This session report is going to be a bit brief. It was our first time back in-person, so we started the session with a group lunch and then spent a while socializing before getting into the system and then actually playing. Technically, the session was a one-shot (hence why I hadn’t done setting creation yet), but I had a hunch we’d be switching over from OSE.
The premise of the “one-shot” was that we were going to retcon our
prior session of OSE. In that previous session, the group had come up with a plan to attack some ghouls in a barrow. They’d brought supplies, abandoned their plan because of hubris, and got routed.
The original party consisted of an acrobat, a barbarian, a cleric, and a thief. We were using the advanced fantasy genre rules with homebrew races. When I converted them to WWN, I tried to keep the spirit of the characters. I did not create homebrew foci for my homebrew species (though there were concessions made for small ones), but I may do so later. Note that there are no humans in my setting, so I’m treating the species as fungible by default.
- Deirdre: the barbarian was converted to a warrior with the barbarian background. I gave her the whirlwind assault focus at level 2. Shocking Assault was tempting, but she uses a “big” weapon, and it felt more fun to have her wade into battle and kill lots of enemies. I had to switch her weapon over from a two-handed sword (OSE) to a great axe because great swords are too expensive for 1st level characters.
- Dingo: the thief was converted as a pure expert with the criminal (thief) background. I gave him Specialist (Sneak) and Trapmaster. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do for his second focus, but Trapmaster ended up being a really good choice (the player seemed to like it).
- La Nachou: the acrobat was the most difficult to convert. The acrobat’s thing is its leaping abilities, but the player also felt his character was kind of useless. If you can set it up, you get double damage, but that’s not always easy or possible. For this character, I made him a specialist/partial-mage with the High Magic tradition and the artisan background (because he’d rolled coppersmith as his secondary skill in OSE). I chose Velicitous Imbuement and The Excellent Transpicuous Transformation along with Retain Sorcery to let him do that multiple times per day. I gave La Nachou Alert and Impervious Defense for his foci.
- Tama Nya: the cleric was converted over as a partial-mage/partial-mage with the Healer and Necromancer traditions. I’m not currently allowing the Gyre-specific classes from “Arts of the Gyre”, so Sarulite Blood Priest wasn’t an option. I took Armored Magic for her focus. This more or less recreated the basic cleric from OSE except she was much better at healing and killing undead (because Smite the Dead does guaranteed damage).
Since we rolled something approximating 3d6 in order (roll seven times in order, drop lowest result), I kept the results from OSE and reused them for WWN. I also followed WWN’s rule for assigning a 14. In the future, we’ll just use follow the normal character creation process. Hit points were rolled, and I took the equipment packages and tweaked them to fit. I also converted our money over from OSE at a 25:1 ratio (I was using a sp-based economy, but it was just multiplying OSE prices by 10).
Before we got started, everyone had a chance to buy equipment. They bought a bunch of oil, which was the original plan from OSE. They wanted to set up an ambush and set the ghouls on fire. For the ghouls themselves, I converted them from OSE with a few tweaks. I followed the naturalistic armor recommendations from WWN and gave them only a single attack (since that seems to be the norm) doing the naturalistic amount of damage. I patterned their paralyzing attack after the Polop weapons, which give you two chances to avoid the paralysis (first you lose your next Main action then you are paralyzed for the rest of the scene). While I could have used the OSE ghoul as written, this felt more in the spirit of WWN.
We started off the session outside the dungeon (Deeps?). It has multiple entrances, and I wanted to give the PCs a chance to decide how to go about things. They’d been here before, so they knew what the trade-offs were depending on the entrance. They could choose to climb down the side of the cliff and enter on the sea-side opening. The risk there is a trap that could trigger, dropping portcullises and alerting the ghouls to their presence. There is a chimney they could climb down, which would put them in an alcove off to the side. They seemed averse to climbing though. The entrance they chose was one hidden under dirt and leather, and buried under some rocks. They crawled through it and entered the barrow.
Once inside the dungeon, I engaged with my exploration procedure. By default WWN assumes an abstract dungeon layout. I like maps, so I followed the slightly more strict time progression. I kept distances abstract, choosing to track time based on scenes since the party spent most of their time sneaking about the hallways trying to get information. They had a lantern they used to provide light. My assumption is ghouls see just fine in the dark (and most nasty things probably do if they are active at night, since there are no stars). The ghouls here had a deal with some locals to come in and worship at a shrine, so they are not default hostile to people who come into their lair. Otherwise, the party’s sneaking about would not have been as effective.
Unlike last time, the party didn’t just completely abandon their plan. I’m sure that was part of it, but they also seemed to key in on Dingo’s Trapmaster focus. They wanted to set something up with that and stage an ambush. Even though that was literally their plan last time, having it be on Dingo’s character sheet seemed to reinforce that it was something they should do. Anyway, they snuck down the passage (shuttering their lantern as they snuck past the ghouls in their dining hall) and made their way to the alcove.
While they were doing this, I was rolling wandering encounter checks. I like the way WWN gives you guidelines on how frequently to roll. OSE does this too, but it’s mostly up to discretion. Since the sight was not particularly organized or alert, I was rolling every three turns. Fortunately, I got a 1 the first time I rolled. I’d run out of time, so I went with what I had. In the future, I think following the suggestion in WWN to tie it back to the inhabitants is a good one. I had an existing table of events, which rolled for a patrol. The master of the ghouls was going to leave her room and walk about the dungeon. I had her coming up ahead, and the party had to decide what to do.
They were near a door, so they opened it up and saw the fire beetle inside. For some reason, they thought it was a good idea to leave a ration in the hallway for the beetle. They retreated back and listened. They heard a ghoul come out and say something, but none of them spoke the innate language of the undead, so they had no idea what he was saying (mostly something along the lines of ‘why is this here?’). They then decided to fall back again to another passage, back closer to where they entered. They left a trail of coins this time, and at the end of the passage, Dingo set up a fire trap, and they set up an ambush.
I figured at this point word had gotten back to the master (a Lady Ghast and an accompanying ghoul) that someone was up to something. She found the coins followed them to see what was happening. The other ghoul led the way. When the ghoul got to the trap, it activated, and the ghoul got burnt. Since it was a set ambush, I gave the party a surprise round (they made their group Dex/Sneak versus the ghouls’ roll), and they alpha-striked them. The ghoul died right away. It had had barely any hit points left, and Deirdre moved into position to finish it off. She then make a Snap Attack to make a ranged attack against Lady Ghast. Tama cast
Smite the Dead, and either Dingo or La Nachou finished off Lady Ghast at the start of the combat round itself (the party against won initiative).
Note that what we did with Make a Snap Attack was a mistake. I’d initially read it as you sacrifice your next Main Action. It’s actually your Main Action for the round. If you go first, you’re only going to Make a Snap Attack if you are reacting to someone who reacted to you (there is a good example of this in the SWN section on combat). If you want to interrupt someone, you have to Hold an Action. Even if we hadn’t run that wrongly, I think the party would have won overwhelmingly. Deirdre had used her Veteran’s Luck to good effect. Even without it, she still dealt a minimum of 4 damage to anything with an AC of 15 or less.
After that, they returned to the area with the fire beetle. At this point, the dungeon was on alert, but I was rolling terribly on my wandering encounter checks. They snuck into that area and found a ghoul dressed in priest robes and the fire bettle (named Glowy or something like that). There was a statue of the Sovereign of Disgust, one of the celestial lords, and a minor cult back in the Grand Kingdom. This is pre-world-building, so I expect religion will be different, so this could change (since WWN’s procedure seems more focused on the religions themselves rather than on grab bags of deities). Regardless, the ghoul asked if they were there to worship. He could get the boot and step on them if they’d like. Tama responded by blowing the ghoul up with her last casting of
Smite the Dead. The player
really liked that. Glowy freaked out, and they eventually calmed it down with some rations.
The party grabbed some valuable-looking candlesticks made of silver and left. I figured since Dingo had a thief background, it would be his thing to know the value of stuff like that. I communicated that secretly to the player and left it up to him what to tell the party. I don’t think he actually has yet.
The party snuck back out and made camp. During the night, the ghouls followed them back to their camp, but I rolled “predictably hostile” for their reaction when the watch found them. Tama really wanted to blow them up (but she was out of spells). The ghouls confirmed they were the ones who killed the boss, and decided to back off (figuring it wasn’t worth determining empirically whether they could take the party).
We wrapped at that point because I didn’t want to do any wilderness exploration or travel without having setting generation completed (because I knew the map would likely change). I’m using a hybrid of individual and group goals for XP. You set two group goals at the start of the session, and you get 3 XP for the first you complete. Anyone who helps gets 1 XP (for each goal completed). Whether a goal is completed is determined by group consensus. There was no group goal because that is determined at the end of the session (to help me with planning). Everyone got 4–7 XP. We’re using a slower version of the slow (2× slow) track since I expect the average amount of XP to be higher.
Overall, the players liked it. The guy who played La Nachou thought it was the coolest character he’s played. The Tama’s player was really into killing undead in OSE, but the character was not particularly good at it. Now the character is much better. Deirdre’s player has terrible dice luck, so both Shock damage and Veteran’s Luck lets him not suck at combat (a common source of amusement in other systems). Dingo also got to do some cool stuff, and I was happy to see they were really into setting up traps. I expect this to be a common tactic going forward.
