Iron Sky
Procedurally Generated
I love Sagiro/PCat's similar thread, so I thought I'd do one for the Dark Sun game Sanzuo just started.
We just put my homebrew game that I'd run from level 3 to 16 on hold for a variety of reasons a few weeks ago - perfect timing since Dark Sun just came out and Sanzuo was psyched to run it.
I skimmed through the book, got a couple character ideas (a defiling templar tiefling pyro-wizard or a warlord of some kind if we needed a leader) and waited for everyone else to make their characters.
We ended up with:
*Thoon and Walter (Thrikreen Wasteland Nomad Beastmaster Ranger and his Spider Beast Companion)
[sblock=Thoon's Background]Thoon's Athasian Background he selected placed him from the Western Hinterlands far, far away beyond the Ringing Mountains and the Forest Ridge. He lost his clutch and was wandering aimlessly until he met Gilneas and bonded with him.[/sblock]
*Gilneas (Shardmind Elemental Priest Animist Shaman)
[sblock=Gilneas Background]Gilneas was originally a human explorer who made it across the Ringing Mountains and into the Forest Ridge. There he discovered the Crystal Forest, known for turning anyone who enters into crystal. For reasons unknown, it did the same to him, yet he survived and struggled back to civilization (shrouded like a mummy and always wearing deeply cowled robes) to try to find a cure.
So far he's only found Thoon.[/sblock]
*Jinn Rajen of House Vordon (Half-Elf Noble Adept Euphoric Ardent)
[sblock=Jinn's background]Jinn was the bastard son of Lord Rajen, head of a sub-house of House Vordon that is one of the primary power-players in Tyr. When he was young, he saved Kyden - then a killer-for-hire for the underworld of Tyr - from the hangman's noose using his family's clout. Recently, he was sent to negotiate trade with the distant city of Balic, but on his Caravan's return home, it was attacked and dispersed mere days from Tyr.[/sblock]
*Warder Kyden (Human Noble Adept Tactical Warlord) <my character>
[sblock=Kyden's background]Kyden grew up on the streets of Tyr, eventually "graduating" into the ranks of an underworld small-timer named Slitbelly's toughs. He was working on breaking free of Slitbelly's shadow and become freelance when someone in Slitbelly's organization betrayed him to the Tyr authorities. He would have died if Jinn hadn't saved him and swore an oath to protect Jinn until death. He has been Jinn's Warder (personal bodyguard) ever since.[/sblock]
*Jack (Minotaur Gladiator Spiritbond Seeker) <didn't join until second session>
[sblock=Jack's Background]Jack was captured from the distant east and fought as a slave gladiator until the Sorcerer-King of Tyr was overthrown and the slaves were freed. Since then, he's mostly worked with the organizers of the Arena Games that replaced the gladitorial death-pits after the sorcerer king was deposed.
Note: I'm a bit iffy on this one since our 5th player lives in a different city now and plays with us over Skype. All I know of his character is what I've gleaned from playing with him.[/sblock]
[sblock=Themes]In italics are the character Themes, something like paragon paths for heroic levels that also serve to anchor your character both mechanically and flavor-wise into the world of Dark Sun. Each provides some benefit at level 1 (usually an extra encounter attack power) and provides alternate Utility/Encounter/Daily powers that may be selected instead of class powers when leveling up.[/sblock]
We spent the first couple hours writing up our character sheets. We built them in the Character Builder, but there's so much in the Dark Sun book that isn't in the CB yet, we decided to go back to old-school written sheets (at least until the CB updates).
Jinn's player was originally going to make a... Warlock? (I forget already), but as I was trying to decide between my Wizard and Warlord, I flipped to the Noble Adept Theme and instantly had an idea for the two of us. Fifteen minutes later, Jinn and Kyden were set.
[sblock=Party composition]For our 1st session, we had 3 leaders, 1 striker. Three of us had 23hp, our Ardent 28hp. Between us, 10 ways of triggering surges (counting Second Winds) per encounter at level 1, but we're so fragile that it pretty much guarantees that a bit of focus-fire and someone's going down. And, as the old saying goes, "if you don't pick a defender, the monsters will pick one for you..."[/sblock]
With everyone's characters complete and backgrounds figured out, and our sheets filled out, we sat down to play.
The game began with Jinn and Kyden pushing on towards Tyr after their Caravan was hit. In the distance, they spotted the strange combo of a Thrikreen, his giant pet spider, and mysterious robed figure leading them.
It being Athas, weapons were drawn on both sides, with Kyden motioning Jinn to close with the strangers as soon as he spotted Thoon's massive bone greatbow so they had a fighting chance of reaching the Thrikreen before he emptied a whole quiver in them.
Fortunately, Jinn and Gilneas were more diplomatic than their "escorts" and a few minutes later, Gilneas was practically beaming out his whole life's story (he has no mouth and can only communicate via telepath) and his recent tragedies, so grateful was he to find someone willing to listen.
Jinn, being a gentle soul (a rarity on Athas), decided that they should travel together back to Tyr. Kyden and Thoon were more hesitant, but followed their respective bondees with a careful eye on each other.
This is where we started to encounter Survival Days, Dark Sun's replacement for food and rations that represent not just food, but water, shelter, ointments against the sun and other elements, and everything else you need to survive for a day in Athas unforgiving environments.
Everyone had at least 5 Survival Days, except for Kyden since I'd bought him a back-up Fullblade for Kyden after hearing about the weapon-breakage rules (can break your weapon to reroll 1s on attack rolls) and Survival Days cost a whopping 5gp each. We were three days out of Tyr and Kydan had only 2 Survival Days...
To make it worse, after one day, we encountered another apparent survivor of a Caravan attack who claimed to be another minor member of House Vordon named Khaled. While even Jinn was hesitant to bring another body along, he and Kyden eventually decided that it was their duty since the man claimed to be a member of their house - though woe to that man if it turned out he had lied when they got to Tyr.
Thoon - using his desert nomad training/high Nature skill to keep himself in Survival Days - was unwilling to share his supplies with the "useless" additional member, so by the time the group reached the outskirts of Tyr, Gilneas was down to 6 Days, Thoon at 5 (he'd used 0 due to his knowledge of the desert), Jinn at 1, and Kyden at 0. We'd also kept Khaled alive.
A few hours from Tyr itself, we came across a beast described as a cross between a pitbull, a lizard, and a pig the size of a wolfhound munching on the remains of... something unfortunate.
Pretty much none of the wildlife you come across in Athas isn't hostile and a quick couple knowledge checks revealed that these things traveled in packs, so we readied our weapons.
The battlefield, thrown up on the 53" plasma thanks to Masterplan, was a rocky desert; a mix of 1 square tall boulders, loose sand, and rougher (difficult terrain) sandy spots. The rest of the beast's pack showed up, 6 of them total, spread out in a arc in front of us.
Gilneas and Thoon quickly got their Spirit Companion (a dust devil) and Walter (the Spider) out in front where the relatively unintelligent beasties began lunging in at them. Then we formed "the front line", Walter, Jinn, Kyden, and the Shaman in front, Gilneas directing his companion from behind, and Thoon raining down arrows.
Unfortunately, Kyden ended up playing tank. Thoon was originally stuck on the front lines, grabbed by one of the beasts, and so Kyden slipped around to a flank to make an attack. Unfortunately, one of the other beasties destroyed Gilneas Spirit, leaving three of them to focus fire on Kyden. Three hits, down goes the Warlord.
With plenty of heals, he was quickly back up, but between standing up, picking up his weapon, and healing himself, he was stuck in the same spot. Down he goes again.
Eventually, he made it back behind the main defensive line to join Jinn and work together on the beasts - as they had trained to do together for years back in Tyr - and we began taking the enemies down, despite the Alpha of the pack showing up and nearly taking Kyden down again.
At the end of the fight, Walter was down, everyone except Jinn bloodied. Kyden who used 6 out of his 7 surges in that fight and was still bloodied at the end. Thanks to some fancy Shaman-assisted healing, Kyden was topped off without spending his last surge. Everyone else was down 2 surges (out of between 6 and 10).
After resting(and Thoon harvesting 3 Survival Days from the corpses), we hurried on to Tyr. I felt actual relief when Sanzuo described us reaching the fertile Tyr valley, his descriptions of fields of wheat and olive groves vivid in our minds after hours of descriptions of dust, sand, heat, desolation, and the ever-looming threat of running out of Survival Days with its unknown but dire-to-fatal consequences.
However, as Khaled walked past the fields, we noticed the wheat shriveling and dying as he passed - defiler! He thanked us for getting him there, all pretenses dropped. The reaction to this man destroying a bit of this oasis after all the wasteland was visceral. And soon violent.
The weapon began with us about 15 squares away from the man. Thoon took a couple shots at him and sent Walter after him, then the man backed up and summoned an intimidating obsidian obelisk between him and us that pull Jinn and Walter to it, blasted them, and knocked them down, dropping Jinn to bloodied in one hit(not too hard when you have 28hp).
Kyden wisely gave it wide berth as he moved in, charging with Invigorating Wave that Jinn rapidly capitalized on (thanks to his Melee Training Feat).
Gilneas summoned and used his Spirit of Athas (Theme power), dropping the Defiler's attacks and defenses by 2 for the round. Thoon dropped Guardian Arrow, protecting the surge-drained Kyden with the threat of scary 1d12+5 Greatbow attacks while Jinn rapidly used Demoralizing Strike to lower Khaled's defenses more, followed by a Taclord-assisted AP Daily that gave everyone next to him +1 to hit and +3 more damage.
I then complied by critting with Kyden's feat-augmented (19-20 crit range) Fullblade Viper's Strike for 1d12+19 damage, plus an AP and another hit.
The defiler was dead shortly after. Between dailies, a timely pile of de-buffing attacks, and the fact that Khaled seemed to be an elite meant he died quickly. Sanzuo was disappointed, not because the fight went so quickly, but because Khaled never missed.
Arcane magic users in Dark Sun can reroll major (daily/recharge) powers that miss by defiling the land around them, harming living things around them. Apparently, this guy had some cool powers he could only use when he was defiling, but he never missed so he didn't get a chance to use them.
We left the body for thedogs pig-lizards and headed into Tyr, ending the game by relaxing in Jinn's family estate in Tyr's noble district. Again, I was amazed at what a relief it was to be able to have our characters just sit and relax without having to worry about bare survival.
We had a second (even better) session that we just finished tonight, but I'll have to write that up another time since I need to get to bed.
As a quick summary, I was impressed at how the combination of Sanzuo's constant description of the wastes and the unrelenting metric of Survival Days effected my psychological reaction to the world. It felt even grittier to me than Warhammer Fantasy did when we played it, which is something I never would have expected coming from 4e. I don't ever remember feeling physical relief at something my character experienced in game.
Sanzuo did a great job of immersing us in the world that I'd recommend to anyone running this game. It may seem repetitious describing just another flavor of dust and rock and heat and desolation to your players each day, but it instills a bit the relentless barren hostility of the land to them that sinks in.
Combined with the mechanics of "If you don't have Survival Days, you will quickly die", it's a potent immersion mechanism that makes those places where life thrives that much more real and important. The days of seeing no living thing make running into even the most mundane creature interesting, no less so since that creature is wary, honed by survival, dangerous and probably is looking at you as a source of food and moisture the same way you are it...
We just put my homebrew game that I'd run from level 3 to 16 on hold for a variety of reasons a few weeks ago - perfect timing since Dark Sun just came out and Sanzuo was psyched to run it.
I skimmed through the book, got a couple character ideas (a defiling templar tiefling pyro-wizard or a warlord of some kind if we needed a leader) and waited for everyone else to make their characters.
We ended up with:
*Thoon and Walter (Thrikreen Wasteland Nomad Beastmaster Ranger and his Spider Beast Companion)
[sblock=Thoon's Background]Thoon's Athasian Background he selected placed him from the Western Hinterlands far, far away beyond the Ringing Mountains and the Forest Ridge. He lost his clutch and was wandering aimlessly until he met Gilneas and bonded with him.[/sblock]
*Gilneas (Shardmind Elemental Priest Animist Shaman)
[sblock=Gilneas Background]Gilneas was originally a human explorer who made it across the Ringing Mountains and into the Forest Ridge. There he discovered the Crystal Forest, known for turning anyone who enters into crystal. For reasons unknown, it did the same to him, yet he survived and struggled back to civilization (shrouded like a mummy and always wearing deeply cowled robes) to try to find a cure.
So far he's only found Thoon.[/sblock]
*Jinn Rajen of House Vordon (Half-Elf Noble Adept Euphoric Ardent)
[sblock=Jinn's background]Jinn was the bastard son of Lord Rajen, head of a sub-house of House Vordon that is one of the primary power-players in Tyr. When he was young, he saved Kyden - then a killer-for-hire for the underworld of Tyr - from the hangman's noose using his family's clout. Recently, he was sent to negotiate trade with the distant city of Balic, but on his Caravan's return home, it was attacked and dispersed mere days from Tyr.[/sblock]
*Warder Kyden (Human Noble Adept Tactical Warlord) <my character>
[sblock=Kyden's background]Kyden grew up on the streets of Tyr, eventually "graduating" into the ranks of an underworld small-timer named Slitbelly's toughs. He was working on breaking free of Slitbelly's shadow and become freelance when someone in Slitbelly's organization betrayed him to the Tyr authorities. He would have died if Jinn hadn't saved him and swore an oath to protect Jinn until death. He has been Jinn's Warder (personal bodyguard) ever since.[/sblock]
*Jack (Minotaur Gladiator Spiritbond Seeker) <didn't join until second session>
[sblock=Jack's Background]Jack was captured from the distant east and fought as a slave gladiator until the Sorcerer-King of Tyr was overthrown and the slaves were freed. Since then, he's mostly worked with the organizers of the Arena Games that replaced the gladitorial death-pits after the sorcerer king was deposed.
Note: I'm a bit iffy on this one since our 5th player lives in a different city now and plays with us over Skype. All I know of his character is what I've gleaned from playing with him.[/sblock]
[sblock=Themes]In italics are the character Themes, something like paragon paths for heroic levels that also serve to anchor your character both mechanically and flavor-wise into the world of Dark Sun. Each provides some benefit at level 1 (usually an extra encounter attack power) and provides alternate Utility/Encounter/Daily powers that may be selected instead of class powers when leveling up.[/sblock]
We spent the first couple hours writing up our character sheets. We built them in the Character Builder, but there's so much in the Dark Sun book that isn't in the CB yet, we decided to go back to old-school written sheets (at least until the CB updates).
Jinn's player was originally going to make a... Warlock? (I forget already), but as I was trying to decide between my Wizard and Warlord, I flipped to the Noble Adept Theme and instantly had an idea for the two of us. Fifteen minutes later, Jinn and Kyden were set.
[sblock=Party composition]For our 1st session, we had 3 leaders, 1 striker. Three of us had 23hp, our Ardent 28hp. Between us, 10 ways of triggering surges (counting Second Winds) per encounter at level 1, but we're so fragile that it pretty much guarantees that a bit of focus-fire and someone's going down. And, as the old saying goes, "if you don't pick a defender, the monsters will pick one for you..."[/sblock]
With everyone's characters complete and backgrounds figured out, and our sheets filled out, we sat down to play.
The game began with Jinn and Kyden pushing on towards Tyr after their Caravan was hit. In the distance, they spotted the strange combo of a Thrikreen, his giant pet spider, and mysterious robed figure leading them.
It being Athas, weapons were drawn on both sides, with Kyden motioning Jinn to close with the strangers as soon as he spotted Thoon's massive bone greatbow so they had a fighting chance of reaching the Thrikreen before he emptied a whole quiver in them.
Fortunately, Jinn and Gilneas were more diplomatic than their "escorts" and a few minutes later, Gilneas was practically beaming out his whole life's story (he has no mouth and can only communicate via telepath) and his recent tragedies, so grateful was he to find someone willing to listen.
Jinn, being a gentle soul (a rarity on Athas), decided that they should travel together back to Tyr. Kyden and Thoon were more hesitant, but followed their respective bondees with a careful eye on each other.
This is where we started to encounter Survival Days, Dark Sun's replacement for food and rations that represent not just food, but water, shelter, ointments against the sun and other elements, and everything else you need to survive for a day in Athas unforgiving environments.
Everyone had at least 5 Survival Days, except for Kyden since I'd bought him a back-up Fullblade for Kyden after hearing about the weapon-breakage rules (can break your weapon to reroll 1s on attack rolls) and Survival Days cost a whopping 5gp each. We were three days out of Tyr and Kydan had only 2 Survival Days...
To make it worse, after one day, we encountered another apparent survivor of a Caravan attack who claimed to be another minor member of House Vordon named Khaled. While even Jinn was hesitant to bring another body along, he and Kyden eventually decided that it was their duty since the man claimed to be a member of their house - though woe to that man if it turned out he had lied when they got to Tyr.
Thoon - using his desert nomad training/high Nature skill to keep himself in Survival Days - was unwilling to share his supplies with the "useless" additional member, so by the time the group reached the outskirts of Tyr, Gilneas was down to 6 Days, Thoon at 5 (he'd used 0 due to his knowledge of the desert), Jinn at 1, and Kyden at 0. We'd also kept Khaled alive.
A few hours from Tyr itself, we came across a beast described as a cross between a pitbull, a lizard, and a pig the size of a wolfhound munching on the remains of... something unfortunate.
Pretty much none of the wildlife you come across in Athas isn't hostile and a quick couple knowledge checks revealed that these things traveled in packs, so we readied our weapons.
The battlefield, thrown up on the 53" plasma thanks to Masterplan, was a rocky desert; a mix of 1 square tall boulders, loose sand, and rougher (difficult terrain) sandy spots. The rest of the beast's pack showed up, 6 of them total, spread out in a arc in front of us.
Gilneas and Thoon quickly got their Spirit Companion (a dust devil) and Walter (the Spider) out in front where the relatively unintelligent beasties began lunging in at them. Then we formed "the front line", Walter, Jinn, Kyden, and the Shaman in front, Gilneas directing his companion from behind, and Thoon raining down arrows.
Unfortunately, Kyden ended up playing tank. Thoon was originally stuck on the front lines, grabbed by one of the beasts, and so Kyden slipped around to a flank to make an attack. Unfortunately, one of the other beasties destroyed Gilneas Spirit, leaving three of them to focus fire on Kyden. Three hits, down goes the Warlord.
With plenty of heals, he was quickly back up, but between standing up, picking up his weapon, and healing himself, he was stuck in the same spot. Down he goes again.
Eventually, he made it back behind the main defensive line to join Jinn and work together on the beasts - as they had trained to do together for years back in Tyr - and we began taking the enemies down, despite the Alpha of the pack showing up and nearly taking Kyden down again.
At the end of the fight, Walter was down, everyone except Jinn bloodied. Kyden who used 6 out of his 7 surges in that fight and was still bloodied at the end. Thanks to some fancy Shaman-assisted healing, Kyden was topped off without spending his last surge. Everyone else was down 2 surges (out of between 6 and 10).
After resting(and Thoon harvesting 3 Survival Days from the corpses), we hurried on to Tyr. I felt actual relief when Sanzuo described us reaching the fertile Tyr valley, his descriptions of fields of wheat and olive groves vivid in our minds after hours of descriptions of dust, sand, heat, desolation, and the ever-looming threat of running out of Survival Days with its unknown but dire-to-fatal consequences.
However, as Khaled walked past the fields, we noticed the wheat shriveling and dying as he passed - defiler! He thanked us for getting him there, all pretenses dropped. The reaction to this man destroying a bit of this oasis after all the wasteland was visceral. And soon violent.
The weapon began with us about 15 squares away from the man. Thoon took a couple shots at him and sent Walter after him, then the man backed up and summoned an intimidating obsidian obelisk between him and us that pull Jinn and Walter to it, blasted them, and knocked them down, dropping Jinn to bloodied in one hit(not too hard when you have 28hp).
Kyden wisely gave it wide berth as he moved in, charging with Invigorating Wave that Jinn rapidly capitalized on (thanks to his Melee Training Feat).
Gilneas summoned and used his Spirit of Athas (Theme power), dropping the Defiler's attacks and defenses by 2 for the round. Thoon dropped Guardian Arrow, protecting the surge-drained Kyden with the threat of scary 1d12+5 Greatbow attacks while Jinn rapidly used Demoralizing Strike to lower Khaled's defenses more, followed by a Taclord-assisted AP Daily that gave everyone next to him +1 to hit and +3 more damage.
I then complied by critting with Kyden's feat-augmented (19-20 crit range) Fullblade Viper's Strike for 1d12+19 damage, plus an AP and another hit.
The defiler was dead shortly after. Between dailies, a timely pile of de-buffing attacks, and the fact that Khaled seemed to be an elite meant he died quickly. Sanzuo was disappointed, not because the fight went so quickly, but because Khaled never missed.
Arcane magic users in Dark Sun can reroll major (daily/recharge) powers that miss by defiling the land around them, harming living things around them. Apparently, this guy had some cool powers he could only use when he was defiling, but he never missed so he didn't get a chance to use them.
We left the body for the
We had a second (even better) session that we just finished tonight, but I'll have to write that up another time since I need to get to bed.
As a quick summary, I was impressed at how the combination of Sanzuo's constant description of the wastes and the unrelenting metric of Survival Days effected my psychological reaction to the world. It felt even grittier to me than Warhammer Fantasy did when we played it, which is something I never would have expected coming from 4e. I don't ever remember feeling physical relief at something my character experienced in game.
Sanzuo did a great job of immersing us in the world that I'd recommend to anyone running this game. It may seem repetitious describing just another flavor of dust and rock and heat and desolation to your players each day, but it instills a bit the relentless barren hostility of the land to them that sinks in.
Combined with the mechanics of "If you don't have Survival Days, you will quickly die", it's a potent immersion mechanism that makes those places where life thrives that much more real and important. The days of seeing no living thing make running into even the most mundane creature interesting, no less so since that creature is wary, honed by survival, dangerous and probably is looking at you as a source of food and moisture the same way you are it...
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). In return, the would proclaim the games were in the family's honor. Thanks to Jinn's +14 Diplomacy and an assist from Kyden, they agreed, though they said they didn't know what exactly the prize would be yet, just that it was metal.
