iso ongelmani

This is my number one problem:

These are mythic spaces that run on dream logic.°

°Sourced from a blog post shared to me by my friend Shane: 

https://www.paperspencils.com/two-week-megadungeon/

I struggle with this when designing adventures, I feel it grabbing me in it's tightening grip, I feel it limiting my voice and creativity. But, I cannot do anything to stop it. I make one room fantastic and weird, then move to the next room and my logical brain works up a connection as to why whatever weirdness I cooked up was there. Why? Dammit, why?!?

Also, that two week mega dungeon sounds cool as hell to try! Damn you, Shane!

Adventures in Marshall Barony, ep 10

THE CAST O' CHARACTERS:

CURRENT ROSTER
Vance - Yozzat, a dwarf
Joe - Olwen Door-Hinge-Bane, a human ranger
Tim - Raymondo M., human thief
Steve - Dosta Grimm, a fucking elf
Shane - Grey the archer, fighter stylized as a archer / Gordo the thief
Bryan - Brad, human fighter (out due to real life injury!)

SESSION 10

This one will be short. First, our game night was the day Google experienced one of its rare "shit stops working" days and everyone had issues. One could not log into Gmail to access Hangouts, Meet would not allow them to connect, ugh. I thought about suffering and trying to use Zoom but I would rather sacrifice my left nut. Second, well, not much happened.

Once we got everyone connected the group seemed quite skittish and chicken tonight. I had a special treat for them tonight, a unique creature I am sure none of them have ever seen:

Dug Stanat's Feeding Lord Festilaux's Fistule

It rose out of the green pool and studied the group. They immediately backed up and staked the door shut. I am glad I did not too much thought into this encounter....

Next they went back to the wailing wall and opened the false wall. Behind it was a large room with two altars and a deep moaning coming from a connecting room. Soon, two zombies - the likes (again) that they had never seen. While they were dark and ashen in color, a deep fire burned inside them, leaking out of cracks in the 'flesh'.

An arrow was fired at one, it stuck in its chest and being wood, immediately burst into flame. Then a spear was thrust through one's chest, it too burst into flame. Some Holy Water was tossed at them, the attack missed but covered the floor, the 'creatures' avoided this so another flask was tossed on one. It struck and seemed to put out some of the flames inside it, but then it roared back and the flames flared up as if in anger. Our troupe deemed this too odd, and backed out of the room, again staking the door.

Next was a flooded room. They had passed over this room at least four times, only returning when no other clear path seemed survivable. Opening this door revealed a tall altar with a tall curtain along the wall behind it. Rather than step in the knee deep water, they began using a grappling hook and rope to pull the curtain down, revealing three skeletons again the back wall along with two statues of a fancy knight in armor (which matched the mosaics on the side walls.  This room proved to be quite scary and the party refused to enter it as well. 

We stopped there for the evening.

DM's Thoughts: I guess looking back, this Barrow is pretty tough, with strange and new monsters that no one has ever seen before. It is kind of funny because all of old grogs all say "Running away is sometimes the smartest option" yet when it happens in a game it feels empty and hollow. After listening to Tim's podcast (click here to give it a listen) I realized that I may need to tone it down a little. I have been pretty hard on these guys. They are first level, I have killed a PC or NPC in every session except two. I will have to think upon this over a couple of hard ciders.

I will say, I wondered why they keep forgetting the many magic items I have given them. Oh well, lead a horse to water and all that....

THE GRAVEYARD

Misstep, wayward magic-user

Able Artone, human fighter - (Christian)

Macros - long-living magic-user (Joe)

Brother Adelmo - cleric (Tim)

Vox - human barbarian (Bryan)

Janos - halfling (Jason)

Harold Flynn - halfling badass (Vance)

Shelzabaz the Magnificent - magic-user (Steve)

Caradoc - an awesome halfling unjustly murdered by a callous and vile DM (Vance)

HIRED HELP

Dimgert Flathammer of the Kragagor clan, alas dear friend, ye are no more

Bint (kobold) who they oddly forgot about this adventure!!

Usee (kobol) likewise forgotten  

About ten kobolds who died to avenge their people!

Garth the human (dead)

Izzy the elf (dead)

Too many retainers to count and I cannot recall their names

Adventures in Marshall Barony, ep 9

THE CAST O' CHARACTERS:
CURRENT ROSTER
Vance - Yozzat, a dwarf
Joe - Olwen Door-Hinge-Bane, a human ranger
Tim - Raymondo M., human thief
Steve - Dosta Grimm, a fucking elf
Shane - Grey the archer, fighter stylized as a archer / Gordo the thief
Bryan - Brad, human fighter (out due to real life injury!)

SESSION 9

Wow, not even sure where to start with this one. I knew it could be deadly, I built it that way but if caution entered their mind, perhaps my list of PCs and NPCs killed would be less. But here we are.

We entered the barrow, they quickly discovered two statues with glowing gems behind them, Grey opted to use the statue to climb up and read the gem for removal. As he did, he used....and I am quoting here...."his ballsack to step up and reach the gem." Needless to say, the penis broke off and this set the tone for the rest of the session. 

Penis jokes were spread wide and far...

Next the discovered the room to the north, flooded and opted to not open the door, instead exploring the crack behind the last statue. And that was their mistake....

Grey was immediately covered by a Green Slime. I gave him the option to step out of the way (he said "I look up" just as it dropped on him) but he instead stood his ground and while he did damage to it, he was also covered, and trapped, beneath the slime. Dosta threw a flask of oil on it while Olwen lit a torch and subsequently set it aflame. A few moments later, and a few HP less, they managed to subdue the slime, sending caustic thick smoke in the dungeon. They quickly decided to push forward, locating the crack and heading deeper into what appeared to be a natural cavern. A cavern filled with fucking frogs! 

Now, the smoke was blocking everyone's vision, and the crack was tight, but our 'heroes' pushed onward and were ambushed by luckily only one full grown frog and her two babies. Attacks began in earnest but the smoke and tight passage caused havoc on any attempt at tactics and Grey bravely stepped forward...into the pool of water....hoping to get a clear attack on the momfrog.

He felt a sting of pain and looked down to see the two babies munching on his legs, one with a critical. He fell beneath the water, a dark water grave. Fear began to set in (I think) and the party began to (smartly) retreat back into the barrow, sealing the crack by knocking over the statue.

They then turned back and headed up the hall to the north, lifted a portcullis, and discovered another statue. We let Shane spawn his third character for this campaign, Gordo the thief, and he opted to climb this statue as well, for the gem. Yozzat was able to locate the release that allowed the statue to slide forward, in this case, grabbing and pulling the statues ballsack. ;-) When it slid forward it revealed a hole with a metal-rung ladder leading down into darkness below.

Opting to not go deeper and to the next level of the dungeon (where undoubtedly the GM has 2HD creatures to kill them!), the group opted to continue further into the tomb. Another statue and they came upon another door. Due diligence provide just a mild smell and no sound from beyond so they opened the door...

And were immediately smacked in the face with the most horrible, rotting smell emanating from a large sunken pool of vomit-green liquid in the middle of the room. Most of the party reacted by vomiting too.

We stopped there for the night. Tonight was the largest group we have had together and it was a hilarious, raunchy, good time. Thanks guys, I needed that.

THE GRAVEYARD
Misstep, wayward magic-user
Able Artone, human fighter - (Christian)
Macros - long-living magic-user (Joe)
Brother Adelmo - cleric (Tim)
Vox - human barbarian (Bryan)
Janos - halfling (Jason)
Harold Flynn - halfling badass (Vance)
Shelzabaz the Magnificent - magic-user (Steve)
Caradoc - an awesome halfling unjustly murdered by a callous and vile DM (Vance)

HIRED HELP
Dimgert Flathammer of the Kragagor clan, alas dear friend, ye are no more
Bint (kobold) who they oddly forgot about this adventure!!
Usee (kobol) likewise forgotten  
About ten kobolds who died to avenge their people!
Garth the human (dead)
Izzy the elf (dead)
Too many retainers to count and I cannot recall their names

Death & dismemberment

Yeah, I know, this isn't breaking any new ground here but I felt like our game has become very, very deadly. I thought perhaps death is becoming boring and I should do something about that. So, this is my attempt to cobble something lite, flexible and easy to use in-game. This is also hobbled together based on lots of other sites such as Robert Fisher, Trollsmyth, Blood and Guts.

DEATH, DISMEMBERMENT, & LASTING WOUNDS

When one of the following occur, the player will use the table below to determine the result. If the damage would drop a character lower than 0 hit points, those additional points of damage are added to this roll. Example: Bob takes 7 points of damage while only having 3hp, leaving 4 points extra. Bob's player rolls 2d6 on the table below but adds 4 to the total of the roll to determine the result.

Note that most NPCs, mooks, or low level monsters will NOT use this table.

When to roll:

• When an attack reduces a character to zero or less hit points
• When a character suffers additional damage after already being reduced to zero hit points
• When a character falls more feet than their level times ten, example: Bob is 2nd level and he falls 30 feet, he would take 2d6 damage, then roll on the table below even if he were not reduced to 0hp

Roll 2d6 (add a number equal to any additional damage after the character is reduced to 0hp):
  2-3   no additional effect
   4     stunned (no furthers actions this round)
   5     knocked down & stunned for d6 rounds
   6     bleeding badly, will bleed out in d6 rounds unless treated
   7     broken ribs, d6 weeks to heal
   8     1-5: broken limb bone, 2d6 weeks to heal naturally
          6: eye removed
   9     1-4: crushed limb bone, 3d6 weeks to heal, will not fully heal naturally
          5-6: eye removed
  10    severed limb, will die in 3d6 rounds unless treated
  11    mortal wound, will die in 2d6 rounds unless treated
  12+  instant death

Any roll of 6+ has a 50% of permanent scarring, which can reduce Charisma. Additional side effects may be caused by wounds such as a leg never fully healing and having their movement reduced; a crushed arm may not be able to wield a weapon but could hold a shield. DMs will determine any additional side effects based on the severity of the attack.

As to be expected my players frowned upon this....so, I guess I will just keep killing their PCs instead of giving them a second chance at life....  ;-) 

Tiny Dungeons play report, Sky Pirates!

So Christian from Destination Unknown and I have been somewhat excited about this silly little game called Tiny Dungeons and have pretty much been talking about it off and on since last weekend. Tuesday night while talking he said basically "I am on lockdown in LA, life sucks, save me and let's play something." So Wednesday during the day my mind was just swimming with ideas and I approached him and asked if he wanted to get together for an hour or so, give the system a run through, see if we liked it in play or not, he agreed.

I had a very, very rough idea based on a setting write up in the back of the rulebook called Skies over Rocét, a sort of airships over poison-mist covered lands. I really didnt work on it until my drive home, originally planning to do just a simple fight or something to move through the ropes of combat or something. Then, I got stuck in traffic and the mind went cra-cra. What follows are the text messages I sent him while stuck in traffic (rambly, train of thought voice-to-text follows, you were warned):

So what I'm thinking for a one shot is a world like any other D&D setting, move forward 500 years and suddenly the low altitudes all get covered in mist. Some societies were able to move to high altitude locations and set up cities and develop trade routes using magical or maybe non-magical airships. Society has reestablished itself and now you have small pockets of humanity scattered on the higher regions of lands, mountaintops hilltops, etc but the myths are deadly not because of a gas or something like that but because of what lives in the mist, much like the movie The Mist.

Now ships move from location to location and trade but there are also pirates that haunt the air and look for ships to capture and steal. In addition there are treasure troves aplenty hidden in the mist below that only the bravest and most foolhardy venture into the mist or in the locations when the mist manages to part and expose locations

I think your character would be a young member of a very small pirate crew who are looking to make a name for themselves. Perhaps they have discovered the location of an interesting structure that they could explore for treasure. Their Mistseer has calculated that the mist should part for a brief amount of time tomorrow, the crew will head that direction and hopefully explore that area for treasure before the mist rolls in

Tech is about 1700s, pirates, flintlock, cannon. Magic exists but somewhat rare (feared). Airships are built around massive creatures with airbags, a byproduct of their digestion is that they create extreme lighter than air gases which enter these pockets and the pilots use to control altitude.

So if you went below deck in a ship you might pass something that looks like a tentacle that runs to different portions of the ship with airbags spaced evenly around it to keep the ship level.

Airbag creatures have a mental capacity similar to that of a cow, so they are bred, fed, and maintained merely as a sort of service vehicle to enable aircraft to fly. Different size creatures will power different size craft from something the size of a horse to something as large as an elephant

You live in New Angeles, when the mist rolled in, a few rich folks in LA went up in Yosemite and established a small community there. A short while later the first Gasus Baggus appeared and enabled them to roam, which they used to collect stuff they needed to survive. Luckily enough 'natural way of living' and hippy people had joined them and they survived. After a couple of years a ship arrived offering to sell things from the old world. Later these folks, rougher and meaner but far outnumbered, set up at the edge of town. Locals called them pirates but they framed themselves as explorers of the Ruined Below. Fast forward 50 years and the two have melded well enough, like two different neighborhoods and carry on an uneasy existence. The explorers go out to find useful bits of tech, things not available on the top of El Capitan, and trade for food, medicine, etc. A merchant class has sprung up and they trade with other remote communities. Sometimes the explorers provide security for the merchants.

I got home, fed and walked the dogs, went to the local Chik-fil-A to pick up a sammich and the most excellent waffle fries for dinner. While eating I hammered this out:

DM note: Making up the crew on the fly was extremely easy. I had the entire crew of seven people written up in under five minutes. You essentially need a name, a trait or two (leave one slot open for you to add one on the fly if you want, good for emergent play Jason!), and maybe a weapon. During play I ended up adding that Krak had a large backpack and on a successful Save Test, any reasonable item they might need could be pulled out of the pack (rope, wrench, grappling hook, etc)

The trip out to the site was uneventful and we soon came upon the site of the wreckage. The large craft had settled on the edge of a cliff over looking a river in a valley. The surrounding area was mostly rolling hills with just a few bits of shrubbery, providing just a few spots where someone could hide in an ambush. We circled the wreckage and Christian was satisfied it was safe, the captain slowed over the wreckage and a rope ladder was dropped to the deck below.

We had planned originally for just an hour or so and ended up running for over two hours. With my slim notes above, I was able to flesh out and smoothly run the game. Combats were smooth and quick and the system mechanics allowed for quick and decisive resolution of checks and tests. We easily managed combats with the PC, three NPCs, and multiple enemies, to include a situation with the boss monster in the boat...the giant and starving gasbag. Christian thought outside the box and ended up feeding the two bad guys TO the starving gasbag, and quickly reinflating the gasbag's airsacs (which provide the lighter than air gases which provide buoyancy for the airship). It was quite ingenious of him and he went from returning to the Captain's airship with a handful of items to returning  WITH AND ENTIRE AIRSHIP AND ALL ITS CARGO! 

Notes on Tiny Dungeons: Thus far I am really enjoying this system. It reminds me of a system like Fate Accelerated or Risus, both systems I liked that I eventually ended up leaving on the shelf because of inherent issues within the system that imo ruins them. FAE has a pretty wide swing on the power level of the Approaches, ime this causes drastic power level differences for the players (and bad guys). This causes chaotic fluctuations in the games. Risus, well, long story here, but fuck Risus. 

Anyway, so far in the one game I have ran and one that I played (solo) the Tiny system is providing a more constant and reliable resolution system than FAE or Risus. I am currently planning two more Tiny X sessions with different folks to test out the system more.

The Gatehouse on Cormac's Crag, session eight

renamed to reflect the current situation!

THE CAST O' CHARACTERS:
CURRENT ROSTER
Vance - Yozzat, a dwarf
Joe - Olwen Door-Hinge-Bane, a human ranger
Tim - Raymondo M., human thief 
Steve - Dosta Grimm, a fucking elf
Shane - Misstep, wayward magic-user
Bryan - Brad, human fighter (out due to real life injury!)

SESSION, THE EIGHTH
Joined now by two more players, Steve and Shane, the party stood over the barrow mound entrance. The entrance was merely a dirt-covered depression on the side of the mound and would require some hard work with shovels and pickaxes to expose what likely lie beneath: a stone block!

Only, our group headed out to the Midgemarsh sans shovels and pickaxes! What in the flaming hells?! Ok, this was an oversight, I will admit, on both our sides. We use OSE and OSE is mysteriously lacking any sort of mining or digging items on the provided equipment lists, so they did not see it in an equipment list and I failed to mention it prior to us heading out to the mound. Luckily, their friendly guide Dimgert IS a miner and luckily had a shovel and pickaxe in his gear.

For future reference I submit an expanded equipment list (prices listed are per Fudwick's Emporium in Kalynn) (side note, Blogger sucks balls for tables):

Shovel 5gp	Ladder, wooden 10ft   1gp	Black & tackle, small 10gp
Pickaxe 4gp	Ladder, rope, 20ft   10gp	Tent, small (2 people) 25gp
Sledgehammer, hvy 10gp	Chain (per foot)  4gp	Tent, large 6ppl        60 gp
Sledgehammer, lt 6gp	Piton, steel, set (2ea)  1gp	Pulley system, heavy 100gp

Anyhoo, a few party members joined Dimgert, while a couple went wandering, 'on watch' or something and did not help dig out the entrance. This is where things began to go astray. It was going to take a while to dig out the slab covering the entrance which gave me the perfect opportunity to sneak my random encounter giant frog closer to the group. This would allow it to use the frog's special leaping ability. Two PCs caught on that something was stalking them, but because they were not helping to dig, this actually ended up putting the party in MORE danger. They managed to remove all the dirt and could now begin working on sliding or lifting the stone slab to access the barrow below the mound.

The frogs were able to sneak up while the group was digging and launch a surprise attack on poor Dimgert, swallowing him whole in the process. One frog attacked the group at the mound while another attacked Olwen. The mage Misstep ran forward and attacked with this staff, and was subsequently also swallowed. Luck favored the party though and they were able to subdue the large creatures, pull out Misstep and retrieve most of his items undamaged.

Again, the party decided to waste more time, cutting open the frog, searching its innards and collecting up the meager treasures inside. Suddenly a group do f six Lizardmen appeared off in the distance, jogging quickly towards their position. MOST of the group began frantically to slide the door, just 6" at a time to make the opening wide enough to allow the group inside the barrow. At the last moment the group was able to dive through the three foot wide opening and into the darkness below. They tumbled down a flight or two of stairs and ended up laying in a flat hall with a terrifying skull serving as a gate to the tomb. 

A quick aside... the party leapt into the barrow and only after being inside at the bottom of the stairs did anyone remember they had left the shovel and pickax. 

THOUGHTS ON OSE/BARROWMAZE
So far I think the system is working quite well. We saw a little more concern this session with movement being limited but overall this session was riddled with players not working together imo. I think some of the delay could be caused by my own DMing style. I tend to be pretty easy going and I have decided to take a step back and enforce some rules and be a little more strict in some areas (such as movement and encumbrance).

I have not in the past really focusing on random encounters too often, in fact I think we only had a single encounter on all of our trips back and forth to the gatehouse. I checked each time but the players had been very fortunate. Perhaps the players thought I was not use the random encounters much. I am overall trying to showcase the fact that the Midgemarsh is one dangerous freaking place. We have had THREE random encounters spread over two sessions just getting to the Barrowmound! 

Next session will be inside the mound and likely end in more death. This one is going to be tough, and the players will have to think things through and be smart...

THE GRAVEYARD
Able Artone, human fighter - (Christian)
Macros - long-living magic-user (Joe)
Brother Adelmo - cleric (Tim)
Vox - human barbarian (Bryan)
Janos - halfling (Jason)
Harold Flynn - halfling badass (Vance)
Shelzabaz the Magnificent - magic-user (Steve)
Caradoc - an awesome halfling unjustly murdered by a callous and vile DM (Vance)

HIRED HELP
Dimgert Flathammer of the Kragagor clan, alas dear friend, ye are no more
Bint (kobold) who they oddly forgot about this adventure!!
Usee (kobol) likewise forgotten  
About ten kobolds who died to avenge their people!
Garth the human (dead)
Izzy the elf (dead)
Too many retainers to count and I cannot recall their names

Tiny Dungeon, solo report!

 My friend Christian was looking at some systems yesterday and we got to talking about Tiny Dungeons, a system I have looked at previously but deemed 'too lite' for my gaming group. I had additional thoughts about how lite it was and if it would be good for long-term play. 

I grabbed the book, a copy of Four Against the Darkness, some paper and dice and went to town....er, to the dungeon! First up, I wanted to make a character to see how the process went. Amazingly simple. I grabbed the Halfling Heritage from the Tiny Dungeon TinyZine Compendium 2019 and put together my usual halfling named Snikle Wiffleberry because I can. ;-)

Then I grabbed one of the characters included included in the TD Quickstart Characters, picking The Retired Blacksmith War Veteran, I can totally see a grumbley old dwarf, penniless because he drinks away all his money to make the horrors of war fade away into nothingness. After all, Snikle is not stupid, if he was going plundering he would probably grab a strong veteran looking for some loot to take as a partner on an expedition. 

So I had my two characters, Snikle the halfling and Grond the war vet:

Then I needed something to explore. I decided to go with Four Against the Darkness because it has a very simple, but effective, dungeon generator that works really great for short, quick, little things like this. A quick side note - I downloaded the Tiny Dungeons Solo Rules but I do not recommend them. The writing is subpar and confusing. I ended up using my so1um rules a few times to answer questions when I came upon the need.

First up, the starting chamber (mapping starts at the bottom of the page image below). Of course I got the one with three doors.... Anyway, we went to the far right and immediately bumped into two skeletons. I used simple initiative, each side rolled a d6, highest went first. The skelies won initiative, both hit Grond and Snikle for one attack. Grond killed his skelie and Snikle killed his, but then...

Holy shit! The Rise Again trait is kick ass!  The damn things rose from the dead again! After a skelies is hit, you make what is called a Save Test, roll 2d6 and if you get a 5 or 6, they rise back up! We ended up killing them numerous times before they finally succumbed and no longer rose from the dead.. That is a mean trait!

I made one mistake here, no doubt because of the newness of the rules. I forgot that ALL things get two actions in combat. Two moves, two attacks, or one of each. While I had the characters strike twice, I only had the skelies attack once.

Going through the door, we discovered an empty room (yeah random rolls!) and then a locked door (via my so1um rules). Grond used his Massive Anvil Hammer to bash the door down (I used a normal attack roll, gave the door two HP) and they discovered a healing fountain! Each healed their wounds before continuing.

A few random rooms of halls and emptiness, we encountered a pack of Goblin Swarmlings, these were easily dispatched by our team (could have been far worse with a 2d6 encountered and I only rolled a 2 and a 1). Following their deaths, we discovered a gem worth 20gp. Score! Snikle is gonna use it to wow that elf babe back in town.

Entering the next room, the shit got real. Fast. A medusa surprised the team, immediately attacking with her Stonegaze trait. I made this on the fly. FAD said we encountered a Medusa with 4hp and Stonegaze ability (the FAD rules were not compatible with TD, so I decided she could use it two per turn and when a successful attack was made, meaning she locked eyes, the character had to make a Save Test or be turned to stone. If she remained alive after three turns of turning someone to stone, it became permanent. Back and forth we went, different sides each winning initiative and the pair somehow managing to make their Save Tests. Grond and Snik slowly wore her down until we got her to 1 HP left and the halfling finally failed his Save Test, instantly turning to stone before Grond's eyes! She had Grond down to 4 HP from his full 8 and she only had 1 left. Grond knew he had to cut her down for his friend to be restored so he doubled his efforts. Winning initiative, he was able to cut that bitch's snakedreads off and then remove her head. Snik slowly returned to the living. 

After collecting their treasure, jewelry worth 150gp (surely enough to sparkle that elf maiden's eyes) and a Wand of Sleep, the pair quickly skedaddled out of this tomb and headed for the safety of a pub, a tall ale, and a thin elf maiden.

Thoughts on TD:
I LOVED the simplicity of the system. I easily made up the medusa's stat s on the fly and could see myself doing this with minimal prep for a game, getting a game ready to run in very little time. I also liked the versatility of the system, I think you could run nearly any genre with ease and almost no work using the TD rules. Star Wars? No problem. Fantasy? No problem. Cthulhu? No problem. Pulp heroes? No problem. I can see where some people have said the game lacks the ability for depth or advancement, but I think you could use this for a solid 8-10 adventures and still have a great time. I can see where the a few traits are so powerful that they stand the chance of upending a game, but that is what a good DM is for. 

Anyhoo, I would recommend the Tiny Dungeons rule set, and I cannot wait to get in a game or run some sessions for others!

The Gatehouse on Cormac's Crag, session seven

  

THE CAST O' CHARACTERS:
CURRENT ROSTER
Vance - Yozzat, a dwarf
Joe - Olwen Door-Hinge-Bane, a human ranger
Tim - Raymondo M., human thief 
Steve - Dimzad Shatterstaff, a dwarf (out because of work)
Bryan - Brad, human fighter (out due to real life injury!)

SESSION, THE SEVENTH
With this session I had decided I wanted to expand the play area a little. I have been thoroughly enjoy GoCC but I wanted to give the players a little more opportunity to explore the area and what it has to offer, options for things to do, etc. For one, I felt like the area around Kalynn is ripe for exploration that we have yet to even dip our toes into. So, Thursday afternoon, during a late lunch, I devised a plan....

We all knew Joe was going to be doing some serious shopping now that they had gold, and he was already roaring to go when we all logged into the Google Meet. Luckily, we went through that quickly, got Tim's new character a token, and I went over a few things I wanted to make note of before the game started (the previously posted discussion about movement and encumbrance).

We began in town and the characters noticed a sort of ruckus going down at Pepsy's Pub n Inn. It seemed some adventurers had returned with a large horde of gold and treasure. The group hustled their way into the crowd - there is only standing room inside -  and discover it is actually a group of dwarven miners. The miners had been up in the Mourning Mountains when one of their party broke his arm. Unable to continue mining, they opted to head back later than usual, to Kalynn. As night fell, so did a thick fog and they decided to camp.

The Dwarven Miners:
Dimgert Flathammer of the Kragagor clan
Morgart Rockaxe (broke leg)
Findorn Farseerer (broken arm)

Early in the morning they were startled by the living dead moaning as they stumbled into their camp, reaching out with their dead claws! Scared and fearing for their lives, they high-tailed it out of there in the early morning hours with the sun still sleeping and a thick fog still blocking their view. In their anxious flee, they managed to enter the Midgemarsh. 

The Midgemarsh is a feared place. A miserable swampy mess filled with biting insects that makes all living things life suck. Ages ago, the river to the east called the Barrow River flooded it's banks, as it did, the river flooded the barrows that were hidden there and flushed their contents into the Midgemarsh. Consequently, the inhabitants of said barrows were not happy. They began to wander. Additionally, the Barrows River Valley was not the only place with barrows. The Midgemarsh (which used to be a lovely plain filled with rolling hills) was full of it's own barrows! Needless to say, now you have unhappy undead, mad their homes were disturbed, wandering (and sometimes fighting with) the original inhabitants of the Midgemarsh, more undead!

Anyhoo, the new thief in the group, Raymono attempted to swindle the treasure from the dwarves. Posing as a royal inspector of some sort. His reaction rolls, as expected (it IS Tim after all), go poorly and the one non-drunk dwarf is not fooled. Further attempts are cur short by the local lord, a few of his muscle, the town reeve (a fat, no good ahole), and the local Irnoch priestess named Sister Íde show up.  Lord Rothrod (I renamed him from Lord Ross in David's book as Ross is my father's name and felt too close to home) asked for the crown and believed it belongs to an ancient civilization that used to live in these parts. Sister Íde studied the crown and determined that it needed to be sent to the Grand Temple of the Divine in Sunderia for further study. With that she departed and Lord Rothrod waved his men off. Once allow, and as if not wanting his men to know he has a heart, he offered the dwarves a bag of gold coins for their now-lost crown.

After things settled down and the lord left, the party began questioning the dwarves, determining that the horde was found in a barrow the dwarves fell into, killed a skeleton, and escaped. The two dwarves, Morgart Rockaxe (broke leg) and Findorn Farseerer (broken arm) would be laid up for at least a few weeks. The party convinced Dimgert Flathammer to serve as a guide....

The next morning, the group headed off, led by Dimgert. An hour or so into the marsh, they heard some splashing nearby. They discovered a skeleton chained to a downed tree. Olwen immediately goes to town on it's skull and ended its miserable 'life'.

Rather quickly, they discovered a rotting body floating in the water nearby, Olwen started to search the body...but then Joe remembered Rotgrubs and decided not to search. The noise attracted another group of skelies who attacked the group. Suddenly, the rotting body sprang to life! The battle was fierce but luckily, this time, all party members survived!. 

They party continued until Dimgert lead them to the opening. Yozzat was lowered down into the hole and searched for about twenty minutes to find a secret compartment with additional gold within. Beyond that, it appeared all had been discovered. While he searched below, Olwen searched above.

And before long, he found what he came here for....more barrowmounds!

    
Maps wiped from https://www.patreon.com/afternoonmaps (I know, blasphemy that I am not using my own map, oh well)

THE GRAVEYARD
Able Artone, human fighter - (Christian)
Macros - long-living magic-user (Joe)
Brother Adelmo - cleric (Tim)
Vox - human barbarian (Bryan)
Janos - halfling (Jason)
Harold Flynn - halfling badass (Vance)
Shelzabaz the Magnificent - magic-user (Steve)
Caradoc - ??? (Vance)

HIRED HELP
Bint (kobold) who they oddly forgot about this adventure!!
Usee (kobol) likewise forgotten  
About ten kobolds who died to avenge their people!
Garth the human (dead)
Izzy the elf (dead)
Too many retainers to count and I cannot recall their names

OSE: Movement, Encumbrance & Initiative

Before our session Thursday, I wanted to update the players on a few rules updates (inclusions really) that I had not previously been to stringent on. Here I will gab about them for no other reason than this is my blog. ;)

Movement (and therefore encumbrance). I recently listened to a play report that included a dungeon battle in 5 foot wide tunnels. During the battle, the width of tunnels and the movement of characters came into play in a big way. Marching order in a 5 foot wide tunnel, where it would be very difficult to squeeze past the leader to fight the bad guys, it very important. I realized I had been very loosey-goosey with this and allowed the players far too much leeway in moving around in combat. This brought up two distinct points we needed to discuss:

1) Encumbrance. I had not really been tracking this at all, relying on the players (and me) to keep an eye on reality or carrying an asston of stuff. I have decided we will be using the Basic Encumbrance rules from OSE. Essentially I will limit movement to the armor worn listing as the group enters a dungeon/adventure, once they start carrying stuff, we will take a closer look at things. As the change between with-treasure and without-treasure is quite different especially for those in heavy armor I expect to have a direct effect on play. So movement will be based on the Option 1 rule for encumbrance below:

2) Movement. I never really focused on this in combat, and many times this will still not really come into play. Combat tends to be close and fast with characters only having to move slightly but in listening to that actual play I realized the I have been too loosey-goosey on movement as well. Moving forward I plan on being much more strict on movement and actions. Players will have two options:     

1. Normal movement with a single action taken at any point during that move
2. Sprint, moving twice their normal but no other actions.

The reason this is important is that it could have a major impact on situations where movement is limited. In the image below Olwen is facing off against a mounted rat and two giant rats. Brad and Usse are nearby and want to help. Last session the team loaded up their friend Brad with plate mail, a shield and sword, so his movement is 20' for combat, that is four squares given the 5' squares in the map. Usse though is a much more lean warrior, carrying only a pair of daggers. 

If Brad's player moved him his full move, he would be positioned here (image below), and I would likely allow him to attack the diagonally connected square with the giant rat. However, now Brad is blocking the hall because squeezing past a character engaged in combat in a 5 foot wide tunnel is difficult. So, because Brad is weighted down and armored up and this impacts the faster, less armored party members. 

Brad might have chosen to double his move so he could get into the next square, though he would not have been able to make an attack at that time. Life's about choices. 

I am hoping this leads to some interesting situations where the players' decisions on equipment, placement of the characters in the marching order, etc end of having tactical implications on the game.

3) Initiative. Previously, and use ease of use, I had simply had each side roll once and do a group, all or nothing initiative. Last night I switched to one roll for baddies and then individual for the players. I will likely stick with this as I feel it is easy to track in combat (if I somehow get ten players maybe I will rethink this). When fighting either two distinct groups of baddies, or we have an encounter with minions and a BigBoss baddie, I will probably roll separate initiatives for the baddies. Players can add any benefits from race/class/abilities to their initiative roll.

The Gatehouse on Cormac's Crag, play update

THE CAST O' CHARACTERS:
CURRENT ROSTER
Vance - Yozzat, a dwarf
Joe - Olwen Door-Hinge-Bane, a human ranger
Tim - as yet unnamed new character
*Steve - Dimzad Shatterstaff, a dwarf
*Bryan - Brad, human fighter

THE GRAVEYARD
Able Artone, human fighter - (Christian)
Macros - long-living magic-user (Joe)
Brother Adelmo - cleric (Tim)
Vox - human barbarian (Bryan)
Janos - halfling (Jason)
Harold Flynn - halfling badass (Vance)
Shelzabaz the Magnificent - magic-user (Steve)
Caradoc - ??? (Vance)

HIRED HELP
Bint (kobold)
Usee (kobol)
About ten kobolds who died to avenge their people!
Garth the human (dead)
Izzy the elf (dead)
Too many retainers to count and I cannot recall their names

This is sort of a recap, get you up to speed, sort of post. My general thoughts on how things are going, how I run my games in Roll20, etc. A bit of a ramble, but perhaps others might find it useful to some degree.

ON USING GoCC:
I have been running GoCC since early July, a full six sessions now (which is actually a pretty good run for me) using OSE. I tend to run a rather loose game so I am not a dead-stickler to rules....more of a 'what works in the moment' rather than stick to the rules raw method. I have pretty much stuck to the adventure as written, only adding slightly more treasure, a few traps, and adding some magic items to a BigBoss. I think this is actually one of the strengths of this adventure. It is pretty lightly written, affording a DM enough information that you could run as-is, but this also allows a DM to add bits here and there without effecting the main adventure but giving it enough to 'make it their own'. 

I specifically chose this product to start my game for two main reasons:
1) It could be ran as-is, with only a quick read through. I am busy, have serious attention difficulties. I thought by using this lightly-written adventure I might be able to get past this. I have a notorious and dreaded history of starting campaigns and then killing them off when I get bored or the-next-big-thing catches my eye. I did not want to invest, or have my players invest, tons of time in a new campaign only to screw it up and kill it.
2) The reasons stated above about the adventure being just enough to run, but with enough space to add personal touches.

I think this adventure is 'deadly', and could actually be more deadly if I used everything in it. For example, my players have been very luckily with only one encounter between the village and the gatehouse (a 3-4 hour trip on foot). (more on this below)

With GoCC, you get quite a large play area. There is a regional area with five, FIVE, sub-areas that are all ripe with possibilities.The PDF says that it is a "mere 3 hour march to the gatehouse" from the village. Calculating this out with the average hiking speed (according to Google) of 2mph, that means the gatehouse and village site on oppose sides of a typical 6 mile hex. Plenty of space to drop in whatever your hearts desire.

/ matt's tangent on wilderness exploration
I know I have made this argument before, about how large a Six mile hex really is and how much land it encompasses, but I enjoy doing this, so here goes. I recently went hiking and whitewater rafting in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Georgia (yes, during COVID, sucks to be you folks that live in the big cities on the east and west coast). We went whitewater rafting just below the Olympics rapids used for the '96 Olympics. We put in at the white dot and got out at the blue dot, the captain of our boat said it was about a 3 mile route and it took us about 3 hours to cover as we floating down a rapidly moving river.

clickie to enbiggie

Here is another way to look at just how much area a six mile hex encompasses. Here is a photo I took on the trip from a scenic overlook high above Lake Parksville Lake. Notice the boat speeding away down there. If you think it would not take you literally an entire day to search an area of two square miles for a small dungeon entrance, I would posit that you have never hiked a day in your life out in the true wilderness.

clickie to enbiggie

And here is the six mile hex superimposed with an angle showing approximate viewpoint from the photo above. You can see the length of the lake is roughly two miles. Compare the area of the lakeshore inside those two lines with the above photo.

clickie to enbiggie

USING THE VILLAGE:
As I said in my previous post I have stuck to the early D&D mantra of "Keep them out of the city" (from B2 In Search of the Unknown) and strictly made the village of Kalynn a place to recoup, sell, purchase, pick up retainers, and then scoot them out of town quickly. However, I have sort of felt the hole left by little 'role-playing' this causes and am likely going to expand the interactions in the villagers because I have some ideas for expanding the play area of the adventure. The areas around the village, along the various routes to the gatehouse are chock full of opportunities for more adventure!

To accomplish this I am moving from David's map to my own. Here is his map. Adequate, useful, and great...if a bit square, next to my re-purposed map. A few more locations, and frankly, I am partial to my own work.

 

ON USING ROLL20:

The adventure is written for White Box but really this has not impacted the game at all. I do a little prep in Roll20, basically adding in tokens and copying over a few stats from the OSE SRD, just what I need to run the game. A quick note on the data I enter here. While those colored circles probably line up with something from a character sheet, as a DM I find that useless. So I set them up for quick in-play use. Red makes me think of blood, so I put Hit Points in there. Blue, for whatever reason (maybe blue is good guys in the Army and good guys bring armor to the battle...?) reminds me of armor, so I put the Armor Class in the blue circle. Green is left over, so I put the main combat damage in there. Having these number readily available with a single click has allowed me to speed up our combat.

In the expanded token settings, I usually copy over the entry from the SRD like below. While this is not usually necessary, this takes out any guessing or pausing for me to look up a creature's stats during the game. I find this also comes in handy because I tend to prep in advance, sometimes FAR in advance. Our current exploration of the second level of the dungeon in GoCC I put together one Sunday afternoon back in early July. So for my old, feeble mind to remember that these little fuckers suffer an additional +1 of damage from silver weapons would totally have been forgotten (never came into play actually). For BigBoss battles, I find this set up invaluable as I can list spells, special abilities, and magic items here. I will often also drop any treasure into this GM Notes section.

Another tip: If you are running something that has numerous monsters, stat them up then simply copy them. This way you never have to enter the data on another token. I do often go in and change up stats a little here and there just for variety. Now though, I realize my players probably never even notice that! Ha! Total waste of my time!

DEADLINESS:
So this game has turned out exceptionally deadly. In a marked difference to most of my previous games, where -- don't tell my players this, I tended to take it easy on the and flub dice rolls occasionally so the game was not deadly -- with this game I switched to rolling in-game in Roll20. I rolled real dice off-screen and if I rolled a 6 on damage, I reduced it to 4 or something so PCs were not dying around every corner. Now, I stick to rolling in Roll20 with results visible to all. So, this campaign I have murdered a PC every single session we have played.

In my defense, and as the saying goes, "DMs don't kill PCs, players kill PCs through their choices". They made some silly choices. Why is that mage on the front row? You stood your ground as a ratling mounted on a giant  rat charged you (together they have a HD of four)? Tossing burning flasks of oil in close company? 

CURRENT STATUS:
We have been going strong for the last two months now with six (we think) sessions. We have had to miss a few session here and there but I have mostly had a strong, stable group of three players with an occasional one or two extra join us. I went into this with the mentality of "If two show up, I will run" because many of my campaigns in the last three or so years have died partially due to lack of player interest (probably due to my own lack of interest) which caused them to not be dedicated and show up to the game. 

The current group of usual players seem to be enjoying it, as am I, and I hope we will continue for the foreseeable future. 

Wow, that was a bit rambly, but maybe some will find it interesting.

The Gatehouse on Cormac's Crag, set up post

 

I have been running GoCC by David Bezio now for about two months, a total of six sessions (or 8 depending on if you could the first two session when I used my homebrew system). I am using Old School Essentials and I thought I would toss up some of my thoughts on using this adventure and a few comments on using OSE as well.

The first important point to make is that, like any other Dungeon Master out there, I am making changes as we play through this, tailoring it to my group, my style, and how I like and think works best. I have reworked the various maps in the original PDF to my own style and for ease of use in Roll20, hiding the traps, secret doors, etc. I have also reworked the original village, regional, and the maps from David's other release, the Phoenix Baronythe Pheonix Barony. Below is my reworked 'barony' map, I redid the map because I wanted to be able to expand/edit the setting as we played. I contacted David regarding the placement of GoCC in this setting (there were enough hints in the PDF that I thought it might be located in the original Barony). David verified this but did not disclose where exactly he placed it. So I placed it in the northern mountains. I also renamed the village from Caoilainn to Kalynn (I think David was just making fun of the RPG fantasy trope of adding vowel to names and spelling it in the most difficult way possible, I got tired of trying to spell it or say it). I also renamed the Phoenix Barony to the Marshall Barony, I just did not like the name.

I also redid the regional map, it has not been completed but I did it for the same reason as above with the barony map. I planned a few other locations than the primary adventure location of the Gatehouse, adding a cavern/dungeon in the top left, as well as adding a mysterious island in the middle of the river.

For the first sessions I used the existing village map in the adventure, but I recently realized I want more locations in it as I want to expand the role-playing in the village a little (felt a little short to me). I have decided to repurpose an old map of mine from 2017 and populate with a mix of the locations from GoCC and my own write up for this village. This will be fleshed out in an upcoming issue of Old School Zine.

The second important thing is that I am using OSE for my game instead of White Box. Now, I LOVE White Box but most of my players prefer OSE, no big deal really as most things slide over nearly perfectly and are compatible. Any DM with a little experience should be able to convert on the fly. 

I have also added some to the adventure in the form of different monsters, a few new magic items, and in the last encounter, I upped the big baddie's power and capability slightly. The main reason for this is that the players had 'carefully' avoided this encounter for a couple of sessions and I felt this had increase the tension, the payer seemed worried enough about the coming battle. So I gave the guy some magic items to give him a little more surprising power.

NEXT I will go over quickly how the sessions have played out and my thoughts on the adventure thus far....