[LPF] Ryall's Estate

[Systole]

Daylily chuckes, then slings his giant hammer over his shoulder. "When the bad spirits whisper to you for silly thing like purple house and yellow metals, you did not think that was being strange?" He snorts, not really expecting an answer. "You was having meat and furs enough for every person. But spirits tell you to wanting yellow metal, and so you catch-release, so birds was tasty meal for us, and wolf is soon being nice hats."

He wanders off after Quioan, leaving the whole sordid, civilized mess behind him. "If the bad spirit come to me and whisper for house and yellow metal and cloths and..." he pauses and shudders, "and soap, I think I am know better than to listening to them. A much stupid man is the hunter, I think."

He turns back to Relic and Kazanto. "Uyah! Elder Storyteller, Snake Daughter! Time for ale and frog licks, eh?" he says, holding up his small cage full of morose toad.

 

[InVinoVeritas]

"Oh, frog licks! I'll want to try this..."

(Lost power over the weekend. Now I'm back to see it's all done...)

 

[jkason]

GM: Sorry, IVV! I blame Relic and his bloody sleep spell.

Caan sputters at the elven spit on his face.

"This isn't over," he growls.

"I daresay it is," Commander Parsons says. He nods to his men, who drag the imprisoned game warden off. To Gabbiano and the party members he adds, "Venzan justice isn't quite so swift as our mallet-wielding friend might like, but Caan's certainly not got anything pleasant in his future."

As Gabbiano again expresses his gratitude to the party, Finia transacts with the eager Relic, trading gold collars and gems for standard currency. Soon the old man is well-burdened with coin as well as Niam Caan's remaining gear, and he and the others leave Gabbiano and his attendant to deal with cleaning up the mess--which seems appropriate, given that his poor human resources choices seem to have been behind all the recent unpleasantness.

Far more quickly than when they had to sneak their way through it, the quartet find themselves exiting the former game preserve back onto the short road to Venza. A hawk shrieks high above them, but as the party tense and look skyward, the bird of prey simply glides on by, riding a thermal over the road and back into the forest in search of its next meal.

GM: And that, as they say, is that. Big Thanks to you guys for playing gineau pigs for my first attempt at DMing. Clearly it wasn't as challenging as my limited knowledge of CR would have indicated, but I hope you enjoyed yourselves in any event. I've got a final XP / Treasure post to do (if you guys don't want everything traded in for cash, speak up and make a firm claim now), and Qik had asked that I pull back the curtain re: the deaths of Ryall and Roug, so I'll do that as a follow up, as well. Feel free to ask any other questions and I'll do my best to answer anything I didn't manage to in-game, but other than that, good gaming with you all, and best of luck!

 

[jkason]

Murder's Mystery Revealed

You were all right to note that that the deaths of Ryall and Roug were a big shift in the tone of the adventure. As my own jokes admitted, it was designed as a bit of a Scooby-Doo plot, where the villain's elaborate scheme probably cost more than he'd ever make with it. While both men were meant to exit the adventure at the point when the party split from them (I didn't want you guys to have to spend every encounter worrying about their safety), my original proposal let them live happily ever after, with Gabbiano even covering their expenses to replace the lost house(s). Heck, I briefly toyed with having them share the house when all was said and done.

What changed was the adventure playing out in practice differently than it had in theory. Being new, I was doing a pretty straightforward matchup of treasure to encounter. The end result, as several characters noted, was that the party had found more than enough funds to replace the house a couple times over before you'd even left Roug's little plot of land. It was pretty clear to me that there was little motivation to continue beyond the fact that I could OOC tell you that there were more encounters and XP to be had.

So then Relic and Daylily gave me a bit of inspiration. Relic suggested to both Ryall and Roug that the person behind this mess seemed to want to hurt them specifically, sending all these critters to attack. In context, he was suggesting that one or both of them might be 'in on it,' and trying to shake the truth out of them, but the suggestion that Caan would try to cover his tracks with lethal force wasn't out of character for him.

Then Daylily threw all that raw meat on the back of the Ryall's cart. I knew there was a wolf encounter coming up, and my first thought was: well, what if they stopped to eat first? That evolved to Caan deliberately sending the wolves to kill the men with the hope that the pig carcass would make it seem like a natural-but-unfortunate attack. It robbed Ryall and Roug of their happy ending, the poor sods, but I thought it fit into the logic of what had been building in-game and (I hoped) provided a new motivation for the party to endeavor to track down the house-stealer and finish the adventure.

 

[Qik]

OOC: Thanks for pulling back the curtain, jk. I actually think the change in tone, while surprising, worked; I think it was just the unfortunate correlation with your absence that made for a minor hiccup. But all in all, I really enjoyed this adventure, and would love to run in another jkason adventure in the future! Thanks for running it. And everyone else, I really enjoyed the dynamic of the group, and am looking forward to adventuring with you all in the future. From what I've gathered, Deuce Traveler might be starting an adventure for those of us who want to join in the near future. Edit: Re: the challenge of encounters, I though the last one was a pretty good yardstick. To a certain extent, there was some luck involved: for instance, I'm pretty sure Relic's sleep spell never failed, which wouldn't always be the case.

 

[Systole]

Daylily will claim the MWK Studded and CLW potion, unless anyone else wants. Seriously, step up and take them if you do, because I'm selling the MWK studded unless I blow the roll for a MWK hide shirt, and it's iffy that he'd actually use the potion.

Regarding CLs, those really were pretty appropriate. You ran into a very balanced party. We had buffs and heals (Kaz), buffs/DPS/scout (Q), controller/DPS (Relic), and DPS/meatshield (Daylily). In particular, Relic's Color Spray and Sleep target Will, which is a tough save for most low-level stuff, and a 2Her is massively overpowered at low levels (especially with Enlarge Person, Bless, Charge, and/or Power Attack behind it). And we had good recon on the final battle, which meant we could plan a complete blitz -- this always, ALWAYS favors the players.

Plus, the last encounter went pretty much according to plan and the dice were mostly on our side. Daylily plowed through the dogs, leaving Caan open for Relic's Sleep spell (and he had the arcane bond backup for a second try in case the first didn't go). And we had Q in case Caan decided to run or duck into concealment and start sniping. I was pretty happy with the challenge level -- it's always tough at first level, and better to error on the side of easy than TPK.

 

[jkason]

Experience Points

w/ Hlaalin:

Hawk encounter: 540 xp
Boar encounter: 600 xp
Wolf / weasel encounter: 1000 xp

Total: 2140 xp
per PC (5 PCs): 428 xp

After Hlaalin:

Final encounter (4 dogs + Niam Caan): 1140 xp
per PC (4 PCs): 285

Total encounter xp per PC (final 4): 713

Time-based XP per PC (7xp x 77 days): 539 xp

Total XP per PC (final 4): 1252

Bollocks. A week longer and I could have gotten you to 2nd level. I'm blaming Relic's sleep spell again.

Treasure

w/Hlaalin:

Hawk encounter: 4 gems @ 100gp each: 400gp
Boar encounter: 8 gems @ 100gp each: 800gp
Wolf / Weasel encounter: Gold collar: 200gp

Total: 1400gp
per PC (5 PCs): 280gp

After Hlaalin:

4 gold collars @ 100gp each: 400gp
MW studded leather armor: 175gp
MW composite longbow (+1 Str): 500 gp
Arrows: 1gp
Scimitar: 15gp
Silent whistle: 9 sp
Potion CLW: 50 gp
Gabbiano reward (base w/o time gold): 1200gp, 1 sp (just to even out the math )

Total: 2,342 gp
per PC (4 PCs): 585gp , 5sp

Time gold (6gp x 77 days): 462 gp per PC

Total gold per PC (final 4): 1327gp, 5sp

The treasure split above assumes you guys cashed in everything. If anyone decides to keep a piece of Caan's gear, I think you only have to reduce your own gold by the cost of the item. The others are then effectively splitting 3/4 of the cost in gold from you, so their splits don't change. I'll leave that stuff up to you guys to hash out. Meanwhile, I'm gonna go see if I can't get me some DM credits.

 

[Qik]

Bollocks, indeed. Wonder if we could get someone to run a tiny one-shot just to level us? Maybe whoever runs our next adventure can add a little encounter at the beginning.

 

[Systole]

1102.5g for Daylily
MWK Studded Leather (175)
CLW potion (50)

Last call for either of those.

 

[jbear]

Cheers for everything JK, I enjoyed it. I'll be looking forward to playing in one of your adventures again. Good cool on twisting the plot.

As for my sleep spell ... ha, it will NEVER faillllllllll!!!!!!!

Rats on not making it to 2nd lvl!

What was that about another adventure Quik? If you here anything PM me please, life is about to get crazy for me over the next couple of weeks as I'm moving with my wife and kids back home to New Zealand from Spain. I doubt I'm going to be able to be checking in on the Dunnwright so often but I'll easily see a PM.

Anyway, thanks guys! Look forward to foiling more dastardly plots with you pesky kids!