Episode 13

I apologize for the lateness of the posting, but sometimes life gets in the way.

I had anticipated about 3-4 different paths the party would go down at this point.  I always try and figure out what the most likely and least likely options are for where the party is going to go.  Once I have that figured out I spend energy planning accordingly.  This was not the #1 thing that I expected from the group, but I did have something in store if its how things went down.

Episode 13:

At this point the party started the night in Wisthaven.  They had spent a few days gathering information and following up on leads.

Tian Primrose, the half-elf information dealer, caught up with Lina at the Smoking hound (the Inn they are staying at).  I decided to make Tian kind of a creep, he hits on the little gnome Lina and in general acts like a jerk.  But he has the information that Lina is looking for and has found out where Kong, the beardless dwarf is.  At this point Lina also asks for information on Eric Erinson (Sam's nemesis) and on Vlaad the Dark Knight Anti-Paladin/Bounty Hunter from the week before.

Once the part found Kong they met back up with Ismana, the elven wizard, at her trans-dimensional Tower that has at least 1 entrance in Wisthaven and 1 in Osht.  They were reminded that she was looking for some White Yew from the mountains.  Kong knew of some other beardless dwarves who were interested in some work.  So with a ahdnful of dwarves in tow the rest of the party decided it was time to go and do this little fetch quest for the addle-brained wizard.

They spent a little extra time getting making some purchases and once they were ready, they loaded a bunch of horses and their dwarven allies.  With that they made the 2 day trip to the mountains and began cutting down trees.


After a few days the party had most of what they needed.  But, each day they were there added to the possibility that a local group of bandits was going to notice them and attack.  As it turned out, on the 4th night they decided to lay an ambush.

The way I ended up doing this was to have them write out their order of watch and have each one roll their perception check for their watch.  Once I had that I rolled randomly to see who was on watch when the bad guys snuck in.  If our heroes perception beat their sneakiness, they had a chance to act before getting hit.  As it turns out it fell on Lina's watch, the best possible result for the party since she had the best perception roll.


By the numbers this was a CR8 encounter.  In reality it was probably close to 9/10.  they fought 3 rogues (level 2 rogue, level 2 warrior) 3 archers (level 4 warriors), 1 fighter (level 3), 1 ranger (L3) and 1 Wizard (L3).  Over all no individual enemy was more difficult that a CR2, but the bad guys were buffed up and the goodguys were off guard and mostly unarmored, which was overcome with a pretty ingenious unseen servant spell to help the inquisitor and the fighter.

This was a fun battle. The wizard was using his familiar to deliver chill touch, the archers were pulling the party in different directions and Kong got sneak attacked by two rogues when he tried to skip out the back of the tent.  I was honestly really happy with how this turned out.  Sam made some judicious use of the Create Pit spell (which may be the best 2nd level spell...period) which really cut off the enemies mobility.  Sam ended up getting downed, but not killed and Damone swung in to save him.  After about 10 rounds of difficult combat the elf wizard managed to get away and Typhus decided it was time to get to his "Dark Work" of questioning the still living bandits.  As a side note Lina calls it his "Dirty Work", which I think most of the group has started to pick up on and kind of makes me chuckle.

Typhus found out that the bandits had a fortification built about a days ride away.  They spent the next couple of days finishing up their lumber work and sent the dwarves back south to Wisthaven with the prisoner.

The fortress was basically a wooden pallisade 25' tall 50' long and 40' deep.  about 10 guys were inside, including a 5th level cleric and a 6th level fighter.

The party came up with a plan to get inside: Sam would make a silent image of the guard they rescued while Lina would throw down Ghost Sound to make him call for help.  From Ismana's bag of Tasty Treats they pulled 3 flying candies and handed those out to the melee fighters.  Once the guards opened the gates they would all throw down the buff spells and the up front fighters would fly up top while the sneaky guys/casting guys would come in from the bottom. 

The plan worked like a charm, they hit a couple of snags (Kong was flying 50' in the air when the cleric dispelled magic on him.... which caused him to hit -8... but he was fine).  The Hsted flying combatants had not trouble moving around the battlefield and within 12 rounds they cleaned up the bad guys.

The only sad news is that between these 2 fights and a little role-playing we chewed up the enitre night.  It was fun though ran some enjoyable combat and we have a good place to pick up from next week,  Now I just have to dish out the treasure for all that...

Until Next Time!

-Ubercroz

Episode 12

This week nearly went without any combat at all, which is kind of neat since last week was a very combat intensive night.  As a result of that I have no combat maps to upload this week!    Over all it was a good night.

Episode 12:

The party started off the evening at the top of a dwarven fortress with a bunch of dwarves outside the main keep.  Now the dwarves were currently unaware that the heroes had slipped into the temple, slaughtered a bunch of guys, stolen 15 bars of mithril, released all their slaves, and freed their friend from captivity.  The part quickly looked around the room they were in, grabbed Durn's gear and a book written in a cypher, and booked it.

This gave me a nice opportunity to add some tension.  They could hear the dwarves discover what happened and then they could hear the tread of running dwarven feat as they ran down the steps to stay just out of reach of their stubby little feet.


The party then bolts out the secret door at the rear of the cliff and managed to get out before the dwarves knew where they went to.  Outside they met with all of the folks who, only a few short hours before, where about to be slaves of the dueregar.  They ducked back into the trees and slept from dawn to the evening so that they could be full rested and move in the night time.  Before that point the party was fatigued due to pulling an all nighter.

Under the cover of darkness the party managed to move out of the valley, and with tremendous luck and good decision making every potential combat was avoided.  This was partly due to Whoden, Sam's 1 eyed raven, and just being careful, and of course tremendous luck over and over.

The party then met up with some roving dwarven patrols from Garrets Reach.  These were not bad guys and when they realized that they had saved a bunch of their citizens from slavery escorted them back to Garrets Reach.  At this point the party decided that they were not going to go IN to Garrets Reach due to the heat that they were under.  Durn went in, since he was not with the group, and agreed to meet up with the party 1 day later with potential news about the other missing party member, Kong.

Once the party had rested Durn came back and explained he would work to help clear their name, but he needed to stay and help take care of his father who agreed to testify against the Stoutfellows.  In regards to Kong he had been tried and his sentence executed.  His fate was the worst a dwarg could suffer, he was banished, had his beard shaved off, and his hand was clamped in the "Black Gauntlet", a device that caused searing pain so long as it was worn.  Kong left several days before, with the party believing that he went to meet them in Wisthaven to the southeast.

The party then continued to Wisthaven.  Wisthaven is the largest, oldest, and most corrupt city in the area.  I should mention that at this point an NPC noticed that Sam the Salesman had his gender changed.  This is something that I had not mentioned in previous posts due to in game knowledge of other players.  Sam picked up a cloak with from the doppelgangers a few weeks back and when he put it on he began to slowly change gender- and his party failed to make perception checks to notice (which was staggering).  Once Urz realized Sam was now Samantha he immediately groped him, causing Sam to look ashamed and confused.

Once on ground the party had a lot of loose ends to tie up.  They looked for information on Kong- paying information dealers, gathering information on their own, trying to pick up hints.  They needed to locate the next Seal Tower and find out where Belfast had gone to- so they went to the temples and asked around about where the tower might be and if the death cultists had been heard from.  Urz decided to find out if someone could enchant the green dragons wings he had been carrying around for weeks so that he could fly- This one was interesting.  It turns out Ismana, from Osht who sent them on a previous quest, has a tower in a pocket dimension with entrance points in more than 1 location, and that is who Urz ran into, and picked up a another quest from her as well.  Sam had a personal quest to deal with and looked into that as well.

Speaking of Sam, for the first time since the beginning of the game he ran into the guy who brought him into this dimension.  On the streets of Osht Sam Simmons ran into a man who called himself Eric Erinson.... though Eric did not recognize "Samantha".

That evening the party ran into a black knight wielding a Lucerne Hammer with a bowl of incense hanging off of a chain.  This was an Anti-paladin with spring attack (stealing some inspiration from a podcast).  His incense gave let him use his cruelty in any square he had stood or swung his hammer.

This was not designed to be a hard fight.  Just challenging and making the players work around him some.  So he bounced around hit a bunch of people, fatigued the group, and then ran away as soon as he could to avoid being killed (with a hp total of 7 at the end of the fight).I


Vlaad the Black Kngiht took off, but made sure to leave his calling card and now the party has 1 more thing to worry about (like they needed that).

We did a lot of role playing, the party spent a lot of time shopping (something they had little chance to do for the past many weeks).  And they really had a chance to wind down from the past few weeks and put together all the details of what they needed to do.  The game could have gone the whole night without combat, but I know that not everyone would have liked that so I made sure to include that here.

Well, we have 2 more villains to contend with - Eric and Vlaad, a couple of new quests, and they have a dwarf friend missing somewhere in the city.  It looks like next week is going to be good.

Until Next Time!

-UberCrozier

Episode 11

Tonight went pretty well all in all. Everyone showed up with a little bit of last week on their minds. I think that’s good. We had a lot to do tonight and tight schedule to keep. A couple of my players have to work some weekends, so the night can't go too late. Typically we start around 7:30 (lol 8:00) and we strive to finish at 12:00-12:30. Its a tight schedule and with kids and breaks we actually get a lot accomplished every night we get together. Since last week focused so much on roleplaying I wanted tonight to be much more problem solving and combat focused. Its less stressful than moral decisions and when you succeed you can walk away from the night feeling pretty good.

Episdode 11.

The party started off in the woods near Granites hidden fortress. They had ambushed him and now found themselves in the predicament where they had to figure out how to get from their small encampment into the temple. I built a few skill checks into this, history, engineering, geogrpahy would all help to point the party towards knowing that the cliff at the back of the mountain range looked strange and out of place somehow.

The party started the night a little on edge, they didn't want to screw anything up. They moved very carefully, at night, towards the back of the woods, crossed a stream, and got up to the cliff. A lot of time was spent making sure that they crossed that stream safely. I'm glad they did that, shows they want to stay safe but are willing to take risks when necessary.

Topographical map of the valley.  Yellow is the low ground red is the high ground

I did another word puzzle here. After searching they found a stone puzzle box they could plug into the wall tat said “more valuable than gold”, the letters I had included one to make STONE, FAMILY, MITHRAL, TRUST, HONOR. The answer was trust. They had 4 chances and using the right skills (perception, knowledge (history, local, dungeoneering) they could eliminate some letters. It took 3 tries and around 15 minutes but they got in.

Once they snuck in they found some slaves, and Durns mother who told them to travel upstairs to find her son. After wards they very quickly got into a fight with some dueregar and some mountain dwarves. I'm torn on what maps to include here, this was a pretty straightforward fight (CR7) but had a giant pit in the middle that led down to the underdark.

The only thing I really wanted out of this fight was for someone to get knocked into the pit and killed as a result. As it turns out Urz bullrushed a Dueregar over and dropped him. I was very happy to see that. One of the Dueregar they were fighting did manage to slip out the back and run back towards the underdark.... who knows how that will turn out.

The party found a few bars of Mithril here, I don't give my parties a lot of money over time, so this Mitrhil may be one of the few major sources of income they get for a while. Once they had explored the lower level they climbed over 9 stories to reach the next level where they found... nothing of note.

I do this sometimes. There was nothing to find there, but one of my players today asked me what they missed, and I said- “I dunno, I guess not much.” Its good to have areas where you don't anything from time to time. It makes it so finding something that much better.

The two bottom pillars shot acid arrows at anyone standing in green

Next they moved up another level into what, I think, became the best of the three encounters that the party had that night. There was a forge, anvil, and toolset they passed as they entered into a CR8 fight. A Level 3 Dueregar cleric, 2 Level 4 dwarf fighters, and 2 level 3/2 dueregar Warrior/Fighters... Oh and pillars that shot acid darts whenever someone got near them. The pillar ended up being great. It made my players have to worry about where they could stand and where they could end their turn. The fight itself took around 10 rounds and really used a lot of resources.

When it was over they had killed everyone except for 1 dueregar who was willing to trade information for his safety. He explained that the dueregar were trading mithril for slaves to give them cheap access to labor and to give the Stoutfellows the Mithril they needed to have the best equipped Clan in the

dwarven hierarchy.

When that was over Typhus- the Judge Dredd of the country of Proveria- determined that this Dueregar was guilty of his crimes and threw him into the red hot coals of the forge. Typhus is an inquisitor and LN, it also fit his character. He considers himself to be judge, jury, and executioner as such he found the dueregar guilty of slavery and meted out his punishment.

The party at this point was pretty hurt. Their APL is 6.4, which I rounded up to 7. Well given that the 7 and 8 enounter were tough and a lot of resources were expended on those fights...and up next was the big daddy of the fights. A CR 10 fight to save their lost comrade Durn.

Upstairs they found a number of mountain dwarves and dueregar waiting for them. Over the next 12 rounds the party expended the majority of their resources. Typhus was dropped to -8 at one point, Lina spent a good portion of the fight running from a dueregar, Urz was laying waste to the dirty dwarves with cleaving power attacks, Sam was creating pits under anyone foolish enough to stand, and Damone was buffing everyone into the extreme. When all was said and done, all the parties spells were spent, and there were no remaining rounds of abilities left.

I like fights were people get the chance to stick and move. One of my gripes about the OGL system of combat is that it tends to be more beneficial for people to standstill and swing than it is for people to move around the map. I like dynamic fights and this was one. I don't pull punches in my games, and there was a legitimate chance for a TPK here, but when the party is willing to throw themselves at the fight with all they have then I am happy with the result.

Now the Party has Durn, they are at the top of a fortress filled with angry dwarves and near a town where they are wanted for murder and potentially killing the Mayor. As the night drew to a close the party found themselves barricaded behind a stout door to rest as they plotted out their next move. It was a night filled with combat. The nice thing was that at the end of the night they felt like they succeeded. They broke into a stout dwarven fortress, snuck up several levels, put down the resistance, and saved their friend.

They are sequestered away in the top level of this fortress behind a thick iron banded wooden door and are resting up to face whatever foes are still in and around the keep.

Until next time!

-Ubercroz

Episode 10.2

This is the session that actually made me want to start tracking this game.  Like I said before there were a lot of strange things that happened and I don't have a lot of GM's around to talk to that don't play in my game.  So I wanted to get a chance to get some feedback (I am sure it will be biased since this is written from my perspective) and to let other people get some feedback from my game.

Episode 10.2

The Party headed up north towards Garrets reach, around 2 days away.  Half way there they find a raided caravan.  No bodies, but there are signs of a fight there.  They find Durns holy symbol here.  They pick up the trail and begin to follow it.

I wanted them to have a possibility of finding this Hidden stronghold I made were Durn is right off the bat.  It would be tough (6 skill checks of 22+) but they could do it.  I like my games to be sand boxy.  It keeps me on my toes and forces them to have to think and have consequences in the world.

They got about halfway to the fortress and lost the trail.  So they went to Garrets Reach and talked to Durn's father, a man I named Dangit Brewhammer (I thought that was funny).  After some convincing (and a charm spell) Dangit tells them that he asked Durn to help him rescue his kidnapped wife and daughter.  Granite Stoutfellow (the Stoutfellow that runs Garrets Reach) is involved in the slave trade and Dangit wasn't keeping up his part of the deal, so Granite took his wife and daughter as payment.  The party decided to go and meet with Granite.

I've said before I try to give my NPC's motivations.  Dangit is scared something worse is going to happen to him.  Granite deals in a secret slave trade with the Dueregar swapping mithril for slaves.  So he really wants to keep the city in good working order so he can do his dirty deeds behind the scenes where his family’s name won't be dirtied.  This is important when my players talk with Granite.

They get a meeting with Granite and they open up by essentially asking him to sell slaves to them- they don't just come right out and say it, but they mention that Draggard recommended they meet Granite and buy slaves from him.  Granite gets nervous hearing this and tells the players he doesn't deal in that kind of thing and basically tells them to get out- The players notice Kong's axe on Granites belt.

Its easy as a GM to design a dungeon or an encounter that has a solution.  What is somehow both easier and more difficult is building an encounter with no preordained solution.  From a certain perspective, you just put it out there and lean back while the players play with it.  On the other hand, we tend to WANT to have an answer ready as a GM, and to think how we would do it.  I made Granites Keep a place that existed with something the players wanted inside and that was it.  If you don’t have a particular answer you open yourself up to letting the players make up something better than you ever could have.

Now the players decide to wait for a guard to leave Keep and follow him to an alley where Lina sneak attacks him with a blackjack.  They invisible him and take him to Dangits house and tie him up in the basement.  They find out that Kong is in the dungeon of the keep and that the guards do shifting rotations keeping people up on the wall at almost all times.  Lina and Damone decide to go scout out the keep at dark while Sam says he and Urz will take care of the guard.  At this point Sam makes a noose and strangles the guard to death.

I had something of a problem with this.  I was super surprised that one of my more experienced players playing a LG character would do that.  This is partly my fault.  I have caused other NPC's they let go come back to haunt them and this is the over reaction to that.

Lina and Damone find a small window they can climb up to unnoticed at the keep and peek inside and find some stairs.  Given these two are both new players they got a little nervous about being alone and booked it back to the party.  Sam and Urz drug the body outside and were caught by a guard.  They bluff and convince the guard that the body is just drunk; the guard offers to lead them back to the "drunken" guard’s house.  When he turns around they hit him with color spray and the guard saves.  Now the guard calls the other guards and Sam and Urz have to book it and get out of there.  They manage to invis and get away.

This was the repercussion for killing the guard.  Now this party of heroes is wanted for murder in Garrets Reach.  It will certainly make things harder and I don't know what is going to happen to Kong.

The party all gathered up and rather than going after Kong that night before news spread about the dead guard they waited until the next night... when the guard was doubled on the keep.  They decided to wait out Granite and follow him to his secret fortress.  They found the way, managed to get a little ahead of him and caught him in an ambush where things finally went the player’s way.  They dismantled him and his guard and now are camped out 1/2 a day’s ride from Granites hidden fortress.

Well, the night started out rough and had a few bumpy moments, but the players got where I hoped they would.  They have less information than is ideal, but that’s okay.  I was pretty frustrated at several points in the evening; I didn’t like some of my player’s choices.  In retrospect this was the kind of stuff I want to happen.  I want my players to muck around and do things with lasting consequences.  When I get put in an uncomfortable spot as a GM that’s when I have the chance to really shine and make my game better.  So that’s a lesson I will take with me, next time things are going awry, sit back relax and let the good times roll.

Until next time!

-Ubercroz

Episode 10.1

There are times when it seems like a game comes off the rails quite a bit, and this was one of those nights.  There was mystery, murder, bar fights, confusion, and despair.  That may be an exaggeration but there was confusion at a minimum.  Enough happened here that I think I am going to break this into 2 posts.  The reason is that I don't want to overload anyone and so much role playing happened that to go into it all would be overwhelming- I think.  So here is part 1

Episode 10:

The party started off the evening in Owls Roost, the northern most city that is still within the confines of the country of Proveria.  Owls Roost is a merchant city, it’s where a bunch of traveling merchants and nomads set up shop and it stays a large city, mostly made of tents.  I didn’t exactly have a basis for this but I wanted it to have the feeling of 1840’s mining town.  Owls Roost is a city of convenience, it’s right in the middle of some major traffic ways from the dwarven trade cities to the north and the country of Proveria.  It is also the gateway to the one pass that would take them north of the Dwarven Highlands into the Northlands.


The party begins asking questions around town looking for their buddy Durn.  Urz asks "Have you seen a Dwarf with nine fingers anywhere?".  I caught myself right before the guy answered no and paused.  so Urz says "I intimidate the guy".  The lowly merchant tells Urz about a Dwarf in South Town named Draggard is probably who he is looking for.

This is where improv skills can come in handy.  Whenever your instinct as a GM is to say no, try to stop yourself.  The game will be much more fun if you say "Yes, and...".  This was one of those times, it ends up completely changing the adventure that I said yes to his question about the 9 fingered Dwarf.  I also noticed my party had been abusing the intimidate skill recently.  It seemed like the party preferred using that skill over diplomacy.  So on the spot here I made 2 decisions: 1- I was going to make a 9 fingered dwarf who ran things in town, He is the seedy underbelly.  2- If they keep intimidating people they are going to let Draggard know that the money they pay him for protection doesn't seem to be working.

Typhus went to the local constable and found a drunk constable who seemed to be completely disinterested in managing the law in town.  However, he recommended that they look at the bar next door for info, after Typhus intimidated him.

I have a simple rule when I name a tavern: the (adjective) (noun).  it works pretty well.  In this case it was the (fallen) (wheel).  In my world I have essentially made Inquisitors like a separate branch of the government.  So when Typhus rolls in and shows his badge people listen.  Not all inquisitors are on the same level… and to be honest I have not really worked out all the details, but I liked the idea of the roving law man.

After a some more looking around Sam finds that Durn and Kong went north with a merchant group a week ago.  Lina found out that the thieves guild was located in South Town, and Damone found out that the north gate is where records of merchant travel are kept.  All with done with a couple more intimidate checks.

So when all the information is gathered they decide its time to go meet.... Draggard.  So for whatever reason this NPC caught their attention, and I obliged.  They found his tent after intimidating a Madam at the brothel across the street and intimidated the bar tender to get back in and meet Draggard face to face.

At this point I couldn't really have a party of 5th level characters bullying everyone they run into.  So I pulled out a premade 12th level fighter NPC I had and made him Draggard.  They were not going to be able to bully this guy around, he ran the place.

The party now demands information from Draggard on their 2 dwarf friends.  Draggard recommends they go up north and look.  Somehow the party has convinced themselves that Draggard is a slaver and they don't like him.  At this point everyone they intimidated shows up and lets Draggard know these guys have been causing trouble in town.  Draggard say "pay these people for their trouble and we will call it good."  Once again the party says "Fuck off" and Sam enlarges Urz to intimidate Draggard.  Draggard now demands that they pay for his ruined tent as well, since Urz burst through the top of it.  So the party decides it’s time to fight this fool. 

The comical thing to me about this situation is that Draggard was demanding payment of only 100 gp.  Each one of these characters has nearly 1000 gp on them.  And if they hadn’t wrecked his tent he would have taken 50!  All Draggard cares about is making sure that the people in town know he is not weak and that he runs things.  He doesn’t honestly care about the money or the people; he just wants to stay in control.

I won't go in to details, but they barely managed to slip out the back by laying down grease spells and webs spells and having a summoned snow leopard drag Urz's bleeding body out the back of the burning tent.  I think it’s safe to say things didn’t go the way the party planned.

Fleeing from South Owls Roost with an entirely invisible group they head up to the north gate.  Literally exhausted from their run they find out that their friends left a week ago.  Unfortunately their horses are on the other side of town.  Lina stealth’s back there and uses her masterwork disguise kit to dress up as a green (rather than purple) haired male gnome with a large twisted mustache and led the horses up north to meet with the party at a fireless camp as they prepared to head up north, tired, depressed, and wondering what was coming next.

Until next time!
-Ubercroz

Episode 9

Tonight was a big change for the gaming group.  Durn's player finally decided to switch characters.  He is now playing a heavy armor wearing inquisitor named Typhus, on a mission from God (Tyr).  Typhus has the Sword Crissus the PC's found in Doomsward.  Also I decided to stop running Kong as an NPC.  Nothing that hasn't been dealt with before, but it always throws a kink in the works.

My concept for the adventure this evening stemmed, partly, from the fact that my players had been enjoying their fame.  Now there is nothing wrong with that, they should enjoy it.  What it let me do was take something that my players enjoyed (being recognized as good) and take it away from them briefly.

Episode 9:

Durn and Kong head up north to Garrets reach to deal with the problem with Durn's father.  The rest of the party stayed a few days to gear up, rest, and prepare to head out to Wisthaven to chase down Belfast.

As they got on the road they started to notice that the townspeople they were running into were scared of them and more than happy to do what the PC's wanted.  Well this clearly struck  a chord with them and they decided to investigate.  At the first town the people are scared, but subservient.  They won't accept money from the pc's, but insist they have seen them before and they are willing to do whatever they need to so that the pc's get on their way again.

 Here I gave the players a little information. I could tell they were nervous.  They actually took watch in the tavern they were staying in because they thought the townspeople had it out for them.

They left the first town and caught made it to a second the next day.  This town was much more angry with the PC's, the constable came and spat on them and told them to leave.  At this point Typhus showed up with his big war stallion and his shiny inquisitor badge.  With some diplomacy checks (and a few intimidate checks) the party figures out that the group that was here was there old group- including Durn and Kong.  And that these guys were here only a few days before.  With a few more diplomacy checks (and maybe another intimidate check) they are pointed in the right direction the bad guys took off.  Oh, and they got spat on 2-3 more times.

This was cool part to play, I got to show the gamut of reactions to being bullied.  And it let me take the players in a more roleplaying direction.  Role playing sections can be difficult, because your party can often surprise you.  I was not 100% that they were going to take the hook here.  So I had some predetermined consequences ready if they went the other way.

After 3 days of tracking the party finds a sinkhole in the middle of the woods the bad guys dropped into.  

What they found was as classic a dungeon crawl as I could come up with for a 1 session game.  I am in the military and spend a good amount of time on the road.  So most all of this dungeon was created in a hotel room with horrific internet.

The guys they are after are a group of doppelgangers.  They have made their home inside of this cavern and have a few pets they use for defense, or whatever else they need.  The players enter at the bottom of the map.  I have a series of traps here that the players could get caught up in.  The room to the left is a Dire Wolf and her two cubs.  The room with the chests in it is guarded by two assassin vines past a dead fall of rocks, a poison dart trap, and a 20' pit trap.

The pit trap made for some comic relief, so Lina was disabling it and Urz says "I'm going to peek around the corner", at which point he falls into the pit.  He was mostly fine.  He then climbs up on the other side and is immediately grappled by the first vine.

To me this ended up being the most fun encounter of the night, the party had to figure out how to get past the pit, kill the vines and then get into the treasure room.

They made it into the treasure room... the chest with a lil' cloud on it is poison gas.  They triggered it, they were fine.

The room labeled "body room"  is exactly what it sounds like, a room of dead bodies.  They have parts cut off and butchered- this was used to feed the monsters.

The back left room had a Giant spider and two baby spiders in it.  Again, not a difficult fight, but it was interesting with the spiders web and a little poison.

Lastly the Doppelgangers.  There were 6, 1 of them had a few PC levels.  he was a 2nd level wizard.  no big deal.  The party had purchased a amulet of fireballs and used 2 of the balls in this fight in the first 2 rounds.  That really turned the fight easy.

The interesting thing in this fight was that the players thought that they were going to face mirror images of themselves, stat for stat, so they came in ready to kill.  So while the fight was easy, it also forced them to use resources that have value- and in the long run that's just as good as challenging.

Once the dungeon was clear the party head out and let the townspeople know the doppelgangers are dead. As they head north there is a familiar blond 1/2 elf in a black cloak.  Leanna, the assassin was waiting for them.  There is a little unfriendly banter and right before the party is ready to kill her she says that she has information they may be interested in.  At that point she throws a bag with Durn's finger in it in front of them. "Look after your friends, or come after us".  Now the party has a choice, up north to save Durn and Kong, or east to Wisthaven where the search for Belfast continues...

Until Nest Time!

-Ubercroz

A Puzzle for your Enjoyment

I mentioned a puzzle in a previous post I made.  I wanted to describe it, but thought it would take away somewhat from what I was saying there.

Set up for the puzzle is as follows:

There is a stone plate with 7 1 inch depressions in a row and a series of stone letters that can fit into the depressions.

Above that is written a sentence (my example is below).

The door in front of you has visible gears at each of the top corners that seem to be connected to some unseen mechanism.  There are 3 notches below the gears as well.

So this can be a tough puzzle, if you want it to be.  I mean the word can be any length.  In the picture above you can see there are some black squares and there are some with X's over them.

The squares are to indicate a blank letter.  So I was making options for a 5-7 letter word.  The X's indicate places where the Characters had successful skill checks that let them make the puzzle easier.

In this case I gave them the possibility of making History, Knowledge (nobility, local, religious), or an Intelligence check.  Each time they would eliminate a stone tablet.  I even let them use a very high perception check to eliminate a square because it didn't "look like it fit right".

The notches under the gears are to show that there are three chances at the puzzle.  Once they put the letters in place they push them in to the plate.  If they get it wrong a metal sheet slides down to the first notch, if they get it wrong twice to the second, etc.

The reason I came up with this is that I like riddles, but they can be very frustrating at the table, and it challenges the players, but not the characters.  This, I thought, was a way to make a riddle where the characters skills, intelligence and knowledge would be able to help them out in a real tangible way.

The other thing that nice is that this is a puzzle the players can know exists and it can never be spoiled.  Because you come up with the riddle, the options, and the answer.

I hope some of you out there can use this.

-Ubercroz

Proveria!

For anyone who was curious what this country of mine looked like.  The squares are ruined cities, the grey dots are roads, the orange lines are borders.... Also blue is water, brown are mountains, and green is trees (or swamps depending).

Enjoy!

-Ubercroz

Episode 8

I really like designing encounters.  I also really like role playing and puzzle solving.  I spend a lot of time each week trying to find a balance of these for my players, I want everyone to have the opportunity to succeed and enjoy.  This evening was fun because I got to a little bit of everything.  Oh, I also like to put my characters in difficult moral quandaries.

Episode 8:

The party tracks the down the meteorite to an ancient Elven Hall built into a hillside and has a tangle of wild trees grown up as a wall around it.  As near as they can tell it is currently deserted, or at least no one is there right now.  In front of the main door are 2 halfling sized elven statues with their hands stretched above their heads holding small wooden bowls.  One with red liquid one with blue.  On the door in elven it says "2 of courage and one of fear, you will be most welcome here."  There is a cup with a '3' on it and a cup with a '5' on it, and another small wooden bowl is next to it.

The party has to mix 2 red and 1 blue into the bowl and drink it.  Its a pretty simple puzzle, really.  I mean they used it in Diehard 4.  Whatever the case it took the party a little bit of time to put it together and once they had the mixture they just stood there.


Urz got thirsty and took a drink.  The door opens wide.  Inside is a large open hall with a second floor balcony looking down on a main room with large dining tables.  no one is inside but its well used.  The party very carefully (I've gotten them scared by this point in the campaign) moves through the building.  As they round a corner they can hear soft crying.  As they get closer they can see that there is a tiny, 8 year old, elven girl curled up in a ball weeping.

Here is Il'yonia, the daughter of the Leader of the Green Dragons.  I've mentioned before all my NPC's like to have motivations.  She is mad that her dad left her here alone with no one but the single 'caretaker' in the building.  She wants to run away but can't.  Enter the PC's... and her ticket out.


Il'yonia tells the party she has been kidnapped and that she knows where the starstone they are looking for is.  They start walking down the hall, she whispers the magic words, the floor turns incorporeal and the party drops down to face...

A Green Dragon.

Green Dragons are mean, his treasure's in the top right corner, mostly silver because I love to make my players suffer.

So this is nearly a CR 10 fight... technically.  Il'yonia is 3rd level sorceress with fey bloodline.  Her focus is to charm as many people as possible so they will help her.  Really she wants the players to kill the dragon, because that dragon is keeping her there.  The dragon is a young green dragon, charged with making sure the girl stays put.  There are vines and roots growing out of the ground he can use to cast entangle.  There is also a cavern exit 10' off the floor he can fly to and get advantage on them while using his breath weapon.

As the fight went down the party was convinced Il'yonia was out to get them.  Kong got charmed, Urz got charmed, then Durn moved next to her, Sam threw up a silent image of a wall so no one could see what happened and then Durn hit her in the head with his mace.  Il'yonia fell down, bleeding but not dead.

Part of what I wanted here was to distract the party from the real threat.  All Il'yonia was doing was casting charm, but the party was convinced she dropped them into a death trap and was a villain.  While she was not a threat it certainly added to the fight.

Kong dropped unconscious, bleeding, Urz got enlarged to fight the dragon on the ledge and the dragon was eventually blinded by Glitterdust. After a little work the party finally killed the dragon in what, I think, was a pretty fun fight.

Now they have to deal with the little girl.  She cast charm on them and half the party wanted to dump her off anywhere, and most everyone else was mixed.  Sam- on the other hand- LG Sam from Earth, decided to take her back to the appropriate authorities so that she could be taken care of.  And that, ultimately is what happened.  It did cause a little turmoil in the group and I gave them a hard time for hitting an 8 year in the face with a mace, but it all worked out.

They gathered up their goods headed back to Osht.  It was a slightly comical thing.  They didn't have enough bags.  So they skinned the dragons tail  and converted it into a giant dragon skin sack.

Once they got back they found out that Ismana had almost forgotten about them, but was really happy to see them.  They also found out that she accidentally scry's on people and had happened to run across Belfast near Wisthaven, to the east.  After that they spoke with the High Priest Ferdinand and he explained where the other Seals that Belfast is looking for were, and since the party had been so helpful in the past explained the Calamity.  The Calamity was an Arch-Liche named Nagaste-Tor who had laid waste to their country centuries before.  His philactary was never found and they could not defeat him.  However, by priests of the different faiths sacrificing their lives they could use the seals to hold him in place.  If the seals are broken Nagaste-Tor will be unleashed again.

At that moment a messenger shows up with a message from Durns father, asking for help up in Garrets Reach.

Until Next Time!
-Ubercroz

Episode 7

At this point in the game I feel like things are going pretty well as far as the story goes.  However some issues have come up in the group.  Kongs player, the older guy with 1e experience is not really able to show up regularly so I am playing him as an NPC for the time being, and Durn's player wants to retire his cleric and make a new character.  This complicates things a little, I had already built in story archs for both of these characters.  That being said, I am not going to tell a player he has to keep playing a character he doesn't like.  As a result I start putting together some ideas for the following weeks.

Episode 7:

The party spends a little time putting together some information and deciding where to go.  They have a few options at this point based off what they know.  New Proveria, the capital has the majority of the big mages in the country and a prominent magic guild as well as a large library.  Osht is a religious city-state inside of Proveria that is run by a council of High Priests and has a large White Opal colored tower at the center- Osht is important because it is where the ancient Heroes of Proveria stopped the Calamity.  The other option they have is to go south to the swamp and find the "Blind Seer of the Swamp" and see if they can gain some insight that way.

Ultimatey they settled on Osht.  Osht, is an independant city state and it is also close to the Great Forsest, where most of the civilized elves are from.  Once they arrive they spread out around town and start looking for contacts and information.

I keep about 10 sheets of paper on hand that have a bunch of male/female names for each race.  I use this often.  When the players ask to go meet someone or see if there is "someone they know" some place I just pull it off the page and roll with it.

They players run into a few people they know- since Damone was raised by elves of the song goddess she goes there and asks to meet with the high priestes- who I figured he knew.  After talking with her Damone gets a contact with the High Priest of Tyr, the current ruling religious group, at the Opal Tower.  Durn spent this time talking with the guy who was his mentor and met an old rival from his days in school.

This section was disapointing to not get to follow up on.  Durn ran into a guy on the way into the Temple and said something snarky- and I think he intended it to be out of character.  So I decided to run with it and say that this was a guy he knew before and never liked.  I was going to have the party run into him later, but when Durn decided to leave a few adventures later I let it drop.

Once Durn spoke with his mentor he found out that the Seal at Doomsward keep was one of four that was holding back a great evil, and that they would need to talk with High Priest Ferdinand if they wanted more info (thats the Tyr guy).  Lina is roaming around town and finds out there is a Wizard/Inventor named Ismana looking for adventurers.  Sam goes to the library and contracts a researcher to look into how he would go about traveling back to earth..

Well, it will take them about 9 days before they see the High Priest Ferdinand so they decide to go talk with Ismana.  Ismana is a female elf wizard who lives in a small tower with a big basement.  She is wild haired and covered with soot, absent minded and very happy to see the players show up.  Ismana needs someone to go into the great forest and pick up a meteorite that fell a few days ago.  In exchange she offers the players a magic bag of candy.

Man, I really like this bag of candy.  "I call it Ismana's bag of Tasty Treats".  3 times a day the players can pull candy out of the bag.  The candy is good for 10 minutes, and then loses its power.  There are 8 varieties of candy: red makes the player breath a jet of fire anytime he opens his mouth, blue lets them breath water, green gives bark skin, yellow is CMW, brown makes them throw-up a snowleapard, pink dispels magic, purple lets you fly, and black grows a tentacle off of your back.  It silly and cheap and slightly vulgar.  But I'm a 12 year old kid at heart so whatever.

E= Elves.  They were all hidden with drop offs to allow for people to play with environment

The party takes the bag and heads out to a massive inn in the middle of the forest.  They are looking for clues and Urz gets into a massive bar-room brawl where he ends up breaking the railing, and breaking the other guys nose.  Once they get directions they head to the crash site where they are ambushed by some revolutionary elves.  They beat those fools (CR4 fight, its nice to feel like tough guys sometimes).  And find out that the meteorite is gone.  Now they have to track it down to where ever it came from...   Oh these guys also hit level 4+ this time, and will ding 5 the next session.

Until next time!
-Ubercroz

Episode 6

I found out after I ran this game that pathfinder had made a basic mass combat system in the Kingmaker Adventure path.  So I had to make up my own rules.  I used a hex map for the mass combat, mostly because I had already drawn a encounter map on the back side of the map and the hex map was convenient.  I... don't know if getting into the minutiae of that is worthwhile.  So I'll just say I made something up, it worked and if anyone cares I can go into more detail.  That is true for everything I post up here.  I want to hit the high points and move on.  Speaking (or typing) of moving on, why don't I do that and get to episode 6.

Episode 6:

The city is thinly defended so Knight-Captain Jarick offers to pay the players an officers wage per day to help defend the walls.

This was because I, as a GM, knew the players were broke.  I forgot to mention it before but the party spent a good chunk of money to buy Kong a +1 Dwarven Waraxe from a pair of dwarven brothers who are smiths that gave it to them 50% off because those brothers hate the Stoutfellow clan as well.  So I knew the players would get up there.  But if they decided to bail... well that would have been fine but getting out of town would have become the adventure instead.


After several days of fighting the The High Priest of Tyr asks the players to look into some mysterious activities in the temple district, because one of his paladins was found torn completely apart.  They go to investigate and they run into 2 paladins, 2 death cultists, and 7 demons all fighting against one another as 3 separate groups.  A little investigation showed that the demons started popping up the night they went to Athis tomb, which was did not have Athis's body in it.  The demons seem to be focused around the Temple of Nergal- the God of Death, and were Belfast used to work.

Paladins on the left, cultists to the right, party in the middle

The Interesting encounter is the one at the bottom level of the temple.  I lost the map, so I recreated it to show what I put together, its about 90% the same though a little smaller and with less detail.  This was around a CR7 fight.  I put in a Druid, to hit them with shatter, heat metal, warp wood, and then other support.  I put in a cleric to do some buffs, and I had a few fighters to deal the pain, the warriors are not much more than minions to draw the focus from the fighters and to get in the way.  From here the fight gets complicated.

Sorry for the crappy picture, but its better than nothing!

This fight has a lot of moving parts, so I will discuss each in turn.  First the building begins to collapse.  Over the top of Athis corpse, which is resting on the altar, there is a purple glowing ball that is being held back by 3 clerics in the blue circles.  As the purple orb pulses things happen.  1st the bottom left column collapses.  Next a hunk of ceiling falls, then a big and small hunk fall.  These become impassable terrain that provides cover.

At the same time these red circles are starting to show up.  One shows up, then another, then a demon appears in the first one, then the last one shows up and then all the 3 demons are there.

This is just to draw the players attention.  The Death cultists are actually harnessing the power of a dimensional rift to the Abyss to bring Athis back to life...

At the same time there are clerics in the circles at at the back near the altar.  As the rounds went down those clerics began dying.  Once the last cleric died Athis was resurrected from the altar as a Grave Knight, When that happens, the Demons and the red circles vanish and so does the purple orb (the rift).  At this point Jarick the Knight-Captain rolled in to buy the party time so they could get out.

I had 1 of the paladins with the group here for a couple reasons, 1 she had protection from evil so that would help them in the fight, and 2 she was going to be killed by Athis, if I could manage it.  I wanted the players to hear how much damage she took from his full round attack so they would know not to screw with him.  It worked.  He dealt around 96 points of damage and smoked her.


Now that is taken care of but we still have a siege to deal with, oh and turns out that Jarick got dug out of the collapsed temple and he barely made it.  Reports come in that for whatever reason the main leaders of the Red Tusks have left, so the Count of Pastan asks the heroes to go out and kill the leaders that are left to break the siege.  They sneak out through an old smugglers tunnel and take out the bad guys- the only real interesting thing is I dropped Leanna's name here to remind them she got away, and to let them know she was involved.  The party fumed a little at her then blasted this pretty easy CR 5 encounter.

With that the siege was broken, and the Heroes of Doomsward Keep are now also the Heroes of Pastan.  I thought that was a nice place to bring the session to a close.

Until next time!
-Ubercroz

Episode 5

I think when it comes to designing longer campaigns its nice to break bigger chunks into 3-4 sessions with  smaller chunks in between which are 1 night, 1 shot adventures.  Doomsward Keep was a big chunk- took the majority of 3 sessions to run.  I then had a murder mystery and some puzzle solving for the next "1 shot" chunks.  Now we are headed back into a larger more plot driven section of the game.  Actually, I had a whole different arch designed where the players went down to the swamp and did all kinds of stuff down there.... and they ignored the hook so this was my backup.

Episode 5:

The players head out of Newhaven with Mordicai in tow and are back up where they left Leanna to hang.  Turns out she killed the constable and busted out of town.  She headed north, but the players failed (the DC) to track her. Leanna has become someone my players really hate.  They know that her death was in their grasp and that simply staying to watch her die would have resolved the whole thing.

They head back to Durrisburg, get their reward and are now told the Count up in Pastan wants to meet the Heroes of Doomsward Keep.  They head up towards Pastan with a several objectives:
1: They want to learn more about the death Cultists and about Belfast- since they heard he was from Pastan. 
2: Sam wants to get some information on being a Traveler. 
3: They want to hook up with the Temple of Tyr since they have a sword of Tyr (which I named Crissus).   4: Mordicai has mentioned he wants to maybe become a Soldier up there.

So they spend some of their cash, get a few horses (and pony named Gertie for Lina the gnome), and head up to Pastan.  On the way I drop another preselected Random encounter.  This one is with some mercenaries the Stoutfellow Dwarves hired to take out Durn.

I have a Chessex vynl flip map that has grids on one side and hex on the other.  On the hex side of the map I drew out a large version of the City of Pastan and laid it out in a district format.  I used this to let the players put their minis where they wanted to go.  It was a nice way to split things up and let people do their own thing while they did their research, since the count couldn't see them for a few days.

They  found out Belfast was the Chief advisor to the count that was recently murdered until 5 years ago when Belfast vanished.  They find out that travelers come in pairs (conduit and source- both needed or neither can travel) and they find out that the Death Cult is related to the Calamity somehow.  Durn gave back Crissus to the highpriest of Tyr, and Mordicai was selected as a Squire.

They meet with the Count and he asked them to look into the death of the previous Count, Athis.  They run around town, look in some dark corners, and eventually find an information dealer who seems to know what is going on.  They pay her 50 gold and she tells them a little something.  She then says for a little more money she can tell them something more specific.  This party hates to spend money on things, so Sam says "Fuck off", and they leave.  I found to be somewhat surprising.  Durn heads to his temple and prays a little bit and I drop some divine intervention on them to head to Athis's Tomb- at that point the Knight Captain Jarick joins them strangely interested in the search.

Athis Tomb starts off with a puzzle I made up.  You give the players a riddle and a sheet of paper with a limited number of letters on it and say "the stone tablet the riddle is written on only has space to place 5 letters".  The reason I like this is that you as the GM have amazing control of this puzzle.  If the players use their characters skill (knowledge nobility, history, or an inteligence check) then you remove some of the letters they don't need.  I may post a picture of what I did so you can see what I mean.  They have 3 chances to plug in the right answer and then the tomb opens.
There are other work arounds for this as well, the rogue could potentially disable the trap or unlock the door, they could try and break the door down, and all of these are fine so even if the riddle fails they still have options.

Inside of the tomb are just a bunch of traps and only 1 fight.  At the end of the maze of coffins and tombs they get in a fight with a mummy.... and Giles the death cultist they left tied up at Dooms Ward Keep.

Sam almost dies and gets mummy rot- which Durn allowed him to save from a second later using his liberation power.  And then they barely manage to kill Giles.  Jarick actually was the one who killed the mummy-  This was because I kind of goofed here.  Jarick is a knight-captain and a 12th level fighter who I forgot to figure into the equation of how hard this fight would be.  So it went from a potentially deadly fight to Jarick destroying the mummy and the rest of the party killing Giles.  In reality this could have very easily been a TPK, because that mummy really got them good he stunned all the melee guys right off the bat and then giles got a crit on Kong that nearly killed him.

After this Jarick admits that he killed Athis, who was his good friend, becuase Athis became involved with the Death Cultist group.  While the party tries to decide what to do about this word rings out that the Red Tusk Orcs are laying siege to the city.

Until next time!
-Ubercroz

Episode 4

This week was something of a rushed job on my part.  It worked out pretty well and I had some ideas of what I wanted to do.  I wanted to throw down a some variety of random encounter down... I said before I don't like random encounters.  I suppose I should say I don't like purely random encounters without purpose.
In older games, like basic, 1e, and to a certain extent in 2e the game was more about survival than story.  So at that time a random encounter was as good as a dungeon crawl, odds are your character would die before 4th level anyway.
To me encounters should drive the story.  I don't want to waste time on an encounter for no purpose than to kill something, I just don't have enough time at the table to do that.
Anyway, I knew I wanted one of a few encounters- something to develop the world (some orcs) something to develop story (Stoutfellow dwarves on the hunt for Durn) etc.  So I rolled the orcs.

Episode 4:

The guys are headed down towards Newhaven to find the ettin.  And run into some Red Tusk orcs who demand payment for "The War effort"  The players say no and kill them (this also has become something of a theme... but maybe thats just fantasy RPG).

The town is small, around 150 people or so and this ettin has been rollin around town killing people and causing all kinds of trouble.

The party gets there and they find out that he has been causing trouble over the last several years, ever since the nearby evil wizard got messed up by some adventurers.  Its been getting closer and closer and started killing people a few months ago.

Man I hate to admit it, but yet again inspiration from another source.  This Ettin is a polymorphed Cleric who was part of the adventuring party.  The source material was kind of dense and difficult to understand what was supposed to happen.  So yet again I tossed it and pretty much recreated everything from scratch outside of a few broad details.


Once they are in town for a little bit, they figure out that the Ettin has been drawing on this shrine to the Sun god in the northern woods of town.  They go up to investigate and run into Mordicai, a young soldier whose father was killed by the Ettin and wants to see this monster put down, he does not trust the party and is getting antsy.

So the original concept had a rhyme that was nearly indecipherable without knowing everything there is to know about the ettin.  So I made a new rhyme and drew some pictures with symbols to go along with it.  I am a big fan of letting the PC's use their characters skills to help them out.  So I made a key to the symbols in the pictures.  With the symbols and the rhyme the players were able to put together a rough outline of what happened to the cleric.  They didn't know the details but they knew he used to be good.


At this point the party heads up to Oldhaven to find the Ettin.  They run into a few Red Tusk orcs and are told they don't want to fight, they just need to get back to help the war effort.  The players "let" the Orcs lead them to where the Ettin is.  Turns out one head is good and the other head is bad, and the players have to figure out how to cure him.  To make matters worse Mordicai shows up with some townspeople to kill the Ettin.

This was a complecated event.  I had a lot of work arounds and even killing the Ettin would have been okay.  But what he really needed to do was be forgiven for being mean and hateful (my intent was by his god, but the PC's figured out something I did not intend but liked so much I let it work).


The PC's did something real cool here, they found a wand of web earlier and webbed all the townspeople.  They then kept just out of reach of Ettin while they talk Mordicai (!) into forgiving the cleric/ettin for killing his father.

To accomplish what they wanted I put a series of challenges in place, a couple of diplomacy checks and a charm person did the trick.  This changed a lot of stuff.  Mordicai was going to fight to the death and they completely changed how that encounter was going to go.  I love it when my players suprise me.


So at this point the Ettin is now a cleric and everything is good.  He also mentions to Sam that Sam appears to be a travler- a guy who travels through dimensions but he will need to head north to figure it out.  The party then offers to take Mordicai up north with them since he now wants to be an adventurer like they are.

It was a good night and I was really impressed with how my group did.

Let me know what you think, I don't have the riddle or the drawing anymore and it would take some time to recreate.  If I can find them I will post them up in here, but otherwise... you will have to use your imagination.

Until next time.
-Ubercroz

albhonna

I threw this up here for something else, you can ignore if looking for my campaign notes.

Episode 3

The big thing about this next fight... well I know I claim to be a homebrew gm, but I steal whole chunks from modules.  and this dungeon drew inspiration from the 4e Shadowkeep game.  Its not the same game at all, but their are very similar elements throughout that I twisted to my own sick designs.  So this next fight draws from that game in that, well there is an evil portal, there is a cleric summoning something evil, and... well thats all I guess.  This ended up being a long session, so this entry may be a little longer than most.

Episode 3:

The players chose to leave Giles tied up on an alter upstairs, planning to deal with him later.  I thought this was a lovely opportunity to let him escape, and cause problems later.

Leveled up and ready to take on the day the party went downstairs to a face off against Belfast.  We have a big fight on our hands.  This drifted very close to a TPK, and I am okay with that.  I love epic fights.  and this is fight lies somewhere around a CR8 in total difficulty, and this of course is a 3rd level group with 6 PC's.

You have Belfast, the 5th level cleric, 2 1st level fighters, 2 1st level warriors, 2 1 hp skeletons, and... blood elementals.  Blood elementals I made for the week, um basically they have around 3 hd and 2 dr/magic.  that made things complicated.

The blood elementals (BL) would when summoned showed up anywhere on pool of blood that was best for me

The way the fight broke down was Belfast ignored them until after the fighters died, then he summoned blood dudes, THEN he broke the seal in the middle summoned fliying black death tentacles and he fought them essentially 1 on 1 at that point.  Urz hit -10 hp, but he's a 1/2 orc so he was fine.  I dropped 2 guys that fight, but killed no one.  The blood added a few interesting things, slippery floor and the Blood Elemental threat, so that made the room feel dangerous.  The gray areas are rough terrain so that made things more difficult as well.

So bad guy drops, he curses his weak body and then turns into a 3 week old corpse! oh no what happened to the badguy!?  


Well, like any good GM I can't waste a good villain in one fight, so he had back up plans.  he had a potion of invisibility, which got wasted.  His BIG backup plan was that he has low power versions of himself roaming the country side doing bad things, if they die he loses a level. (I am keeping track of this so the players will later be rewarded for having taken out his little dudes.)  So he uses fresh corpses to spread himself a little thin.  

Anyway they gather up his hot gear and head back to town, huzzah the heroes of Dooms Ward Keep! (this title sticks with them for a while).  Lord Durris then asks them to look into an Ettin in a little town to the south and they agree to do so.

On the way there they stop in a little town called Millan.  They meet up with a nice Tavern Keeper who gets murdered, and now they have to figure it out.  It basically boiled down to asking everyone in town what happened that night and then finding out whose stories didn't match.  Pretty fun role playing experience.  The players were looking all over town splitting into small groups and asking people what happened and eventually put together that it was Leanna the bartender!  Turns out Leanna is an assassin working for Belfast and our friendly bartender Garrit found out.

This is a small lift as well.  I nabbed a chunk of another module I half looked at for some concepts and then built the story to fit.  This was to control pacing, we had just spent the better part of three weeks in nothing but combat and dungeons getting constantly beaten on.  I wanted to slow things down and give them a chance to stretch their skills.  They got to use diplomacy, bluff, sense motive, intimidate, survival, knowledge skills, all kinds of stuff.  So this is a nice way to reward people who pay attention to their skills.


Well Leanna bailed out of town and the party tracked her north a little ways.  Where she was waiting for them in ambush.

Leanna is a 5th level rogue who I just put a ton of points into bluff, stealth, and perception.  She was a glass cannon.  No armor really, but I gave her a couple of flash bangs so she could hide, sneak attack, bluff and hide, then sneak attack, leave everyone in the party bleeding and then book it.  This was a fun fight.  If things went bad for the party it could have gotten real ugly real quick.  Her feats were point blank shot, deadly aim, two weapon fighting and I intended on her taking a -20 stealth check on a snipe check once.... which she did and succeed (they rolled BAD perception).  

Eventually Lina, the gnome rogue rolled a good perception check and Durn grabbed her with a hold person spell.  They took her back to town and let the town take possession of her so she could "swing from the gallows"- which has now become a very common phrase in my campaign now.

At this point I asked, so you stay and watch her hang?  They said "nope, we are going to get that Ettin."  I smiled a little to myself, a level 5 rogue in a town of 0 level commoners... sounds like justice will have to wait.


So I hope that wasn't too long, but it was a long night.  Catch you next time!

-Ubercroz

Episode 2

Episode 2:

The Party headed back to town after hearing Collins request that they return (this was from the magic mouth scroll).  When they arrived in town they found that Ninian, the towns huntmaster, had raised undead in the graveyard and was preparing laying siege to the rest of the town from within.  This was around a CR5 encounter- it was honestly pretty close to a CR6, which I think is fine for a 6 person party of 2nd level.  I can clearly see that I am going to need to add in my maps for these things, because this stuff is hard to describe without map aid.

Ninian is a 4th level Ranger, there are a handful of skeletons, super weak (again 1 hp minion style), and 2 zombies, and 3 megazombies

I like to break my bigger fights into 3 pieces,  opening, twist, BIGGER TWIST.
In this case I have 4 skeletons and 2 zombies on the field when the players enter.  The zombies are the meat shields and the skeletons are archers.  easy so far.  3 rounds in Ninnian pops out on top of a crypt and begins lobbing arrows down on the party.  As they get into melee range Ninian pops a scroll and 3 mega zombies show up.  These are regular zombies in most every regard save they have too many HP.
I knew this was going to be the only encounter they faced that day so I wanted to push them to their limit on this fight.  I am not a big fan of random encounters- I think it slows down the game and it makes the designed encounters too hard (or too easy if they happen to grab a level between sessions).  I really like to control the pace of the game, so eliminating random encounters is a nice way to do that.  I don't tell my players I eliminate them- I still roll the dice and have them run into a "random" encounter sometimes.

Ninian is on top of the crypt, S=Skeleton, Z=zombie, MZ= MEGAzombie

So after this they found a letter that told them (cue scary and surprising music!) that Ninian is working for Belfast.

So with their new levels and a couple magic items under their belts they headed back to the dungeon.  I stole a trap from somebody at this point, but I really liked it.  Its a statue with a big sword and a couple dragons that push you into the sword guy.  Pissed off one of my more experienced players- he called it "horseshit, no way you can get around that without getting hurt!"  I almost agreed.... except they charged right into the damn thing with little caution.  The rogue could have disabled it.... maybe, but I still loved it.

In the next room they had a pretty cut and dry encounter with some death cultists and some zombies.  no big deal.  At this point the Sam began using what has become a staple of this party.  He enlarged Urz and Kong.  So now we have two large fighters roaming the map and doing lots of damage.

Well they captured a death cultist (who I named Giles on the spot) and Damone, the bard charmed the fool. So he spilled his guts and then they tied him up and prepared to rest, since the next day they would be fighting their first real BBEG, Belfast.  I also let them pop another level.

Until next time!
-Ubercroz

Episode 1

I don't, and never have, played 4e.  However I like Chris Perkins as a DM and I think he knows a thing or two.  I tend to view my sessions in terms of episodes, and as such I will be referring to them by episode number/session number to help me keep track.

The way I am going to break down the night is describe an event or encounter, and then discuss what my thoughts for that were and why I did what I did.

Episode 1:

Opening night: 20 April, 1215 Talendian calendar
I feel like most of the time people get too hung up on how to get adventuring groups together.  It feels like it wastes a lot of time and is usually akward.  So for this campaign everyone except Sam were in the group at the start of things.

The party is near a small town called Durrisburg, they have taken up residence as the local heroes and are   running patrol around the town when they come across a group of kobalds attacking some poor guy in the middle of the road.  There are 7 Kobalds and this is roughly a CR 3 fight.  I gave a couple of the Kobalds PC levels to make them tougher and dropped the weaker ones to 1 hp, kind of in the style of 4e minions.

This was a pretty basic encounter, first one of the campaign,  since I have two brand new players in the group, one who played 1e ADnD and nothing since, and 3 experienced players.  So I wanted something simple that would let them get a feel for combat.  took a little time, I may post the encounter map, but it was super straight forward and fun- Kobald sling guys had exploding rocks- good stuff.

I dropped it in sideways, but I think you can tell this is a road, anything outside the road I consider rough terrain.

This guy- named Tavis- tells the party that some death cultists kidnapped him and his group and were taking them up to some ruined keep up north.  With a little research from a local wizard named Collins- who has been helping Sam learn he can cast spells- they learn the place is called Dooms Ward Keep.

So at this point I want to open things up for my players, let them use some of those skills.  I like skills.  I want them to have a chance to know about this keep, or use the information in the books nearby to look it up and do some research.  Turns out they did not do that, but chose to use diplomacy to gather information. Now they know where they keep is, and have a desire to look for it.  Insert Deus ex Machina.

Collins asks Sam to go with the party, as this may be related to the way he was transported into this realm.  Sam, not knowing any better says "Sure!".  Now they gather up supplies and get ready to head up to a dungeon 1.5 days away.  Before they leave Collins hands Sam a scroll with Magic Mouth cast on it, telling him that if the town needs help the scroll will tell him.


 The idea here is that I wanted a reason to make the players leave the upcoming dungeon at some point, I had a few ideas and settled on this scroll.  The thinking is when Collins does something to trigger the spell the scroll will scream at the pc's "get back to town, get back to town!"  I thought it would help me control the pacing and if they were about to go into an encounter I knew would take too long for the session I could pop that thing and end the session that way.  

They head up to Dooms Ward Keep without incident and fight through a couple of Kobalds who are working for these Death Cultists.  They peel through a number of standard traps in a very dungeon crawl manner. They fight their way into the first level capture a Hobgoblin lieutenant named Borgan and learn that there is a dark ritual under the keep that is being performed by Belfast were he is sacrificing people.  They also find an enchanted sword on him that was blessed by Tyr.  They want to go downstairs- I pop the scroll.  Session ends and everyone gains a level.

Over all the session was pretty straightforward and we got a good amount done, the players know whats going on and there was even a little roleplaying happening.  They even captured the hobgoblin instead of killing him!  Pretty good stuff.  The new players are getting a feel for combat and the older player is pretty grumpy since we use miniatures and he was very used to the style of theater of the mind where you can do all kinds of stuff in a round- 1e was a 1 minute round as opposed to a 6 second round.  In general I feel pretty satisfied with how it went.

Like I said, I have some maps I may add to this at some point to give some context, but let me know what you think.

- Ubercroz

Opening, purpose, introduction

Opening:
The purpose of this blog is to track and discuss my weekly pathfinder campaign as it continues to develop.

First I should broadly discuss my world. The kingdom our heroes are in is called Proveria. It is a traditional mideval style country with French and English architectural influence.  It was crippled around 200 years ago by an event I refer to as "The Calamity". It's not discussed much in my game what it was, I know but I have kept it hushed so I can drop it on my players. The capital of Proveria is New Proveria, the original capital was wrecked during the Calamity, so this is a relatively young city.

To the south of Proveria is an empire modeled after Rome, called the Talendian Empire. They are aggressive and always looking for a chance to pick up some new turf. The sea is to the east, the dwarven mountains to the north, and a friendly Germanic style country called Bondoria to the west.

I dont get crazy with renaming the months or days of the week, it just adds to confusion at the table and it's mostly not worth it. I will eventually add more detail but this is just the baseline info just to give you context.

Cast of Characters (PC's).

Sam the Salesman- Sam is from our world. He was attacked in an alley and got sucked into Proveria, he was an insurance salesman but is somehow now a sorcerer. He has a one eyed raven familiar named Whoden, smarter than the average familiar.

Durn Brewhammer- Durn is a dwarf Cleric of Dania (travel and liberation). He left home when he found out his dad was involved in the slave trade with the stout fellow clan- a group of mean mountain dwarves.

Kong Stonesmith- Kong is a dwarf Fighter of the Mountain Dwarf warrior clans, professional soldier runs in their blood, rival clan to the Stoutfellows

Lina Griswold- Lina is a gnome rogue with purple hair.   She grew up in New Proveria where her father, a kind gnome, was killed.  She decide to go off on her own at that point and is now adventuring leaving the city behind, she had some trouble with the law there anyway.

Urz Goatskull- Urz is a 1/2 Orc Barbarian.  He is the oldest son of the chief of the 3rd largest tribe in the Goatskull clan.  He is expected to eventually run the clan.  The Goatskulls rival the other clan in the area, the Red Tusks Orcs.  By comparison the Goatskulls are pretty nice, they trade with people and only raid and kill sometimes.

Damone Desmond- Damone is a halfling bard who was raised by the elves and worships Sonara, the Elven Goddess of song.  He has ties with the elven culture and is friends with Durn, they met while Durn was fleeing from the Stoutfellows.


Setting:
So the setting of this campaign is we start in  small town called Durrisburg.  A few hundred people live here, there is a low level cleric who runs the chapel, there is a town wizard and adviser to the local lord Named Collins, the local lord himself Lord Durris, and the bartended/ex-adventurer named Anders who is the go to guy for information for most of the PC's.

There is a swamp to the south, orc tribes to the north and south, and a large city named Pastan farther to the north.

The players I am running this with are a diverse group.  All of us are adults, some of us have children (I happen to have 2).  Of the players I have 4 guys and 2 girls.  The girls are both married to other people in the game.  1 of the guys is the father of another player and he is who taught me how to play.

Experience is also a factor here, neither of the girls have ever played before, and the older guy has not played at all since 1st edition ADnD.  So this should be fun.


Well that is about all for this Blog now.  Next entry will be on the first weeks game.

-Ubercroz