Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
"Out of the Frying Pan"- Book IV - Into the Fire [STORY HOUR COMPLETED - 12/25/06]
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="el-remmen" data-source="post: 2826887" data-attributes="member: 11"><p><strong><span style="font-size: 15px">DM Commentary for Sessions #82 through Session #87</span></strong></p><p></p><p>The Keepers of the Gate’s adventures in the Mystic City of Topaline are based on the Dungeon Magazine adventure “Beyond the Glittering Veil” (from issue #31), which was an adventure designed to introduce 2E Psionics to an AD&D game – however, by the time to run this adventure came around I still had not found (or come up with) a psionics system for Aquerra that I liked (I since have: Green Ronin’s Psychic Handbook will be the rules for “psionics” in Aquerra (with some tweaks)) – but since I could not divorce myself of the idea of using one of the Mystic demi-plane cities for the set of Hugun’s Key Room, and since I was lazy and did not get around to designing a new one – I just took Topaline from that Dungeon adventure, essentially moving it from where I had originally placed it in Aquerra.</p><p></p><p>You see, when building areas of the setting I almost always tie them to adventures that I like and want to run one day.</p><p></p><p>Anyway, I stripped all the references to psionics out, ignoring the need for rules (since they would not be meeting any psionic foes) and anything left over would be “mysterious powers”. It worked out fine. The physical description of the city and the luminescent sea and the red suns and all of that were my contributions, and is different from the description in the adventure. Also in the original adventure the PCs go to the city to investigate the source of shadows that are infesting a town that are coming from an old obelisk that opens portals. This “shadow infestation” is what would have happened in and around Summit if I had not decided that Finn & crew had succeeded in stopping the priest of Seker. (See Session #49 – the Tale of Finn Fisher).</p><p></p><p>The skeletal creature in the gatehouse was a Crypt Thing. The use of 1E Fiend Folio monsters always endears me to an adventure, and this was no exception – except of course I had to convert him. I also gave him three levels of sorcerer. As I have said in previous commentaries, even though I do not allow the sorcerer as a class (preferring the flavor of the witch class I have re-written a handful of times), I will use sorcerer casting levels as an add-on to creatures I want to have innate magical abilities. Looking back now, I realize I could have given him twice as many sorcerer levels and it might have made for a more challenging combat. He kind of ended up having a glass jaw despite all his hit points since he did not have the magic to back up his bluster. Oh, and I doubled his hit dice for some reason.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Notice I did not include CR or skills. I just can’t be bothered with that stuff for an NPC that will not be recurring, or when I think there is no way it will come into play. On the other hand, for some NPCs I insist on figuring that stuff out (well, the skills, never CR – CR is for suckers!). Also, I added the <em>tongues</em> ability, and changed the <em>Teleport Other </em> ability from being random to being to any location in the Crypt Thing’s ‘domain’. What constitutes its domain? Eh. Whatever. The place it lives and the area it controls. If I were publishing it in a module or something I would detail it, but I see no need to give myself extra work. Also, teleporting individual members of the party throughout Topaline would likely have led to a TPK and would have been a pain in the ass to run with the PCs all separated.</p><p></p><p>As for its feats, again whatever. I imagine Gantus had been there a long time and was bored and grew more and more obsessed with his undead sculpting than improving his ability to guard.</p><p></p><p>The ‘boggles/noggles’ were also in the adventure without much explanation for why they were there, but I see them as some kind of mutated sub-species of the Mystics profoundly changed and stupefied by the planar energy. At some later date I will probably come up with some advanced form with psionic powers – which ideally is what I would have liked to have done with this encounter. They are an old monster that first appeared in some 1E module and later in the 1E MM2. The players hated them! They were not so physically tough, but they had DR and were constantly blinking around. Though my obnoxious squealing of “noggle! noggle!” every time I rolled the dice for them might have contributed to their feelings.</p><p></p><p>Ju-ju zombies… I love ju-ju zombies. And I think running fights are a lot of fun. The players certainly seemed to like the challenge of fighting through a possibly unlimited number of zombies to get to a goal.</p><p></p><p><strong> Chochokpi </strong>: I honestly don’t remember where the idea for <em>Chochokpi the Tree That Grows Backwards</em> came from. I know I had a thread about it in the Rat Bastard DM’s Club, but an old version that no longer exists so I cannot trace back its roots (no pun intended), but really it was something that was inspired by those strange cosmic Marvel Comics characters that make their appearance every now and again, like the In-Betweener and the Living Tribunal. You can read more about what Chochokpi is on the Aquerra wiki <a href="http://aquerra.wikispaces.com/Chochokpi" target="_blank">here</a>. However, the real reason to put Chochokpi there (no, he wasn’t in the original adventure) was to mix in some of the weird chronal stuff I had hinted at along the way, and as a means of giving the party fairly powerful magical items to aid them in Hurgun’s Maze, which I was in the middle of finally detailing and I knew it was going to be the biggest challenge they had faced to date, as well it should be, since it was meant to be the climax of the campaign.</p><p></p><p>I have no stats for Chochokpi, but if I had had to run him in a combat I would have as a gargantuan treant with 0 speed, that could reach any square in the pyramid and more and a 5’ step anywhere in there would have drawn an attack of opportunity. I would also have given him 10 or so levels of druid (figuring he has fewer levels as he grows backwards), but as I figured, it never came to that.</p><p></p><p>As for the details of the metaphysics of it, I didn’t worry too much about it. I mean, here we are talking about unfathomable cosmic craziness and the essence of time and space and divinity and blahitty-blah. It just has to sound good. </p><p></p><p><strong>The Slaadi:</strong> Just another chance to use more 1E Fiend Folio monsters. I see these chaotic monsters just leaping around the planes wreaking havoc and injecting stuff with their eggs. So I just imagined a few of them who somehow accidentally ended up in Topaline and were happy to kill.</p><p></p><p><strong>Introducing Bastian:</strong> I really wanted to try to find a way to introduce Bastian before the party went into the demi-plane. However, Bastian’s player (Jesse) could not join us until after that adventure had already started, and not wanting to wait any longer I figured I could add some long term plot stuff as a means of including him (the mystery of how he got there and what the pillar of fire really was), with the realization that at this point in the campaign it was highly unlikely we’d ever resolve it. Oh, well. . . I know exactly what to start with if we ever have an Out of the Frying Pan reunion game. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /> Also by working it out with the player so that Bastian had an estranged connection to Gothanius (and later it appears to Richard the Red and somehow has knowledge of the dragon and the orc army), I was giving him motivation for being involved and for the PCs to think his help might be useful.</p><p></p><p>I had to use Abderus’ status as a divine creature to smooth over the usual paranoia of a new potential member of the group as to not have it derail the campaign with too much inner-turmoil that would distract them from the final adventure itself. I also used him as a source for some spells for Martin that would make navigating Hurgun’s Maze a little easier.</p><p></p><p><strong>The Questions:</strong> I consider this portion of the adventure a near total failure. I like the idea of riddles. I mean, riddles are a part of the fantasy genre and folktales and myths and the like. And ‘Riddles in the Dark’ is probably my favorite chapter in the Hobbit, but riddles in RPGs are hard to make “fair” in any kind of game sense. Riddles are hard, and typically people are playing characters smarter than they are (or in some cases stupider) – so how fair is it to have the character’s ability to solver riddles lay solely on the player, and how fun is it to just make them roll Intelligence or Wisdom or Knowledge skill checks and say they solved it or didn’t based on a roll? </p><p></p><p>I am thinking something that might work in the future is build some kind of riddle that works in stages or is has multiple parts and then give hints or partial answers based on the success of Knowledge rolls that make actually solving it easier without taking away the fun of actually coming up with an answer.</p><p></p><p>But this time the way I handled it was creating riddle-like open-ended questions, that I figured the players could have fun discussing in character and then have Abderus make his decision based not really on the answer, but the reasoning of the answer. This was something I developed with the help of the Rat Bastards and that I was excited about – but I think all I really did was create a session or so of frustrated playing and annoyance with the questions and the situation. So, in trying to avoid what riddles can do, I still got the same basic outcome, except it took longer! Just goes to show that no matter how long you’ve been DMing, you always have things to learn and adapt to and can still make mistakes. On the other hand, taking chances and looking for new ways to accomplish old things is the only way you are going to discover the things that <em>do</em> work.</p><p></p><p>Anyway, this is basically what I was looking for in terms of answers (but keeping an open-mind for other possibilities I had not thought of that could blow me away):</p><p></p><p><strong>Question 1:</strong></p><p><em> “Up in an arm-like bough of Chochokpi is a tiny bird’s nest, clutched in its fingered branches, where a newly hatched bird sits, just out of your sight above you. Tell me, is that baby bird alive or dead?” </em></p><p>For this I was looking for something expressed how fragile and uncertain life is. Something along the line of <em>“Whether the bird is alive or dead is in Chochokpi’s hands”</em> or <em>If its mother is there to nurture it</em>. The answer the party did give seemed to literal for Abderus’ tastes.</p><p></p><p><strong>Question 2:</strong></p><p><em> “There was a man who treated his son like a servant. And poorly at that. He beat him and gave him only the scraps of the fine dinners he would eat himself. He gave his son the worst and most menial jobs and never showed him an ounce of trust, except to say, ‘You are free to go whenever you please. Ask for it and you will get your due inheritance in gold and you may be on your way.’ His son never took this offer. The question is, was this man’s son a slave?” </em></p><p>For this one I was looking for an exploration of what it means to serve and what it means to be in bondage and where duty lies in there. Unfortunately, I thought that Abderus would also be looking for the kind of unity from the party in terms of their answers – A unity that would display the party’s ability to endeavor in their quest in the Maze, and Roland’s apparent dissatisfaction with the answer tainted it.</p><p></p><p><strong>Question 3:</strong></p><p><em> “If I offered to show you the Key Room and explain everything about it that I know,” Abderus paused. “Would you be willing to leave one of you behind to guard the library and the Key Room in my stead and take over my duty for however long, knowing that you would not die of old age no matter how long it was, but that the wait might change you irrevocably nonetheless?”</em></p><p>I really had no idea here. I just figured I would make the players sweat knowing it’d be cheesy to choose the NPC, and then have the NPC (Dorn) offer to be the one to stay. I considered having Logan be the one to stay behind and thus rid myself of him, but in the end it really did not fit his character.</p><p></p><p><strong>Getting Rid of Logan</strong>: Logan’s player (mmu1) left the game after session #81, which unfortunately was right after the party got to Topaline – otherwise I would not have had him come along as I was not in the mood to drag around an extra NPC. Thankfully, Martin’s player (Eric M.) took over play of Logan in combat, much as he did for Gunthar whenever I had a lot of the foes to run. In the end, I had him run off with Richard the Red based both on a suggestion by his player and as something that just seemed to make sense. I think how Richard came off to Logan as compared to other watch-mages like Martin or Logan’s father (who we cut as a very stern figure in our discussions of the character’s background), there was more bond over how they saw things.</p><p></p><p>The campaign now stood at the cusp of the end and honestly, I was really freaking out about the result and really afraid that all the build up and anticipation for this final chapter would fizzle out and not live up to what it pretended it could be. I even had threads in the RBC moaning about it and looking for affirmation from my fellow DMs. At this point I had a lot of loose threads getting all unraveled nearly at once and I had no time left to delay bringing them into play. </p><p></p><p>Over the next couple of sessions I would have to:</p><p></p><p>- Reveal the Extent of the Orcish Force</p><p>- Open Hurgun’s Maze and allow opportunity for the party to reach the entrance</p><p>- Deal with the waiting Monks in the camp above the ‘amphitheatre’.</p><p>- Have Mozek show up to get into the Maze</p><p>- Deal with Richard and his group trying to get into the Maze</p><p></p><p>I needed to get Richard and his friends away from the Keepers of the Gate because dramatically I felt like their showdown should come closer to the end of the campaign – but I also needed it to actually happen for there to be some kind closure with Richard who has been a specter over everything they had done since they first met him (back in Session #21). So, making him take off for whatever reason was risky. Also, I did not want to deal with so many NPCs when the confrontations with the monks or Mozek happened – as I felt like that would make it less dramatic as well. In the end, when he confronts the Keepers of the Gate within the Maze, I think it is a lot more exciting – so I am glad I did it then.</p><p></p><p>I was going on as much a ride as the players at this point, not sure how it would play out, and as you’ll see in the next session (or maybe the one after that?) you will read about them doing something I did not expect and totally making their journey in the Maze a lot easier for them, but that is for the next commentary.</p><p></p><p><strong>Leveling:</strong> I awarded XP after this set of sessions, making sure to give enough so that everyone (except Bastian) went up a level. I knew this would likely be the last time I gave XP during the campaign. The <em>next</em> time would be the <em>last</em> time. So at this point, Ratchis, Martin and Kazrack were 10th level (the highest level reached in any campaign I have ever run), Roland reached 9th (and got the ‘Voice of Man’ class ability), and Bastian remained at 8th.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="el-remmen, post: 2826887, member: 11"] [b][SIZE=4]DM Commentary for Sessions #82 through Session #87[/SIZE][/b] The Keepers of the Gate’s adventures in the Mystic City of Topaline are based on the Dungeon Magazine adventure “Beyond the Glittering Veil” (from issue #31), which was an adventure designed to introduce 2E Psionics to an AD&D game – however, by the time to run this adventure came around I still had not found (or come up with) a psionics system for Aquerra that I liked (I since have: Green Ronin’s Psychic Handbook will be the rules for “psionics” in Aquerra (with some tweaks)) – but since I could not divorce myself of the idea of using one of the Mystic demi-plane cities for the set of Hugun’s Key Room, and since I was lazy and did not get around to designing a new one – I just took Topaline from that Dungeon adventure, essentially moving it from where I had originally placed it in Aquerra. You see, when building areas of the setting I almost always tie them to adventures that I like and want to run one day. Anyway, I stripped all the references to psionics out, ignoring the need for rules (since they would not be meeting any psionic foes) and anything left over would be “mysterious powers”. It worked out fine. The physical description of the city and the luminescent sea and the red suns and all of that were my contributions, and is different from the description in the adventure. Also in the original adventure the PCs go to the city to investigate the source of shadows that are infesting a town that are coming from an old obelisk that opens portals. This “shadow infestation” is what would have happened in and around Summit if I had not decided that Finn & crew had succeeded in stopping the priest of Seker. (See Session #49 – the Tale of Finn Fisher). The skeletal creature in the gatehouse was a Crypt Thing. The use of 1E Fiend Folio monsters always endears me to an adventure, and this was no exception – except of course I had to convert him. I also gave him three levels of sorcerer. As I have said in previous commentaries, even though I do not allow the sorcerer as a class (preferring the flavor of the witch class I have re-written a handful of times), I will use sorcerer casting levels as an add-on to creatures I want to have innate magical abilities. Looking back now, I realize I could have given him twice as many sorcerer levels and it might have made for a more challenging combat. He kind of ended up having a glass jaw despite all his hit points since he did not have the magic to back up his bluster. Oh, and I doubled his hit dice for some reason. Notice I did not include CR or skills. I just can’t be bothered with that stuff for an NPC that will not be recurring, or when I think there is no way it will come into play. On the other hand, for some NPCs I insist on figuring that stuff out (well, the skills, never CR – CR is for suckers!). Also, I added the [i]tongues[/i] ability, and changed the [i]Teleport Other [/i] ability from being random to being to any location in the Crypt Thing’s ‘domain’. What constitutes its domain? Eh. Whatever. The place it lives and the area it controls. If I were publishing it in a module or something I would detail it, but I see no need to give myself extra work. Also, teleporting individual members of the party throughout Topaline would likely have led to a TPK and would have been a pain in the ass to run with the PCs all separated. As for its feats, again whatever. I imagine Gantus had been there a long time and was bored and grew more and more obsessed with his undead sculpting than improving his ability to guard. The ‘boggles/noggles’ were also in the adventure without much explanation for why they were there, but I see them as some kind of mutated sub-species of the Mystics profoundly changed and stupefied by the planar energy. At some later date I will probably come up with some advanced form with psionic powers – which ideally is what I would have liked to have done with this encounter. They are an old monster that first appeared in some 1E module and later in the 1E MM2. The players hated them! They were not so physically tough, but they had DR and were constantly blinking around. Though my obnoxious squealing of “noggle! noggle!” every time I rolled the dice for them might have contributed to their feelings. Ju-ju zombies… I love ju-ju zombies. And I think running fights are a lot of fun. The players certainly seemed to like the challenge of fighting through a possibly unlimited number of zombies to get to a goal. [b] Chochokpi [/b]: I honestly don’t remember where the idea for [I]Chochokpi the Tree That Grows Backwards[/I] came from. I know I had a thread about it in the Rat Bastard DM’s Club, but an old version that no longer exists so I cannot trace back its roots (no pun intended), but really it was something that was inspired by those strange cosmic Marvel Comics characters that make their appearance every now and again, like the In-Betweener and the Living Tribunal. You can read more about what Chochokpi is on the Aquerra wiki [url=http://aquerra.wikispaces.com/Chochokpi]here[/url]. However, the real reason to put Chochokpi there (no, he wasn’t in the original adventure) was to mix in some of the weird chronal stuff I had hinted at along the way, and as a means of giving the party fairly powerful magical items to aid them in Hurgun’s Maze, which I was in the middle of finally detailing and I knew it was going to be the biggest challenge they had faced to date, as well it should be, since it was meant to be the climax of the campaign. I have no stats for Chochokpi, but if I had had to run him in a combat I would have as a gargantuan treant with 0 speed, that could reach any square in the pyramid and more and a 5’ step anywhere in there would have drawn an attack of opportunity. I would also have given him 10 or so levels of druid (figuring he has fewer levels as he grows backwards), but as I figured, it never came to that. As for the details of the metaphysics of it, I didn’t worry too much about it. I mean, here we are talking about unfathomable cosmic craziness and the essence of time and space and divinity and blahitty-blah. It just has to sound good. [b]The Slaadi:[/b] Just another chance to use more 1E Fiend Folio monsters. I see these chaotic monsters just leaping around the planes wreaking havoc and injecting stuff with their eggs. So I just imagined a few of them who somehow accidentally ended up in Topaline and were happy to kill. [b]Introducing Bastian:[/b] I really wanted to try to find a way to introduce Bastian before the party went into the demi-plane. However, Bastian’s player (Jesse) could not join us until after that adventure had already started, and not wanting to wait any longer I figured I could add some long term plot stuff as a means of including him (the mystery of how he got there and what the pillar of fire really was), with the realization that at this point in the campaign it was highly unlikely we’d ever resolve it. Oh, well. . . I know exactly what to start with if we ever have an Out of the Frying Pan reunion game. ;) Also by working it out with the player so that Bastian had an estranged connection to Gothanius (and later it appears to Richard the Red and somehow has knowledge of the dragon and the orc army), I was giving him motivation for being involved and for the PCs to think his help might be useful. I had to use Abderus’ status as a divine creature to smooth over the usual paranoia of a new potential member of the group as to not have it derail the campaign with too much inner-turmoil that would distract them from the final adventure itself. I also used him as a source for some spells for Martin that would make navigating Hurgun’s Maze a little easier. [b]The Questions:[/b] I consider this portion of the adventure a near total failure. I like the idea of riddles. I mean, riddles are a part of the fantasy genre and folktales and myths and the like. And ‘Riddles in the Dark’ is probably my favorite chapter in the Hobbit, but riddles in RPGs are hard to make “fair” in any kind of game sense. Riddles are hard, and typically people are playing characters smarter than they are (or in some cases stupider) – so how fair is it to have the character’s ability to solver riddles lay solely on the player, and how fun is it to just make them roll Intelligence or Wisdom or Knowledge skill checks and say they solved it or didn’t based on a roll? I am thinking something that might work in the future is build some kind of riddle that works in stages or is has multiple parts and then give hints or partial answers based on the success of Knowledge rolls that make actually solving it easier without taking away the fun of actually coming up with an answer. But this time the way I handled it was creating riddle-like open-ended questions, that I figured the players could have fun discussing in character and then have Abderus make his decision based not really on the answer, but the reasoning of the answer. This was something I developed with the help of the Rat Bastards and that I was excited about – but I think all I really did was create a session or so of frustrated playing and annoyance with the questions and the situation. So, in trying to avoid what riddles can do, I still got the same basic outcome, except it took longer! Just goes to show that no matter how long you’ve been DMing, you always have things to learn and adapt to and can still make mistakes. On the other hand, taking chances and looking for new ways to accomplish old things is the only way you are going to discover the things that [I]do[/I] work. Anyway, this is basically what I was looking for in terms of answers (but keeping an open-mind for other possibilities I had not thought of that could blow me away): [b]Question 1:[/b] [I] “Up in an arm-like bough of Chochokpi is a tiny bird’s nest, clutched in its fingered branches, where a newly hatched bird sits, just out of your sight above you. Tell me, is that baby bird alive or dead?” [/I] For this I was looking for something expressed how fragile and uncertain life is. Something along the line of [I]“Whether the bird is alive or dead is in Chochokpi’s hands”[/I] or [I]If its mother is there to nurture it[/I]. The answer the party did give seemed to literal for Abderus’ tastes. [b]Question 2:[/b] [I] “There was a man who treated his son like a servant. And poorly at that. He beat him and gave him only the scraps of the fine dinners he would eat himself. He gave his son the worst and most menial jobs and never showed him an ounce of trust, except to say, ‘You are free to go whenever you please. Ask for it and you will get your due inheritance in gold and you may be on your way.’ His son never took this offer. The question is, was this man’s son a slave?” [/I] For this one I was looking for an exploration of what it means to serve and what it means to be in bondage and where duty lies in there. Unfortunately, I thought that Abderus would also be looking for the kind of unity from the party in terms of their answers – A unity that would display the party’s ability to endeavor in their quest in the Maze, and Roland’s apparent dissatisfaction with the answer tainted it. [b]Question 3:[/b] [I] “If I offered to show you the Key Room and explain everything about it that I know,” Abderus paused. “Would you be willing to leave one of you behind to guard the library and the Key Room in my stead and take over my duty for however long, knowing that you would not die of old age no matter how long it was, but that the wait might change you irrevocably nonetheless?”[/I] I really had no idea here. I just figured I would make the players sweat knowing it’d be cheesy to choose the NPC, and then have the NPC (Dorn) offer to be the one to stay. I considered having Logan be the one to stay behind and thus rid myself of him, but in the end it really did not fit his character. [b]Getting Rid of Logan[/b]: Logan’s player (mmu1) left the game after session #81, which unfortunately was right after the party got to Topaline – otherwise I would not have had him come along as I was not in the mood to drag around an extra NPC. Thankfully, Martin’s player (Eric M.) took over play of Logan in combat, much as he did for Gunthar whenever I had a lot of the foes to run. In the end, I had him run off with Richard the Red based both on a suggestion by his player and as something that just seemed to make sense. I think how Richard came off to Logan as compared to other watch-mages like Martin or Logan’s father (who we cut as a very stern figure in our discussions of the character’s background), there was more bond over how they saw things. The campaign now stood at the cusp of the end and honestly, I was really freaking out about the result and really afraid that all the build up and anticipation for this final chapter would fizzle out and not live up to what it pretended it could be. I even had threads in the RBC moaning about it and looking for affirmation from my fellow DMs. At this point I had a lot of loose threads getting all unraveled nearly at once and I had no time left to delay bringing them into play. Over the next couple of sessions I would have to: - Reveal the Extent of the Orcish Force - Open Hurgun’s Maze and allow opportunity for the party to reach the entrance - Deal with the waiting Monks in the camp above the ‘amphitheatre’. - Have Mozek show up to get into the Maze - Deal with Richard and his group trying to get into the Maze I needed to get Richard and his friends away from the Keepers of the Gate because dramatically I felt like their showdown should come closer to the end of the campaign – but I also needed it to actually happen for there to be some kind closure with Richard who has been a specter over everything they had done since they first met him (back in Session #21). So, making him take off for whatever reason was risky. Also, I did not want to deal with so many NPCs when the confrontations with the monks or Mozek happened – as I felt like that would make it less dramatic as well. In the end, when he confronts the Keepers of the Gate within the Maze, I think it is a lot more exciting – so I am glad I did it then. I was going on as much a ride as the players at this point, not sure how it would play out, and as you’ll see in the next session (or maybe the one after that?) you will read about them doing something I did not expect and totally making their journey in the Maze a lot easier for them, but that is for the next commentary. [b]Leveling:[/b] I awarded XP after this set of sessions, making sure to give enough so that everyone (except Bastian) went up a level. I knew this would likely be the last time I gave XP during the campaign. The [I]next[/I] time would be the [I]last[/I] time. So at this point, Ratchis, Martin and Kazrack were 10th level (the highest level reached in any campaign I have ever run), Roland reached 9th (and got the ‘Voice of Man’ class ability), and Bastian remained at 8th. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
"Out of the Frying Pan"- Book IV - Into the Fire [STORY HOUR COMPLETED - 12/25/06]
Top