Commentary thread for that “Describe your game in five words” thread.

[John Dallman]

True trolls just won't die!

Teamwork Triumphs by Thumping Trolls.

These are actually separate campaigns. It's mere coincidence that both regular fantasy games I'm in had significant troll encounters last week. The AD&D1e party were tracking some ogres, who appear to have been eaten by True Trolls, but said trolls regenerate fire damage. That problem isn't solved yet. The GURPS Dungeon Fantasy party met Pathfinder 1e trolls who do die of fire damage.

 

[glass]

Sunday: Online map different from key map.

This was actually towards the end of the session (prior to that, they had mostly just been fighting some more goblins). I am running The Sunless Citadel (the 3.0 version, although I am convering it on the fly to PF1). The PCs had more or less cleared the top level, and had found a set of stairs heading down to the lower level. The map I was showing the PCs (and gradually uncovering as they explored) was one I found online - until this point it had been identical to the one in the adventure (albeit prettier). But the stairs are not on the key map.

I do not know if the stairs were added in the official 5e version, or by the person who stuck the map up online, but now I need to figure out where it comes out. Fortunately, as I said it was towards the end of the session so I have a week to figure it out....

EDIT: I looked into it. The stair were added by the person who tweaked the map, and they go up. So a bit of a celestial rewind will be needed.

_
glass.

 

[John Dallman]

Do tell! How'd it happen?

We were fighting at front and rear of the party. At the front, our cavalier, paladin, and ranger were taking turns fighting three True Trolls. Only two of them could get at us at a time, because we weren't coming out of the 10' tunnel into a large cave. At the rear, outdoors, another True Troll had appeared, the Paladin's talking horse had warned us, and our magic-user, the ranger/cleric and the cavalier's squire were working on that. They had the advantage of range to work with. All this is AD&D1e; the players and GM have all been playing for a long time.

True Trolls are weird: If you hit them with cutting or impaling weapons, bits of them come off. Those bits fight independently, but want to join back onto the biggest part, which retains troll shape.

Up at the front, the two trolls we were currently fighting were in a total of nine pieces. They take damage from area effects individually. So a Flame Strike wiped out one of them except for a small bit ("Wee Jimmy Krankie Troll") and trimmed the other one back a lot. That second one then succumbed to Dust of Paralysis from the cleric's sling shot, and stayed that way as its remaining parts joined onto it.

That meant the cavalier, paladin, and ranger could then gang up on the third troll at that end, which went down quite quickly. Then it was a matter of fetching torches from the fire the squire had lit before the rear troll had shown up, dicing the two mobile trolls very fine and burning the pieces. The paralysed troll got slow-roasted over the fire.

 

[kenada]

"thief has a death wish"

There were two times during the session where I thought the thief was going to get everyone killed. The first time, he kept wanting to sneak down into the statue garden to get a better look at the “iron bull” (a D&D gorgon). Even after a robed figure came out (which was a classical gorgon), he still seemed keen on getting closer. The barbarian talked him down from his crazy plan, and they eventually withdrew after the figure went back inside.

The second time was when they were breaking camp. The morning after camping, the party found evidence that tigers had been snooping around their camp during the night. The thief decided he wanted to kill* the tigers for his goal that session (to fell a fell beast), so he threw a ration to them to lure them out and intended to shoot them with his bow. On their turn, the barbarian lead the horses and wagon (where the thief was sitting) away while the tigers were distracted.

---

* I’m running a B/X-based homebrew system. The thief has 15 hp. The tigers have 6 HD. The party also had a barbarian and a cleric. Everyone was 4th level, and the system makes characters more capable than their B/X counterparts, but it still would have been ugly. The first scenario would have almost certainly ended with a thief statue added to the garden.

 

[glass]

Sunday: Fight bugbear. Talk down others.

Following on from the previous session, the PCs climbed down to the lower level of The Sunless Citadel, and fought a bugbear hunter (plus a pair of skeletons and a pair of twig blights). They then intimidated their way past some goblins, and used diplomacy to get past some bugbear "gardeners".

At the end of the session, they fought four goblins, and there was a hilarious note that they would call for help, but it would only come if the fight lasts six rounds. Needless to say, four goblins do not last six rounds against even level-2 PCs.

_
glass.

 

[John Dallman]

Found village of civilized Medusas.

Having dealt with the truetrolls, we carried on looking for inhabitants of the area that Landcentre (the country we're working for) is going to annex. It's 130km by 150km, so this is the fairly quick scan, finding large monsters and settlements. In dense woodlands, we spotted a cockatrice, and a little later, noticed that it was chained to the tree it was sitting in. We decided to err on the side of friendliness, and called out hellos, and fairly soon a couple of human-sized creatures in robes came along.

They introduced themselves as gorgons (this is correct as per Greek mythology, "Medusa" was the personal name of one of the gorgon sisters), and admitted that they knew of Landcentre and visited its cities to trade on occasion. They're clearly capable of decent disguise, since they do have snakes for hair.

We explained that Landcentre was willing to take civilised people as citizens, and the requirements are fairly simple: pay the taxes, which aren't huge, and send your young people for military training. They asked for time to think about it, and invited us to their village. They can indeed turn people to stone, which they do voluntarily, by looking at you and willing it; they're immune to their own (and each other's) gaze. They can do this permanently, or temporarily: if it's going to be temporary, there's a saving throw penalty. There are ten adult gorgons, and about twenty daughters. We did not ask how they are fertilised; by this time we were being extremely polite and wanting to get away. We think Landcentre will be happy to have them as citizens, but being in the company of so many of them is hard on the nerves.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Session Zero and character generation.

How'd Session Zero go? I love the start of a new campaign! Are you using 5e? Were there any surprises in what the players or DM wanted or decided on?

 

[Umbran]

How'd Session Zero go? I love the start of a new campaign! Are you using 5e? Were there any surprises in what the players or DM wanted or decided on?

This is with my regular group that's been mostly on hiatus since the start of the pandemic. I'm the GM, and I've not been running much in all this time, so I am trying to pull out some of the stops.

We're playing 5e, The Wilds Beyond the Witchlight (player's request), using the Beadle & Grimm's Silver Edition. I'm hoping to enhance with additional material from DM's Guild, and some dedicated background music on Syrinscape.

Since this is the same group I've played with for over a decade, many things in a usual Session Zero about preferences and style didn't require much discussion. We established some ground rules on Charm magics, and so on.

None of the choices were what I'd call surprising, knowing the players - they aren't playing too far out of their wheelhouses. I have...

One Warforged Artificer, intending to go Battlesmith.
One Fairy warlock, with a Djinni patron, who is not sure how he ended up in that position.
One Fighter, likely to go Battlemaster, likely halfling - think a small Fallstaff with a pair of swords.
One Warforged Bard, expecting College of Lore - the character was built to be the repository of a culture's lore, but now that culture seems to be... gone.

 

[overgeeked]

“Tell me and you move.”

One of my West Marches groups bogged down and got stuck in a loop. Planning and talking and second guessing instead of doing anything. They started getting frustrated with the situation and each other. I thought it was RP but it was spilling over. Had to remind them it’s a game and to actually do anything in the game they need to tell me they’re doing it, not just talk about it or plan on it or discuss it. “We should go over there” is not the same as “we go over there.” That distinction may not mean much to some, but I’m running an old-school game, so characters die and the world is hostile. If I move characters at the suggestion of or planning to stage, I get a lot of dead PCs and players who argue they didn’t actually say they did the thing. So, tell me and you move.

 

[aramis erak]

Ah. Good luck.

Thurs: ER
Fri: surgery
Sat endoscopy
Sun & Mon

Spoiler: TMI

The Quest for Poo

Tues why still in pain?