First Turn at Mapping, and Using His Head

 Last Sunday, I ran my TS&R Jade campaign. Only three players showed up: Steven (my 10yo), Charles, and Nate. They hired half a dozen men-at-arms, purchased a few torches, and headed into the Pits of Lao. For some reason, Nate and Charles thought it would be fun to let Steven be the mapper this time. It took him a bit of practice to get used to translating the descriptions into lines on the map, but once he got the hang of it, he did really well.

Steven had been thinking about the campaign rumors over the weeks (scheduling nightmare) we weren't playing, and he had a plan. We'd been discussing the use of his locate object spell. One rumor was from a former adventurer who had located a machine that allowed him to find a big score of treasure and retire. He wanted to find that machine. I told him that his locate object spell could help with that. 

When they got down to the second level of the dungeon (there is a set of stairs leading down from the entrance room), they bribed a group of bakuto (gambler yakuza) who collect tolls there with some wine, then went on their way. At first, the spell didn't detect the machine. It has a radius of 120', and the target was a little out of range...but none of them realized they had explored and mapped to just a room or two away from the target. Luckily for them, they decided to explore east instead of west or south, and moving to the next room allowed Steven's PC to get a ping with the spell. 

The next room had some low level Taoist mages and their ashigaru bodyguards. Reactions were positive, so they discussed trading information. I had to come up with a reason why the mages were examining the room they were in, and I decided they were doing an inventory for the Lao family (the last Lao, the crazy wu jen daughter of the Venerable Lao, having died 100+ years ago). This led to a brief discussion of the Dungeon as Underworld for the benefit of Charles, who is new to RPGs. After the game, I sent him a link to Oakes Spalding's blog, which has a copy of Philotomy's Musings on the subject. He was thankful for that. 

Anyway, the party found a well with treasure but the "water" was actually acid, and didn't try to recover it after Saro, Nat's PC, got singed. Then they wandered up and fought some giant toads, but had a surprise round so they weren't in any danger. Finally, the locate object spell led them to the Fighting Ring, an area they'd been to before, where you can summon a Level 2 Random Encounter to fight for cash prizes, while phantasmal fans cheer on the fight. They'd been here before. 

Just beyond it was the room with the Potion Transmuter machine. The machine has two settings: healing potion and potion of treasure finding. After a bit of examination and experimentation (a healing potion poured in became a potion of treasure finding, wine poured in became ruined wine). Nate's henchman had another healing potion, and he decided to convert it as well as Saro's (the first experiment). Then Saro drank his potion and off they went, trying to find treasure. 

Pro Tip: I had marked my dungeon map with gold dollar signs using a colored pencil in any room with monetary treasure, and with blue stars for any room with magical treasure. That made it easy to let them know which direction the nearest treasure was. Of course, the nearest treasure to the transmuter machine was the gold down the acid well that they had already found... But there was more treasure beyond that. 

They ended up with a really nice haul in the end. Slider, Charles' Thief, made it to Level 4, so Charles can make a henchman for him. He's considering a Wu Jen. Niko, the henchman of Citizen Snips (Steven's character), also leveled up. It was a good session, and I'm really happy to see Steven getting into the game a bit more, rather than just trying to make jokes and do silly kid stuff.

Combat As War

 On Sunday, I was running my TS&R game, and the party was exploring more of the mini-mega-dungeon. They were basically looking at their map, and trying to fill in gaps on the 1st level. 

The party consists of: 

Koles' Human Wu Jen 4 and henchman Holes' Human Wu Jen 1 (my son Flynn's characters)

Citizen Snips Human Blade Mage 4 and henchman Niko Human Fighter 1 (my son Steven's characters)

Fei Mao Crane Hengeyokai Kensei 4 and henchman Snakebite Human Mudang 2 (Denis' characters)

10 Bad Habits Koropokuru Yakuza 4 and henchman Savage Poko Raccoon Dog Hengeyokai Fighter 1 (Justin's characters)

4 Men-at-Arms, wearing leather armor with axes and short bows. 

They returned to the Underground Garden and bought some fruits, vegetables, and flowers from the treants that tend the garden. They made peaceful contact with some tengu and got a tip that it might be possible to get some swordsmanship training at the tengu encampment south-west of town (I need to flesh out that spot on the map now!), fought some astral projecting evil spirits called berbalang and got some treasure, discovered a secret door that led to one of the areas they'd explored in the previous sessions where a black bear was snacking on dead goblin rat and giant rat corpses (they used some purchased fruits and flowers to discourage the bear from following as they retreated), and then they came to the first of several locked doors. 

10 Bad Habits picked the lock, and there was a short corridor with another door. He was unable to pick this one, so they bashed it in after listening and hearing nothing. 

This was a subsection of the level that has been taken over by bandits as their lair. And a random roll showed me that no bandits were in the common area, but that there were 60 bandits plus their leader, a 3rd level Xia (martial artist/monk) in other rooms of the lair. The bandits were in three rooms, 20 per room, and the leader in his quarters.

Bashing the door made noise, but a surprise roll gave the players time to set up their forces. There were four doors into the common area that they could hear unlocking. They arranged their men-at-arms in the center of the room to fire arrows, and each pair of PC and henchman took a different door.  Koles' and Holes' weren't next to a door, but they had spells prepared for the door the others hadn't covered. 

When the bandits opened their doors, Koles' used phantasmal force to make the floor lava, and after 20 saving throws, all but three thought they were being incinerated and fell unconscious to the floor, as the arrows from the men-at-arms eliminated two more bandits in the 'lava' room. 

Holes' turned to use his sleep spell at the southern door where 10 Bad Habits & Poko were waiting, and his sleep spell took out nine more bandits. 10 Bad's backstab missed, unfortunately, as did Poko's attack. 

Meanwhile, Fei Mao used his Sweep ability to attack four times against 1HD opponents, and took out three of the 20 in the room he and Snakebite were at, while Snakebite went defense mode to avoid taking massive damage. 

Finally, at the leader's door, Niko hit the leader with his magari-yari +1 doing some decent damage, and Snips used cause fear to make him run back  into the room and cower. 

With their leader running in fear and half their forces eliminated before they knew what was happening, I rolled morale for the bandits and they failed. They surrendered, and were all tied up. 

One 4th level party took out an encounter with five times their numbers without taking a scratch. And the bandits had a Type A treasure, which was mostly jewelry and art objects, so it was easy to transport back to town with their captives. The treasure from the berbalangs and the bandits was around 34,000gp, so everyone but the Blade Mage leveled up, and Niko the henchman is 1xp shy of 3rd level due to the rule on gaining only one level per adventure. 

And now that they have access to the bandits' secret entrance to the dungeon and that easy to seal off section of the dungeon, the players are thinking to convert that to their dungeon delving base. 

This was much more fun and exciting than if it had been a 5E style "balanced encounter" with just a handful of bandits attacking at a time. Oh, and for anyone wondering how fair it would have been if the party had discovered this area while they were 1st level, the bandits aren't killers. They would have used non-lethal attacks, disarms, overbearing, etc. to try and capture the party and demand ransom from town if that had happened. I don't mind it when PCs die in my game, but I'm not out to kill them. That's just too easy.

Taking Unusual Skills

In our recent Call of Cthulhu campaign, the main Keeper, Richard, took a break for a few sessions to let his friend Brady try his hand at being a game master. For Brady's game, I rolled up a jazz drummer named Theo. He's running a module that requires all the players to have mob connections, so my jazz man is way in debt for lots of booze, drugs, and women. 

In the session last week (the third session of Brady's run), our investigators have become trapped in the boarding house where the thief we're trying to track down lives. There are all sorts of weird things happening in the house. In one of the rooms, there was a young girl playing violin, and my PC and the mob hitman ended up in that room while other players investigated other rooms. The music she was playing was strange, and the hitman checked the bedroom to find the girl's parents dead with blood pouring from their ears. 

It wasn't hard to put two and two together. As the girl (ghost? demon?) started to play again, my PC decided to instruct her on the finer points of jazz rhythms. After a bit of discussion, Brady had me roll my Arts: Jazz skill, and I got a hard success (less than 50% of my chance to succeed). So Brady decided that instead of the 2 minute performance she was supposed to give -- at which time bad things would happen -- my rhythm lesson sped up her performance and since it was over in only one minute, we were able to escape the room unharmed. 

Yes, that's right. I was able to avoid catastrophe with jazz. 

Never let a min-maxer tell you you're wasting your time selecting non-optimal skills or a non-optimal background. You never know when those oddball skills/proficiencies/knowledge may come in handy!

Satisfying Game Play

Last weekend (yeah, it's nearly Friday already...I've been busy!), I ran a session of my TS&R Jade campaign and things went really well. In the session before that, the party had confronted a corrupt merchant and his yakuza buddy who were selling black lotus powder in town. Well, in that session, they fought the final battle on the outskirts of town, as the merchant and gangster were trying to flee.This session, after a bit of discussion of where to go and what to do, they decided that since they still had the warrant from the town magistrate to search Merchant Choi's home, they were going to use it and confiscate all his treasure. But first, they paid a visit to Kunio, the yakuza lieutenant who wanted Hideo, the drug dealing yakuza, out of the picture. Kunio agreed to lend them three thugs (using Justin's yakuza PC's streetwise ability to call in favors), and asked for Choi's ornate decorative suit of armor as a reward. The party also hired five men-at-arms, several of whom they had hired before, including Yu-seok (pronounced "you suck"), and Yeuh Dai (pronounced "you die"), much to the delight of the boys. 

When they got to the home, my younger son's Blade Mage used a disguise spell to make himself look like Choi. After they put a loose binding on his arms, they went in and demanded that the guards surrender. "Merchant Choi" told them to comply, and so they did. 

In the house were Choi's guards (around 15 left), a handful of drunk gamblers (who had been hanging out with the yakuza kashira), eight dancing girls, four gardeners, and around a dozen servants. Each group was interrogated, with my older son's Wu Jen using ESP to learn a few secrets. The gamblers were quickly let go. The guards and entertaining girls were disarmed (the poison blades of the dancing girls, being dumped in the koi pond, killed the fish), and most were then let go. One of the gardeners' thoughts betrayed that there were secret passages in the house, so he was kept while the rest were let go. The servants were sent to bring all the valuables. 

Well, knowing there were secret passages, and not getting a suit of armor among the loot collected by the servants, the party started searching the house. But in one guest room, there were three paper lanterns, and ghost-like creatures (ao-andon) emerged from them. The ao-andon got initiative, and they all used hold person, which paralyzed nearly everyone. My older boy's Wu Jen and one m-a-a were unaffected...and of course "Merchant Choi" who ordered his guardian spirits back into their lanterns. One reaction roll later, the plan worked, and the gardener was revealed to be a type of ninja guardian called an o-niwa-banshu. The three lanterns went into the koi pond (along with jokes about zombie koi fish emerging because of it).

The plan to overcome the party with the spirits failed, so the ninja agreed to show the party the secret chambers, including the treasure room which had the armor, and several rectangular areas free of dust, where the crates with black lotus powder had been removed (those had been recovered in the previous session, but the players had suspected there would be more). 

With all the treasure confiscated, Nate started scheming a plan to take over the mansion. Not a bad idea, it's a nice big house with a nice garden (now with zombie koi fish?), secret passages connecting rooms, and space for the party to settle down and expand their operations. Maybe even take on some permanent hirelings instead of recruiting men-at-arms each session. 

But there was a quandary. If they took the loot to the magistrate, it would be public knowledge that they had taken it. Also, Choi's family might stake a claim. But if they took the loot to the yakuza Kunio, he wouldn't pay them full value for it. Eventually, after debate and a vote, they went to the magistrate. But a bad reaction roll to the idea of him granting them the house led the magistrate to take half of the value of the treasure as a tax. And they don't get the house. There were some schemes hatched to "haunt" the house and make the Choi family want to sell it cheap... but that's for a future session. 

I was really satisfied with this session, and so were the players. There was technically a combat. We rolled initiative with the ao-andon, and players made saves vs the spells. But there wasn't a single to-hit roll in the entire session. Just a lot of talking, scheming, intimidation, cleverness, and invention. Not only that, most of the PCs leveled up after the game.While I do enjoy running combats, it's also great fun to have a session like this without any real combat, and everyone's engaged and having fun.

It's also satisfying that Stevie's Blade Mage made it to 3rd level, so he was able to pick two 2nd level spells, and chose phantasmal force and locate object. He's definitely not trying to be a combat power-house with his spells, which is good. He can play more cleverly this way, something he's learned from our earlier West Marches games (although in Star Wars his Jedi is packing more guns than anyone else in the party, including the Mandalorian!).

Using my noggin

Nate, who has been playing Tusken Tumble, the Half-Orc Acrobat in my West Marches game, started a 5E game using the free content WotC has been putting out during the coronavirus lockdown. He started us as 1st level PCs in the Lost Mines of Phandelver module, which is I guess the 5E equivalent of Keep on the Borderlands.

I rolled up a Wizard (Conjurer specialist now that he's 2nd level). And among his spells, only one cantrip does direct hit point damage. It's called infestation, and it summons up fleas, mites, etc. to bite and annoy the target. All of his other cantrips and spells are 'utility' magic.

Out of four sessions Nate has run, I've only played in two (the most recent last Friday night). So I just hit level 2 after this past session while everyone else is level 2 or 3 already. But that didn't really matter. I've been a pretty effective character when I've been there.

Minor Spoilers for Lost Mines of Phandelver below:

In my first session (second of the campaign), we were exploring a goblin cave to rescue some prisoners and stolen goods. The goblins had wolves (dire? worgs? not sure) as guards. Dean's Gnomish Bard and I combined our minor illusion cantrips to get the sound and image of a cat, to lure them out, which worked. We were able to take them on more easily as some were chained and some were not. Later, inside the cavern, my familiar (a Raven, not the most optimal familiar, but stylish!) scouted out a chamber that was up a hill of bones and rubble, and found several goblins, a bugbear, stolen goods, and a prisoner. Some of the party climbed up, but then retreated when they saw how tough the opposition was. I cast my second spell (the first being mage armor) to grease the slope, and the goblins that pursued slid down into our waiting warriors' axes/swords/pummeling fists. Then we all went up the slope, rescued the prisoner (Jeff's character, as he joined the session late), and when reinforcements arrived, I was back to using infestation and minor illusion to distract.

Last night, I felt like I was a bit more creative with my spells. We started out in town, seeking information on the Red Brand bandits who the party had tussled with in the third session which I missed. We ended up impressing a farm boy who knew the secret location into the lair by my mending cantrip and Bumblesnick's minor illusion cantrip. Once we got in the lair, we encountered a creature called a nothic (one-eyed twisted former mage with mental powers) and decided to fight it. The Ranger and Monk did most of the work there.

But after we killed it, we found a room with some red cloaks. They were filthy, maybe diseased, but a prestidigitation cleaned them. But since they wouldn't be much good as disguises shiny clean, more prestidigitation gave them cosmetic soiling.

The final room we investigated had three sarcophagi with armed skeletons leaning on them. With the help of both my and Bumblesnick's unseen servant rituals, we had the servants thread ropes gently through the bones of the skeletons to tie them up. When Denis' Tortle Monk entered the room, they animated of course, but the ropes kept them from mobbing Chell the Monk while we battled them.

Finally, we had a cache of weapons, beaver pelts, and the treasure from the nothic. It was a lot to carry. So I cast Tenser's Floating Disk to carry the loot out.

Dustie, playing a Half Orc Ranger, was wondering why I wasn't blasting away at things. I just laughed and in character wondered why any spell-caster worth his salt would be so crude.

Considering that a very high percentage of spells in 5E are damage dealing spells, I don't think Dustie was overreacting. I just found it amusing that I was getting by without much in the way of direct damage spells, and definitely making things easier for the party.

______________________________________

Story Two!

In my West Marches game this afternoon, the party was asked by the local king of the Fair Folk to wipe out a lair of river sahuagin (piranha people instead of shark people), in exchange for help transporting their large piles of treasure taken from the fledgling dragons last session. Justin's character, Queeg, is an antiquarian (MU/Thief).

On the way to the dungeon, they met hostile satyrs, but Queeg's phantasmal force spell (or was it the wand of illusion?) of frolicking nymphs distracted most of them.

Queeg has a stone of earth elemental control which he used to summon an elemental to battle the sahuagin (until it was dispelled by the sahuagin priestess of Blibdoolpoolp). That weeded out a fair number of sahuagin guards.

Then the party waded in. The remaining front room guards were reinforced by the priestess and her retinue, plus they had a giant crab. While battling, Queeg made good use of continual light to blind the priestess, his wand of paralyzation, and his mirror image spell to even the odds a bit (very necessary, as the priestess had used hold person and paralyzed Abernathy the Dragonborn Fighter/Magic-User, and Calvin the Half Orc Cavalier) [Yes, home brew Classic D&D!]. He also used a staff of dispelling to remove the paralysis of the hold person spell.

Later, fighting the Sahuagin Baron and his bodyguards, Abernathy finally got to shine, with sleep spells (Queeg also used sleep) and magic missiles.

Two things are clear from this: One, Justin is also using utility magic well to solve problems. Two, Queeg has a lot of magical gear (being the only MU in the party for some time, he got a lot by default).

The Funhouse and the Tactical Dungeon

I will come out and say it. I'm a fan of funhouse dungeons. Some people just groan. Some people can't suspend their disbelief. Some people feel like it's the DM (or module designer) springing 'gotchas' on them. But I personally love the zany, goofy, and the straight up bizarre in dungeons.

I've been trying to add more of that to the West Marches, especially now that I'm keying zones that are three or four bands of difficulty from the home town. Yes, there are tougher monsters. And there are more monsters per encounter. But the farther you get from town, the crazier I want things to get. It's a fantasy game after all!

I finally figured out what to do with a certain famous dungeon map from an early TSR module. I won't say which since I know a few of the players read this blog. Sorry guys! What I've decided to do is make it a funhouse. But not just any sort of funhouse. Dungeons like Quasqueton have their weirdness, but a lot of mundane as well. The Tomb of Horrors (it'll get placed in the Marches someday, but much farther from town than the areas I'm working on now) is a bunch of puzzles with deadly consequences but pretty much all funhouse style.

What I'm hoping to do is make this dungeon more of a carnival of crazy, a place where the monsters are there to challenge you to strange contests instead of to combat, where "traps" are more like weird fantasy game shows, and where the "special" bizarre encounter is pretty much every room on the map. I am a Mel Brooks DM after all!

The purpose of a funhouse dungeon is, in my estimation, two-fold. One, it lets the DM flex their creative muscles. Not needing to worry about ecology or economy or social tensions frees the DM up to think about what would make the game more fun. Two, it provides a challenge for the PLAYERS, not just for their ability scores, skills, and collected magical spells/items/powers. Sure, players could choose to fight their way through the funhouse, but they're choosing to miss a lot of the cool stuff that way.

I remember many years ago, maybe on the old WotC forums, maybe on Dragonsfoot, people debating funhouse dungeons. There was a consensus among the posters (which makes me think it was more likely WotC forums in the 3E days rather than Dragonsfoot in the early OSR days) that funhouse dungeons, or any sort of encounter that relied on the PLAYER'S creativity or knowledge was bad design. The proponents of immersion in setting and character thought this was the ultimate no-no. How could you say you were role playing if you were solving problems as yourself rather than as your made up persona?

Well, I think they were wrong. There's nothing wrong with letting your personal player knowledge, creativity, and problem solving skills help you out of an encounter in an RPG. If you have a clever or creative idea, and it circumvents an encounter or a die roll, GOOD!

I find it funny that some players* find the idea that I might use my real world knowledge to defeat a Grimtooth style trap without rolling any dice to be "cheating" but will happily use real world knowledge to help them in tactical battle situations. They will happily design a squad of adventurers that execute amazing levels of tactical brilliance against monster combat encounters, even though their characters don't all have a military background -- using their real world knowledge. They may also engage with the rules to such an extent that they are always making "optimal" choices for how to engage the game mechanics -- using their real world knowledge. They make plans to engage in social encounters, manipulate NPCs, and find methods to get what they want through role play -- using their real world knowledge.

Why is it suddenly a bad thing if my crazy idea saves us from having to go toe-to-toe with a gorgon or dragon and likely losing a character or two?

Why is designing a series of encounters where combat should not be the preferred method of resolution a bad thing? It's not "fair" to the players who aren't good at coming up with the sorts of ideas that will get you through the dungeon? Well, is heavy tactical play fair to the player who just isn't good at tactics? Sure, in tactical play everyone gets to roll the dice and fortune plays as big a part as planning. That does even things out. Even with a great tactical plan, you'll fail if the dice screw you over. And thinking of it that way, isn't an outside the box resolution, the kind that is expected for a funhouse dungeon encounter, a superior way to engage with the game? If your tactical expertise is still limited by the chance outcomes of the dice, isn't avoiding the dice through your player smarts the better way to resolve the situation? I think so.

Small squad tactical infiltration dungeons are fun, don't get me wrong. I enjoy that sort of thing, too. But don't dump on the funhouse dungeon. It's challenging different player skills than the tactical assault, but both are challenging the player.




*I was going to say a lot of players, but this was a few people on a message board thread, so I probably should not the vast majority of gamers feel this way, I have only anecdotal evidence that a small but vocal number of gamers felt that way like 10 to 15 years ago.

Player Expectations of Character Death and Disability

Just finished another session of my West Marches game. It was fun. We had a new player who has played a few RPGs before but never D&D. He rolled up a Human Fighter with 18 Strength and a halberd and off we went.

In the previous session, the party found a dungeon under a ruined temple, and explored part of it. They went back there. Last time, they had the 5th level Thief and Magic-User veterans, plus four brand-spanking new 1st level characters: Half-Elf Druid, Halfling Ranger, Human Fighter, and Dragonborn Cleric.

[Yes, I have house ruled Basic D&D to have race and class instead of race-as-class. And Dragonborn and Changelings (like Tieflings, but could be Infernal, Celestial or Fey ancestry) both because my son really likes Dragonborn and to make conversion easier since there were 3 Tieflings in the 5E version of West Marches. With race-and-class and race-as-class, I'm constantly a pendulum, liking one or other the other. Right now I'm on race-and-class, but starting to feel (again) that dedicated classes for demi-humans are better...]

The mother/daughter playing the Fighter and Cleric decided not to come anymore, but we had our new guy with a Fighter. But, this time, the Fairy Princess (Changeling Magic-User) player didn't come. And the dungeon they were in is really challenging. It's not designed for a 1st level party unless they are VERY clever. 2nd to 4th would be a better fit. But the treasures are right for that level range so...

Long story short, a wight killed the new Fighter in one hit, and the next round level drained the 5th level Thief down to a 4th level thief before they managed to kill it. The Fighter player was OK with that, actually. Like I say, he's played a few other RPGs before, and he'd just rolled the character up and wasn't attached. He rolled up another Fighter (with only 14 Str) and got back in the game.

Our Gnome Thief player (a really good friend outside of the game) had gotten up to 5th level in 5E before the conversion. And seeing all that XP drained, and taking the hit to HP, thief skills, and chances to hit was a shock to him. He got over it fairly quickly though, and after the session he was joking around about it. Not happy, of course, but able to take it in stride.

The player of the Druid, though, had this look on his face of controlling his anger during this encounter. He didn't say anything, but I could tell he was pissed that I'd throw something as dangerous as a wight into a low level dungeon. And later, in a room with a dozen skeletons, his druid died in the melee. I think he was probably considering if he should stay or quit the game. It took him a while before he accepted a new character sheet and started rolling a new PC.

I did say that he could have the XP earned from this adventure. It seemed only fair to me, as before his Druid died, he was having some good rolls and figuring out some of the puzzles and traps for the party. He accepted that, and in the end rolled up a new PC, but since we were near the end of our play time he didn't finish before we wrapped up the session.

He said he'll be on vacation during our next session, but will come back in May.

So, player expectations. The Druid player is used to playing 5E and Pathfinder. He's used to "tough but fair" encounter/adventure design. He's used to characters with lots of bells and whistles that help them manage encounters. And he doesn't have that now. Like I say, he's playing well and smartly. He just got unlucky (large room with skeletons laid out in a pattern on the floor, trying to go to the next room without the proper McGuffin animates them, so the skeletons could attack the whole party).

The Thief player has, like I mentioned, been playing since I was using 5E. His previous character was zapped away to imprisonment by the Deck of Many Things (and could still be rescued). Energy drain with no save was a bit of a shock to him though. In 5E, it's a temporary setback (3E/PF as well, and I don't remember if it was even a thing in 4E).

I'm thinking I should have been a bit more up front about what it would mean to switch to old school D&D with the players. I'm sure I mentioned that it's deadlier, but probably didn't impress just how deadly it can be. Death at 0hp. Lots of save or die effects, including most poisons. Ruthless energy drain rules.

Of course, the players need to pony up some responsibility as well. They could have run from the wight after the Fighter was drained. They could have mentioned taking defensive positions in the skeleton room (bothering the remains was also a trigger to animating them, but they could have done that with the squishy PCs out in the hall). Part of it was just bad luck. They didn't have a Cleric to Turn the undead, and the skeletons and the wight had initiative on the party in the first round both times. But the losses could have been better mitigated by clever play.

Well, everyone still seems keen to play, despite the setbacks. And if they do keep with it, the treasure they could collect will make it worth their while. We may find out in two weeks or so.

Poop Loot!

Oh, so many potential titles for this post, on our most recent Vaults of Ur game last (Friday Korea time) night. 

"Crabs are a man's best friend"
"I thought you were dead"
"You lose it here, you're in a world of poop"
"Getting the monkeys off our backs"

Anyway, as always, Vaults of Ur games are run by Justin, and we were down to the minimum core crew of Dean as Very Elder Karl, Jeremy as Ripper the Werebear Orc, and myself as Thidrek the Sleestak.  With only three PCs, we decided to hire some extra help.  Karl hired a falconer (animal trainer) and two bowmen (and I forgot all their names).  Thidrek bought four more attack beasts - a war beetle, mini-tyrannosaurus, battle crab and war flamingo) and a potion of speed.  Ripper bought two more mini-T-Rexes and a potion of giant strength.  Mongoose Lissken, the NPC we rescued, bought himself some better armor and weapons.  Elder Karl also commissioned the creation of a stone bow, a crossbow that fires sling stones, so he could have a d6 ranged weapon instead of a d4 one.

I should add these to Flying Swordsmen

Jeremy was a bit late because of his work, so Dean and I roleplayed a short trip back to The Hive.  We went down to the tunnels beneath, checked in with Zizzik and Forager, and then gathered some of the healing waters from the hidden spring we had discovered there.  We gathered two waterskins each (including two for Mongoose). 

When Jeremy finally joined us, our quest to finally slay the apes at the behest of the Great Bear cult finally resumed.  If you have been reading these play reports all along, you may remember that Ripper was killed, and we went on a dream quest to escort his soul back to his body.  We didn't have enough cash for the Raise Dead spell, so we were given a quest by the High Yogi of the Great Bear to kill these carnivorous apes that a heretical Bear Cultist had created.  We got side-tracked and ended up captured by the harpies and their vulture-men, so the past many adventures have revolved around us trying to deal with the ape/vulture situation.  Last time we finished off (so we think) the harpies and their chicken-men, so the vulture men are leaderless.  Now it was time to finish off the apes.

We headed south through the ruins, and used the falcon and Karl's speak with animals spell to get a bit of reconnaissance done.  There was a high hill, forested, with the ruins of a manor house on it.  In a dream sending, the Great Bear had shown Karl that silver apes were the leaders that needed to be destroyed, and they were somewhere in that manor.  At the base of the hill, a shrewdness* of apes attacked.  We sent our attack beasts charging in, and we sat back and fired missiles at the apes (Thidrek drinking his potion immediately to be able to get more shots off each round).  Our beasts did a fair amount of damage, but only the beetle survived the melee.  None of the apes survived, though.

We headed up the hill, and found the manor house ruins, and outbuildings, and a very large tree atop the hill.  We saw some apes, and in an attempt to lure them out, Thidrek got pelted with stones, but they didn't come out.  We headed towards one of the buildings, and then both the white apes and silver-back apes attacked.  There were six silver-backs and seven white apes.  Ripper took his potion then.  We made a tactical retreat into one of the buildings, but our beetle and one of the archers were slain before we made it into cover.  With Karl's bless spell, cures and magic stone fist, Thidrek attacking twice per round and Ripper doing double damage on his hits, we were able to just barely hold our own.

Our first position was inside a two-story building.  Our falconer and archer went upstairs and the archer fired down on the white apes while Ripper and Karl held the doorway, with Thidrek and Mongoose firing past the two for a round, then having to deal with the silver-backs, who flanked around to another door.  I'm glad Thidrek now has a magic sword!  This was a very tense battle.  Ripper was battered but resisted the urge to go were-bear.  Thidrek lost one shield due to a fumble roll, and another due to silver-back.  Elder Karl dropped to negative hit points but Mongoose used Hive healing water to get him back on his feet.  He also loaned Thidrek his spare shield.  Everyone ended up in single digits by the time the white apes and the silver-back in the other door were destroyed.

Group Initiative rolls were tense, just the way Zak describes them.  Hit rolls were tense.  Monster hit rolls were even more tense!  Man, this was a touch and go battle.  And it still wasn't over. 

Given a breather by the remaining silver-backs, we retreated up the stairs to where our retainers were.  Ripper healed up a bit, Thidrek tried to repair his shield, and we waited for the apes.  We heard them banging around on the walls below, so Ripper used his giant strength to bash some of the wall blocks down on them.  A few missiles fired from the hole he made managed to slay one more silver ape. 

Then the remaining two dropped in from the ceiling, knocking out both the archer and Mongoose with rubble.  We began to fight, and then the floor fell through due to the load and the additional structural damage we'd inflicted on the building.  Poor Mongoose and red shirt archer, they didn't survive the fall.  The rest of us did, and took down the apes.  And as the last ape fell, Ripper felt the spirit of the Great Bear leaving him.  Elder Karl had the feeling that his church-imposed quest was at an end.

Mongoose Lissken, R.I.P.

But the adventure wasn't over.  We still weren't sure if there were any more apes or not.  We were also curious if there was any loot to be gained in the manor.  So we did what murder-hobos are wont to do, and went further exploring.  In the manor house, the main entrance hall had caved in, and the apes had used the pit as a dung-heap.  Discussion of what to do followed.  Karl insisted there must be a poop-monster in the dung-heap.  Ripper, still at reduced agility due to a vulture-man inflicted crit, was leery of balancing acts to get around the pit, but also didn't want to get his armor dirty.  Thidrek decided to do what he always does, and used his grappling hook to scale to the roof and look around. 

Despite Thidrek finding that we could go across the roof and down to avoid the shit pit, Karl decided to wade through it.  Ripper decided to tip-toe around the broken edge of the room (and despite his lowered Dex, managed it well).  And just as Karl feared, there was an outyugh in the ape shit.  Just as Ripper opened a door and a crossbow bolt flew past him, the outyugh attacked.  Karl went down (again), and Ripper, after taking a crossbow bolt in the back and finding a Fort Low guardsman with broken legs was firing at us, jumped into the pit to save Karl.  Thidrek, still high on speed, kept firing with his crossbow.  Ripper made short work of the outyugh due to giant strength, and he hauled Karl out of the pit.  Thidrek helped the guardsman out. 

Ripper, already covered in shit, went back to search the pit while Thidrek washed out and tended Karl's wounds.  Ripper found some jewelry and a magic scroll, and a few loose coins (we didn't bother to count to see if there were exactly 2000 coppers in the ape shit, but to be honest it wouldn't have bothered me if that was the number).

Lacking all of our hirelings and pets, and with our cleric down but our quest completed and some loot in hand, we headed back to Fort Low.  Along the way, we found out more about Thidrek - his chemical dependencies like bug powder and potions are a way to deal with the existential dread of sleestak existence; about Fort Low society - orcs may be genetically engineered super-soldiers, but they're still discriminated against by the humans; and about life as an old school adventurer - it's short and hopefully sweet, but mostly full of blood and shit.




*apparently the group name for apes can be this or troop, but a shrewdness of apes sounds cooler to me.

Assassins: What are they good for?

This morning, I was rethinking the AD&D Assassin class.

It's a popular class with some, hated by others.

JB had a big series about them earlier this year, after he and Alexis failed to come to terms with what the class was for and how it should be played.  As Paladin in Citadel recently pointed out, the biggest trope D&D brought to fantasy was that of the "adventuring party."  With that in mind, what is the point of the Assassin?  How do they best fit into the standard adventuring party?

One of the problems (that also appears with OA games and the Ninja), is that the Assassin in fiction is quite often a loner.  And due to that plus their alignment restriction to Evil, I've often encountered players of Assassin characters who try to hide the fact from the other PCs, and sometimes from the other PLAYERS as well.  I don't remember reading anything in 1E that specifically advises Assassins to hide their true profession, but OA sure does with the Ninja (and the 2E Complete Ninja's Handbook as well).

Screw that.  If you're an Assassin in an adventuring party, you're a useful asset, and shouldn't be keeping it secret from the group (or at least from the other players).  You've got a job to do, an important role in the party.  And it becomes pretty much impossible to perform that role if you're trying to keep it secret.

So what's the role of the Assassin?  It's to perform the "surgical strike."

An adventuring party is in a dungeon, or out in the wilderness, and comes upon a lair.  Who's in it?  Do they have treasure?  Can the party take them on with decent odds to come out alive and with the loot?  Is there an Alpha Monster or leader?  If so, it should be the Assassin's job to set up an assassination of that Alpha Monster/leader, if possible, with the party's help.  Then the party as a whole will have an easier time with the lesser monsters/minions.

I've never actually played an Assassin.  I haven't really seen that many played, either.  And when I have seen them played, usually they end up being sorta second-class Fighter/Thieves.  This is either because they're trying too hard to hide their profession, or else because the player or DM seems to think that the assassination ability should only be used on NPCs between sessions when the Assassin PC can go on a solo mission.

I'm sorta itching to try out an Assassin now.  One who makes no bones about his profession, and is along with the party to try to be the guy who takes out the Bugbear chieftain before the fight starts, to lower the morale and also prevent the biggest, baddest Bugbear in the lair from getting involved in the fight.  With the party's support (scouting by the Thief, spells by the Cleric/Magic-User, diversions created by the Fighters, whatever), it could be a lot of fun.

Every monster SHOULD be beatable

Thinking about one of my answers to Brendan's 20 questions on my DMing style.

The question of should we run, or can we defeat every monster.

I think my answer firmly puts me in the "combat as war" camp, but also perfectly shows off one of the things that I love about RPGs.  Something that keeps me coming back.

For those too lazy to follow the link, here's the question and my response:

Will we need to run from some encounters, or will we be able to kill everything?  You don't NEED to run.  But see questions 1 and 2 above if you don't when you should.  If you're clever, though, yes, you CAN kill everything.  It's up to you to figure out how in some cases.

 Questions 1 and 2 being about character generation and character death (for me, at 0 hit points, no "death and dying" rules).

Should every encounter be one where the players can just attack and expect to win?  Absolutely not.

Should there be a way that even a single level 1 PC could destroy the toughest of dragons, giants or balrogs?  Yes, there absolutely should...

...if the player is clever enough to think of one, that is. 

If I throw a super tough monster in an encounter, or a force of lesser monsters that can overwhelm the PCs, it's not the time to run in and roll initiative, roll to hit, roll damage, rinse and repeat.

Running is likely the best option (surrender is also on the table, but I don't think that's often happening in most RPGs).

But just like Spider-Man, who gets whipped up on by the Hobgoblin in the first few pages of the comic, if the players can come up with some clever stratagem to defeat the overpowered foes, there should be decent odds for it to actually work. 

Players need to realize, though, that even when they have that foolproof plan to lure the dragon into wasting its breath weapons on illusions, quaffing the potion of diminution that it thinks is a potion of invisibility, and then stuffing it into the bag of holding and tossing it into the bottomless pit, that plan might not be as foolproof as they would like.  Things may go wrong, and likely there will be a TPK or near TPK if something does go wrong. 

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Think it's not worth the risk?  Then stick to the orc warrens and sewers chock full of giant rats until you feel tough enough, by all means.

Again, I'm reminded of the bear cave in my Board Game Group sandbox game from 2 years ago.   For a party of low level characters, two bears were a dangerous encounter, but one they could have won with more luck or the right tactics.  Dave had suggested the correct tactics (going back to town for boar spears to keep the bears at bay), and if they had followed through, they could have defeated the bears without suffering the lost characters. 

The stuffing the diminutive dragon into a bag of holding was something Killing Machine came up with back when we were kids.

Next time you find yourself up against a foe that you can't defeat toe to toe, try to think of some way to flood the Augean stables, keep the trolls arguing until the sun rises, go forth and bring back a shrubbery, or take off  and nuke the entire site from orbit. 

And as old Jack Burton says, "It's all in the [mental] reflexes."