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Did you guys go outside the rules at all during that fight?
__________________ "If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
-- Ernest Hemingway, "A Farewell to Arms" Burning Empires:Boldaq Keep on the Shadowfell
Did you guys go outside the rules at all during that fight?
If you mean "did anyone use stunts?" then no, I don't think so. But we tended to describe our powers in terms of the objects we were fighting -- like Temigent trying to twirl animated clothing up in his flail, or Cobalt swatting down fireplace tongs before kicking them under some furniture.
One thing I forgot to mention in my previous post: when we first arrived in the sub-basement, the entire thing was considered Difficult Terrain. Piratecat asked us to outline our method for sorting and clearing, which resulted in a player-determined pattern of both Difficult and normal terrain when the fight broke out. Nifty!
I do tend to use more minions than specified in the DMG, as per Mearls' comments in one of the podcasts; I find that about 6 per "normal" monster is about right. In this case, I took a lesson from Jeff Quick's old d20 minigame "Hijinx" and let player-described objects be key in the conflict. It was fun, although it broke my mind a little bit to keep coming up with more and more aggressive junk to act as minions.
The sentient history book (reawakened by the evil ritual recently performed by Alene two floors overhead) was effectively a non-enemy; with only 1 hp, you just had to figure out it was there and then find it. Meanwhile, the minions and animated objects were beating on you as you made standard action skill checks. The wizard's spirit (Nithigol the Animate) claimed to be the apprentice of someone known as Inquisitor Zacris, Zacris the Undying. He was sort of peeved when the group suggested that Zacris was, in fact, very dead. Given that Nithigol was surprised that no one was a wizard, it's likely that this tower hasn't always been populated by the Grey Guard.
A few magic items were found in all that mess; a restful bedroll, some dwarven stonemeal biscuits that taste awful but never go bad, a blessed book (containing an old diary) and eternal chalk. I like quirky low-power items that aren't combat oriented. In addition, Temigent found and claimed a black marble egg that contained a fawning, servile shade who would act as his servant. Based on the Prison of Salzacas in AV2, I don't think anyone was sorry that a NPC claimed it; the shade was useful but really annoying in personality! (And ridiculously fun to roleplay. Sniff. I'll miss him.)
The group was really irked to let Scrax the kenku assassin go. They could have killed or tortured him, although it would have been illegal under Imperial law. Scrax's certainty that he would be treated with gentility once he renounced Bramble as his assassination "client" was unexpected by the group. Clearly, not your normal sort of assassin.
We pick up in a month with the group heading south to Halfhammer, to learn a ritual that will be able to prove whether the missing Grey Guard member Caducity Skirr is dead or missing. On the way they've been told to stop by the halfling town of Mudtunnel. Built inside an elemental anomaly, a whirling tube of elemental muck that scares away most natural predators, it's a fairly safe place -- except two of the three Grey Guard members there have recently been slain, and the one remaining member has no idea why.
Last edited by Piratecat; 18th September 2009 at 05:16 PM..
I love the idea of using player-described junk as attacking minions. Very cool. And I look forward to hearing about Mudtunnel; sounds cool too. Hell, all of this campaign sounds cool! Plenty of ideas here, lots of good insight to the game, all very useful. Thanks for all of you taking the time out to post these updates, they have quickly become one of my favourite threads
Are the players who played in this session getting to level up sooner (since they got more XP, and from a hard encounter to boot!)? Or is there little incentive to get more XP in your game, PC?
Are the players who played in this session getting to level up sooner (since they got more XP, and from a hard encounter to boot!)? Or is there little incentive to get more XP in your game, PC?
Bob has it right. Being one of those people who at some point went from "I love tracking xp religiously" to "oh my gosh, tracking xp is a giant pain in the ass", I now level the group roughly every 5 sessions. I want a six year campaign; if we play once every two weeks, that's 24 times a year, so about 5 levels a year, which works out perfectly. Levelling generally happens after something dramatic, of course.
So in that sense the players who missed tonight's game still get xp, because they'll level at the same time that the attendees do.
This game was sort of wacky, because I only had about 2-3 days to plan it once I learned that half the group would be absent. I was keeping "clean out the basement" around as a side adventure, but now I had to figure out how some monster could be living in the basement without professional monster hunters never noticing. This was my solution. It's a tiny bit too "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" to be entirely legitimate, but I think it worked pretty well. Even better, I was able to slip in some surreptitious plot -- Hi, Eyrie of Light! Hi, Inquisitor Zacris! Hi, creepy shade in a box! Hi, tower's backstory and history! -- without anyone really noticing.
I was just curious if the players that played got something out of it beyond "Yay I get to play this session" and "Whee fun game".
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It's a tiny bit too "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" to be entirely legitimate, but I think it worked pretty well.
To be fair, I heard somewhere that there was a type of demon which lived inside books, and possessed those who read it. Intelligent, evil (or at least naughty) books are in fiction, so it's okay.
Besides. After playing the Library level of Ghostbusters, The Game, I've been wanting to run a "Inanimates come after you" adventure, myself.
I want a six year campaign; if we play once every two weeks, that's 24 times a year, so about 5 levels a year, which works out perfectly.
I must admit that my mind always boggles a bit when you say stuff like this. I've sort of adjusted to the concept (if not entirely internalized) running a campaign that takes several years to come to its conclusion. But it would never occur to me to base my rate of level advance on such a timeline.
I guess I never think of my games in terms of any desire for them to reach maximum level. I would probably base the rate of advance (since I'm not using XP either) on how often going up a level makes sense for the players in terms of adjusting to their new powers/being ready to add to that repertoire. For my current game I settled on every three sessions but 1/4 might have been a slightly better ratio in retrospect.
I'm certainly not finding fault with your method. It just isn't one of the considerations I use when I'm envisioning the XP system and campaign arcs and so forth. Is there a reason why you picked six years and not five or seven?
WAITASECOND!...PC must know when 5e is being released!!
I'm certainly not finding fault with your method. It just isn't one of the considerations I use when I'm envisioning the XP system and campaign arcs and so forth. Is there a reason why you picked six years and not five or seven?
Yeah. I'm 42. I considered another 16 year campaign and realized that I'd only get another two campaigns, ever, before I kicked off! So shorter seemed wiser.
Seriously, I used to use 12 games to a level in the last campaign, and I knew I wanted something shorter -- but still long enough to build the world and stories that drive me as a DM. Five sessions to a level (at about 3 hours per game, shorter than many groups) seemed about right. I did the math and realized this was almost exactly six years, which worked out well too. I didn't need much more convincing.
And let's face it, I can get my jollies with one-shots at game days and cons -- and I'm in Sagiro's 3.5 game, and I'm in Storminator's MnM game -- so it's not like I don't get to try other adventures and systems.
We haven't played in a month due to real-life complications that include weddings and vacations. Here's the blurb for this Thursday's upcoming game:
Last game you met (and fought) an annoyed remnant of Nithigol the Animate, long-ago governor of Floodford and apprentice of Inquisitor Zacris, "Eye of the Crown", also known as Zacris the Undying. You found some interesting magical trinkets - stonemeal biscuits, a blessed book with a thousand pages in it, a nail of sealing, and even some eternal chalk -and beat the crap out of a stuffed "browl", a moth-eaten elk head, a large statue, and much much more.
Time to stretch your legs. In this grand new country of Tordon, it's a good thing that the Grey Guard are politically inviolate and sacrosanct: red-uniformed soldiers (now referred to as "Redbacks") patrol the streets to sniff out imperial loyalists. Most locals have stopped their annoyed grumbling about how Capria will never allow this rebellion, especially now that new gallows have been built in Raining Square. But luckily for you, you're being sent out on an errand that actually gets you out of Floodford!
Commander Brogh would like assurance that Caducity Skirr has heroically met her final reward, and he thinks the Grey Guard Tower in Halfhammer might have a ritualist who can help. On the way he'd like you to stop by the legendary halfling village of Mudtunnel. The small Grey Guard outpost there has sent a brief request for assistance that just arrived, something about a deceased Guardsman, and it's mostly on the way.
So come see the world! It's said that no visit to Iskaine - err, Tordon - is complete without a visit to Mudtunnel. Find out why for yourselves.
I had been wondering, "what makes this halfling village interesting? Why the heck would anyone want to live somewhere named after mud, instead of in boat-islands like most other halflings on the lake?"
My answer was "if in doubt, go cinematic."
Mudtunnel is a remnant of some ancient elemental magic that no one can understand today, repurposed to actually be useful.
There's a tremendous whirling cylinder of water and mud and weeds that churns out there in the swamp, 1000' long and over 300' tall, but hollow inside - about the same proportion as a 2 liter bottle of soda turned on its side if you slice off the ends. It doesn't do anything, it just churns, which really irritates the arcane scholars who have come to study it. It's also hard to get to, naturally, because the vortex slurps up mud and water around it and sucks it in to the whirling cylinder - but even if the area around it was dammed, as has been tried in the past, the vortex still draws material out of the elemental chaos to keep itself fueled.
If you're a small vulnerable bunch of halflings living in a swamp, a place where predators can't easily reach you is darned attractive.
So over the centuries halflings have colonized this giant elemental phenomena, driving pilings down through the maelstrom into the ground below. They've built a platform village suspended inside, loud and dirty but very safe. Over the centuries the first few houses have evolved into a tangled maze of buildings and alleys and bridges, with the high-rent district being on either end of the tunnel where there's more light and fresh air. Special ferries have to bring people in and out of the town, since anyone who didn't know how would probably get themselves killed, and the town has thrived despite being a sort of curiosity.
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