Saturday, February 26, 2005
Henderson
After the party got to the outskirts of Puquuay, Revan sent "the clubmaster," the party's rogue, to go back and get Henderson (the npc lizardman fighter). As a result of this solo mission the clubmaster was given bonus experience for the session. Henderson also ended up gaining a level. The next session will begin with Henderson back in the party, along with news about the elves of Moonmist (where the party first landed on the Isle of Ancients). Yes, the moon elves sent an army to reclaim the Temple of Transformation. Yes, Henderson ate Barkfire (the mage he was supposed to guard). Yes, Henderson is very sorry, but he got hungry, and there was an army on the way that he had to get away from. The return trip overland with The Clubmaster to Puquuay was relatively uneventful, the two rogues only had to hide a few times.
Choices and consequences
So, Jaramon was defeated last session, captured alive. Joseph (Robby's 6th level cleric) was determined to bring this horrible villian to justice through retribution by the authority of the church of St. Cuthbert. Taito (Carson's monk) had put Jaramon unconcious with a sleeper hold. Gradually, the transmuter's spell effects wore off: protection from arrows, invisibility, protection from good, fly, spider climb, silence (which Joseph had targetted on him earlier in the encounter) were the main ones. After a poison acid needle in Jaramon's cloak of resistance did 18 points of damage to Joseph, Lance's rogue "clubmaster" was called in to deal with the rest of his articles of clothing and equipment, which included a circlet (metal headband) with a spring-loaded gem that activated teleport to any of 10 random rooms within Jaramon's chambers, a +2 longsword, a +2 composite longbow, an amulet of armor +1, bracers of armor +2, a ring of protection +1, and a wand of baleful polymorph. Monetary treasure equalled about 10,000 gp for each player and npc. The freed captives from the Temple of Transformation numbered about 150 or so, and were still numb from a long period of charm related effects from their captors, and horrendous, cramped conditions. In game terms, they had 5 or 10 hit points each, even those who may have had higher maximums at one time. Some of the women latched on to the paladin and the cleric, seeking meaning and direction. As a group, they expressed great gratitude to the party for their freedom, offering their unwavering allegiance. The party put them to work hauling sculptures, tapestries and any other items of value out of the plush living quarters below the Temple, and armed those capable of fighting with what weapons were available.
A choice presented itself: a secret cavern below Jaramon's quarters led to a network of natural passageways. The party could go back out the top of the temple and fight off the giant lobster-men and the army of moon elves that would likely be arriving soon, or take their chances (along with the freed prisoners) in the caverns. After discussion, the party chose the caverns.
The group worked their way through the caverns for a time, discovering regions of magical side effects and toxins dumped beneath Jaramon's laboratories. Purple magical fogs, strange lights resembling magic missiles going around in circles, acrid sulfury vapors that caused unexplained hair growth and finally an area so black it seemed to devour light itself. Joseph cast a light to cancel out the darkness the drow trading party had cast, triggering a massive encounter. Flegal (Shane's ranger) changed into a vulture (see entry from previous session) and flew over to the far side of the cavern, where he began sniping at drow spellcasters. Also among the enemy were moon elves and mongrelmen, but mostly drow, and a couple of umber hulks. The battle took about two and a half hours of game time. When it was over, the party had slain 47 of the enemy, the enemy had killed about 100 of the low hit point freed prisoners. Enemy area-of effect spells (such as lightning ball) had also killed 20 or so of their own numbers. The party picked up a few unusual new henchmen/followers, a defeated party known as the Ironics, including a sprite fighter, a kobold cleric, a half-ogre rogue, a half-orc wizard and a gnomish ranger. These six (along with the party and 50 refugees bringing up the rear) were among the few survivors of most of the battle, though the half-orc wizard was slain toward the end of it. Six drow surrendered and were the sole survivors on their side. Interrogation revealed that passages to the lower levels of a dwarven mine some miles away could eventually lead out of the caverns. Geena's (Penny's dwarven fighter) stonecunning revealed that the party was about three miles below the surface.
Flegal's tracking ability was called upon a couple of times to guide the party through a capillary network of caves, eventually leading to an enormous underground canyon visible below. An army of drow workers could be seen hauling a 60' iron golem on wheeled planks along the floor of the canyon. By the time their scout/herald arrived to meet the party, each party member had activated their hats of disguise to appear as drow and moon elves, claiming all the others as their slaves and prisoners in order to get past the encounter, as the group was still recovering from the earlier fight. Revan negotiated with the emissary in elvish, offering (as the weaker clan) a gift in exchange for passage. Such trades are common in the underdark, though mutual mistrust comes with the territory. The emmisary asked what clan Revan's group belonged to, where they had come from, and what they had to trade. Since the party had learned that the drow group encountered earlier had been regular traders with Jaramon, Revan told the emmisary that they were with that group, and could offer a sword capable of transmuting its target into a frog as a gift. Phil did not want his half-orc fighter character (Zen) to give up the sword, so he attacked the emmisary. Revan immediately made an excellent diplomacy check to inform the other side that the party was not associated with the attacker. The half-orc scored a critical hit on the emmisary, who failed his saving throw and turned into a frog. Immediately afterward, poison arrows rained on the half orc, slaying him. The drow were given the sword, and the party went on its way.
Later on, the party encountered a group of three hags, and later also killed a couple of bullettes (land sharks). The dwarven mine was located, and the party worked their way to the surface. Meatsville ("Pigtown") was the nearest civilization the party found, a community of about 12,000 (pretty big!) 30 miles southwest of Puquuay ("Trolltown"). It turns out that Pigtown has a lot of hog farming and related industries disliked by the haughty moon elves, who invaded once, then left the area with a truce about a year and a half ago. Also, it is ruled by the royal family of King Biffy XIII, a half-elf who has a castle, a palace and a cathedral. Who is the cathedral to? None other than St. Cuthbert, as it turns out! Jaramon was left there in the care of the local high priest, who plans to keep him in the cruel dungeons for five miserable years as payment for his crime. After that time, Jaramon is to be burned. Pigtown, though a bit stinky, is a relatively safe place for the party to recover for the time being. Local watering holes include the Swine's Heart, the Pig's Eye, and the Sow's Ear, among others.
Next session: April 9th.
A choice presented itself: a secret cavern below Jaramon's quarters led to a network of natural passageways. The party could go back out the top of the temple and fight off the giant lobster-men and the army of moon elves that would likely be arriving soon, or take their chances (along with the freed prisoners) in the caverns. After discussion, the party chose the caverns.
The group worked their way through the caverns for a time, discovering regions of magical side effects and toxins dumped beneath Jaramon's laboratories. Purple magical fogs, strange lights resembling magic missiles going around in circles, acrid sulfury vapors that caused unexplained hair growth and finally an area so black it seemed to devour light itself. Joseph cast a light to cancel out the darkness the drow trading party had cast, triggering a massive encounter. Flegal (Shane's ranger) changed into a vulture (see entry from previous session) and flew over to the far side of the cavern, where he began sniping at drow spellcasters. Also among the enemy were moon elves and mongrelmen, but mostly drow, and a couple of umber hulks. The battle took about two and a half hours of game time. When it was over, the party had slain 47 of the enemy, the enemy had killed about 100 of the low hit point freed prisoners. Enemy area-of effect spells (such as lightning ball) had also killed 20 or so of their own numbers. The party picked up a few unusual new henchmen/followers, a defeated party known as the Ironics, including a sprite fighter, a kobold cleric, a half-ogre rogue, a half-orc wizard and a gnomish ranger. These six (along with the party and 50 refugees bringing up the rear) were among the few survivors of most of the battle, though the half-orc wizard was slain toward the end of it. Six drow surrendered and were the sole survivors on their side. Interrogation revealed that passages to the lower levels of a dwarven mine some miles away could eventually lead out of the caverns. Geena's (Penny's dwarven fighter) stonecunning revealed that the party was about three miles below the surface.
Flegal's tracking ability was called upon a couple of times to guide the party through a capillary network of caves, eventually leading to an enormous underground canyon visible below. An army of drow workers could be seen hauling a 60' iron golem on wheeled planks along the floor of the canyon. By the time their scout/herald arrived to meet the party, each party member had activated their hats of disguise to appear as drow and moon elves, claiming all the others as their slaves and prisoners in order to get past the encounter, as the group was still recovering from the earlier fight. Revan negotiated with the emissary in elvish, offering (as the weaker clan) a gift in exchange for passage. Such trades are common in the underdark, though mutual mistrust comes with the territory. The emmisary asked what clan Revan's group belonged to, where they had come from, and what they had to trade. Since the party had learned that the drow group encountered earlier had been regular traders with Jaramon, Revan told the emmisary that they were with that group, and could offer a sword capable of transmuting its target into a frog as a gift. Phil did not want his half-orc fighter character (Zen) to give up the sword, so he attacked the emmisary. Revan immediately made an excellent diplomacy check to inform the other side that the party was not associated with the attacker. The half-orc scored a critical hit on the emmisary, who failed his saving throw and turned into a frog. Immediately afterward, poison arrows rained on the half orc, slaying him. The drow were given the sword, and the party went on its way.
Later on, the party encountered a group of three hags, and later also killed a couple of bullettes (land sharks). The dwarven mine was located, and the party worked their way to the surface. Meatsville ("Pigtown") was the nearest civilization the party found, a community of about 12,000 (pretty big!) 30 miles southwest of Puquuay ("Trolltown"). It turns out that Pigtown has a lot of hog farming and related industries disliked by the haughty moon elves, who invaded once, then left the area with a truce about a year and a half ago. Also, it is ruled by the royal family of King Biffy XIII, a half-elf who has a castle, a palace and a cathedral. Who is the cathedral to? None other than St. Cuthbert, as it turns out! Jaramon was left there in the care of the local high priest, who plans to keep him in the cruel dungeons for five miserable years as payment for his crime. After that time, Jaramon is to be burned. Pigtown, though a bit stinky, is a relatively safe place for the party to recover for the time being. Local watering holes include the Swine's Heart, the Pig's Eye, and the Sow's Ear, among others.
Next session: April 9th.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
Ogres & Elves
The small Wednesday session was a continuation from two weeks ago, the completion of the Battle of Horseshoe Island to liberate the human villagers from their ogre and hobgoblin occupiers. Black Eyed Bill ("Pirate" ranger), having won the sea battle, fired catapaults and ballistae at the ogre's fortress, while Vat-of-Can Bob (the Paladin) and the NPCs led the villagers in their land attack, including heavy catapaults fired by Aiko and Nightsong Sharpfang, who also sang her bard song. A few bugbears and goblins fought on the side of the ogres. Fergus continued to fly overhead, picking off targets with magic missiles, low on spells and saving the last charges of his wand to protect himself when his fly spell would inevitably run out. The villagers defended their five heavy catapaults with low walls, hidden pits and long pikes, skewering many an angry charging hobgoblin.
Black Eyed Bill and his crew finally landed their ship and disembarked, flanking some of the ogres and hobgoblins, and joining the assault on the fortress. Within, Bill climbed the porticullus chain to the crenelated wall, where he defeated the ogre general (a wizard, not an "ogre mage," per se). Bob interrogated the only common-speaking ogre upon their surrender, and learned that the ogres ultimately answered to "the Duke," who happens to be an elf that has united all the ogres and their kin in the eastern hemisphere to form an empire to stand against the elves on the other side of Aarde. Unfortunately, humans seem to be caught in the middle, with no empire to call their own, being defeated by both ogres and elves.
Black Eyed Bill and his crew finally landed their ship and disembarked, flanking some of the ogres and hobgoblins, and joining the assault on the fortress. Within, Bill climbed the porticullus chain to the crenelated wall, where he defeated the ogre general (a wizard, not an "ogre mage," per se). Bob interrogated the only common-speaking ogre upon their surrender, and learned that the ogres ultimately answered to "the Duke," who happens to be an elf that has united all the ogres and their kin in the eastern hemisphere to form an empire to stand against the elves on the other side of Aarde. Unfortunately, humans seem to be caught in the middle, with no empire to call their own, being defeated by both ogres and elves.
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Dr. Morrow/AVP/Jaramon bites it...
Determined to defeat Jaramon, the (Saturday) party delved deeper into the depraved wizard's lower levels within the pyramid. After finding a secret ladder down, 18 mongrelmen guards fought the party to the death, defending jailed subjects, human and otherwise, who were packed tightly behind iron bars. It was a long and difficult battle, but with a bit of help from prisoners freed and armed earlier, none of the party members or npcs were seriously hurt, though some of the liberators who joined in the battle were killed. The newly freed prisoners were armed with the weapons of the fallen, and given a few duties, mainly to help carry treasure from Jaramon's minions quarters. A transmuter (one of the minions) in the form of a vulture attempted to polymorph one of the party members into a frog, but failed to do so, and was slain.
In the level below, the treasure of the minions included that of the enchantress enlisted by the party as guide, a couple of wizards, and the high-priest, who had been hired to set up the pyramid as the "Temple of Transformation." The wizards had all already been beaten by the party. The high priest was easily defeated, though he surrendered and was allowed to live. His quarters were luxurious, with carvings and sculptures of a procession of reptiles, avians, mammals and aquatic creatures. Many servants were tied up, to be questioned later.
After a long search, a teleportal led to the next level down. Here, in a level containing a giant underground colloseum even the enchantress had not had access to, was a dead titan on a wooden frame, with various parts of other large creatures being grafted to it, including Roc wings, giant squid tentacles, extra eyes (including a few beholder eyestalks). In short, the beginnings of a nightmare being made, thankfully not yet completed.
A secret panel led to a narrow hallway. After evading a couple of traps, the party came to Jaramon's personal chambers, protected by teleportals. They found him reading a book, tried to attack, and dissappeared to other rooms, as did Jaramon. Jaramon took the opportunity to cast a few defensive spells, but after a long series of cat-and mouse, the monk in the party was able to grapple with an invisible, protection from missiles, protection from good, spider-climbing protected foe, who also had some powerful contingency magic items to teleport to his various rooms at random when in trouble. Unfortunately for Jaramon, his "random" room diced out to be the same room he was already in. The teleport defense was mainly designed for times when he was outside of his personal chambers, to bring him back there. It turned out to be the one weakness that would cost Jaramon his life. Once Taito grapped with Jaramon, all the teleporting in the world couldn't protect him, because Taito was along for the ride. Eventually, Jaramon just blacked out. Technically, he's still alive, but the party has plans to burn him or otherwise execute him next session.
Well, that's how it goes. It was a good session, and the group accomplished a lot, finishing the mini-story line for several sessions, demonstrating intelligence, compassion and mercy. The players, especially the party leader (Revan, Roddy's character) continue to surpass my expectations. I awarded 3,750 experience points to everyone. The NPCs (Geena, Mick, Telpin and Henderson) will all level to 6th. I'm going to be able to begin a new storyline for the next session, which will be Saturday, Feb. 26. Players were Shane, Phil, Roddy, (new guy--Shawn?), Lance, Robby and Carson. Lance and the new guy were not there for the whole session.
In the level below, the treasure of the minions included that of the enchantress enlisted by the party as guide, a couple of wizards, and the high-priest, who had been hired to set up the pyramid as the "Temple of Transformation." The wizards had all already been beaten by the party. The high priest was easily defeated, though he surrendered and was allowed to live. His quarters were luxurious, with carvings and sculptures of a procession of reptiles, avians, mammals and aquatic creatures. Many servants were tied up, to be questioned later.
After a long search, a teleportal led to the next level down. Here, in a level containing a giant underground colloseum even the enchantress had not had access to, was a dead titan on a wooden frame, with various parts of other large creatures being grafted to it, including Roc wings, giant squid tentacles, extra eyes (including a few beholder eyestalks). In short, the beginnings of a nightmare being made, thankfully not yet completed.
A secret panel led to a narrow hallway. After evading a couple of traps, the party came to Jaramon's personal chambers, protected by teleportals. They found him reading a book, tried to attack, and dissappeared to other rooms, as did Jaramon. Jaramon took the opportunity to cast a few defensive spells, but after a long series of cat-and mouse, the monk in the party was able to grapple with an invisible, protection from missiles, protection from good, spider-climbing protected foe, who also had some powerful contingency magic items to teleport to his various rooms at random when in trouble. Unfortunately for Jaramon, his "random" room diced out to be the same room he was already in. The teleport defense was mainly designed for times when he was outside of his personal chambers, to bring him back there. It turned out to be the one weakness that would cost Jaramon his life. Once Taito grapped with Jaramon, all the teleporting in the world couldn't protect him, because Taito was along for the ride. Eventually, Jaramon just blacked out. Technically, he's still alive, but the party has plans to burn him or otherwise execute him next session.
Well, that's how it goes. It was a good session, and the group accomplished a lot, finishing the mini-story line for several sessions, demonstrating intelligence, compassion and mercy. The players, especially the party leader (Revan, Roddy's character) continue to surpass my expectations. I awarded 3,750 experience points to everyone. The NPCs (Geena, Mick, Telpin and Henderson) will all level to 6th. I'm going to be able to begin a new storyline for the next session, which will be Saturday, Feb. 26. Players were Shane, Phil, Roddy, (new guy--Shawn?), Lance, Robby and Carson. Lance and the new guy were not there for the whole session.
Saturday, January 29, 2005
Me plus three
Wednesday 1/26 D&D session... Black-Eyed Bill (Carson's "nautical ranger," human, 5th level) and Bob (Phil's human paladin) joined Miss Princess (B's halfling barbarian), Aiko (P's npc dwarven monk), Nightsong Sharpfang (npc female kobold bard) and Captain Fergus Dowrimple (human evoker 6 rogue 2) to continue working with the natives of Horseshoe Island to liberate it from the army of hobgoblins and ogres.
Last week, Black-Eyed Bill was part of a small group that sabotaged the purple ogre navy's three sailing ships, removing planking from the two docked near the fortress and stealing a rudder from the one anchored in the bay. Hobgoblin halberdier formations attacked the natives in 4 square formations of 64 each. Though they were severely hurt by Fergus' fireballs and lightning bolts, they kept on coming, eventually driving the natives back. After the battle, 300 or so native warriors, poorly skilled, beaten and poorly equipped, retreated (along with the party, who served as officers in the operation) back to their small villages on the other side of the island. Knowing that captured villagers would eventually be eaten by the hobgoblins and ogres, a second attack on the fortress would have to happen soon. In the meantime, forces on both sides had a chance to recover and prepare. An early raid by the Merry Maiden gave the hobgoblins something to think about and some wounds to lick - two enemy ships were sunk, though the maiden was heavily damaged. After capturing a few of the enemy crew, a semi-successful prisoner exchange was made, with limited success and a lot of distrust on both sides, netting the party 400 gold pieces and 5 freed natives from the fortress.
Rivet (Robby's kobold alchemist/engineer, mentioned briefly as an npc for this weeks session), Nightsong and Aiko were helpful in directing the natives to dig traps and defensible pits with stakes for at least some cover and protection in the event of a hobgoblin attack, while longspears, heavy catapaults and other weapons were built and prepared. All told, five heavy catapaults were built for the land attack, along with one battering ram, a lot of shovels, and enough weapons to arm about 600 natives.
The attack was two-pronged, using the Merry Maiden along with a land advance to overwhelm the highly disciplined hobgoblins and their ogre overseers. The fortress was a typical stone walled structure, built on a rocky hill and featuring numerous crenelations for archers and catapaults on top, one large, strong square gate/door, and large enough to accomodate an army of 1,200 (though the exact number there was unknown). Signallers on the point would keep the Merry Maiden from again being caught by surprise by the enemy ships (as it had once before, nearly sinking it, and requiring a new mast and lengthy repairs). As it turned out, the Scythe made a poor showing, especially after Fergus cast Fly on himself, flew over and dropped a Fireball right on top of the enemy ship, burning much of the sails and rigging. One deadly tactic it had used in the past was to catapault a rain of caltrops, but this time the crew of the Maiden was ready. Fergus then continued to fly over to the fortress with his notorious wand of lightning bolts to make life miserable for the hobgoblins.
Seeing a block of 64 drop to 8 after a fireball, the hobgoblins opted for a looser formation. Fortunately for the villagers, this robbed the hobgoblins of the multiple attacks their reach weapons provided, as well as the tactic of a front line with tower shields to provide cover. But the hobgoblins had no choice, as they saw it. It appeared that Fergus too high up for any of their weapons to reach him effectively, and the villagers were also hammering the fortress and units with catapaults firing at perfect range from the cover of trenches they had built during the night. So far, the villagers are prevailing, ganging up on the scattering hobgoblins to face each one down two or three to one at a time, even though in total numbers, the villagers are outnumbered.
But the battle is not over yet. While the hobgoblin units appear to be broken, the officers at the core of each still stand and fight, often joining or leading other units. And what will be in the fortress? How will the ogres fight when cornered? That remains to be seen.
Last week, Black-Eyed Bill was part of a small group that sabotaged the purple ogre navy's three sailing ships, removing planking from the two docked near the fortress and stealing a rudder from the one anchored in the bay. Hobgoblin halberdier formations attacked the natives in 4 square formations of 64 each. Though they were severely hurt by Fergus' fireballs and lightning bolts, they kept on coming, eventually driving the natives back. After the battle, 300 or so native warriors, poorly skilled, beaten and poorly equipped, retreated (along with the party, who served as officers in the operation) back to their small villages on the other side of the island. Knowing that captured villagers would eventually be eaten by the hobgoblins and ogres, a second attack on the fortress would have to happen soon. In the meantime, forces on both sides had a chance to recover and prepare. An early raid by the Merry Maiden gave the hobgoblins something to think about and some wounds to lick - two enemy ships were sunk, though the maiden was heavily damaged. After capturing a few of the enemy crew, a semi-successful prisoner exchange was made, with limited success and a lot of distrust on both sides, netting the party 400 gold pieces and 5 freed natives from the fortress.
Rivet (Robby's kobold alchemist/engineer, mentioned briefly as an npc for this weeks session), Nightsong and Aiko were helpful in directing the natives to dig traps and defensible pits with stakes for at least some cover and protection in the event of a hobgoblin attack, while longspears, heavy catapaults and other weapons were built and prepared. All told, five heavy catapaults were built for the land attack, along with one battering ram, a lot of shovels, and enough weapons to arm about 600 natives.
The attack was two-pronged, using the Merry Maiden along with a land advance to overwhelm the highly disciplined hobgoblins and their ogre overseers. The fortress was a typical stone walled structure, built on a rocky hill and featuring numerous crenelations for archers and catapaults on top, one large, strong square gate/door, and large enough to accomodate an army of 1,200 (though the exact number there was unknown). Signallers on the point would keep the Merry Maiden from again being caught by surprise by the enemy ships (as it had once before, nearly sinking it, and requiring a new mast and lengthy repairs). As it turned out, the Scythe made a poor showing, especially after Fergus cast Fly on himself, flew over and dropped a Fireball right on top of the enemy ship, burning much of the sails and rigging. One deadly tactic it had used in the past was to catapault a rain of caltrops, but this time the crew of the Maiden was ready. Fergus then continued to fly over to the fortress with his notorious wand of lightning bolts to make life miserable for the hobgoblins.
Seeing a block of 64 drop to 8 after a fireball, the hobgoblins opted for a looser formation. Fortunately for the villagers, this robbed the hobgoblins of the multiple attacks their reach weapons provided, as well as the tactic of a front line with tower shields to provide cover. But the hobgoblins had no choice, as they saw it. It appeared that Fergus too high up for any of their weapons to reach him effectively, and the villagers were also hammering the fortress and units with catapaults firing at perfect range from the cover of trenches they had built during the night. So far, the villagers are prevailing, ganging up on the scattering hobgoblins to face each one down two or three to one at a time, even though in total numbers, the villagers are outnumbered.
But the battle is not over yet. While the hobgoblin units appear to be broken, the officers at the core of each still stand and fight, often joining or leading other units. And what will be in the fortress? How will the ogres fight when cornered? That remains to be seen.
Saturday, January 08, 2005
Temple of Transformation, Part 1
Today was pretty straightforward, a good game session. I had spent a bit of time preparing, and I was glad I did, though I may be under-estimating what the party is capable of taking on. Carson, Phil, Shane, Lance, Robby and Roddy all made it. Phil brought lots of pretzels, Roddy brought Coke-a-Cola and Doritos, Lance brought Bahls (an energy/caffeine drink that came in blue bottles and tasted like cream soda), and Penny brought Mountain Dew. Carson drew funny cartoons on the backs of most of the character name cards. So we had plenty of sugar, snacks, caffeine and salt. And bad jokes. Phil now has plenty of dice and a better attitude, which is good. His new character is a half-orc barbarian, which he says he's going to stick with.
So last session, the party captured two of Jaramon's minions, an elven sorcerer battle-mage and sorceress enchantress. Revan was able to persuade the enchantress to reveal the location of Jaramon's headquarters, the Temple of Transformation. After scouting a route out of the sewers below Moonmist, Flegal found a cave route through the Purple Moon Mountains, where the party fought rat-roaches and young flail-snails, dropped 200' down a saltwater geyser and to the edge of Jaramon's Valley. Upon further persuasion, the captured elf enchantress was convinced to cooperate with the party by using a wand of domination (party treasure from earlier) to get 12 elf guards to disregard the party (in hats of disguise as elves), so the party could stow away on a wagonload of 29 indentured servants bound for the pyramid temple, beyond the 20', mile-long crenalated wall with 4' rolling stone spheres on each side, through the zoolike valley/park/bestiary, past the giant Cube of Force, beyond the 20' lobster-men construction worker-guards, into the pyramid. Everything was done very carefully, every detail attended to. Forethought corrected a number of potentially bad situations. Even so, it would be tough. Henderson was left behind at the cave to guard the battle-sorcerer, who could not be persuaded to cooperate and had suffered some broken fingers as a result. Once the guards were secured and disarmed (they were armed with longswords, longbows and wands of Charm Person), the indentured servants were persuaded to help if they wished to, though a Dispel Magic was required to remove any remaining charms to guard against squeelers.
The stone sphere led the wagon in, opening the way before it and closing the way behind it, with 20' lobster-men guards close at hand at the temple entry, where shark-bats flew above. Through the valley, a dog wearing spectacles (dog-wiz) ran, and "crabbits" (bunny-crabs) bounded. But the weekly wagon shipment was proof against these things, and the party was unharmed. Unseen and unused were a few other of Jaramon's creations, including a wizard-squid and a number of assorted mongrelmen and mongrel-elves, willing and unwilling subjects.
Within the temple, the indentured servants were unloaded, and instruction began regarding their appointed tasks, starting with cleaning up after the strange horses, working in the temple kitchen, etc. The great cathedral-like entry was brightly lit by Continual Light, with a spiral stair visible up high, opening to an observatory on the top of the pyramid. The wagon was then loaded with one of the temple's exports, a special unit of ant-ogres (as a ogre, with better armor class from exoskeleton, and mandibles on head as natural weapons), and the wagon left, magical stone sphere rolling before it, opening and closing the way. The dark king of the Purple Moon elves would be well pleased, and his generous patronage of Jaramon's square mile of strange projects would continue. Enemies of the Purple Order would tremble.
Once the wagon had left, the depth of betrayal of his former minoin began to be felt as the party attacked the 12 elf "harrier" guards. Thinking the party were all elves (due to thier hats of disguise), the Harriers (also armed with swords, bows and wands of Charm Person) did not attempt to use the wands to charm the party, as elves are immune to such charms. The indentured servants, who had been armed by the party, also fought the elves, led by Taito, Zen, Flegal, Dante, Joseph, Revan, Geena, Mick, Telpin, and the recently converted elf sorceress. Henderson would have enjoyed the battle too, but he was back at the cave, on guard duty. Casualties were pretty low, just a couple of the indentured servants, due to the timing, planning and execution of the plan.
But this is just the main level, the point of entry. Wagons have been arriving on a regular basis for many weeks. There are several levels below, each with new encounters and surprises. Things are just getting going. The players and their characters HATE Jaramon, and would like to kill him more than anything, preferably as soon as possible. But he has a lot of tricks up his sleeve. Even though the party advanced further than I expected them to today, there was a lot of stuff I didn't use, and can throw at them later if I want to. I was happy with this adventure. There are plenty more levels, rooms, minions, and strange monsters for the party to face in the future.
I awarded 3,000 experience points, which might be a bit high, considering how easy all the encounters ended up being. But I have to give the guys credit for avoiding the tough encounters in the valley, especially those lobster-men. Note that a couple of 100 xp bonuses were awarded today: 100 each to Revan and Joseph for converting characters to their religions, 100 to Taito for Carson's wonderful cartoons. Treasure is being withheld until the end of next session.
I am considering writing up the sorceress as an NPC, because Roddy has conversion rules in the Exhaulted Deeds book, changing her from NE to N, and soon to NG. She could be a good fit for the party, though at this moment I can't remember what name I wrote down for her. She made her first Will save vs. insanity that I use in "alignment drift" situations.
Next month I am moving the session to Sunday, Feb. 13, 12-6, because I have a cello gig on Saturday, Feb. 12. Carson and Phil should be here for this week's Wed. group, though I need to give Carson a ride. Additional Wednesday players may be here in the future. We will also play Sat. Feb. 26, so that month is full of sessions. I'm also thinking about Magic, as well as Mordheim, either here or at the local hobby shop sometime soon.
So last session, the party captured two of Jaramon's minions, an elven sorcerer battle-mage and sorceress enchantress. Revan was able to persuade the enchantress to reveal the location of Jaramon's headquarters, the Temple of Transformation. After scouting a route out of the sewers below Moonmist, Flegal found a cave route through the Purple Moon Mountains, where the party fought rat-roaches and young flail-snails, dropped 200' down a saltwater geyser and to the edge of Jaramon's Valley. Upon further persuasion, the captured elf enchantress was convinced to cooperate with the party by using a wand of domination (party treasure from earlier) to get 12 elf guards to disregard the party (in hats of disguise as elves), so the party could stow away on a wagonload of 29 indentured servants bound for the pyramid temple, beyond the 20', mile-long crenalated wall with 4' rolling stone spheres on each side, through the zoolike valley/park/bestiary, past the giant Cube of Force, beyond the 20' lobster-men construction worker-guards, into the pyramid. Everything was done very carefully, every detail attended to. Forethought corrected a number of potentially bad situations. Even so, it would be tough. Henderson was left behind at the cave to guard the battle-sorcerer, who could not be persuaded to cooperate and had suffered some broken fingers as a result. Once the guards were secured and disarmed (they were armed with longswords, longbows and wands of Charm Person), the indentured servants were persuaded to help if they wished to, though a Dispel Magic was required to remove any remaining charms to guard against squeelers.
The stone sphere led the wagon in, opening the way before it and closing the way behind it, with 20' lobster-men guards close at hand at the temple entry, where shark-bats flew above. Through the valley, a dog wearing spectacles (dog-wiz) ran, and "crabbits" (bunny-crabs) bounded. But the weekly wagon shipment was proof against these things, and the party was unharmed. Unseen and unused were a few other of Jaramon's creations, including a wizard-squid and a number of assorted mongrelmen and mongrel-elves, willing and unwilling subjects.
Within the temple, the indentured servants were unloaded, and instruction began regarding their appointed tasks, starting with cleaning up after the strange horses, working in the temple kitchen, etc. The great cathedral-like entry was brightly lit by Continual Light, with a spiral stair visible up high, opening to an observatory on the top of the pyramid. The wagon was then loaded with one of the temple's exports, a special unit of ant-ogres (as a ogre, with better armor class from exoskeleton, and mandibles on head as natural weapons), and the wagon left, magical stone sphere rolling before it, opening and closing the way. The dark king of the Purple Moon elves would be well pleased, and his generous patronage of Jaramon's square mile of strange projects would continue. Enemies of the Purple Order would tremble.
Once the wagon had left, the depth of betrayal of his former minoin began to be felt as the party attacked the 12 elf "harrier" guards. Thinking the party were all elves (due to thier hats of disguise), the Harriers (also armed with swords, bows and wands of Charm Person) did not attempt to use the wands to charm the party, as elves are immune to such charms. The indentured servants, who had been armed by the party, also fought the elves, led by Taito, Zen, Flegal, Dante, Joseph, Revan, Geena, Mick, Telpin, and the recently converted elf sorceress. Henderson would have enjoyed the battle too, but he was back at the cave, on guard duty. Casualties were pretty low, just a couple of the indentured servants, due to the timing, planning and execution of the plan.
But this is just the main level, the point of entry. Wagons have been arriving on a regular basis for many weeks. There are several levels below, each with new encounters and surprises. Things are just getting going. The players and their characters HATE Jaramon, and would like to kill him more than anything, preferably as soon as possible. But he has a lot of tricks up his sleeve. Even though the party advanced further than I expected them to today, there was a lot of stuff I didn't use, and can throw at them later if I want to. I was happy with this adventure. There are plenty more levels, rooms, minions, and strange monsters for the party to face in the future.
I awarded 3,000 experience points, which might be a bit high, considering how easy all the encounters ended up being. But I have to give the guys credit for avoiding the tough encounters in the valley, especially those lobster-men. Note that a couple of 100 xp bonuses were awarded today: 100 each to Revan and Joseph for converting characters to their religions, 100 to Taito for Carson's wonderful cartoons. Treasure is being withheld until the end of next session.
I am considering writing up the sorceress as an NPC, because Roddy has conversion rules in the Exhaulted Deeds book, changing her from NE to N, and soon to NG. She could be a good fit for the party, though at this moment I can't remember what name I wrote down for her. She made her first Will save vs. insanity that I use in "alignment drift" situations.
Next month I am moving the session to Sunday, Feb. 13, 12-6, because I have a cello gig on Saturday, Feb. 12. Carson and Phil should be here for this week's Wed. group, though I need to give Carson a ride. Additional Wednesday players may be here in the future. We will also play Sat. Feb. 26, so that month is full of sessions. I'm also thinking about Magic, as well as Mordheim, either here or at the local hobby shop sometime soon.
Thursday, December 23, 2004
A refreshing change of pace
Wednesday (yesterday) I picked Carson up and brought him over for gaming group. With Phil on vacation, instead of playing D&D we played Magic and Mordheim. I always have fun gaming (even a bad day gaming beats a good day at most other things), but after a few months without Magic or Mordheim, it was a refreshing change of pace. First, we played best two out of three at Magic, and stuck with the decks we each brought out first. His deck was classic, called "Tapdancer," with Instill Energy and related effects that allowed Llanowar Elves to provide extra mana, lands to untap and retap for extra mana, and big fatties to get bigger and fatter. One turn, he put three Rancors on a big fattie and took a swing. My standard deck, which I named "Not Again," takes advantage of the return of Terror and Fireball to the standard environment, along with Raise Dead, Gravedigger, Necrataal, Shock Troopers and similar creature destruction/damage effects of my creatures coming into play or leaving play. Theoretically, it's a good Sligh-type deck with a ridiculous amount of creature destruction, much of it recursive. But if it stalls for too long before getting to four mana (as it did in game three vs. Tapdancer), it has some real problems, because without Gravedigger and some of the other four-cost creatures and spells, it just doesn't go off very well. Also, I really miss Animate Dead and Dark Ritual , because when they were Standard legal I could bring out big enforcers quickly and dominate the board (unless the other guy had Disenchant handy). Game 1, Tapdancer looked like it was going to lose. I had such a big lead, I thought it was in the bag and then his deck went off and I lost. Game 2, I drew up 6 after having 1 mana in my first hand. I had 5 mana in my second hand, and kept it anyway. Then towards the end I drew a second Fireball, and it was all over; what seemed like a mana flush problem was no problem at all. Game 3 was close and a bit long, but I just couldn't draw that 3rd mana and got stuck with 5 or 6 cards in my hand that I couldn't play. Carson mana shorted too, but he was able to get 5 mana out of 2 lands pretty easily, and brought out his fatty. I chump blocked and stalled as long as I could, but that 4th land still just wouldn't come up, and in the end, it would have been to late anyway. So I lost in three. But it was fun. Carson's deck was really cool, and when I saw how many cards he had that worked into his combo/theme, I felt like "Not Again" was not up to my old level of deck design. But then my deck is Standard, which limits it a bit. Maybe I'll try a Classic version for friendly play. Or not. I don't know but it might be fun to build and modify some more decks.
So we still had time for a quick game of Mordheim. Carson had worked up a new group of Witch Hunters. There were three heavily armored, mounted heroes with 5 war dogs (the Witch Hunter version, with 4 Strength) for a total rating of 89. His models looked great. I used my Lizardman warband (I had built it a months ago from Town Crier rules). I dug through my big Lizardman Warhammer army and picked out the 8 figures that best matched my roster sheet, which included 5 heroes (4 Skinks and a Saurus, with the Skink leader being a Shaman) and 3 henchmen (a Skink, a Saurus and a Kroxigor the warband recently purchased) for a total rating of 129. Carson rolled for the scenario, and it came up Wyrdstone Hunt (or was it Treasure Hunt?) with 4 shards up for grabs. We set up the terrain fairly heavy, put the wyrdstone markers out, placed our minis, and Carson started play. He kept his band together, went for the closest stone (horses have good movement) and cursed about having to dismount to explore/pick up wyrdstone. On my turn, I scattered my guys a bit, sending about half of them to the base of a long building right in front of me with a shard on the second level, and about half the guys off to my right toward the other two shards. Skinks and Kroxigors have a 6" movement, while humans (unmounted, not a factor in this game) and my Saurus move 4" when not running. My Skink henchman was kind of exposed, but oh well. On Carson's turn, he shot a crossbow and missed, picked up his first wyrdstone shard, and sent one of his armored horsemen after my vulnerable, lone Skink henchman, but he came up about 1" short. On my next turn, 3 of my Skinks scrambled up to claim the second shard, my Skink Henchman scrambled away and up a ladder to escape the horseman, and my two Saurus warriors who had joined up next to my Kroxigor toward the middle of the board could see that they were too far away to reach his horseman. But the Kroxigor, with his 6" movement, charged and took him out of action. The next turn, 2 or 3 of the Witch Hunter wardogs charged the Kroxigor (I forgot about his Fear effect, so they ended up not needing to take their required Leadership checks) inflicting 1 wound on the big guy before being taken yelping out of action (Krox has 3 wounds, 3 attacks and a 7 strength (-4 to armor saves!), but he attacks last and only has a 3 weapon skill). Soon after, my pair of Saurus warriors found themselves taking out 1 or 2 of the remaining war dogs (a lightning bolt from my Skink Shaman had taken one war dog out earlier). After making their Leadership check to avoid routing after losing 4 of thier original 8 warband members, the Witch Hunters voluntarily routed after seeing my Shaman was about to loose another lightning bolt (Automatic Strength 5 hit, Strength 6 vs. armored foes). So my rating went up by about 14 points, I rolled The Lad's Got Talent for that lone skink henchman and I now have 6 heroes. The warband is sitting on about 5 shards of wyrdstone and something like 70 gold crowns, and has a rating of 143, I think. When I get a chance, I should really spend some time with the minis to get their equipment looking as WYSIWYG as it should (What You See Is What You Get) by gluing swords, shields and bows to those little guys. Anyway, even though this was a very one-sided victory for the Lizard Men, I know that on the whole they are as balanced as any warband, with a bunch of guys with 2 Toughness. I have seen them get their butts kicked a bunch of times. One thing for sure, that Kroxigor was expensive, a big sacrifice to save up over many games for a guy who counts as an animal and never gains experience. Another sure thing: he was worth it!
So we still had time for a quick game of Mordheim. Carson had worked up a new group of Witch Hunters. There were three heavily armored, mounted heroes with 5 war dogs (the Witch Hunter version, with 4 Strength) for a total rating of 89. His models looked great. I used my Lizardman warband (I had built it a months ago from Town Crier rules). I dug through my big Lizardman Warhammer army and picked out the 8 figures that best matched my roster sheet, which included 5 heroes (4 Skinks and a Saurus, with the Skink leader being a Shaman) and 3 henchmen (a Skink, a Saurus and a Kroxigor the warband recently purchased) for a total rating of 129. Carson rolled for the scenario, and it came up Wyrdstone Hunt (or was it Treasure Hunt?) with 4 shards up for grabs. We set up the terrain fairly heavy, put the wyrdstone markers out, placed our minis, and Carson started play. He kept his band together, went for the closest stone (horses have good movement) and cursed about having to dismount to explore/pick up wyrdstone. On my turn, I scattered my guys a bit, sending about half of them to the base of a long building right in front of me with a shard on the second level, and about half the guys off to my right toward the other two shards. Skinks and Kroxigors have a 6" movement, while humans (unmounted, not a factor in this game) and my Saurus move 4" when not running. My Skink henchman was kind of exposed, but oh well. On Carson's turn, he shot a crossbow and missed, picked up his first wyrdstone shard, and sent one of his armored horsemen after my vulnerable, lone Skink henchman, but he came up about 1" short. On my next turn, 3 of my Skinks scrambled up to claim the second shard, my Skink Henchman scrambled away and up a ladder to escape the horseman, and my two Saurus warriors who had joined up next to my Kroxigor toward the middle of the board could see that they were too far away to reach his horseman. But the Kroxigor, with his 6" movement, charged and took him out of action. The next turn, 2 or 3 of the Witch Hunter wardogs charged the Kroxigor (I forgot about his Fear effect, so they ended up not needing to take their required Leadership checks) inflicting 1 wound on the big guy before being taken yelping out of action (Krox has 3 wounds, 3 attacks and a 7 strength (-4 to armor saves!), but he attacks last and only has a 3 weapon skill). Soon after, my pair of Saurus warriors found themselves taking out 1 or 2 of the remaining war dogs (a lightning bolt from my Skink Shaman had taken one war dog out earlier). After making their Leadership check to avoid routing after losing 4 of thier original 8 warband members, the Witch Hunters voluntarily routed after seeing my Shaman was about to loose another lightning bolt (Automatic Strength 5 hit, Strength 6 vs. armored foes). So my rating went up by about 14 points, I rolled The Lad's Got Talent for that lone skink henchman and I now have 6 heroes. The warband is sitting on about 5 shards of wyrdstone and something like 70 gold crowns, and has a rating of 143, I think. When I get a chance, I should really spend some time with the minis to get their equipment looking as WYSIWYG as it should (What You See Is What You Get) by gluing swords, shields and bows to those little guys. Anyway, even though this was a very one-sided victory for the Lizard Men, I know that on the whole they are as balanced as any warband, with a bunch of guys with 2 Toughness. I have seen them get their butts kicked a bunch of times. One thing for sure, that Kroxigor was expensive, a big sacrifice to save up over many games for a guy who counts as an animal and never gains experience. Another sure thing: he was worth it!
Saturday, December 18, 2004
Jaramon, Transmuter and Escapist...
Robby, Roddy, Carson, Shane, Penny and Lance all played today in the monthly Saturday Aarde (+500) campaign. We picked up the session where things left off last month, in Moporia. Everybody did some individual stuff in the city, including reports by the Joseph and Revan to their respective churches. Revan, determined to rid the world of the threat of Jaramon, learned from sailors and traders in town that Jaramon could be on the Isle of Ancients, perhaps in Moonmist (one of the first and most highly populated Purple Order settlements). The theory went that Jaramon, like the party, would go to where he could lick his wounds and re-arm himself after battle, and that Moonmist would be the most likely place, since more high elves from the moon Sonaeed were there than anywhere (or so it was thought by a couple of sources). More importantly, a high elf ship by the name of Moonmist was in port. Though the odds were against success, Telpin arranged for a gnome illusionist friend to create and sell the party a hat of disguise each, and the party bought passage to Moonmist on the elven vessel. Telpin (gnome bard) and Henderson (lizardman fighter/rogue) are the only nonhumans in the party. Only Flegal and Telpin speak elven, but everyone wore the hats disguised as elves for the voyage at 10 gp per head one way.
Unfortunately, waiting for them at Moonmist on the Isle of Ancients was an elven horse-mace captain with a monocle of True Seeing who could see through the disguise of illusion and had his unit attack the party the minute they set foot on the beautifully ornate docks. The party fought their way through the encounter, and the captain was forced to retreat with only a couple of surviving soldiers from his unit. Along the seabank were great tree castles built into ancient knarled sea birches. Fearing the monocled horse-mace captain would return soon with greater numbers, the party hid in a sea-cave nearby and reset their hats to a new set of purple order high elves. Upon investigation within the cave, a sculpted archway was found exuding lilac perfume along with sewage from Moonmist. With nowhere else to go, the party followed the sewer deeper, to about the center of the elven (formerly dwarven) town. They waited quietly until nightfall.
Listening at the ornate eight-sided manhole cover, the party determined they were near an inn or tavern of some sort, as a couple were heard nearby talking. Everyone emerged unnoticed and went into the great ballroom of the dance hall smelling of lilacs. Dante Blackmorg (Lance played him) tried to dance with one of the elven maidens, and ended up embarassing himself, but the party was still not exposed. Nearly 100 elves were there at the peak hour of business, and the party kept mostly to themselves at their table, sending their only elf-speaking members to gather information. Telpin and Flegal learned indirectly from a group of wizards playing darts that Jaramon was expected to be dropping by to play later on. Eventually, an opportunity presented itself for the party to confront Jaramon for his earlier crimes, when he departed to the privy to relieve himself. Attacking him on his own, under cover of Joseph's Silence spell, Jaramon would not have had a chance, except for his ring of teleportatation, which he was able to activate without a sound and escape with a few hit points left.
Knowing Jaramon has many wizarding friends, the party unscrewed the privy, moved it aside, slipped back into the sewers and replaced it where it was on their way down. Within a couple of hours, Jaramon and three companions were in the sewers, launching 10d6 fireballs at the party from a distance. The party charged their enemy, running hard and launching spells and arrows to the best of their ability. Telpin went to -9 hp (cauterized by the flames, though, he remained stable). Dante was slain. Pressing the attack, the rest of the group forced Jaramon to teleport away again and abandon his entourage. The party defeated a small dragon-like creation of his, and captured his enchanting sorceress and war-sorcerer. I awarded the party 3,500 xp. We will resume next month, in the sewers below Moonmist. Later, I leveled up Henderson, Mick the Gangly and Telpin. For each of them, reaching 5th level was a pretty uneventful plateau.
Until next time, keep gaming... but don't obsess. Remember there's a real world out there too.
Unfortunately, waiting for them at Moonmist on the Isle of Ancients was an elven horse-mace captain with a monocle of True Seeing who could see through the disguise of illusion and had his unit attack the party the minute they set foot on the beautifully ornate docks. The party fought their way through the encounter, and the captain was forced to retreat with only a couple of surviving soldiers from his unit. Along the seabank were great tree castles built into ancient knarled sea birches. Fearing the monocled horse-mace captain would return soon with greater numbers, the party hid in a sea-cave nearby and reset their hats to a new set of purple order high elves. Upon investigation within the cave, a sculpted archway was found exuding lilac perfume along with sewage from Moonmist. With nowhere else to go, the party followed the sewer deeper, to about the center of the elven (formerly dwarven) town. They waited quietly until nightfall.
Listening at the ornate eight-sided manhole cover, the party determined they were near an inn or tavern of some sort, as a couple were heard nearby talking. Everyone emerged unnoticed and went into the great ballroom of the dance hall smelling of lilacs. Dante Blackmorg (Lance played him) tried to dance with one of the elven maidens, and ended up embarassing himself, but the party was still not exposed. Nearly 100 elves were there at the peak hour of business, and the party kept mostly to themselves at their table, sending their only elf-speaking members to gather information. Telpin and Flegal learned indirectly from a group of wizards playing darts that Jaramon was expected to be dropping by to play later on. Eventually, an opportunity presented itself for the party to confront Jaramon for his earlier crimes, when he departed to the privy to relieve himself. Attacking him on his own, under cover of Joseph's Silence spell, Jaramon would not have had a chance, except for his ring of teleportatation, which he was able to activate without a sound and escape with a few hit points left.
Knowing Jaramon has many wizarding friends, the party unscrewed the privy, moved it aside, slipped back into the sewers and replaced it where it was on their way down. Within a couple of hours, Jaramon and three companions were in the sewers, launching 10d6 fireballs at the party from a distance. The party charged their enemy, running hard and launching spells and arrows to the best of their ability. Telpin went to -9 hp (cauterized by the flames, though, he remained stable). Dante was slain. Pressing the attack, the rest of the group forced Jaramon to teleport away again and abandon his entourage. The party defeated a small dragon-like creation of his, and captured his enchanting sorceress and war-sorcerer. I awarded the party 3,500 xp. We will resume next month, in the sewers below Moonmist. Later, I leveled up Henderson, Mick the Gangly and Telpin. For each of them, reaching 5th level was a pretty uneventful plateau.
Until next time, keep gaming... but don't obsess. Remember there's a real world out there too.
Monday, December 13, 2004
Blogs, links and more blogs
I have been reading some other blogs, and want to improve this one by adding links to other blogs, and possibly creating a new one also.
Saturday, November 13, 2004
The (D&D) "Matrix" episode 11/13/04
Well, today was a great game. Phil, Carson and Robby, Roddy and Shane made it. P. had a bazaar so I had B. too (she's 3, but she behaved herself). It was about 4 already when I learned Robby and Carson would have to go at 4:45, so that was a bummer, since I wanted to wrap the "Matrix" plotline into the game today. First, the party was running a routine errand, picking up yeast from the Cliff Village lizardmen for a nice dwarf town baker lady. They met a lizardman who was the sole survivor of a patrol ambush, where the rest of his group was captured. Then, the party was attacked by 10 flying 4-armed "Violet Vultures," formerly lizard men, armed with +3 longswords (3 each), +3 shields, and +3 breastplate armor. It was a very tough encounter that k/0'd or killed all 4 npcs and all the pcs except for the paladin and the ranger. But the reward was very great. On their way to get the Taito (Carson's Monk), resurrected at Moporia, the day watch (they were in the black desert, travelling by night) spotted another group of Violet Vultures that turned back on seeing the party. Later, when just two party members were on watch, there was a white flash, blacking out the party members. When they came to, their captive bad guy was gone, but they resumed the trip (or so they thought). As it turned out, a lizard went behind a rock, then an identical lizard went behind the same rock... (yeah, I know, a dead giveaway from The Matrix). Eventually, Revan was able to make some amazing saving throws and woke up in a glass "coffin" crysallis, in a room with the ten of them arranged in a circle of crysalli. He broke out, attacked the elf mage (of the purple order) attendant, and eventually everybody was able to escape (there were thousands). But Jaramon popped away again at the first sign of trouble... Finally, everybody was able to recover their equipment, and Taito's body was found. A presentation is being made to St. Cuthbert's church in Moporia regarding the incident. I awarded 3750 XP, and once items were sold, each character racked in about 275,000 GP in treasure (Yeah, higher than usual, much higher...) But they earned it, they probably saved the world this day.
Sunday, October 10, 2004
B's First Barbarian, and module recycling
B's First Barbarian -- A couple of Wednesday nights ago, I was running Phil through what was going to be the first session of a new solo D&D campaign, this time set in Greyhawk. Phil is playing a half-orc fighter named Dracono Phoenix (yeah, cheesy name but okay), and he is considering multi-classing to some other class later on, perhaps bard. With this in mind, I had outlined three NPCs with the idea of multi-classing them later on as well: A human paladin, an elven ranger and a barbarian (race undetermined). For the adventure, see the notes on the previous session - I didn't have a whole lot of time to come up with something new, and since Phil hadn't been at that session I recycled that scenerio. If you have ever DM'ed on a regular basis, you know what I am talking about. So basically, there's this coastal town under attack by a bunch of evil elves (actually well intentioned high elves who have been seriously misled). It's mostly a peaceful human fishing village. Red Hand's orcish army is hired by the town to join in defending against the evil elves. My daughter B is three years old, and I ended up "babysitting" her that night (though you're not really ever a babysitter when you're a father). She really wanted to play, so I put her in the booster chair and had her play the barbarian. I decided the barbarian should be a female halfling, just to fit better. B had a great time, and she rolled really well, and since barbarians are illiterate and don't know what is going on, her roleplaying was perfect! It goes to show you that anybody can play a barbarian.
Module recycling - Saturday, it was a medium sized group. I had rearranged a bunch of stuff, and couldn't seem to find any of my session notes (one of the great reasons I use this blog) so I ran Tomb of the Overseer, a mini-module from AEG. It seemed to be going well, between Robby and Carson's out-of-game comedy (funny enough to be worth the distraction) and Lance (!) playing Zach's fighter-rogue Dante. Most of the players had been computer gaming pretty heavily before the session. Shane was there too, playing his ranger, though he would have to leave early, as did Lance. Yeah, the game was going well, until Roddy started paying closer attention to the game and remembered he had played in this module back when we had the shop, and he wanted to go to the room with the three crowns that turned the wearer into undead, and he liked the "grateful dead" ending where you give the undead paladin his stuff back. Carson chimed in that he remembered everybody was really bitchy at the shop that day (4 years ago!). I shouldn't have been surprised, these guys have pretty good memories, though I have a sneaking suspicion that it's no accident that these comments followed after I came back from going to the bathroom. So I need to go back to my old procedure of penciling in the player names of everybody who has been through a module, and also I need to carry my game materials with me if I leave the table for any reason. Or, I can just do what I did for the second half of the session and run everything right out of my head.
Jaramon the Transmuter, my new arch-villian had a small lab and sub-lair nearby, as it turned out. Revan, Roddy's paladin, detected "evil" on a 2"x 2" button, which opened a sliding stone wall, then the party fought giant lizardmen who shrunk to normal size after being slain and had two potions, one red, one green (polymorph, enlarge, though the party hasn't identified them yet). I haven't decided why the button radiated "evil," except that maybe it was an aura similar to Nystul's Magic Aura except for radiating evil instead of magic; Jaramon is so evil he might have found some strange comfort in this, and it might also have helped him find the button in the dark. One of my goals with Jaramon is to have him use magic in unique and unpredictable ways. The wall predictably rolled shut behind the party. The party fought a bridge battle against more of the 4-armed "Jaramonians" (really some of my WH40K Tyranid minis). Upon getting to the other side of the stone bridge (laid out across a chasm with Wall of Stone), the party entered a plain stone chamber and found a magical trap in the floor, which they avoided. In the next room, a similar one. As it turns out, the first one polymorphs any living creature into a Jaramonian, and the second returns any polymorphed creature to its original form. I had placed a couple of magic mouths here and there, mostly just to laugh at the party and rattle them. What fun for DMs. The first of the Magic Mouths said "what form would you like to be?" to which each of the party members said they wanted to remain as they were, except Taito, who said "I want to be Taito," and was turned into a potato for 4 rounds. The second Magic Mouth said "Rabbits rabbits rabbits!" in the second room, covering the entire floor in white rabbits, two layers deep and forcing Reflex saves just to move around. As it turned out, Jaramon had actually cast a spell of his own, flying invisibly in the room, as was discovered when Dante was throwing rabbits aside to clear a path and search the room, and a rabbit hit something in midair and went straight down, and an unseen voice said "Damn." A popping sound followed, as Jaramon teleported away just before Flegal started launching arrows and everyone started attacking where Jaramon had been. An area of rabbits over the second magical "trap" (the one that turns things back to what they were) was covered in ants instead of rabbits, and any rabbits that jumped over there were polymorphed back into ants, their original form. After some experimentation, the party discovered the abilities of the two glyphs in the floor of the rooms, and decided to destroy the one that changed things into Jaramonians. When Joseph (Robby's cleric) started pounding it with his mace, Flegal (?) was turned into a rabbit, and Jaramon's voice made an offer: "destroy my glyph, and I will destroy you, but if you wish to leave now, you may." After conferring with each other, the party decided to leave (after returning Flegal to normal on the second glyph). "Take the long passageway to the right, straight past the stone bridge, it will lead you out," said Jaramon. And it did. I awarded 3,000 experience points for the session (about 500 per hour, since there was a fair amount of combat). I've said it before and I'll say it again, this is a fun villian. So I'm going to be careful to keep him alive until the party gets to be, say... 20th level.
Module recycling - Saturday, it was a medium sized group. I had rearranged a bunch of stuff, and couldn't seem to find any of my session notes (one of the great reasons I use this blog) so I ran Tomb of the Overseer, a mini-module from AEG. It seemed to be going well, between Robby and Carson's out-of-game comedy (funny enough to be worth the distraction) and Lance (!) playing Zach's fighter-rogue Dante. Most of the players had been computer gaming pretty heavily before the session. Shane was there too, playing his ranger, though he would have to leave early, as did Lance. Yeah, the game was going well, until Roddy started paying closer attention to the game and remembered he had played in this module back when we had the shop, and he wanted to go to the room with the three crowns that turned the wearer into undead, and he liked the "grateful dead" ending where you give the undead paladin his stuff back. Carson chimed in that he remembered everybody was really bitchy at the shop that day (4 years ago!). I shouldn't have been surprised, these guys have pretty good memories, though I have a sneaking suspicion that it's no accident that these comments followed after I came back from going to the bathroom. So I need to go back to my old procedure of penciling in the player names of everybody who has been through a module, and also I need to carry my game materials with me if I leave the table for any reason. Or, I can just do what I did for the second half of the session and run everything right out of my head.
Jaramon the Transmuter, my new arch-villian had a small lab and sub-lair nearby, as it turned out. Revan, Roddy's paladin, detected "evil" on a 2"x 2" button, which opened a sliding stone wall, then the party fought giant lizardmen who shrunk to normal size after being slain and had two potions, one red, one green (polymorph, enlarge, though the party hasn't identified them yet). I haven't decided why the button radiated "evil," except that maybe it was an aura similar to Nystul's Magic Aura except for radiating evil instead of magic; Jaramon is so evil he might have found some strange comfort in this, and it might also have helped him find the button in the dark. One of my goals with Jaramon is to have him use magic in unique and unpredictable ways. The wall predictably rolled shut behind the party. The party fought a bridge battle against more of the 4-armed "Jaramonians" (really some of my WH40K Tyranid minis). Upon getting to the other side of the stone bridge (laid out across a chasm with Wall of Stone), the party entered a plain stone chamber and found a magical trap in the floor, which they avoided. In the next room, a similar one. As it turns out, the first one polymorphs any living creature into a Jaramonian, and the second returns any polymorphed creature to its original form. I had placed a couple of magic mouths here and there, mostly just to laugh at the party and rattle them. What fun for DMs. The first of the Magic Mouths said "what form would you like to be?" to which each of the party members said they wanted to remain as they were, except Taito, who said "I want to be Taito," and was turned into a potato for 4 rounds. The second Magic Mouth said "Rabbits rabbits rabbits!" in the second room, covering the entire floor in white rabbits, two layers deep and forcing Reflex saves just to move around. As it turned out, Jaramon had actually cast a spell of his own, flying invisibly in the room, as was discovered when Dante was throwing rabbits aside to clear a path and search the room, and a rabbit hit something in midair and went straight down, and an unseen voice said "Damn." A popping sound followed, as Jaramon teleported away just before Flegal started launching arrows and everyone started attacking where Jaramon had been. An area of rabbits over the second magical "trap" (the one that turns things back to what they were) was covered in ants instead of rabbits, and any rabbits that jumped over there were polymorphed back into ants, their original form. After some experimentation, the party discovered the abilities of the two glyphs in the floor of the rooms, and decided to destroy the one that changed things into Jaramonians. When Joseph (Robby's cleric) started pounding it with his mace, Flegal (?) was turned into a rabbit, and Jaramon's voice made an offer: "destroy my glyph, and I will destroy you, but if you wish to leave now, you may." After conferring with each other, the party decided to leave (after returning Flegal to normal on the second glyph). "Take the long passageway to the right, straight past the stone bridge, it will lead you out," said Jaramon. And it did. I awarded 3,000 experience points for the session (about 500 per hour, since there was a fair amount of combat). I've said it before and I'll say it again, this is a fun villian. So I'm going to be careful to keep him alive until the party gets to be, say... 20th level.
I am the greatest DM ever!
I have been pretty busy and haven't posted a few game sessions. I just read the Olaf unleashed blog, hence the title for today's entry (Olaf is Jim Carrey's Limony Snicket movie character). Since my last entry I have run two or three games. (just posted an old draft)
Saturday, September 18, 2004
Magic Day
I just got back from Old Town Hobby after a day of Magic: The Gathering. What a great game, what a fun time. It was just Shellah and Lance, Carson and me. Most of the games were really close in our round robin. We drafted the same as last time, except we switched out Darksteel for a pack of 8th Edition Core Set. With the first pack being 8th, a lot of really great cards were showing up early, and of course it's hardest to make those early decisions on what to draft. Nothing amazing caught my eye, but an early Dark Banishing was something I couldn't pass up on after last time. Big creatures didn't seem to be coming to me, but I saw a Pyroclasm early on. I ended up with mostly black and artifact with a splash of red and a smaller splash of blue. There was some decent green that I had to decide against using. We all noticed that lots of blue cards were not getting picked, and were the last to get drafted. My biggest creature was a 3/3 Serpent Warrior and my best artifact was a Crystal Shard. I had a lot of Equipment and creature removal too, but I wasn't feeling very confident at all about the deck, because I couldn't see anything cohesive about it, other than an overall fast profile with cheap creatures to be pumped by equipment and enchantments. No single standout card to get me excited, but hardly anything with a casting cost over 4. I can't think of when I've felt worse about a deck I was about to play in a tournament. Our pairings were up at noon.
First, I played Carson. He had the same kind of hodgepodge feeling about his deck as I had about mine, and there were some real similarities. Carson had a lot more creatures. He was playing 4-color from what I could tell, with a lot of green and black and blue, some white and a fair amount of artifacts. Game one was long, but my poor start (mana and creature short) eventually got the better of me. He had an Icy Manipulator that was really locking me down. I sideboarded more blue and more creatures in for game 2 and everything came up right and I won fairly quickly, then in game 3 the same thing happened for him, so I lost 1 game to 2.
Next up was Shellah, Lance's wife. She is a really good player, and I heard later about her success with a hasted Craw Wurm working really well in her red-green deck. The cards just seemed to come up right for me in game 1, though I think having a Diabolic Tutor and a couple of cards with Scrye helped a bit. That splash of blue for flyers and the Crystal Shard were good too. She had me down to 1 life in game two, but I came back and won thanks to the creature removal. Even though I came up as a 2-0 winner, the actual games were both a lot closer than that.
The final matchup of the round robin for me was our defending champion, Lance. He was ahead of me in the standings, and the only way for me to win the tournament today would be to beat him 2-0, which I doubted could happen. But I paid closer attention than I usually do to game play, especially late in a tournament. I discovered that with Crystal Shard and Ravenous Rats, I could make Lance discard a card every turn for 3 mana. Also, just from having played Lance a bit more in recent tournaments, I have been learning a bit more about how his mind works. He played a red-white deck with artifacts and some wonderful recursive removal in the form of the Minotaur Shaman, a goblin and some other new red guy. If he had had more Equipment, like John did last time, Lance would have made short work of me and my little creatures. But I had luckily drafted an Unholy Strength, and that, along with Cranial Plating and some of my other artifacts, made a difference. Another standout card for me was Somber Hoverguard. Each of the two games went back and forth, with a lot of removal from both sides, excellent defense from Lance's white creatures, bounce with the Crystal Shard, etc. At times there were fast effects and instants on the stack that went a bit deep and somewhat complicated, but when we got through those, stalemates were broken and the cards in play were a bit simplified. Not once today did my Blind Creeper (a 3/3 for 1B who gets -1/-1 until end of turn whenever a player playes a spell) go to the graveyard out of combat. The only artifact control I had was a Detonate, and I used it every time it came around. Anyway, when the dust settled, I had won 2-0. Bonesplitter, Magma Jet and Vicious Hunger were all helpful cards, but the stupid Serpent Warrior helped me the most today, along with the Ravenous Rats and what I consider to be the best card I used today, Crystal Shard, which let me chump block and bounce my creatures back to my hand.
After the tourney, Carson handed me all of his cards (what a guy!), and Richard gave me a couple packs for winning. It feels good to win, but I would have liked it a bit better if more people had made it today. Today was the 3rd of the three tournaments I planned. In the future, we might do a $5 draft tourney with 1 pack of the newest set and prizes (each player brings 30 nonbasic cards, commons recommended, to fill out the rest of the draft, with random start distribution of cards and seating order). Hey, it's a good idea, it could work!
Color Analysis for today: (8th, Mirrodin, Fifth Dawn draft 9/18/04)
Dave: Black/Red/Blue (1st), Lance: White/Red (2nd), Carson: Green/Blue/Black/White (3rd), Shellah: Red/Green (4th).
First, I played Carson. He had the same kind of hodgepodge feeling about his deck as I had about mine, and there were some real similarities. Carson had a lot more creatures. He was playing 4-color from what I could tell, with a lot of green and black and blue, some white and a fair amount of artifacts. Game one was long, but my poor start (mana and creature short) eventually got the better of me. He had an Icy Manipulator that was really locking me down. I sideboarded more blue and more creatures in for game 2 and everything came up right and I won fairly quickly, then in game 3 the same thing happened for him, so I lost 1 game to 2.
Next up was Shellah, Lance's wife. She is a really good player, and I heard later about her success with a hasted Craw Wurm working really well in her red-green deck. The cards just seemed to come up right for me in game 1, though I think having a Diabolic Tutor and a couple of cards with Scrye helped a bit. That splash of blue for flyers and the Crystal Shard were good too. She had me down to 1 life in game two, but I came back and won thanks to the creature removal. Even though I came up as a 2-0 winner, the actual games were both a lot closer than that.
The final matchup of the round robin for me was our defending champion, Lance. He was ahead of me in the standings, and the only way for me to win the tournament today would be to beat him 2-0, which I doubted could happen. But I paid closer attention than I usually do to game play, especially late in a tournament. I discovered that with Crystal Shard and Ravenous Rats, I could make Lance discard a card every turn for 3 mana. Also, just from having played Lance a bit more in recent tournaments, I have been learning a bit more about how his mind works. He played a red-white deck with artifacts and some wonderful recursive removal in the form of the Minotaur Shaman, a goblin and some other new red guy. If he had had more Equipment, like John did last time, Lance would have made short work of me and my little creatures. But I had luckily drafted an Unholy Strength, and that, along with Cranial Plating and some of my other artifacts, made a difference. Another standout card for me was Somber Hoverguard. Each of the two games went back and forth, with a lot of removal from both sides, excellent defense from Lance's white creatures, bounce with the Crystal Shard, etc. At times there were fast effects and instants on the stack that went a bit deep and somewhat complicated, but when we got through those, stalemates were broken and the cards in play were a bit simplified. Not once today did my Blind Creeper (a 3/3 for 1B who gets -1/-1 until end of turn whenever a player playes a spell) go to the graveyard out of combat. The only artifact control I had was a Detonate, and I used it every time it came around. Anyway, when the dust settled, I had won 2-0. Bonesplitter, Magma Jet and Vicious Hunger were all helpful cards, but the stupid Serpent Warrior helped me the most today, along with the Ravenous Rats and what I consider to be the best card I used today, Crystal Shard, which let me chump block and bounce my creatures back to my hand.
After the tourney, Carson handed me all of his cards (what a guy!), and Richard gave me a couple packs for winning. It feels good to win, but I would have liked it a bit better if more people had made it today. Today was the 3rd of the three tournaments I planned. In the future, we might do a $5 draft tourney with 1 pack of the newest set and prizes (each player brings 30 nonbasic cards, commons recommended, to fill out the rest of the draft, with random start distribution of cards and seating order). Hey, it's a good idea, it could work!
Color Analysis for today: (8th, Mirrodin, Fifth Dawn draft 9/18/04)
Dave: Black/Red/Blue (1st), Lance: White/Red (2nd), Carson: Green/Blue/Black/White (3rd), Shellah: Red/Green (4th).
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Vs. Bugs
Well, the Wednesday game included Rob & Alex, Mat & Ava, me, and Jon ran high-level Aarde (Phil couldn't make it). I'm going to have to cut back a character or have Phil play one, and that's okay. Tonight I left Glum in my book and played Sriko, Chantal and Gilgar. Over the course of the past week I updated them all to allow for the passage of time and experience since the party "retired" with the Fountain of Youth in their tower at Pavalos. Now that they're 20th level and have had some time, Sriko's many item creation feats are coming in pretty handy. I made a quick list of some useful items (lots of +5 weapons and armor, etc.) and passed it around the table. We are in the underdark on a quest to gain a favor from Moradin so he will forge an item for the party, and the quest entails getting holy symbols from a number of his enemies. Tonight, we had a big encounter with some very tough Formians and variants, basically a bunch of gigantic ant-people. I'm glad I levelled everybody up, and I'm also glad Sriko made those items. We didn't really have much to worry about though. Ava's mage got down to the low 40 range of hit points, and thought she was going to die, but we have plenty of high level clerics in the party. Sriko summoned an awesome celestial elephant and did a Holy Word, Chantal did a Fire Storm for 18d6, and rained arrows on bad guys, and Gilgar charged with her twin axes, then quick-drew her longbow and polished off the biggest enemy with 5d8 damage, each at +17 damage (counting one 3x critical). It was a faster moving session than last time, and we used miniatures, which was nice. Oh damn, I left my overhead projection markers. Ah well I'll pick them up next time.
I bought the new Scrye today and it seemed like Yu-Gi-Oh was all over it, but it has a lot of useful stuff about Magic:The Gathering, though I had hoped it would include more information about the new set, but it has some nice teasers and a poster. Saturday should be fun. I think I will do some more tournaments this winter, and maybe space them out January, February and... April, oh I don't know, 6 a year maybe. Anyway, 10 a.m. Saturday the 18th, Old Town Hobby, $10 for three booster packs and a day of draft fun. Hope I can find a sitter...
I bought the new Scrye today and it seemed like Yu-Gi-Oh was all over it, but it has a lot of useful stuff about Magic:The Gathering, though I had hoped it would include more information about the new set, but it has some nice teasers and a poster. Saturday should be fun. I think I will do some more tournaments this winter, and maybe space them out January, February and... April, oh I don't know, 6 a year maybe. Anyway, 10 a.m. Saturday the 18th, Old Town Hobby, $10 for three booster packs and a day of draft fun. Hope I can find a sitter...
Sunday, September 12, 2004
Yesterday
The Saturday group was pretty small yesterday (9/11/04), but we sure had a good game. It was just me, Roddy, Shane and Chaun, but Chaun wasn't there for the whole 12-6 session. We played upstairs at the kitchen table, and there was plenty of soda, chips and popcorn to go around with just the four of us. I ran Khadgar, Cedric and Kazalonian (Sorcerer, Druid, Cleric, all 20th level) and Gilgar (P.'s old 20th level dwarven fighter) through a short adventure involving the resurrection of Hurkendorn, a powerful enchanter bent on controlling Aarde through sheer charm, Geas, etc. Hurkendorn had managed to manipulate all the world leaders (including Lhevix, the city set up by the old characters in retirement) into signing trade treaties with his city state, Pavalos, along with military non-attack agreements. But the party learned of Hurkendorn's evil intentions. By 2:00 (and about half a round of combat) Khadgar had hit him with a Meteor Storm and Gilgar hit him on 4 out of 7 attacks, each at 1d8 + 17 damage. Cedric and Kazalonian didn't have to do anything, and Hurkendorn never had a chance, even though he was a high level character in his own right. It was fun to use characters from the old campaign, I'll have to do it again more regularly. It's nice that my new 3.5 DMG has Epic rules in it.
After that, we played in the newer, low-level campaign. My new villian is a powerful transmuter named Jaramon (the mad). Revan (Roddy's 4th level paladin) along with Shane's ranger and my NPCs (two fighters and a bard) rallied small armies of 80 lizardfolk and 80 dwarves to liberate a half-orc city from Jaramon's 200 mongrelmen, who had occupied it. Units of lizardfolk included 20 cavalry on giant lizards, 20 shortbow archers, 20 spearmen and 20 with hand weapons. The dwarves included a unit of 50 miners, and a special unit of 30 engineers with seige weapons such as catapault, balistae, battering rams, etc. Shane's ranger, Flegal, scouted ahead for the armies, and located the barracks building. The miners dug a trench in front of the seige weapons, and most of the units hid in it, while Revan joined the cavalry unit, who took cover behind a hillside. Once the seige weapons opened fire, small groups of mongrelmen poured out of the city gates to attack them, unaware of the units hidden in the trench, who overwhelmed them. After picking off mongrelmen from the city wall, the dwarven and lizardmen forces were able to liberate the half-orc city with only about 10% losses. The party then accompanied a small force to deal with a floating island with strange obelisks on it in the middle of the freshwater lake (the city's water supply, which was turning people into mongrelmen). The island was a giant floating eye, and the four obelisks were like eyelids, and the water, obelisks and eye somehow had the power to disfigure anyone who came near or failed a Fortitude save. People had the ears of cats, the "hand" of an elk, wood for hair, stone scales for skin, and one lizardman's buttocks was changed to that of a ferret. One dwarf's nose was changed into that of an elephant. There were a lot of changes, but eventually a lizardwoman shaman powerful enough to return everyone to normal was found, though it was a painful and lengthy process, and the stone scales are still grafted to Flegal's skin (reducing his charisma by 2 and raising his AC by 4). Everybody gained a level, treasure and magic were pretty good. It was a fun session, and next time I will try to remember to use the theatre-style popcorn maker with butter popcorn oil. :)
Remember, Magic booster draft tournament at 10 a.m.-4 p.m. next Saturday 9/18 at Old Town Hobby, 3 boosters and a day of fun for $10, not bad! It will be the last in a series of 3 booster draft tournaments, we'll pick up some more tournaments in the future.
After that, we played in the newer, low-level campaign. My new villian is a powerful transmuter named Jaramon (the mad). Revan (Roddy's 4th level paladin) along with Shane's ranger and my NPCs (two fighters and a bard) rallied small armies of 80 lizardfolk and 80 dwarves to liberate a half-orc city from Jaramon's 200 mongrelmen, who had occupied it. Units of lizardfolk included 20 cavalry on giant lizards, 20 shortbow archers, 20 spearmen and 20 with hand weapons. The dwarves included a unit of 50 miners, and a special unit of 30 engineers with seige weapons such as catapault, balistae, battering rams, etc. Shane's ranger, Flegal, scouted ahead for the armies, and located the barracks building. The miners dug a trench in front of the seige weapons, and most of the units hid in it, while Revan joined the cavalry unit, who took cover behind a hillside. Once the seige weapons opened fire, small groups of mongrelmen poured out of the city gates to attack them, unaware of the units hidden in the trench, who overwhelmed them. After picking off mongrelmen from the city wall, the dwarven and lizardmen forces were able to liberate the half-orc city with only about 10% losses. The party then accompanied a small force to deal with a floating island with strange obelisks on it in the middle of the freshwater lake (the city's water supply, which was turning people into mongrelmen). The island was a giant floating eye, and the four obelisks were like eyelids, and the water, obelisks and eye somehow had the power to disfigure anyone who came near or failed a Fortitude save. People had the ears of cats, the "hand" of an elk, wood for hair, stone scales for skin, and one lizardman's buttocks was changed to that of a ferret. One dwarf's nose was changed into that of an elephant. There were a lot of changes, but eventually a lizardwoman shaman powerful enough to return everyone to normal was found, though it was a painful and lengthy process, and the stone scales are still grafted to Flegal's skin (reducing his charisma by 2 and raising his AC by 4). Everybody gained a level, treasure and magic were pretty good. It was a fun session, and next time I will try to remember to use the theatre-style popcorn maker with butter popcorn oil. :)
Remember, Magic booster draft tournament at 10 a.m.-4 p.m. next Saturday 9/18 at Old Town Hobby, 3 boosters and a day of fun for $10, not bad! It will be the last in a series of 3 booster draft tournaments, we'll pick up some more tournaments in the future.
Thursday, September 02, 2004
9/1/04 Session at G's
Well, I packed up my player's handbook, character sheets for Gilgar, Sriko, Chantal and Glum, called Phil and we went to Jon's to play last night. Mat and Ava were there, as well as Rob and Alex. Jon ran the game, set in my old Aarde campaign world. It was strange that it wasn't more strange to be a player in my own campaign world for the first time, instead of running. Also, playing those familiar high-level characters really is pretty fun. Everybody was in good spirits, and we really did have a good time, with a lot of roleplaying and time in a dwarven lumberjack town in the middle of an oasis, where the characters bought a few magic items. Kalanas (Alex's mage/fighter) lightning bolted some shambling mounds, which pumped them up instead of hurting them. Glum (Steve's Lizardman fighter, played by Phil) drew his Hammer of Thunderbolts on some dwarves in a bar. Gilgar did enough damage to a bugbear to kill it about 20 times over. I had to leave before the end of the session, and even then I got home late. To just play instead of running the game was relaxing. It's a whole different pace. I need to update those characters and get a map to Jon in a couple of weeks. A week from Saturday I'll be running my game again and because it is an alternate version of "future Aarde" than the other future Aarde, it will be interesting input for ideas; Phil is the only player who has a character in both campaigns now. It's interesting, though it's also interesting to me that I almost stayed home and ran Phil through a solo adventure last night. I know I made the right decision, and Phil will become a better player for it.
Sunday, August 22, 2004
Magic 8/21/04
Magic Magic Magic! We signed up at 10 and got set up, and started at 10:30 Saturday. This time, instead of just being a judge, I went ahead and played in the booster draft tournament. Counting me, we had six players: Me (Dave), Lance, Shella, Ty, Sam and John. We drafted from Mirrodin, Dark Steel and Fifth Dawn, same as last time. My first pack had a decent black rare (Promise of Power), and blue seemed to be coming around pretty well, so I drafted black and blue, going for flyers. My strategy was to aggresively draft for as many flyers as possible, going for evasion over utility and removal. I actually got a bit of counter but made the mistake of passing up a couple of good black removal cards. The final deck had 44 cards, with 19 lands (counting Stalking Stones, 9 islands and 9 swamps) with the remaining cards divided pretty much in thirds between artifacts, black and blue--pretty much all creatures except for about 6 or 7 cards.
My first duel was against Sam. He played mono black with artifacts, and had much better removal than I did, and much better utility, and a surprising amount of life-gaining. But my fliers came up pretty well. After I had a few small creatures on the board that were starting to get picked off, I dropped the Desecration Elemental (3B, Fear, whenever a player plays a spell, sacrifice a creature, 8/8) which pretty much cleared the table of creatures in a few rounds. Sam played a black creature enchantment (I forgot what it was called) that made me pay 3 life during my upkeep just to keep that fatty on the table, so it cost my 9 life, but he chump-blocked his creatures away and eventually took the 8 damage. I ended up winning, two games to none, but the second game was very close (I was at 2 life at the end). Good fun games, and I definitely saw where all the good black cards had gone to. We shook hands and smiled.
Next, I played Ty, who is an outstanding guy and a great player, who was also 2-0 so far. He even brought donuts for everybody! His deck was green and blue with great utility and speed, and strong counter-ability. As usual, Ty had very smart gameplay but unfortunately nothing came up for him with any real size or power. My mana and fliers came up nicely, especially cards like Spire Golem (a 2/4 flier that would cost 6, except with Affinity for Islands, it usually cost me about 3). I won again, two games to zero, putting Ty at 2-2 and me at 4-0. I was feeling pretty good about my choices and my deck, but after seeing Sam's and Ty's decks, I could see that I had made a big mistake to pass up a couple of good black removal cards in the draft, and a bit more counter would have made my deck better.
My next opponent was Lance, who was 4-1 at this point. Another great guy. He was playing green-white, with heavy anti-artifact, equipment and big fatties, including a big anti-flier spider, playable as an instant. The first game was pretty long, considering his overwhelming dominance. His deck almost seemed custom-made to beat mine. I sideboarded eight cards and beat him quickly in game 2, everything just came up quickly for me, and didn't for him. I lost game 3, as his creatures just outmatched mine. So now I was 5-2. Lance went on to win the tournament, 8-2.
John E. was also 5-2, so I figured it might be an even match. Boy was I wrong about that. He was playing red-white with lots of fast weenies beefed up by useful equipment. The real surprise was all of the little red creatures with Prodigal Sorcerer-type abilities. They came up pretty well for him, and that kind of recursive removal made his deck dominate, by being able to deal from 1 to 5 damage to any creature or player. If I had had some anti-artifact, that would have helped, and so would some spot removal, since he was creature-short a couple of times, and just piled a bunch of equipment onto one or two guys and "Timmed" me to death. He beat me 2-0, and it wasn't even close. John took second, at 7-1, since Lance had beaten him (all that anti-artifact stuff did well). We finished the tournament at about 4:00.
I didn't play against Shella, but her deck was mono-red and artifact, and she ended up being 2-5 (Actually, 4-5, I guess, since Ty had to leave before we could finish the round robin, and Shella had a "bye" that round). A lot of her games were close, but I think another color or two would have helped her.
Analyzing the players and the colors they played is interesting. I could assign 1 point for each color used, 2 points if used as the only color in a deck, and total everything as follows:
Artifact: 6, Black: 3, Blue: 2, Green: 2, Red:3, White:2
My feeling is that black and red were weaker due to mono-drafting, but that in general everything was pretty even. Everybody played lots of artifacts, because there were plenty. By this logic, it makes sense that green-white won the tournament, but blue-green should have done better if you think of it that way.
We played one big five-player game after the tournament, using decks we had along. Sam had a really good idea for a format, where everybody writes down their names on pieces of paper, which are drawn out of a hat. You have to take out the opponent you draw first, then whatever name he or she had, and so on until there is one final winner. It seems to work pretty well. John won, with his deck of new beasts and elves. Everybody else used decks of mine, built mostly of older cards that were tourney-legal about the time of Invasion, about 2-3 years ago I guess. So maybe the newer cards are a bit more powerful, or maybe my deckbuilding needs improvement, but anyway a lot of those newer cards were pretty great, and John's a good, serious player.
After the tournament, Richard had prizes for first-third place (I won a pack for third in this case). All the losers (not just Sam, who finished last) got plastic bugs for consolation prizes, which was nice (I got a rhino beatle, which makes a great token creature). A lot of people, including me, bought stuff, and Richard said he had a good business day. I'm looking forward to the third Saturday in September to do all of this again, this time maybe with some Core Set to change things up a bit.
My first duel was against Sam. He played mono black with artifacts, and had much better removal than I did, and much better utility, and a surprising amount of life-gaining. But my fliers came up pretty well. After I had a few small creatures on the board that were starting to get picked off, I dropped the Desecration Elemental (3B, Fear, whenever a player plays a spell, sacrifice a creature, 8/8) which pretty much cleared the table of creatures in a few rounds. Sam played a black creature enchantment (I forgot what it was called) that made me pay 3 life during my upkeep just to keep that fatty on the table, so it cost my 9 life, but he chump-blocked his creatures away and eventually took the 8 damage. I ended up winning, two games to none, but the second game was very close (I was at 2 life at the end). Good fun games, and I definitely saw where all the good black cards had gone to. We shook hands and smiled.
Next, I played Ty, who is an outstanding guy and a great player, who was also 2-0 so far. He even brought donuts for everybody! His deck was green and blue with great utility and speed, and strong counter-ability. As usual, Ty had very smart gameplay but unfortunately nothing came up for him with any real size or power. My mana and fliers came up nicely, especially cards like Spire Golem (a 2/4 flier that would cost 6, except with Affinity for Islands, it usually cost me about 3). I won again, two games to zero, putting Ty at 2-2 and me at 4-0. I was feeling pretty good about my choices and my deck, but after seeing Sam's and Ty's decks, I could see that I had made a big mistake to pass up a couple of good black removal cards in the draft, and a bit more counter would have made my deck better.
My next opponent was Lance, who was 4-1 at this point. Another great guy. He was playing green-white, with heavy anti-artifact, equipment and big fatties, including a big anti-flier spider, playable as an instant. The first game was pretty long, considering his overwhelming dominance. His deck almost seemed custom-made to beat mine. I sideboarded eight cards and beat him quickly in game 2, everything just came up quickly for me, and didn't for him. I lost game 3, as his creatures just outmatched mine. So now I was 5-2. Lance went on to win the tournament, 8-2.
John E. was also 5-2, so I figured it might be an even match. Boy was I wrong about that. He was playing red-white with lots of fast weenies beefed up by useful equipment. The real surprise was all of the little red creatures with Prodigal Sorcerer-type abilities. They came up pretty well for him, and that kind of recursive removal made his deck dominate, by being able to deal from 1 to 5 damage to any creature or player. If I had had some anti-artifact, that would have helped, and so would some spot removal, since he was creature-short a couple of times, and just piled a bunch of equipment onto one or two guys and "Timmed" me to death. He beat me 2-0, and it wasn't even close. John took second, at 7-1, since Lance had beaten him (all that anti-artifact stuff did well). We finished the tournament at about 4:00.
I didn't play against Shella, but her deck was mono-red and artifact, and she ended up being 2-5 (Actually, 4-5, I guess, since Ty had to leave before we could finish the round robin, and Shella had a "bye" that round). A lot of her games were close, but I think another color or two would have helped her.
Analyzing the players and the colors they played is interesting. I could assign 1 point for each color used, 2 points if used as the only color in a deck, and total everything as follows:
Artifact: 6, Black: 3, Blue: 2, Green: 2, Red:3, White:2
My feeling is that black and red were weaker due to mono-drafting, but that in general everything was pretty even. Everybody played lots of artifacts, because there were plenty. By this logic, it makes sense that green-white won the tournament, but blue-green should have done better if you think of it that way.
We played one big five-player game after the tournament, using decks we had along. Sam had a really good idea for a format, where everybody writes down their names on pieces of paper, which are drawn out of a hat. You have to take out the opponent you draw first, then whatever name he or she had, and so on until there is one final winner. It seems to work pretty well. John won, with his deck of new beasts and elves. Everybody else used decks of mine, built mostly of older cards that were tourney-legal about the time of Invasion, about 2-3 years ago I guess. So maybe the newer cards are a bit more powerful, or maybe my deckbuilding needs improvement, but anyway a lot of those newer cards were pretty great, and John's a good, serious player.
After the tournament, Richard had prizes for first-third place (I won a pack for third in this case). All the losers (not just Sam, who finished last) got plastic bugs for consolation prizes, which was nice (I got a rhino beatle, which makes a great token creature). A lot of people, including me, bought stuff, and Richard said he had a good business day. I'm looking forward to the third Saturday in September to do all of this again, this time maybe with some Core Set to change things up a bit.
Thursday, August 19, 2004
Thoughts
Saturday was a good game. Roddy's paladin, Revan fought off four four-armed Jaramonians (16 attacks total). Good thing he has a decent AC, since he's only fourth level! Carson, Phil, Shane and Zach were also there (Aug. 14 '04, 12-6 p.m.) for the session. It was pretty fun. The idea of a powerful transmuter allied with the evil elven Purple Order invaders is fuel for a lot of creative ideas for me, as I've always thought Polymorph and variants have a lot of possibilities. The salt zombies in the Black Desert proved interesting, and I think I will tap into Dark Sun a bit for a while.
Wednesday, yesterday, only Phil showed up, so I sent him back home--again. No explanations were given, and in fact Penny said Jon told Debbie he planned on coming. What am I supposed to think or do? I guess I really need more reliable players to keep the Wednesday night game going, or maybe I need to join someone else's group, or be patient, or throw up my hands and give up on the idea of a Wednesday group altogether after about four years of a good campaign. Is this it, and if so I'd like to know. I always thought we were happy with our regular game session. If it's over I guess it's been a good run, but I'll miss it. What tears me up is not knowing what the problem is, whether it be the time scheduling, the place, the people or what. Did I offend someone? Now I hear Mat and Ava played at Jon's place with Alex and Rob. What am I supposed to think, and what can I or should I do next. Most of all, how come people just bail without letting me know they're not coming, or better yet, have the courtesy to call and tell me why they won't be here? I was really upset last night. Next time, I guess I won't send Phil home.
Saturday (Aug. 21), there's going to be another booster draft Magic tournament at Old Town Hobby from 10 to about 4:00. I hope lots of people show up.
Wednesday, yesterday, only Phil showed up, so I sent him back home--again. No explanations were given, and in fact Penny said Jon told Debbie he planned on coming. What am I supposed to think or do? I guess I really need more reliable players to keep the Wednesday night game going, or maybe I need to join someone else's group, or be patient, or throw up my hands and give up on the idea of a Wednesday group altogether after about four years of a good campaign. Is this it, and if so I'd like to know. I always thought we were happy with our regular game session. If it's over I guess it's been a good run, but I'll miss it. What tears me up is not knowing what the problem is, whether it be the time scheduling, the place, the people or what. Did I offend someone? Now I hear Mat and Ava played at Jon's place with Alex and Rob. What am I supposed to think, and what can I or should I do next. Most of all, how come people just bail without letting me know they're not coming, or better yet, have the courtesy to call and tell me why they won't be here? I was really upset last night. Next time, I guess I won't send Phil home.
Saturday (Aug. 21), there's going to be another booster draft Magic tournament at Old Town Hobby from 10 to about 4:00. I hope lots of people show up.
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
Sat. Aug. 14, 2004
Jaramon's Kingdom, a section of Aarde controlled by an evil elvish member of the Purple Order, the Transmuter Jaramon, at the other side of the Black Desert from the City State of Moporia. It was a fun session, starting where things left off last time in Moporia as the party decided for themselves what to do. They hired a merchant sandskiff to get there, fought sand zombies, an animated rock creature, and several four-armed transmutations called the "Jaramonians." Roddy's paladin, Revan did very well. Taito was full of surprises, Aelfprin was a bit of a nuisance, Zach was there to play Dante Blackmorg ( a human rogue), Shane had Flegal, and besides that it was just NPCs. There are a lot of cool possibilities with a county-sized area ruled by a chaotic evil transmuter, and I feel like I'm just getting started.
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