ZEITGEIST Warriors of the Waste take on Zeitgeist!

[Elfshire]

I meant to do this earlier; just sharing some of the details of my game for all those interested. My group is in flux at the moment, but should end up with 5 players (plus me) again, like what I started with. For more info, houserules, etc, you can check out my campaign's Obsidian Portal page, located here: (fixed to bypass the silly "you're a newbie, you can't post links" feature)

obsidianportal.com
/campaigns
/zeitgeist-wotw

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The group's (initial) makeup...


Arthur Pierson - Human, refluffed Battlemind, Gunsmith (Initially wanted to play the group's technologist, but it was already spoken for, so he made do with Gunsmith). He prefers to wield a warhammer and a heavy shield, and has done custom work on both to install pistols in them, all the better to increase his versatility in combat. His hammer's haft also contains a chamber for several magically-charged shells of his own design, imbuing his martial prowess with supernatural effects [Dubbed as a "Piersonian Augmentor," it basically functions to give him access to the battlemind's psionics even though his player didn't envision him as a psionic character - mechanically, he's the exact same as a normal battlemind]. Native of Flint, and son of a docker foreman.


Darsys Madenia - Tiefling, Warlock (Fey pact), Spirit Medium.
A distant and unloved cousin of the Jierre family, Darsys never showed much talent for technology. Faced with increasing animosity as she grew into an adult, she decided to catch a boat to Risur and start a new life there. Once out of the dead magic zone, she drew the attention of local fey - tieflings that distance themselves from iron and steam are a novelty, after all. She found them much easier to befriend than her family back home, and soon caught the attention of the servants of the Voice of Rot. Striking a bargain with them, she was given not only powerful offensive magic, but the ability to speak with the dead... Given her unique talents and her limited insider knowledge of Danor and the Jierres, it's no wonder Delft snapped her up.


Sgt. Drew McTaggert - Human, Warlord, Yerasol Veteran.
One of the oldest constables in the RHC's employ, Drew was a veteran of both the 3rd and 4th Yerasol wars. His family had originally lived on one of the islands in the archipelago, but his home was now deep behind enemy lines, their bodies likely dead on the sidelines of some battlefield, there to stay unburied until Risur wins back that land. His experiences made him a very coarse individual, prone to swearing and yelling and no small amount of drinking, but the brash volume of his voice tended to get his allies up and moving.


Hugo Von Gearkinson - Human, Hybrid Wizard/Artificer, Technologist.
By contrast, Hugo is one of the youngest constables on the payroll, just 19 years old. He had a brief stint in the police force, and made some small reputation for himself at the firing range... at least until people figured out that his incredible accuracy with a handgun was just due to his ability to channel a Magic Missile spell through a firearm. After putting his incredible intellect and arcane talents on display, though, it wasn't long before he got transferred to the RHC.


Qiyet Outrunner - Half-orc, Ranger, Martial Scientist.
She was born and raised in Ber, the product of a marriage between a human Executore dola Liberta and an orc ex-slave. A follower of the Panoply movement, she was drawn to the idea of visiting other countries from an early age - combining this with the knack for combat she inherited from her mother led her to apply for entry at the Jierre Sciens d'Arms. She was rejected, at which point her mother took a trip to Danor... two weeks later, there was a strange story in Danor's newspapers about how one of the assistant Deans at the academy had gone missing under mysterious circumstances. The very next semester, Qiyet was enrolled with a scholarship, though it wasn't easy for her being the only half-orc in attendance. The moment she graduated (after writing her thesis, “Beyond Brute Force: The Accuracy and Art of Battle Charging”), she packed up and moved again, this time to Risur, which was far more welcoming. She quickly made friends with a few professors at Battalion, who passed her name on to Delft.


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We play once every month (hopefully to change soon), and after about 6 months of playing, we're midway through Adventure 2. I'll come back tomorrow or Monday with my summary of Adventure 1.

 

[Elfshire]

Adventure 1 took us about two and a half sessions to complete, and it went over pretty well - I'd had my eye on running Zeitgeist for a while before I was actually able to get a group together for it, and I was pleased that it ran just as well, if not even better than I'd hoped. Session 1 was easily the best game I've ever ran in my ~10 years of being a DM.

It started out a little iffy, with the players needing a bit of prompting to figure out how to successfully canvass a crowd. I had Stover Delft on-site, giving the constables a brief refresher on standard procedure before excusing himself to go hobnob with the bigwigs. Darsys was the only one who jumped on the chance to roleplay this, chatting up one of the dockers in order to get the names of the others - from there it was just a manner of mucking through a few skill checks. They fell a bit short, so I had two of the constables running to stop the men as they were crossing the bridge... then the fun really started.

Eager to test out their new characters, my players threw themselves into the fight. Arthur's battlemind power selections were largely focused around pushing, so he alone was responsible for taking out half the combatants by hurling them into the water. Hugo's player surprised me, getting around the problem of his simulacrum's lack of a movement speed by summoning it on top of a flower cart and then pushing it around himself, while using it as mobile cover.

Moving onto the boat, my players were settling into the game, and it seemed like everyone had one or two NPCs they wanted to chat with during the opening ceremonies of the shindig. I played up Massarde as slightly drunk, and miffed that the crowning jewel of his battleship was being used as a dining hall, loudly complaining to Hugo, who just drunk in all the technical specs of the vessel, which would serve him well later. Qiyet and Drew spent some time talking to Cpt. Smith, but focused more on his qualifications and his normal position within the RHC, since they'd heard his command on the Coaltongue was only temporary. Darsys and Arthur stuck with Delft, who gave them the order to go belowdecks and find the Duchess once the King's speech started to draw near.

Hugo decided to tag along as they went below, and knocking on the door yielded no answer. Arthur took out his hammer and busted down the door, but Darsys was the first into the room - empty, except for a halfling hiding behind the doorframe that jumped out and brought her down past bloodied in one hit! The battle was on; the party used the 'speaking tubes' to call their allies down, starting to chase Sokana down through the ship after she crawled in one of the portholes on the gun deck. She made a break for the magazine, and Hugo went down to the engine room to secure it, not expecting to find two saboteurs already messing with it. He took a hit or two from those wrenches, but luckily they were too busy using their rust wands on the steam valves to seriously try to drop the lone technologist.

Arthur's player straight-up panicked when the fire sprites showed up next to the barrels full of gunpowder; I practically had to talk the guy down from tearing up his character sheet amid shouts of "game over, man! Game over!" I knew that the wards were still in place, and that Sokana was out to blow the engine up first... but he didn't. It didn't help that he spent 3-4 rounds fighting those minions and missing about six attack rolls, between free attacks from Drew and burning his action point.

Qiyet did a good deal of damage to the eladrin, and then got totally screwed from her immobilizing spell. The handmaiden managed to get allllll the way down to the engine level, just one move action away from tossing in the amber rod and dropping the countdown from 15 rounds to 7. Then Darsys popped up in the hatchway above and sizzled the woman's brain with a daily power, Curse of the Dark Dream.

Of course, the engine was still going critical. When Hugo got a turn to assess their options, I told him that since he'd spent his time during the party talking to Massarde about the capacitor and the Brand, he could try to channel the heat out through that... but it'd require three checks to figure out the controls and the incantations. Nature was one of them, and our ranger, Qiyet, had picked Dungeoneering at first level, instead. She rolled anyway... 19!

End of the night, it was a VERY close call, but the ship was saved with no casualties. I could not stop smiling; I'm so proud of my players

 

[Elfshire]

At the start of the next session, I tried to really play up the level of tension in the RHC office over the following week or so - everyone knew that the Duchess was now a traitor to the crown, and moreover she'd gone and taken over a Danor-controlled island. I told the players that everything was being done to downplay the seriousness of these events to the populace, but in reality it was pretty likely that either a civil war or a Fifth Yerasol War would start anytime now. Or even both at once.

So when Lya Jierre showed up, it was almost a relief, at least until the party experienced just how cold she could be. She barely spoke a word to the disowned Darsys, and she was outright patronizing to Qiyet: "Oh, you were educated in Danor? Yes, I think I remember your thesis. It was... interesting, I suppose."

The PCs were even less impressed by the idea that they wouldn't even be taking point on this mission. It was now that I mentioned that the five of them were essentially assigned to what the Flint office referred to as "Team 2." Team 1 consisted of highly-trained individuals who'd been promoted to the Shale office some time ago, and out of deference to their accomplishments, no constables had been given the honor of their team's previous numerical title. But, being under orders, the party went along for the ride on the Impossible and met up with them.

Most of players immediately lost all respect for Tanya - the running joke in my gaming group is that shamans are the worst class in all of 4e. But Qiyet unexpectedly developed a near-instant crush on Seven-Foot Dan, and readily took him up on his offer to go up on the main deck and break stuff.

Fast-forward past the tense moments after Team 1 disembarked from the ship and underwater for a suspiciously long time. Drew went ahead, finding poor Burton with his leg smashed and pinned... he decided an impromptu amputation was the best way to help him. Rutger paled when he realized half the constables along on this stealth mission were already taken out of commission, but my players bravely forged ahead with no hope of the cavalry coming to save them.

The fight against Dupiers was tough, since most of the party had next to nothing in the form of ranged attacks, but eventually they managed to struggle their way up the platforms and subdue him. As expected, they snatched up the golden icons with fairly little thought as to their larger significance, though Qiyet at least was able to figure out that the dots on one side represented constellations (I created custom pixelized art representing the artistic drawings of each planet for the main sides of each coin). I decided that the icon of Nem was blank, but symbols appeared in its surface if you looked at it with your newly-gained darkvision.


After trekking across the island (and totally avoiding the headless golem), they made their way into Axis Fort and proceeded to massively foul up their Stealth checks. More on that later.

The lighthouse defenders was a pretty fun encounter - though I'd hoped to get more use out of the wizard before he bit it in the second or third round when Qiyet used an Avilona-assisted flying charge plus an action point to kill him in two hits. The minions were almost useless, between Arthur's high AC and Qiyet's resist 5 all from the icon of Urim.

Even with all their failed Stealth, the Lighthouse Standoff was pretty easy when they figured out that even one point of barricade could hold back any number of troops for the whole round, after which they could just build another one. nobody thought to use the flaming oil to take out troops in front of the door, and when I pointed this option out to them afterwards, most of the players seemed resentful at the fact that the game asked them to learn an entirely new and unfamiliar hybrid of combat and skill challenge in one go, AND expected them to think outside the box while doing so.

The advent of Asrabey's arrival was used as a cliffhanger to end the session. When we picked up again, I tried to drop some hints that the 'fire monster' was really just an eladrin warrior, but the party wasn't really catching on. It got to the point where I had to spell it out to them directly, somewhere around the time when they were confronting him inside the tower and they were STILL calling him that. Strange how they get hung up sometimes.

They interrupted my 'boxed text moment,' some of the faster/more ranged-capable PCs thinking they could hit him as he approached the inner wall. I really should've just said "he's too far away, by the time you get over there he's already speeding away through the patch of jungle where the wall used to be," but instead I did an ad-hoc combat encounter. I tried to focus on getting him out of there first and foremost, but in hindsight I wish I'd just once let him turn around and swing at a PC so I could've said "Hm, how's an attack roll against AC 43 sound?" Maybe that would've given them the fear I was trying to instill in them!

Gillie Dhu was kind of an awkward moment, I admit I introduced him kind of ham-handedly. It would've helped if I'd put a little more thought into him beforehand, but I also think the adventure didn't do a very good job of explaining why he was there in the first place, or why he'd attack the PCs who clearly had it out for the jerk that already burnt up his hedges.

I unfortunately HAD to railroad things a bit from this point. With a few shouted insults and baffled questions on the constables' part, I ended the fight with Gillie after the first round or so, especially since I realized he could easily beat the crap out of them to the point where they wouldn't stand a chance against Asrabey, even with their entourage of minions. So Gillie apologized and made a wall of ivy for them to climb up to the roof. Qiyet made it up there way before anyone else, but I knew if she burst down the door she'd get fried and end up having a terrible time the rest of the night. So I kinda forced her to sit up on the roof and listen to the 'cutscene' dialog between Asrabey, Nathan, and Ethelyn. Hopefully they'll realize later in the campaign just how important that little exchange was.

To their credit, once everyone was in the room, they DID try to talk Asrabey down, but eventually they decided they just didn't want to give Asrabey pretty much any of the things he was asking for: Nathan as a prisoner and/or Ethelyn's death. So they fought - I used his level 2 solo stats since it sounded like more of a fun encounter, not to mention the fact that using his normal numbers would mean that only Hugo and the nameless flunkies would actually be able to damage him, since most of the PC's half-damage-on-a-miss powers were long gone.

Before this session had started, Drew's player had approached me, saying he wanted to play a different character, one that better filled in some of the party's needs. I agreed to allow him to switch, as long as I got to kill off his current one in dramatic fashion. Sure enough, the opportunity presented itself during the fight, and Asrabey got one or two lucky hits, managing to drop the Warlord. For a second, I was worried that they'd just pick him back up at the end of the fight... but the dice gods were with me that night. He used his Close Burst attack and critted the helpless Drew, taking him WAY into the negatives, prompting a fit of giggles from the player himself and horrified stares from everyone else at the table. Classic.

Qiyet decided she didn't like seeing her friends turned into a magic-item-covered mound of ash, so she answered this little slight with an axe-blow to the neck, killing Asrabey not-so-permanently (not that she knows that).

 

[RangerWickett]

Overall, how did the players enjoy things?

Well, we're going to be putting out an updated version in the hardcover. Any suggestions for tweaking things?

 

[Elfshire]

Overall, my players are really enjoying the campaign thus far. There have been one or two semi-dramatic moments though, and most of that revolves around the Prestige system.

Thing is, I LIKE the prestige system. I think it's a really cool idea for keeping a lid on power creep via magic items, and making rare items actually feel rare. But my players find it sometimes frustratingly hard to understand - I've mollified this by saying that I can take care of the nitty-gritty number tracking, basically asking them for a roll when/if they need one, and letting them know how long they have to wait for something to come in.

Mostly I think the issue is that when the players get a paycheck (especially at the beginning of Adventure 2), they all want to request some new Uncommon item, and really at this point only two of them can reliably do so per day. With five people in the party, that means at best the whole party won't be fully equipped until three days later, which is a significant wait in the context of an adventure. Not to mention the whole "if I screw up this Diplomacy check, I'm not getting that shiny new axe until a whole WEEK from now" thing.

Really, I think they just need to adjust to the fact that they aren't adventurers anymore. They're government employees - and that means having to put up with slow, blundering bureaucracies.

As for the content of Adventure 1, I wouldn't change TOO much. As I said, session 1 on the Coaltongue was probably the best game I've ever run! As for the rest...

- Maybe knock down the amount of resist all granted by the Urim Icon, or at least change it so it works only when bloodied, instead of vice-versa.
- Clarify who Gillie Dhu is, how he got there, what motivates him, etc.
- Fix the way enemies work in the standoff; maybe if they forgo their attack, they can move again, instead? That way, if a barricade goes down, the remaining foes can flood inside.

Everything else was great. Asrabey was certainly a memorable foe - I can't wait to see their faces when he returns from the dead in adventure 5. And may I say - I commend you for taking the time to listen to your fans.

 

[Elfshire]

Chapter 2

Apologies for the lack of updates - as of this writing, the players have already completed this chapter.

Here and there, I've been sprinkling in cameos of the so-called 'B Team,' or Team 3 as they're known at my table, so that the eventual showdown between them and the PCs during Chapter 3 (and later, their deaths during Chapter 5) is more meaningful. Carlao himself came up and congratulated the PCs after their victory, and I mentioned that the office in general was proud of their fine work. Things began to settle down after that, and so Delft began to look into other problems for his constables to solve...

I started the next session off with a bit of background on Gale, at least what the PCs would know of her. Fey sympathizer, tech-hater, terrorist, and believer in a cause that at least some of my party was sympathetic to (a support which would grow as my player roster changed over the course of this chapter). My player who used to play McTaggert was now playing Enna (pronounced EE-na), a female elven skyseer shaman.

After giving them a brief notice on what had happened at the consulate, Delft bid the constables go an investigate, specifically to see if there was flight magic involved and/or a possible connection to Gale. My player's process was a little lopsided, which I didn't predict, but anything they actually DID look into, they were quite thorough with. For example, they didn't search Nilasa's body at all, nor did they take a single look at the box of chocolates she'd brought, and they didn't even question any of the staff besides LeBrix. But Qiyet found the hidden bloodstain, Darsys got a number of big clues off Nilasa's spirit (killed by a shadow, used flying magic, gave away some documents she'd stolen to a man on the street. Though she wouldn't tell them who she was working for, or what documents she'd taken), and Enna found the site of the scuffle in the alley.

By the time they'd left, they'd pieced together that the consulate was covering up what really happened, and they'd thoroughly pissed off LeBrix with their questioning, and by bluntly pointing out inconsistencies in his account of what happened. They'd also found evidence of post-mortem healing on the victim's face, the wound caused by some kind of necrotic weapon...

As the consulate closed their doors and went back to work, a carriage driver rolled up, asking the party if they'd seen a sharp-looking man with a goatee - this led them to the House of Blue Birds, where a little diplomacy and badge-waving got them up to see Wolfgang's room. All that they got out of the trip was a black-stained rag and the man's name, as well as the names of two references of his, living in the city. They also learned that an "Officer Porter" was here investigating earlier, and subsequent inquiries with the police confirmed that no such man worked in Flint law enforcement.

Speaking with those references - Doctor Camp and Professor Kindleton - let the party learn more about the man they pursued, though not his specific hiding spot at the moment. He was a doctor from the Malice Lands, having traveled to Flint quite suddenly after some kind of marital trouble. My players instantly suspected he was having an affair with Kindleton, which I was able to neither confirm nor deny

As the party ate dinner that night, Enna specifically wanted to split off from the group and follow Kindleton home to her apartment... so I let her run into Officer Porter. Things instantaneously went south - she started attacking the man in the middle of the streets of Flint, though she did so at a distance, using her spirit companion and never revealing herself. People were in panic, and Porter fired several shots using his distinctive chrome pistol before getting the hell out of there. Kindleton fled all the way to a nearby hospital she volunteered at, putting her beyond the reach of the impostor but also completely off-limits to the party, as the security guards knew her and strictly obeyed her requests not to let anyone in to see her.

That was the end of the first day.

 

[Elfshire]

I haven't updated this thread in forever! Probably because I've been keeping an extensive adventure log on my Obsidian Portal site, viewable at the URL in the first post. But here's some stuff that you might not find there...

I had a good chortle in Chapter 2 when the party went out of their way to make Gale promise not to execute any more terrorist plots until they "got this conspiracy sorted out." Mwahaha, you guys don't even know the NAME of the group yet! You think this is just a small story arc! You're going to be fighting them the whole campaign!

Qiyet's player had a roleplaying moment with Kaja Stewart after she'd been put in RHC custody. The constable had checked the woman's files, finding that her father had been in one of the Yerasol Wars, and after a few pointed questions as to Kaja's loyalty, she revealed she was working with Macbannin in the hopes of preventing future wars... but Qiyet pointed out that helping to infuse witchoil with souls was just as bad. Long story short, she's been officially turned (and they managed to prevent her from being assassinated in her cell).

Between Kaja Stewart, Nathan Jierre, and a few other specialists they'e picked up, the constables are starting to assemble what they call "Team 2," which I'm now having Lauryn Cyneburg set up a secret safehouse for. This brain trust has given the party a real leg up in their investigations - Kaja came up with a temporary way to hijack the Ob's rusted rings, and Nathan's been researching new ways to implement planar magic, granting the constables with optional new planet-themed powers.

The party exceeded all my expectations during Chapter 4, creating ironclad identities and never once breaking their cover. The downside: they couldn't take credit for rescuing Isobel, and had she and Andrei shipped off to Risur, where Gale took care of them (Isobel has since joined the Navras Orchestra as a talented violinist, which may come in handy during the colossus attack). The upside? Nobody tried to kill them at the start of Chapter 5. And Lya Jierre has NO idea that she's been exposed.

Drew and Darsys are no longer in my campaign, but I'm going to have them show up as co-DMs during the climax of Chapter 6. They'll be controlling Tinker and Terakalir, while I run Lya's group. What better way to run a 3-way battle than getting another DM or two?

 

[RangerWickett]

Good to hear from you, and thanks for the reminder about the Obsidian Portal link. It's always great to read about groups' exploits, to see how people go in wildly different directions. (My playtest group had a PC form a pact with the Voice of Rot to be the fey titan's official spy. And two PCs staged a daring rescue to nab Isobel the first night in Cherage, basically getting up the Grand Theft Auto equivalent of 4 stars of police alert before they managed to get into hiding, conveniently choosing the same freight car that Mr. Mapple was sleeping in, so he could cover for them.)

Keep it up!

 

[Elfshire]

Just wrapped up Chapter 5 (mostly). The players managed to surprise me a few times.

First, they decided that sending the colossus into the Dreaming would definitely provoke a war with the Unseen Court, and urged Aodhan not to perform the ritual under any circumstance. When asked for an alternative, they contacted Gale and told her to do everything in her power to get in touch with the servants of She Who Writhes, who would likely be stirring already as a 300-foot metal titan waded around in her waters. Later, as the ships in Flint Harbor were raining down enough fire to keep Borne suppressed, but still woefully short of being able to destroy him, huge slimy tendrils emerged from the edge of Flint Bay, dragging the Obscurati's secret weapon far out to sea. Not sure how I'm going to resolve that one long-term, but Beshela will definitely be showing up at the start of next chapter.

Hugo, the party's controller, had the fortune of being a character *perfectly* suited to take down a threat like the Eschatologist Bomb. He could read Dwarven fluently, he was a hybrid artificer/wizard, trained in Thievery, possessed by Xambria, resistant to electricity, and a Technologist. He started to laugh as I told him how easy dismantling the bomb would be for him, despite how dangerous and unstable the device was designed to be. Even on the final check, he didn't need to roll to succeed.