| | This is my gaming blog first and foremost. Might happen that I write about other stuff though.
For those interested, this Blog is a contignuation/revival of my CM blog, which you can find here  | Posted 20th July 2008 at 01:09 AM by Gold Roger (The Vault)
We're at level 2! The only new ability of real significance was that Arthas picked up ritual casting. Lets see what deeds where done then:
With Bandits all but destroyed, it was looting time. The bandits had some money each, but the real treasure was on the leader, as the group found on him a bag stuffed with more gold than should possibly fit in it.
Over 200 gold, four big gems and a magical bag richer, the interrogation was on. The leader was happy to spill the beans, as soon as the name Damian Crine was brought up.
Apparently Crine lured the bandits into some crypt with promises of riches, just so most of the band got slaughtered while Crine slipped past the distracted guardians to get whatever he came for.
That could be the end of the story, but raving about "knowing some tricks as well" the old bandit told the PC's he knew where Crine would be for quite some time from now on.
The next goal was clear: Crine was in the town of DammIhopemyplayerswrotedownthename (warning, not actual name of town) in the northeast, seat of power for the "Iron Baron". Actually known as benevolent ruler with a very martial heredary title.
True to the faith of Keltor, the old bandit was dealed with the old fashioned way and his head, worth it's weight in gold, joined the other valuables in the bag.
Back in the village the people where overjoyed to be rid of the bandits. The village elder even gifted the heroes with a heirloom amulet.
As life is for heroes, the peasants immediatly pestered the group with their other problem. Apparently the village priest has gone mad and commited suicide in his shrine a while ago and since then the shrine and the surrounding graveyard have gone cursed. Thus nobody dares approach them and the death walk again. The usual.
Lothar and Crack didn't give a rats arse, but Arthas was enthusiastic for three, outvoted them and pulled them along to cleanse the place. And that even though the villagers worshipped the groups old "friend" Konchaine.
The shrine was not more than a small pavillion on a hill surounded by grave markers, now trashed and overcast by dark clouds.
Approaching, the group was attacked by a zombie and some barely standing ancient skelletons. Easy going, but as Crack went into a patch of trees for a better position he was ambushed by a haggard figure whose scratching nails froze his blood and legs. Around his neck the ghoul wore a cracked holy symbol of Konchaine and a cut-of noose. Could it be the priest?
Yes, but it mattered not, soon all undead where dispatched.
Thinking the deed done, the group went to poke for valuables in the shrine, when they heard a high pitched giggle. In a flash, there appeared a small red devil on the smashed altar and skeletons exploded from the ground.
Lothar dispatched skeletal archers as fast as the little devil called more from the ground, while arrow upon arrow lodged in his full plate. Meanwhile Arthas and Crack troubled themselfs with a particularly tenacious skelleton in armor and shield.
The Imp, as which Arthas identified the creature, mostly enjoyed itself with dissapearing and stinging people with his tail, to little effect.
But in the end all undead where un-undeaded and the next time the imp appeared all members of the team wacked him for good. Screaming bloody murder and revenge, the fiend pulled a final dissapearing act.
All this was perfect for Arthas' sale-speech, which he pitched into as soon as he was back in the village.
One hard talk later, it was agreed that Arthas would dedicate the shrine Keltor and the two paladins would watch over the village until an Acolyte of Keltor arived to lead the villagers into their new, of course better, faith.
Meanwhile Crack would head of, to pick up their business associate Alkuin and stake out matters in the Iron Barons domain.
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 | | Posted 29th June 2008 at 02:58 PM by Gold Roger (The Vault)
Updated 29th June 2008 at 05:42 PM by Gold Roger Yesterday we played our second session of our new 4th edition campaign. Alkuins player couldn't be there, sadly, however, another player that couldn't be there for the first session now joined in.
This session begins on the road northwest about a week after the events of session #1.
While Alkuin is on some personal errands, Lotar and Arthas have teamed up with a dwarfen mercenary on his hunt for the notorious criminal Damian Crine.
While the bounty on Crine's head is certainly a bonus, the real reason they joined the hunt for this man, is that they know from Ardin that Crine is searching for the Caged City as well.
The dwarf, our new PC, as his very own reason to hunt Crine as well.
Graxxxla, nicknamed "Crack": A dwarfen rogue that want to see the man dead who destroyed his old mercenary unit. Back then the unit was already on the hunt for Crine when he instigated events that killed many members of the group, including their leader. Crack, also a devotee of Keltor. is somewhat filthy and slightly deranged. From his neck hangs a wooden sign saying "Kill Damian Crine".
I kicked of the sesion with a random encounter on the round so Crack's player could get used a bit to 4E combat. Looking back this was a bad decission, as it was unnecesarry and destroyed a lot to kill the athmosphere for this session.
Knowing Crine had recently teamed up with some bandits in the area of a small village in the northwest, the search started there with our very first skill challenge.
After some page searching for check DC's, the system worked very well for us.
Arthas was quick to convince the villagers that he was "here to help" and rallied them to help him find "those filthy bandits".
Meanwhile Crack helped with an unusual aproach, sneaking about town posing as bandit and thus increasing fear and concern over the bandit problem.
Soon Arthas had the rough position of the bandit encampment and one perception check later the skill challenge was won.
From here the rest of the session was almost all combat.
A small watchpost was quickly taken out and one interrogation and quick execution later two things where clear:
1. Damian Crine wasn't here anymore and only the bandit leader knew where he went.
2. The bandits numbered about a dozen and where all in a cave with only one entrance.
So our heroes decided to smoke them out. Soon enough about half of the gang attacked our PC's in a desperate attempt to extinguish the flames.
Again, the bandits where handily defeated and though they stopped the fire, they where now few enough that the group felt confident they could take them in their homebase.
One tough combat later all bandits but the unconscious leader where dead, though Crack ate dirt twice in the encounter.
And that's where we had to stop.
As the DM I was very unhappy with this session and it's about all my fault. It starts with the totally misplaced initial encounter and continues at the bandit camp, where I was badly prepared, staging the encounters with boring setups and reacting badly to PC ideas like the smoking out of the bandits. This session highlighted all that is bad when I rely to much on improvisation and why Ineed to get my ass up and prepare better.
Two non self-doubt observations: PC-class opponents don't work as well as monster build enemies, at leat at low level and it's very important how a DM sets up an encounter. Otherwise encounters will play like the encounters in this session, which where just as boring as 3rd edition combats and actually played almost exactly the same.
I still hate very low level play, simply because of the few choices in opponents I can use and stories we can tell.
Anyway, next session we will be at level 2, though we won't play next weekend, propably meaning a two week wait.
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| | Posted 28th June 2008 at 01:37 PM by Gold Roger (The Vault)
Updated 29th June 2008 at 05:42 PM by Gold Roger I'm far to lazy to keep up a real storyhour (though I tried it once and I still have the updates on my harddrive).
But, with the addition of a fancy new blog, my sense of self-importance thought it might be great to blog the progress of my first 4th edition game.
So, here it is, the first session, with a real oldschool name to boot.
But first, lets introduce our PC's:
Arthas: Half-elven paladin of Keltor, a cruel god of terror and war. Arthas is questing for the Blade of Wrath, a Sword that is holy to the church of Keltor. He focuses more on the caster/leader aspect of the paladin class and sports a through the roof charisma.
Lotar: Dragonborn and another paladin of Keltor. He seeks to avenge his clan, which has been obliberated to the second last man by an jet unknown party. He and Arthas where trained and indoctrinated together. Mechanically he's more a follower of the "hulk smash" school of thought, packing a strength of 20.
Alkuin: Eladrin warlock that received his feypact powers from Cuchulainn, a fomorian he serves as herald and agent in the material world. In need of muscle and money, he convinced the two Keltorians to work with him. He loves teleporting and messing with the minds of others.
As you can see, it's a group that is not capitally Evil, but definitely of questionable moral.
We started the campaign in the city of Lannedar, a free city that managed to be independent and prosper, thanks to it's ruling family, that claims to have oracular power.
After messing around a little, our heroes found employment with an odd character called "Crazy Ardin", trader of curiosities, potions and information. Turns out another group of adventurers working for Ardin found a holy symbol of the dead god Tharan. Carrying a comrade that had lost his leg, the group was in no mood to investigate and instead sold the info to Ardin.
Nobody knew much about Tharan, except that he's dead. But the lost artifacts of dead gods are always up for graps, so of into the sewers it was.
The symbol (the stilisised form of a rat king) was quickly found and soon Lothar had broken down the hollow Wall the symbol was on and it was fighting time.
The enemies that swarmed from the hole where many small rats (a swarm in fact), a bunch of really big rats and a zombie in a priestly vestment of ragged fur.
Lothars firebreath made short work of the giant rats (only minions after all), while Alkuin turned the zombie-priestess into a non-issue when he critted with a witchfire, exploding its head in a burst of green flames. The rest of the fight was just swiping up the annoying ratswarm.
The complex the party entered soon turned out to be some kind of temple (surprise, surprise) and a bit further in two more zombified priests supported by another frenzied ratswarm put up minor resistance.
After those where done for, the party met the real freak, some kind of ratperson thing of a throne, that threw divine magic at them and wanted nothing more than leave the temple. To bad for it that Alkuin speared it with an eldritch blast on the treshold of the temple, just before it got it's clawed foot on the ground of sweet severy freedom. Rat-thing also carried a holy symbol, in fact a magical golden one, set with massive gems. Sweet.
Passing the rat things throneroom, the party found a massive, cathedral like place of worship. Behind the altar was a great gate leading to the gods now where, but the PC's could not pass further, thangs to the tiny detail of a sphinxs that wouldn't let them pass. Yet.
It did talk to them though and answer quite a few question. The sphinxs was placed there by the sungod Konchaine, all time favorite of simple folk and doo-gooder, as well as the killer of ratgod Tharan, one of whose very weak last avatars the party had in fact just destroyed, saving the city from an infestation of wererats and worse.
Nevermind it would have been an infestation the PC's themself would have unleashed.
Anyway, the sphinxs was quite happy the weak avatar was destroyed and offered the party one divinely powered prophecy.
After some discussion, Arthas asked for a prophecy on the Blade of Wrath and got this:
"The blade lies in a dragons heart.
The grip and further answers are held in the coils of The Forked Tongue in The Caged City.
Thus speaks Wynnchilde"
Skill checks to the rescue, it's determined that the Caged City is the legendary capital of a begone kingdom, that one day just disappeared, stolen by a god, devil, fey or worse. As well as that Wynnchilde is an exarch of Konchaine.
As a passing gift Arthas gets his personalised prophecy burned into his right arm along with a fancy glowing holy symbol of Konchaine. That'll lead to revenge some day, but you just can't let the servants of a psychpath god go without some irking.
Anyway, Ardin is overjoyed with all the sweet infos and fancy pnasy amulet he gets out of the deal. Even though thy took the job for money, the group now wants to be payed in potions and information.
So Arkuin gets directions where to learn more on the cities ruling family and a warning that it is dangerous information and Arthas some extra trivia on the caged city.
All in all, the session, which was mostly improvised, was pretty cheesy in parts. But boy we love cheesy stuff in our fantasy.
4th edition played very well for us, though I managed to choose mostly boring monsters that didn't play very diferently from 3.x.
The big surprise of the session was how much the players where involved with the setting, going as far as actively asking questions and even foregoing material rewards for information not relevant to their imediate goals.
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