Charm City Game Day July 19 2014

I've again signed up to run a game at the Charm City Game Day: Prince Charming, Reanimator for DCC.

Here's the pitch:

In all kingdoms there are tales, and in the Barony of Westlake, it is said that the Grimmswood hides the ruins of a long-lost realm. The daughter of its final king, cursed by a malevolent faerie, pricked her finger on a spindle upon her sixteenth birthday, in the blossom of her youth, and died. With her death, the kingdom went to ruin. Few now dare to go far into the Grimmswood, although the riches of the lost kingdom are said to lie unclaimed within. Fear of dark fey magic and even greater evils keep men out.

Or they did so until now. For Prince Hubert Charming of Westlake has determined that the long-dead Princess Beauty is only cursed to sleep away the aeons, and he will have her for his bride. His men rounded up a stable of “volunteers” at the beginning of one early autumn morning, and here you are, with what makeshift arms and equipment you had upon you when you were “volunteered”.

Your mission, the Prince’s Bailiff explains, is to enter the ruined castle, find the place where the “Sleeping” Beauty lies, and bring her forth for Prince Charming to restore with a kiss. Those who choose not to go upon this quest must take their chances with the Prince’s Guard, twenty men strong, and be declared outlaw. Those who choose to hazard their lives within the ruined castle may keep what they find, apart from the sleeping princess, but dare not leave without her.

If you're in the area, you should sign up, even if you decide to play one of the other morning games! The best part? It's free!!

FATE L5R Actual Play

Charm City Gameday has both a morning and afternoon game session. I ran the Tomb of Rakoss in the morning session, and was signed up for Castle Mistamire using Basic D&D in the afternoon. Unfortunately I was the only one who signed up for it (which I found odd given that my game was full) and it was canceled. Going into the afternoon I didn’t have a slot in any of the other games, as they were all full, so I waited to see if anyone wouldn’t show. I ended up playing in a Legend of the 5 Rings game using the FATE system.

Fate is a system that I’ve heard of, and even seen on store shelves, but I’ve never picked it up, or played with it before. There are lots of blogs, reviews, and other pages all about it, so I’m not going to go too deep into it. Honestly, after a 4 hour game, I don’t think I could get too deep into it. Basically it’s a universal system where the dice have two plus signs, two negative signs, and 2 blanks. You roll 4 dice for every action, trying to beat either the opposed roll, or a static difficulty. Added to this roll are your skills, and the permanent and situational modifiers that can be activated to help. It’s pretty simple, but it works. It does rely more heavily on the players and DM to make it work, since there’s less for everyone to rely on, rules-wise.

Going into the game I had only a vague memory about L5R. I had (have?) the D&D Oriental Adventures version of it from the 3.x era, but I haven’t looked at it in ages, and I never used it at the table. I’d played a game or two of L5R when it came out, but… mostly what I remember was a bunch of clans, lots of samurai, and honor was a big deal. Very much Hollywood Japan.

Thankfully that was about all I needed to know about the setting for the game.

I was playing a Spider Clan Courtier, there was the Lion Clan Ninja (Cindy or Sydney?), a Phoenix Clan Wizard (Larry, organizer of the Gameday), and a Unicorn Clan Fighter (Micha). We were all also samurai and the L5R equivalent of FBI agents. Kevin W was our DM... Or FATEMaster... or whatever it's called for FATE.

The basic scenario for the game was to protect an old samurai named Agasha Uki from assassination ahead of his return from the colony to the capital city. It turns out that there’s a dragon who’d corrupted some locals into thinking that he’s a god, and that the colony should be independent.

How crazy is that??

Of course it isn’t so simple as just keep him locked in a safe house until it’s time for the boat to sail. No, there’s a big spring ritual that he has to preside at, attended by all the important samurai of the colony.

The initial attack came from one of the dude’s own bodyguards. It failed, though he was injured. The wizard caused the earth to soften beneath the attacker, causing him to sink up to his chest. We excavated him, interrogated him, I threatened to have our wizard sink him into a fireant hill, where he’d be eaten alive for days…. or tell us everything, and we’d make it swift. He wasn’t very forthcoming at this point, and when we were briefly left alone he attacked my character. Even bound, he was probably a better fighter than me, but I wasn’t trying to win, I just needed to keep him from getting away, so I let him ineffectively beat me up, wasting his energy. By the time the fighter came back I was standing over the prisoner with one foot on his neck. Both the fighter and the prisoner were shocked by the turn of events. And I never even drew a weapon...

We revised our offer, suggesting we’d let him commit seppuku if he talked. He sang like a bird.

While this was going on, our ninja spotted 2 enemy ninja’s in a tree. She shot one, the other ran. We captured the injured one, got him to talk too. Found out there were about a dozen ninja total, and an evil wizard. This mostly from deduction, since neither the ninja nor the bodyguard could remember anything specific about their master.

Then it was time for the ritual. Everything was going splendidly until the local god failed to show, and in his place was a 15’ four armed coal black oni. The fighter placed himself firmly between the oni and our charge, while the wizard pulled up stone walls to protect the old dude.

Our ninja shot the oni with her bow, while I tried to figure out who summoned the demon. I spotted a guy in green muttering to himself and looking really intently at the oni. I took a pot shot at him with my bow. The blood mage bent the arrow around him (unnecessary really since I’m a terrible shot) but it did cause him to reveal himself to the assembled samurai.

After a fairly epic battle where I didn’t actually do very much except distract the oni by yelling at it in its own language the oni went back to the hell it came from, and we captured the bloodmage. Then we finished the ritual, bundled the old dude into a carriage, and tried to get away.

Our fighter couldn’t quite let it go though, and told the bodyguards they weren’t coming… by punching the chief bodyguard and friend of the old dude in the face. This went over about as well as you’d imagine. We managed to calm things down before lives were lost, and leaving the fighter behind took the old dude to the city proper to catch his boat.

While we were on our way, the ninja attacked the estate where this was all taking place. Sadly for them we’d already gotten away. The fighter helped fight them off, easing the tension with the bodyguards a little.

The ninja and I escorted the old dude back home, while the fighter and wizard remained behind to root out the heretical dragon cult and to squash the independence movement.

Amazingly enough it was the DMs first time running FATE! At the beginning it was a little rough, but it smoothed out quickly, and my fellow players were a lot of fun to share the table with.

Running a Con Game (part 2) Actual Play

This post will heavily spoil The Tomb of Rakoss. Also, if you have a copy of the adventure handy to reference (free to download here) it might be handy. Italics notes are comments on the adventure.

I started the adventure by giving the players a very brief background, saying that Rakoss was a necromancer general who’d displeased his emperor. The Emperor, a powerful diabolist trapped Rakoss in his own workshop by destroying the castle above it, and warding it with powerful demonic magic. The players recently found a book written in demonic about the tomb that also contained recent notes in common describing finding the tomb, and the bitter cold within.

I skipped the “random” encounter with the ogres, since it didn’t seem to serve any particular use. The PCs would wipe the floor with them, even surprised, and heal up so that it wouldn’t have any impact on things to come.

The players found the cavernous entrance, explored the pit trap, taking a long bone to poke and prod things. There was a lot of “boning” from that point on.

Once through the door, the second player in the marching order triggered the pit trap, hitting one of the spikes. He’s quickly recovered and healed, and the next door is breached leading into the hallway of Rakoss’ tomb. immediately they see both the hellknight statue and the frozen body.

The adventure describes the body as a skeleton with a broken sword, but with temperatures well below freezing, it wasn’t likely that it had decomposed too much.

The statue was boned, then knocked over. Then climbed over to check door to room #4. Finding it unlocked, they carefully opened it up. There was some joking about the noise of knocking over the statue, and that anyone around heard it. The room turned out to be empty anyway. There wasn’t too much interest in the giant brass bowl, but the tapestry was turned into makeshift bindings to try to keep the statues (should they inevitably animate) from moving too much.

Next they checked room #5 across the hall, killed 2 of the skeletons, and drove the rest back before closing the door. The elf took one of the skeleton’s masterwork swords.

I decided that I wasn’t going to do the 4 step penalty on turning the undead since that would basically mean that not a single undead would be turnable.

The next room they explored was the kitchen, #6. The 4 giant ants weren’t too interested in the party, but they attempted to spray the ants with lamp oil and light it up with the thief’s flaming trident (gotta love randomly generated characters) anyway. With a poor roll, only one ant got any significant coverage, and then the thief missed. Nevertheless the ants were upset, and a general melee ensued which just about finished up the 2 clerics’ healing magic.

Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, they decided to make camp. One of the clerics wanted to go out through the chimney, figuring that if the ants could get in, he could get out. Half the party liked the idea, the other half just wanted to use the door, but decided to wait to see how the cleric fared. The cleric got about 20’ up the chimney when he encountered a hole in the chimney wall, and a giant ant looking back at him. They all ran out the front door at that, managing to avoid the pit traps.

With only 3 real rooms explored (not counting the hallways or the entrance cave), I opted to roll for random encounters… Nothing in the evening. Nothing at night. An encounter in the morning! Without a chart to go by, I opted for bandits, and started pulling minis out and setting them off to the side.

The brave adventurers opted not to engage in a battle where they were outnumbered at least 2:1 and instead charged back into the tomb. One of the clerics animated the body in the hallway as a zombie. They next found the wargaming room (#8) with the table all set up with a game already in progress. The secret door was spotted right away, but the players opted to investigate the next room first.

Look at all those bandits!

The pantry (#10) proved to be of little interest, as all the food was freeze dried. I didn’t mention that the room was supposed to be warmer than the rest of the dungeon since the front door was RIGHT THERE. Also, because when I was drawing the map, I’d neglected to leave space for the secret passage next to the dead guy in the hall, I had the secret entrance to #7 come from the back of the pantry. They didn’t find it though, so the statue remained on the floor of the hallway.

Finally they came to the crypt (#9) with the 4 coffins… and a flesh golem! They ran from the lumbering beast, and made their stand in #8 the war room. In spite of it's various immunities, the d30's first appearance on the table definitely turned the tide of this battle before it even began, though it did squash the zombie in the first round of combat.

Returning to the crypt, the party prepared to face a quintet of undead, and instead discovered treasure in the rosewood coffins. Opting to leave the treasure behind given it's weight (aside from the magic) they decided to check out the room at the end of the hall.

As with the crypt, I ignored the locked door. Unless there's a time press, such as being chased by something, locks and stuck doors slow things down. It's different in a megadungeon where exploration is half the fun, but this is a small one shot dungeon.

Room #12 was obviously a demonic temple, and in their exploration they triggered the summoning of 3 demons at the same time they discovered the secret door. The PCs were spread around the room, 3 by the secret door, one in the middle, and one at the far end. The demons appeared in the middle of the room. The thief who had been holding the tiger skin rung tried to hide under it, and was squashed for his trouble. Everyone else made for the secret door.

Since the caverns aren't cursed like the rest of the dungeon, I decided that the demons would be restricted to the tomb, but they snarled and tried reaching through. I also opted to skip the darkmantles at this point, wanting to get to the manticore. I also reskinned the manticore as a dragon with porcupine spines all along its back, which it rattled menacingly from the dark. This was in part to give them something to talk to, and also because I had a dragon mini. Just for fun, I let the players roll to see if it was 1) a talking dragon and 2) if it was a spell casting dragon. Lucky for them the rolls were yes and no. Actually it was going to talk anyway, but I liked making them roll...

I also replaced the dead body in area #14 with a replacement character. The player who'd been playing the thief chose a halfling in plate armor, so I had him appear at the back of #14, having fallen through a natural chimney while trying to escape the bandits from earlier.

Everyone but one cleric was turned invisible thanks to the elf's magic while they explored the caves (#13-16). After joining up with the halfling, they turned into the dragon's cave. Though evil, it wasn't too interested in taking on an unknown number of invisible foes, so it bargained. Bring the gold bars from the tomb, and it'll let them go. The cleric countered and asked for help with the demons. The deal was struck, and the cleric and dragon went back to the temple. Using its spikes, it slayed the demons in short order. The dragon then shoved the cleric toward the treasure while it guarded the door, trapping the rest of the party in the caves.

Once the gold bars were brought into the dragon's cave (the only treasure they'd seen thus far in his cave) the dragon nestled down in front of the door. The party cried foul, and the dragon said that he told them they could go, and pointed to the cave opening in the ceiling. After some grumbling the elf levitated everyone out. They camped near the chimney, managing to avoid the bandits. Using both invisibility and silence, they returned to the cavern the next day, and surprised the dragon with a fireball to the face.

Again the d30 made a big difference, as did the party's preparations, and in 3 rounds the dragon was dead. They then located the dragon's treasure behind another secret door, now with the gold bars.

The decision to fight the dragon and continue exploring was influenced in large part because this was a con game, and they didn't have much invested in their characters. It also helped that there wasn't too much time left in the morning session. There was some discussion about their "mission" and I reminded them that there wasn't a mission, per se. They were just a bunch of tomb robbing murder-hobos. I don't think they'd ever heard that phrase before based on the grins.

Returning to the tomb, they then decided to check out the secret room #11. The rod captured the attention of the elf. When the screaming faces began to appear, he thought to put it in his bag of holding. I told him that he didn't really feel that was a good choice. Then I gave him the extra 10hp and +1 to armor class. The other players were suddenly even more nervous. While this was going on, one of the players decided to check out the next doorway, leading to room #7.

I decided that opening room 7 from either side would wake the stone golem. Tough luck that, since room 7 also contains the 2 mummies, which I reskinned as dried out bodies in death priest robes that cried an oily black fluid.

Once again, the d30 and the pair of clerics kept this from turning into a 2-pronged TPK. Our time ended just as they finished the battle.

I talked with a couple of the players after the game, since they were curious about the rod, and where the game would theoretically go from here. My answer was that the rod was the phylactery of Rakoss, who'd been released when the other party came to explore the tomb, and that from here Rakoss would begin to hunt them down to get it back.

When I asked them what they thought of the game, they said it was fun, but that it definitely felt like an intro adventure. Nothing all that special. After running it, I have to say I agree. I think that without the d30 it would have been much harder for the PCs, and could have ended up as a TPK with a few poor rolls. I did have fun running it, but it could have been better.

Running a Con Game (part 1)

Saturday I had the pleasure of running a game at the winter Charm City Gameday. I've never run a game at a convention before, so I was a little nervous going into it. Not only was I going to be running with people I didn't know, I was doing it in an environment that I wasn't the most familiar with, surrounded by lots of gamers playing other games (mostly Magic the Gathering at a 64 person tournament going on in the same room).

I decided to run the Tomb of Rakoss the Undying, which I've previously reviewed. If you read the review, you'll note that I didn't think very highly of it, calling it an amateurish intro adventure for higher level characters. One of the guys behind the adventure commented, and suggested that my review was perhaps a bit unfair. Over the last 2+ months since I wrote the review, I decided that maybe he was right. Reviewing something that I had only read, and not used at the table was maybe unfair. So when the call for DMs for the Charm City Gameday went out, I signed up to run ToRtU.

To prep for the game I reread the adventure a couple of times in the week leading up to the event, dug out my copy of Labyrinth Lord, the adventure, a DMs screen, minis for all the monsters and characters, my battle mat, dice and pencils. I then used the Labyrinth Lord Character Generator to make 4 fighters, 3 clerics, thieves, and wizards, and an elf, dwarf, and halfling (all 5th or 6th level). I also made sure I had my markers, paper towels, and some water bottles. Everything but the battle mat and the paper towels fit nicely into a plastic bin.

Once I got to Games and Stuff, I was directed to my table, and started getting set up. 5 out of 6 players showed up, so while waiting to see if player 6 would show, I handed out the pregens, and went over the basics, both of Labyrinth Lord and the day's adventure. I also told them the one major house rule I'd be using - The Order of the d30.

Going around the table starting on my left, the 5 players chose Fighter, Thief, Cleric, Cleric, Elf. The guy playing the Fighter for whatever reason just didn't have his head in the game. I'm kind of glad he was right next to me, since I could nudge him along (i.e. "ok, roll this, now this." "Did you want to attack this guy, or that guy?"). He was the only one who didn't have his own dice, and didn't seem to know D&D at all.

Running the game, I did my best to keep everything moving. There aren't a lot of personalities in the adventure for the PCs to interact with, so I tried my best to make the one big one memorable. When they suggested crazy shit, I went with it. All in all I think it went well. The players seemed to have fun, I feel like I did a good job, and we managed to fill the time almost exactly.

Tomorrow I'm going to write specifically about the adventure, so stay tuned!

Sunday Inspirational Image - Space Ape

This weekend is Balticon 45, ans so far I'm having a blast!

First off I managed to stock up on a bunch of AD&D 2e Birthright stuff for cheap. I also bought the 2 Erfworld graphic novels directly from Rob.

Second the programing this year has all been really solid, and mostly well timed.

I played a quick card game yesterday called Queen's Ransom. While the mechanics are pretty solid I wasn't a huge fan of the way it plays. The game setup felt excessive conpared to the game's duration.

Anyway, for today's inspirational image, here's a weird science Space Ape.

To be a god

“Do you want to be a god?”

There I was, minding my own business, standing in the lobby area of the hotel at a con when this woman who I hadn’t noticed before looked expectantly at me. 

“Of course” I replied. 

Well, really?  How else was I supposed to reply to that question?

“Then come with me!” She said, and turned toward the game room. 

I sat down at a table with a couple of other players, and was offered my choice of a number of pre-generated characters, while at the same time being told about the game and its world.  We were all members of the same family.  Of the available characters I chose Caleb Marsh the Baron (least god) of Moths.  Much like myself, Caleb had been minding his own business on Boston’s Commons shortly after the end of the American war for independence when a being of great power came looking around for someone of great honor and nobility to take the mantle of the god of moths.  Caleb glibly convinced this being that he was just the sort of chap he was looking for.  200 years later Caleb found himself as the head of the Marsh Corporation, an immensely powerful multinational, a playboy jetsetter, and an apparently ageless god.  His best friend is an amoral ivy plant who he plays frequent games of poker with (they both cheat). 

For the next 3 hours the group of us encountered rival gods, and fought against a being that was trying to prevent our Imperator (patron greater god) from becoming.  One notable event included dueling to a standstill the regent of war (or battle?) much to her shock.  Caleb didn’t spend much of his godly power on developing a great link with my moths, he spent it on himself!  Later, using the resources of his multinational, he traveled not only across the world (it’s flat you know) but to another that hung from Yggdrasil to steal an extremely rare painting.  At the very end, as we were putting the conditions in place for our Imperator to be born we realized that the sun was shining from the wrong direction.  With only moments to go, both in and out of game, I spent the last of my power for the session into forcing the sun to shift to where I needed it.  Had this not been a one-shot, there would have been hell to pay with the regent of the sun, I’m sure. 

The game ended moments later, as we had to give up the table for another game, but our Imperator was safely born, and life would continue on. It was my first and last time ever playing Nobilis, and it was amazing.  I bought the book just as soon as my FLGS could get it in stock, devoured it, and then was completely unable to get anyone interested in playing it.  It’s still the most gorgeous role playing book I’ve ever seen, and I would love to someday play again.