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mask-of-ire · 2 years

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25 Mountain Pass Adventure Seeds

By Robb at readytorole.com

A large boulder blocks the central path in a valley, and a hill giant stands by offering to lift it up temporarily for trade. The strange part is that he wants a flower that is very common in the area; some of them are growing 10 feet in front of him!

A local ranger offers to show travelers a shortcut, but some people don’t trust him. He went missing a few months ago and only recently reemerged much hairier than he used to be.

Due to overpopulation, hippogryphs has started nesting lower to the ground. This by itself isn’t a problem as they are not aggressive, but poachers have been showing up in droves and at least one altercation between poacher and traveler has left those involved with injury.

A mudslide recently affected a large part of the pass, making it hard but manageable to travel through. The worst part is small mud imps throw rocks and clumps of mud at those who pass through- not to hurt, just to harass.

After digging into the mountain in search of precious gems and metals, the dwarves have repurposed one of their mineshafts to act as a shortcut underneath the mountain. This seems like a good deal for those willing to pay a few gold, but the bent, unconnected steel and “jumps” that the minecarts need to make leave most people terrified and shaking after arriving on the other side.

Trolls who normally live at the top of the mountain have started coming to the lower depths to attack people, especially merchants, on the path. Rather than eat them and leave the shiny bits like they normally do, they’ve been stealing but allowing their targets to live, causing speculation of their new behavior.

Many openings to an underground cave network have opened up all throughout the mountain pass. Unfortunately, they serve no real purpose other than allowing subterranean predators to prey on those passing through on the surface.

Giant spiderwebs have been appearing all over the path, making all travelers worried about the size of the spider that must be making them.

Sights of a supposed dragon have all but halted travel through the mountain pass, stifling trade and causing some smaller communities to suffer. They are offering a collective reward for anyone able to kill or drive off the scaled menace.

There has been an increase of monsters that disguise themselves as rocks such as stalagmites and stalactites within a certain cave and even outside of it. These have always existed, but the quick uptick in sighting and encounters with them has locals questioning why and how this could have happened.

Travelers speak of a thick-furred monster attacking them near the top of the mountain pass. One survivor asks anyone willing if they could retrieve a lost pendant that was torn from them while running from this creature.

A new, mysterious cave passage saves a lot of time for anyone willing to traverse it. No one knew who had carved it, until the giant ants started coming out of the walls and hunting those inside.

An overzealous earth elemental has begun restoring the parts of the mountain that have been carved for travel back to their previous state, undoing years of work. When asked why, they state that the merchants who travel litter and show no respect for the earth.

After mistaking a cave hosting stirges for a simple cave of bats, travelers who spent the night find themselves close to death and afflicted with a deadly disease. The local cleric says the only way he can create an antidote is with a few live stirges present.

During a particularly busy time for the pass, one of the mountains reveals that they have been a dormant volcano, suddenly bursting and causing all manner of life to search for refuge.

Bandits figured out that by hiding out high above paths that they can easily shoot at and intimidate passersby into give them their belongings. That is until orcs started climbing even higher than them and holding up both the bandits and the passersby.

After a series of small cave-ins, some kobolds have begun selling homemade explosives to any who will buy them. While nothing bad has happened so far, many wonder why they are being so helpful.

Supposedly, the top of the mountain is home to a holy pilgrimage site to a god of travel. While few bother venturing up there due to monsters and natural dangers, those who do claim being given a boon that grants them safety on the road.

A growing number of humanoid bones litter all parts of the pass, freaking out anyone who travels through. What might be creepier is that no one has been reported killed or missing since this has started.

A small group of goblins pester travelers, asking if they want to hire their band of adventurers as guards. Most people laugh at them and move on, leaving the goblins to sulk.

An ettin has been arguing with itself about whether to open up its personal tunnel to others for a price or to keep it closed. Somehow this has resulted in the ettin sitting in front of another path, refusing to move until it can be convinced one way or the other.

A particularly intense thunderstorm has swept through the pass recently. When a bolt of lightning stuck the peak of the mountain, it partially peeled away to reveal a giant, beating heart within.

A shaman living off the path has come out of solitude, looking for a curious set of spell components that would have to have come from halfway around the world. He won’t say why he needs them or what he is willing to trade for them, just that it’s a matter of life or death.

The same horse keeps appearing at one side of the mountain pass every morning. No matter if someone ties it up at night after riding on it or otherwise restraining it, it always ends up back at the start of the path without a saddle or other gear.

Harpies have somehow come into the possession of explosives, likely either bought or stolen from kobolds. They are using these new weapons by dropping them on travelers below, leading to an intense effort to eradicate these avian humanoids from locals.

#dungeons and dragons #D&D #DnD #tabletoproleplaying #tabletop games #adventure hooks #adventure seeds #dungeon master #resources

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mariana-oconnor · 2 years

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I watched Stranger Things s4 last week and I know I am late to the party, but I have thoughts about Eddie Munson.

First, I was sobbing when his uncle was replacing his missing poster. That scene was intense and so well done. Second, I am not going to say that he died for nothing, because he died distracting the stirges (which is what I'm calling the bat monsters because D&D) from both the house and from going through the portal. That's not my problem.

My problem is more... narrative.

They were not subtle about his character arc. From episode 1 we have Eddie trying to convince people to run away. Eddie saying 'there is no shame in running away'. Then he references it repeatedly throughout the series. This is fine. This is how character arcs work. It was consistent it was thematic. It worked... apart from (for me) one thing.

My problem is that his arc, which leads inevitably to his heroic death, is based on nothing. It's built on sand.

Eddie spends most of the series on the run, yes. But his arc reads like a redemption arc. It presupposes that Eddie has performed an act of great cowardice, which he must redeem himself from by instead choosing not to run but to fight. But... what was that act of cowardice?

Yes, he runs. But in none of the situations where he chooses to run could he have made any difference by staying.

With Chrissy in the trailer. He does try to help her. He tries to snap her out of it. He is right there as she dies - he's screaming and cowering on the floor, yes, but still there. He does not run until after she is dead. He is faced with a supernatural event, graphic, brutal and mentally traumatising. He doesn't know if whatever killed her is going to happen to him next. There is no action he can perform to save her. There is no action he can perform to bring her back to life. Running in that situation doesn't just make sense, it's entirely understandable.

After that he is wanted for murder. By turning himself in is he going to solve any problems? Well, he wouldn't be on the run any more and the town basketball team wouldn't be hunting him down intent on blood. But is it an act of cowardice to not want to be imprisoned for a crime he did not commit? No. Once again, running is his only good option. There is no possible hero moment here.

Then with the basketball posse at the boathouse. They came for blood. They outnumber him, they are angry, they are trained athletes, they are armed. By not running away there, all he would do is end up being attacked and possibly killed by them. There is no heroism in that, either. No cowardice in running from it.

Then the other basketball guy - can't remember his name, sorry dead guy - gets killed and sure Eddie could stay and say 'look, I didn't do it. ohgodohgodohgod' but once again, he has no reason to think anyone would believe him. It's an impossible thing. He was once again present at a brutal death, the basketball posse are still angry and came after him looking for blood. Sticking around rather than running once again solves nothing.

So when we get to the final scene where he chooses not to run away - twice, once in the trailer, once when he gets off the bike - it plays out as though ~this time he's going to do the right thing~. But, that presupposes that the previous times he did the wrong thing and... he didn't. There has never been a situation shown where Eddie staying and fighting rather than running away would have solved anything/saved anyone/helped the situation in any meaningful way. You can say 'if he'd phoned the police about Chrissy's death he might not have become the main suspect' but who else are they going to accuse? They definitely wouldn't have believed 'she stuck to the ceiling on her own and her bones spontaneously broke themselves'. Or maybe 'he didn't know she was dead, he should have called for help', but she just got stuck to the ceiling, her eyes popped and her bones broken, trying to say that he should have been thinking rationally after that is ridiculous. He probably thought he was going mad.

I loved this season. I don't even mind this arc. I just think it needed one change. EITHER you needed to have Chrissy make a really big deal out of not wanting to be alone/left alone/saying 'help me' to him. OR you needed to add an extra scene where Eddie has an opportunity to save someone and instead he runs. This would have been so easy to do - the posse were going after members of the Hellfire club. If Eddie had been staying with one of them/asking them for help when the posse turned up. And they attack his friend and Eddie, hiding, sees that happening, but chooses to run instead. Literally, that would have been enough. I just needed his arc to have an anchor so that it really seemed like the running away was a flaw he was overcoming rather than just being his best option at every other time.

Of course, ymmv. I just never got the feeling that Eddie's running was anything other than a completely normal and sensible response to the situations he was in. In fact, I never really had the impression that he had any other options.

#Stranger Things #Stranger Things season 4 #stranger things s4 #stranger things spoilers #I may have ranted a bit #I really did love this season a whole lot #But genuinely this irritated me #It required such a small change to make this feel earned #But running away is not automatically a negative thing #and that it was framed as being such was very annoying to me #Sometimes you need to run away #Eddie Munson

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onslaughtsixdotcom · 3 years

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Scaling Up Dragon Heist

Around April or May of 2019, I started to run Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, one of the official WotC 5e hardcovers. I’m still not done with it, although that is largely the fault of COVID and my own extensions to the campaign.

I think Dragon Heist is one of the better 5e modules by WotC. I think it’s got a strong playground for the characters, and Waterdeep has 30+ years of publication history to draw on. The release of the module also heralded in a HUGE amount of third party extension content, including the famous Alexandrian Remix. I hadn’t heard of this before I started running my campaign and having ideas about how to do it, so it didn’t influence me--although I’m sure we came to a lot of similar conclusions and ideas, based on common perceptions of what the actual flaws are of the module.

Still, despite those flaws, I think they help the module rather than hinder it. It gives the DM a shitload of room to improvise and draw in the margins, rather than some other 5e adventures which feel like they can’t be fucked with in the least.

Here’s the kicker: I started my adventure at level 4. We had a pre-existing party that I had run through the classic N1: Against the Cult of the Reptile God. (Fun fact: A map that I drew is the 3rd Google Images result for that. Woah.)

The party spent a few real-world weeks traveling across about 7 days of overland travel where I ran some drop in one shots; including Mike Krahulik’s Dusk (a Twilight parody) and a really fun 2 hour diversion where the players saw an ancient blue dragon take off the roof of a church during a wedding. Then they arrived in my city: Dawnharbour.

I don’t run the Forgotten Realms. I find it not to my taste. Most of the names suck. The lore is invariably boring or weird, and not the fun kind of weird. I was going to run Dragon Heist, and I was going to put it in my own city. I gave the players some justification previously for why they would want to go there: The cleric’s sister had been kidnapped by the Cult of the Reptile God and turned into a Yuanti; a snake person. The bard had stolen a golden statue of the Reptile God and wanted to melt it down and plate his violin with it. I told the cleric that they would need a high level magic user and someone in Dawnharbour could probably help them; ditto the bard needing a highly skilled magical blacksmith. The third player didn’t really care where they went since he was on the run from his home country. So, off to Dawnharbour. They reached level 4 when they got to the city.

I won’t bore you with the rest of the details of my city or everything I changed for the campaign. Instead, I’ll talk up some hard and fast ways to make the adventure work for a higher level party. Most of them revolve around the encounters. I’m assuming the party will start around level 4 or 5.

Chapter 1

The book opens with the players in the Yawning Portal, a famous tavern with a big ass well to a megadungeon underneath. (More on this later.) They’re hanging out doing whatever when a troll and some stirges pop out of the well. The book says that the players get attacked by the stirges while the owner of the bar, a typical Forgotten Realms 15th level Fighter running a fucking bar for a living deals with the troll.

A troll is CR 5. They can handle a troll. If they can’t, you have a bigger problem.

Next up the book leads them to a Zhentarim warehouse. When they get there it’s abandoned and there are (ugh) 3 Kenku. Kenku are like tengu if they sucked. They’re bird people who can only speak in mimickry, like parrots. They can only repeat words they’ve heard before. This is stupid as fuck (especially when a player wants to be one) but more importantly, they are incredibly weak. I think the kenku are just hanging out or they got captured by the Zhentarim who left them there after they bail or something like that. Whatever.

I put the Zhentarim there instead. I put like 20 Zhentarim. I used the Spy statblock; they don’t have a lot of CR and at level 4 or 5, the players are real slice and dicey about killing them. They can basically carve through two of these dudes in a turn. It was *really* fun to just have the players mow down these mooks. They used the 2nd floor to their advantage, casting Grease on the stairs and creating a bottleneck and then picking them off with ranged attacks and spells. I think I might have given the Zhents 1hp and treated them as minions (see 4e).

I think I had the police show up after they were all dead; someone heard the commotion and called the cops. I think I also put an NPC there; I shuffled around a bunch of the NPCs the module uses. (They got their quest to save Volo from Bigby in the Yawning Portal; instead of finding Volo here, I think they found my equivalent of Renaer Neverremember.) There was a day’s break between this and them going into the sewers in the next part.

The sewer introduces the Xanathar’s minions. I believe a Duergar is actually there and I took this as a sign--I made most of Xanathar’s mooks Duergar, and then decided--this dude is a Beholder and he has a Mindflayer for a lieutenant. The Xanathar’s forces should ALL be classic D&D dungeon monsters, like rust monsters and umber hulks and ropers. This gives you a wide variety of weird shit you can throw at your players at different CR levels, and the idea of a gangster Beholder who thinks hiring a bunch of umber hulks to go shake down a local deli is fucking hilarious. But, it doesn’t make them any less dangerous. Throw some umber hulks or something in this lair. Go nuts--the weirder, the better. Xanathar’s crew should have no qualm about hanging out with a gibbering mouther or a carrion crawler.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2 is the least developed chapter in the book. It also revolved around a bunch of Forgotten Realms faction nonsense that I wanted nothing to do with. I used this time instead to formally introduce the Xanathar, the Cassalanters and Jarlaxle. After they foiled his plans to rig a goldfish competition (think a dog show but for fish), the Xanathar became convinced the players worked for the Zhentarim and invited them to have a sit down about their intentions; if they worked for the Zhents he wanted to formally declare war. The players hated the Zhents--they killed an NPC they liked back during N1, partially to set this all up. Xanny was cool with that.

The Cassalanters were a way to introduce a new player. They call up the Blackstaff to say, hey we have a magic item, can you send a guy here to deliver it? (Magic item possession is illegal on the streets in my setting, but if someone important hires you to transport it, then you can do it. This makes being a courier a very lucrative job; lots of people are just carrying around other people’s stuff for a living.) They almost immediately knock out the new player sent to pick up the item, and replace him with their dofflegagher. The idea was that the dofflegagher player would then infiltrate the Blackstaff’s organization.

Blackstaff is no dumbass and hired a random dude off the street--my new player. Then, Blackstaff hired the rest of the party to go rescue him--mostly as a ruse to snuff out the Cassalanters and get evidence that they were shitty.

When they encountered the Cassalanters, I used a Cambion; one of their servants turned into him. This guy slowly became a recurring lieutenant; he was basically the Goldar for the Cassalanter’s Lord Zedd and Rita Repulsa. At the time, I hadn’t read any lore for Cambions; I’m not particularly concerned with monster lore the way the guys who make the game write it. I literally thumbed through my deck of monsters, saw this winged devil horn dude, and said, “Right on, he looks like he’ll work.” A Cambion is CR5, more than suitable for the encounters the party will have with him over the next few levels. The Fiendish Charm ability is fun and can really fuck with the players; I ruled, of course, that anyone under its affect would obviously be free if the Cambion was killed. Even after it was killed, he just kept on coming back, because he’s from Hell and killing him on this plane doesn’t really do anything.

As the players continue to face the Cassalanters, a go-to seems to be spined devils. This is fine but not very powerful for a level 4, 5, 6 party. Therefore I suggest supplanting it with barbed devils. They’re CR5. Adding one or two of those to an encounter with spined devils can make this a real fun encounter that isn’t too horribly overwhelming, especially if at least one of your martial characters has a magic weapon (which they fucking should; they’re level 5!)

IMO you can also introduce Jarlaxle in this chapter; a fun way is through his Zardoz Zord persona. It could simply be that Jarlaxle knows Volo (or any other NPC the players know) and wants to invite them to a free meal to get to know them. In my game, Jarlaxle operates openly as himself (I found it would just complicate things if he was someone else) and invited the players to his yacht shortly after they met the Xanathar, to formally tell them all about the Vault of Dragons, the Stone, and how everyone they have met in the city is after it.

Chapter 3

I am not the biggest fan of this part of the module. I think nimblewrights and similar creatures are really dumb and don’t fit my D&D world. A lot of the stuff in this chapter is investigation stuff, and you can play that out however you like. It doesn’t drastically need scaling up, though you may have to account for something like Zone of Truth that they might not normally have access to. It also helps if you do the opposite of the book, and make the police a bunch of shitheads who don’t care about the city--this way the players are actually motivated to help. I’ve seen a LOT of posts that open with “the fireball happened and my players shrugged and said they would let the police handle it.” Horrible! The police should either be incompetent, apathetic, or (best case) both. They don’t care who did this and if they did, they wouldn’t be able to catch them. Now it’s completely on the players.

IMO it also helps if you do the leg work to make the NPC someone they actually care about. In the book it’s an NPC they’ve never met but they have a mutual acquaintance through--it would be nice if they get invited to a dinner with this NPC or something similar prior to this. Or, change it to be any NPC they like who you don’t mind killing. Hell, they’re level 5 or 6 at this point--if they got a cleric, they can even cast Revivify and wake the dude up. They could even cast Speak With Dead and immediately find out who blew him up or what he was doing here!

Moving on, there’s the Gralland Villa. I retooled the name to actually sound like a good name; sue me.

The book has a bunch of Zhents hanging out here. A simple way to make this dramatic and hard is to pull the trigger and make the players fight their way in. The stone is right here at the villa and they need to steal it. Sounds simple enough.

Things got complicated for my party when a recurring NPC appeared. She was an ex girlfriend of the bard in our party; they were both Tieflings. She now worked for the Zhentarim and was basically their second in command. And she was here to steal the stone, come Hell or high water. The bard, still in love with her, was perfectly content to let her steal it and even cover her getaway. The rest of the players, not so much, but when the chaos was ensuing and she was literally running past them with the stone in hand, made the decision that it was smarter to try and help her escape and then figure out how to get the stone from her later, than try and get it from her now.

This led literally directly to chapter 4.

Chapter 4

By now it’s obvious: I used all 4 bad guys.

I ran through the chapter and picked the coolest maps and best encounter ideas, including the rooftop chase, the theater, the sewer and the courthouse. I weaved them together carefully, and all the changes I had made to the groups paid off when they entered the theater, chased by barbed devils and our Cambion friend, only to have an Umber Hulk with the Xanathar’s logo painted on his face crash through the stage, flanked by two Duergar. Add in some Drow gunslingers and it was a fucking party.

(the large hexagon is where somebody cast Darkness; the big scuffed circle is a grody spot on my grid tiles. I still need new ones...)

The courthouse had a great scene where the Cassalanter dofflegagher impersonated the chief of police, interrogating the players for the code word to activate the stone (I added one; who cares?) until the real chief of police showed up! The players had to do an entire encounter with this guy while handcuffed; thank god for verbal only spells, right?

From here the stone ended up with the players, and then it ended up with Jarlaxle who they are working for. Jarlaxle attuned to it and told them the Vault of Dragons is inside Undermountain; 3, 5 levels deep? Who knows? And it requires 3 keys: The Crown of Asmodeus, the Ring of Winter, and the Robe of the Archmagi.

I gave these 3 magic items to the Cassalanters, the Xanathar and Manshoon. This is a pretty common hack and it means the lairs in the book actually get used. I made up one of the magic items (Crown of Asmodeus) and stole another from a module I don’t intend to run as written (the Ring of Winter is, I believe, in either Tomb of Annihilation or Storm King’s Thunder). They’re fun!

So the rest of the campaign has been the players bouncing between going deep into Undermountain, the megadungeon underneath the Yawning Portal, and going to the 3 different villain factions to steal their shit.

The villain lairs are NOT statted for level 5 players AT ALL. The players have no hope of actually killing ANY of the villains at level 5; to fight the Xanathar is a pure TPK at level 5. But at level 8, like where my players are now? One of them died and then got Revivified; the others all survived or made their saves when they were hit by death or disintegration. (In the spirit of the Xanathar, I rolled every eye beam randomly, rerolling if I had used that ray in the last round.) That’s about the best you can hope for with a Beholder IMO!

The rest of the lairs you can mostly run as-is. Any very low CR mooks, basically anything lower than 1 or 2 CR, I would probably replace with a higher CR variant. We’ve already discussed what you can replace them with above, and if you’ve made it this far into the module, you should have a pretty good sense of what your players can handle.

#dnd #dragon heist #waterdeep dragon heist

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tsernoshova · 4 years

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21/11/20

Boraz, Barry and Berry met at the Yawning Portal for a few drinks, waiting to meet the one who summoned them with their next quest. While reminiscing about their not really long friend Qor, who tried to be smart and got killed, another adventurer approached their table, a dragonborne, not so common in these parts. “Dildo Schwaggins”, he presented himself. While Dildo decided to rehash his whole life story, suddenly a loud growl was unleashed from the well, the Yawning Portal. Out of the well appeared a troll who was being bothered by 9 stirges, pesky little bird bats. Ugly as well. The adventurers decided to take this situation under control, well, except for Berry, who decided to kick back and enjoy the scene with a beer.

The fight was interesting to say the least, with as much as interesting tactics. There were a few memorable moments - Berry being forced into the fight, because the troll took offence to his cockiness and tried to strike him. Berry through a table knocking down a few Stirges. Dildo lost his scimitar and decided to burn the small creatures, resulting in a fire catching on the curtains which Boraz had to put out. Berry having another amazing idea and swinging Barry around in the air with his dagger out hitting the Troll in the eye. In the end after this chaotic fight the troll and few left over Stirges all retrieved back to the well.

The tavern calms down and the adventurers sit down for a well deserved beer, kind of. Barry and Berry still mid-fight about the swinging stuff. Volothamp Geddarm approaches the table asking them whether they’re adventurers and explaining the quest: his friend Floon Blagmar has been kidnapped. He doesn’t remember much, because he had been drinking, but remember that the last time he saw Floon was at the Skewered Dragon, which he marked with a cross on the map of Waterdeep that he gave the adventurers. As prepayment he gives each of the adventurers 10 GP, and when Floon will be retrieved each will receive 100 GP. However, Boraz notices that Volo isn’t dressed very nicely, and overall looks like shit. Volo explains that he has a bit of a problem with alcohol, but is able to bay - he is a famous writer. Berry asks the people at the bar if they know who Volo is to which they instantly recognize him. The adventurers accept the quest.

ADVENTURERS LEVEL UP TO LV 2

While walking to the Skewered Dragon Berry decides to harass a lady. His friends remind of the laws and they quickly proceed after seeing the lady talking to a police officer. Tall, densely packed building leave most of the neighborhood in shadow at ground level. Most of the streetlamps have had their glass smashed. One nearby shop stands out between these dark, grey buildings. This one is completely purple, inside out. They enter, talk to the owner of the shop - a small bald wizened deep gnome. They buy a few trinkets and ask the gnome whether he has heard something about Floon. The gnome doesn’t recognize the name but the description does help. He tells the adventurers that he saw Floon being jumped, and one of them had a winged snake tattoo on their neck.

The adventurers arrive at the Skewered Dragon. This street is even more depressing - all the light are broken, and there’s only onw beggar sitting outside. You can barely call it an tavern, due to it being in ruins, but it still operates. They head inside, have a few beers and talk to a few people there. Although, they were not too talkative but a few drinks helped with that as well. They too saw Floon being jumped by the Zhentarim. They told them to look for their hideout on Candle lane, “Look for the snake symbol on the door.”

The adventurers find the gate of the hideout, trying to climb past and do complicated things until Boraz just sees if its open - it is. In the yard they check the window - nothing to see. The door is locked, Berry picks the lock. The door is open. Barry

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an-oger-in-the-wild · 5 years

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Children Shouldn’t Play with Undead Things

So here’s a fun little team-building exercise I threw at three of my PCs who met a couple in-game days before the official start of the campaign / meeting of the rest of the PCs. The summary? Three unlikely people meet on a coastal beach and end up hanging out in a coastal town’s tavern, chatting the night away, until they - along with the other patrons of the tavern - start getting attacked by an unknown and unseen source: a poltergeist. The three PCs in question consisted of an aasimar warlock, a half-orc cleric, and a wood-elf druid, so some really cool and interesting social and debuff spells (like Detect Evil and Good, Faerie Fire, and Message to name a few) were available for use that didn’t have to be damage-focused, teaching the group early that you don’t necessarily have to only have combat spells equipped in order to overcome obstacles or solve problems.

If you’d like to use this encounter for your 1st, 2nd, or even 3rd level (like my group was) party, you’ll want to be sure to lay a good foundation of visual descriptions - little things that are actually Easter eggs for the party to remember later, realizing that they were actually clues.

QUEST LEAD: This encounter takes place in a small tavern called Bottles & Drafts. You can read this little block of text to introduce your characters to the first NPC in this encounter; or, alternatively, you can use your own tavern or NPC if you already have a place in mind:

You see, as you enter, a pleasantly-lit tavern, complete with a small hearth, two long tables, three smaller round tables, and a neatly-kept bar with stools. Looking around, you notice that the dining area is rather saddlery-themed with things like horseshoes, halters, and old bridles hung on the wall for décor, befitting of the inn’s adjoining stables out back. Near an entryway to a hall at the far end of the room, you see a physically imposing grayish/green-skinned woman - about 6' 1" - with short, chipped tusks protruding from her lips. She wears a brown tank top with olive-colored cotton pants, and her light-brown hair is kept short on top and shaved close on the sides. She's standing on a small ladder, hanging a new item on the wall: a black leather horse whip (or some might call it a crop). She's mounting it to the wall as best she can, but it keeps falling off the wall each time she gets off the ladder, making her visibly frustrated as she repeats the process three times in the time it takes you to find a seat.

This is Jacoba, a half-orc (use stat block of berserker) - she owns the inn, Bottles & Drafts (named thus as your adventurers can both purchase a night’s stay there or take a trip around back to its stables to purchase a mount, such as a draft or riding horse). Today, your party happens to walk in on her hanging a whip...little do they know that this is the item to which the poltergeist has attached itself.

Part 1: a Start to an Exciting Evening

Be sure the party knows they are not the only ones in the tavern! Three other patrons sit in different areas of the inn (each to themselves):

Roberick Zemony, male human (looks visibly intoxicated)

Tawnel Ostoro, male half-elf (dressed in the uniform of the local guards)

Baerla Flaskbraids, female dwarf (has a small rabbit familiar with her)

While the party sits around conversing - probably around a meal or a few drinks - have some strange things happen as the evening approaches:

Random drinks sitting in front of patrons at the bar tip over onto their laps, soaking them.

Patrons go to sit in their chairs...but right before they sit down, the chair is just a little too far from them and they fall to the floor on their asses.

The whip will continue to fall off the wall, usually AT Jacoba as she walks by with a plate of food or a platter filled with drinks.

She will eventually give up on trying to mount it and will make a scene as her barbarian temper gets the better of her: describe her as being close to raging mad over the “stupid whip,” picking it up (perhaps putting the strap in her mouth and gnawing at it for a moment) then violently whipping a vacant spot at the bar with it a few times before throwing the whip down the hallway and heading back behind the bar.

If the party tries to interact with Jacoba or ask her about the whip, she can explain that the décor is a collection of old pieces that have either been found by patrons who frequent the tavern or are left behind after a rental horse or carriage is returned. This most recent piece was actually given to her earlier today by a tradesman who came through for a drink (while nothing more has to come of this mention, you could always develop this out into an extended quest).

With a good enough Charisma check, Jacoba may also tell the party what she knows about the other three patrons left in the tavern if they get inquisitive:

Roberick Zemony, male Human (nightly patron; commoner, middle-aged; "dad bod," thinning hair; lazy-sounding drunken voice)

Tawnel Ostoro, male half-elf guard (off-duty but still in his regalities; just got off his guard duty shift and likes to come up for a quick sip or two before he returns to the barracks for the evening; condescending)

Baerla Flaskbraids, female dwarf (a scout passing through on her way back to her guildhall north of here; just finished clearing out a pesky infestation of stirges and is staying the night before heading back in the morning)

Part 2: It Begins

Once it’s officially evening, the party sees Roberick get up to go to "water the flowers" (at which Jacoba threatens to kill him if he does).

As he stands to leave, the flames in the wall sconces all extinguish at once and the sound of Roberick screaming in pain and then moaning fills the room.

(HE DEAD, Y'ALL.)

Jacoba will quickly try to relight the sconces if no one casts a spell before this is done.

Once there is light, everyone will be able to see Roberick's dead body on the floor, a knife stuck in his chest.

If no one revives him, proceed to Part 3.

If someone casts Revivify or Speak with Dead, he won't know what hit him or killed him.

Part 3: a Murder Mystery

Before Tawnel (the half-elf guard) allows anyone to move, he will swiftly walk over to the door (the only exit) and bar it shut, stating that "no one will be leaving here until I find out who killed this man."

Investigation checks can begin to be made against the dead body (DC: 13).

On a success, they can tell from the angle of impact and the blood splatter that the attack had to have come from the direction of the bar and that the knife had to have been flung at him from a distance.

If investigating for magic, use the same DC for an Arcana check; however, no magical aura is detected around the body or the knife.

If spells like Detect Magic or Detect Evil and Good are cast, assume that the poltergeist will not be within the 30 foot radius in this one instance; after the party has made some good detective work headway though, feel free to reward smart casting by allowing the undead creature to “light up” as it were. Those spells last 10 minutes unless dropped, so you can toy with them by having the poltergeist move in and out of the range of the spell occasionally.

Insight checks can be made against the NPCs for added intrigue if the characters are suspicious or on-edge:

Tawnel (the half-elf guard): this is probably the most exciting thing he's ever seen as a guard of a relatively uninteresting city, so he's hoping that getting to the bottom of this murder will help him climb the ladder of success

Alibi: he's "one of the good guys" and just wants to figure out what happened…he was sitting in the corner reading smut (but he won't want anyone to know that this is what he was reading).

Motive: everyone - including Tawnel - knows Roberick…he's the town drunk and tends to get into trouble when he drinks: Tawnel has arrested him on a couple occasions for indecency in front of children and found him no better than the dirt beneath his boots - Jacoba has heard him say before that “it would be a better world without Roberick in it.”

Baerla (the dwarf scout): has only been seen thus far to be talking to her rabbit...plus she has a longbow on her back and a sword at her side - seems strange enough to draw some attention, right?

Alibi: she knows no one here - why would she kill someone?...she was busy scrolling a message to send with her animal messenger (a rabbit) back to her guildhall to inform them of the completion of her job; her rabbit is "gone now though."

Motive: Roberick was being loud and obnoxious and (per Baerla) was making fun of her height earlier that evening.

Jacoba (the half-orc tavern owner / berserker): normal day, just got a new shipment of food today as well as a few new bridle materials, some new tankards, that kind of thing; a tradesman bartered with her for a new item for her tavern - the whip.

Alibi: she was serving drinks when the lights went out and Roberick dropped dead.

Motive: Roberick was behind on his tab by several months - Tawnel knows that this has really been bothering Jacoba lately.

Part 4: Further Bloodshed

The poltergeist will become enraged by any light-based spells or by radiant damage (clerics and paladins BEWARE!).

It will also get increasingly angry if the whip is in any way touched or damaged. If someone moves within 30 feet of the poltergeist’s area, it will become aggressive and throw things using its Telekinetic Thrust (+4 to hit, 2d4 bludgeoning or piercing damage, depending on the item); if they get reeeeally close, it will use its Forceful Slam attack (+4 to hit, reach 5 feet, 3d6 force damage).

NOTE: If you really want to freak the party out, try throwing them around with its Telekinetic Thrust by rolling a contested Strength (the PC) versus Charisma (the poltergeist) check to see if the undead creature can “hurl the target up to 30 feet in any direction, including upward,” causing 1d6 damage per 10 feet moved - I wouldn’t recommend this unless your group can handle these amounts of damage though - always playtest before playing!

Part 5: Reclaiming Serenity

There are a couple of ways this can go:

If you have a party who loves to get stuff done by way of combat, you can certainly take the most direct route by allowing them to work through the difficulties of waging war with a creature who never turns visible. As mentioned in my opening paragraph, debuff spells like Detect Evil and Good, Faerie Fire, or See Invisibility are great uses of spellcasting while in combat with an invisible creature. Additionally, you may have a party member who thinks outside the box and has the idea to try to destroy the item to which the spirit is attached - this is a great idea! A low-level encounter like this is a nice way to condition your party for battles that cannot simply be won by hacking and slashing.

If you have a party or party member who wants to make the world a better place with a more passive approach, you could delve deeper into the backstory of the poltergeist, giving it a history that shaped it into a malevolent spirit. Use the whip as inspiration: did the whip belong to the spirit in its previous life? Was it sentimental? Does it need returned to someone in order for the spirit to find peace? Alternatively, does the whip have a darker connotation - was it a weapon used against the spirit in its former life? Is the spirit seeking an unattainable revenge on innocent victims? Ponder these things and come up with a flexible and easily improved story in case you have a tenderhearted sorcerer or a righteous paladin with high charisma who want to try to reason with the undead creature. Allow a series of Persuasion checks to convince the poltergeist that they don’t need to act violently or to help the undead creature to pass on into the next life: this can make for a really memorable role-playing moment that will change the normally black and white outlook most parties have on undead creatures.

Thanks for reading, guys! If you like this post and would like to get more encounter idea inspiration like this one, let me know by asking to be included on my Enticing Encounters taglist!

#dnd #dnd encounters #dnd encounter building #encounter of the week #TTRPG #BtFM #Enticing Encounters #undead #poltergeist #this literally took forever because tumblr posts are annoying to format

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dungeonecologist · 5 years

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WILD ARMS 2 - Live Reflectors & Overworld

A weird note here, as we use the Live Reflector to get to the next 2 dungeons, the different panels used to activate different destinations are clearly modeled off Chinese fengshui lore, utilizing dragon, bird, tiger, and tortoise imagery. Not surprisingly this is also the basis of the 4 central Guardians of Filgaia, yet these seem otherwise unrelated in-world.

The mythic beasts are a part of a daoist concept called the wu-xing, used to describe the interrelation of 5 different aspects or phases, and the overall mapping can be lifted and transposed onto a number of various other sets of 5. Among them the elements, seasons, senses, flavors, and directions. The odd thing is that even though there are pretty specific directional connotations associated with these icons, they aren’t actually in those places?

The black tortoise, Genbu, is associated with Water, the North, and Winter; its Wild Arms equivalent is Schturdark, Guardian of Water. (They do make him a little more turtle than tortoise, but that just makes sense as the water Guardian)

The vermillion bird, Suzaku, is associated with Fire, the South, and Summer; its Wild Arms equivalent is Moor Gault, Guardian of Fire. (Variously either a bird, a dragon, or a hybrid of both across the franchise)

The white tiger, Byakko, is associated with Metal, the West, and Autumn; its Wild Arms equivalent is Fengalon, Guardian of Wind. (also a white tiger, but I really like that the first two Wild Arms games make him a kind of thiranthrop/weretiger. They swap the look in for Luceid in Wild Arms 3, turning Fengalon into a normal tiger, and the Guardian of Desire into a werewolf.)

The blue/green dragon, Seiryuu, is associated with Wood, the East, and Spring; its Wild Arms equivalent is Grudiev, Guardian of Earth. (An azure dragon more in line with western dragons than eastern. Of the central 4 Guardians, Grudiev has gone thru the most dramatic changes, design wise ranging from more recognizably dragon-like, to dinosaur-like, to space Godzilla...)

There’s also the Yellow Serpent/Dragon/Kirin/Emperor, associated with Earth, the Center, and the transitional periods between seasons; but this 5th stage isn’t really used here. (Kirin/Qilin are super cool though and a neat subject all their own. Maybe I’ll find an excuse to talk about them in a later post.)

Curiously they do dodge the daoist Fire, Water, Stone, Wood & Metal elemental system, but the basic framework is still there. But even though the 4 Live Reflector locations are actually in 4 remote corners of the map, the panels correspond

Green Tortoise-South: color’s off and it’s the wrong direction

Red Bird-West: color’s right but direction should be south

Yellow Tiger-North: color’s a little off, but as an alternative to white, yellow’s not a crazy choice, but it’s in the wrong direction.

Blue Dragon-East: right color, right direction

Weirder yet they aren’t even arranged with North and South, and East and West opposite one another, so it’s not like the directions are just rotated or mirrored. It all only strikes me as odd because these are pretty well established iconography in Japanese pop culture, so any of the various creative hands that touched these assets would’ve been pretty keenly aware of there being some meaning tied to each of these design elements, and yet they left the end result just slightly misaligned at every angle...

Anyway, moving on... The next two dungeons are both rather small and lumped together as two halves of the same real mission for this chapter. And in an odd illustration of that unity, they share overworld encounters, even though the two locations are so distant from one another... (I was going to tackle both dungeons in one post, but the first draft wound up a lot bigger than I was anticipating, so this is actually going to be a series of 3 shorter posts instead.)

Both the Western island where the mining town of Holst is, and the Northern volcanic landform where the Raline[sic] Observatory are, are populated by Berserker, Assassin Bug, and Cockatrice.

Actual Assassin Bugs are members of the family Reduviidae, but the name is also that of a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster. (because of course it is) There’s actually not too much resemblance to either here though, and the recolored Stirge models appear in large numbers and all cast a low accuracy insta-kill spell, Dead End.

The Cockatrice is of course a classic fixture of English lore with roots in Greek mythos; Being so prominent as to show up even in familial heraldry. A dragon or serpent with a rooster's head, allegedly hatched of a chicken egg incubated by a toad or snake. Their glare or in some accounts breath can kill. Due to superficial similarities the Cockatrice and Basilisk have become closely related in fantasy, although they don’t actually share any origins. Oddly it is the Basilisk, not the Cockatrice that is generally associated with poison, but the Cockatrice in Wild Arms 2 uses Poison Breath, and curiously not Dead End, like the Assassin Bug.

The Berserkers are an oddity. The name is of course super generic. The form is some kind of human sized mantid, but with one club arm in place of the usual sickle? They recycle the I Hate You! move from the Ratmonkey we’ve seen before. They also partially share a name with a major villain of the original Wild Arms, whose name was erroneously transliterated as Belselk, with whom they share absolutely no similarity with.

Belselk was a part of the race of Demons that served as the core antagonists of the first Wild Arms. They were a race of otherworldly “mechanical” beings but Belselk was pretty all around meaty looking if you ask me. To be fair though, most of the Demons in Wild Arms didn’t seem too mechanical, but at least others hid parts of themselves behind chest plates or helmets; Belselk’s just got normal clothes on for the most part. He’s also confusingly reptilian while the others were mostly humanoid. The one other exception was Alhazad, who I’ve mentioned briefly before.

He was the weakest of the game’s 4 Heavenly Kings bosses. (something I’ll come back to when we come back to Odessa in a few missions) He was the first to die and was immediately replaced by a way cooler dude named Boomerang, who was the companion of Lucied, Guardian Lord of Desire, whom fought along side him against the heroes. He and the Sword Magess, Anastasaia, in this game establish the lore that Luceid appears to those on Filgaia with the strongest desires, regardless of their alignments.

Anyway... now I’m just rambling...

Also at the last minute I realized you can run into Myconid here, and that’s fun. As ever, they’re another one taken from D&D, where the Myconid are a race of humanoid fungus whose spores can reanimate fertile corpses. Here they appear as humanoid corpses with large bulbous and porous growths on their backs and heads, and long tendril like growths wriggling around. It’s actually a pretty unsettling design, even with these low res models and textures.

I feel like I’ve been slacking a little on the actual ecology angle to all this, but this one really doesn’t have a lot to comment on... The Cockatrice doesn’t exactly have a natural environment for it to be restricted to, the Myconid is pretty straight forwardly at home any place fungi would be, and then the other two are insects so so can live just about anywhere. Both places in question are islands, but environments that are still fairly dry and barren: Holst continues the dusty wasteland, and the Raline Observatory‘s surroundings are barren, likely volcanic, rock. It’s not that any of these monsters can’t live in these places, but they don’t feel especially at home there either? I’d expect fungi monsters in a jungle or a rainforest, or a dark damp cave or basement. The fungi would potentially feed on insects, which makes sense, but why the Cockatrice? It and the Assassin Bug have a theme of instant death, going on, but then the Berserker and Myconid don’t quite fit that? I guess there could be a kind of implied food chain going on here, where the instadeath’d humans get brought back by Myconids? But that's pretty flimsy. This is also why I mean to dodge the overworld, as they’re broader environments and less thematically unified over all, as they encompass multiple locations each with their own core concepts.

#wild arms 2 #dungeons and dragons #jrpg #psx

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tippletoewaggletop · 4 years

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21/11/20

ADVENTURERS LEVEL UP TO LV 2

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zippdementia · 7 years

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Part 26 Alignment May Vary: A Not-So-Random Encounter

Today's post will discuss when and how to use random encounters. It's a topic I've covered before, but the session we played highlights some of the key points.

First of all, to catch us up... after successfully defeating the Giant Crabs and making it to Twyin’s Vengeance, the party sets sail for their final destination, the long lost island of Rori Rama. After a week or two of uneventful travel, they come to a narrow island blocking the passage forward. The island is shaped like a crescent, with its horns pointing away from the ship. It slopes upward from the beach to a massive cliff that fills the entire ring, creating the impression of a great curved wall protecting something beyond it. Making shore here, the party explores the island only briefly before being greeted by a fat, tanned, islander with a key around his neck. He seems to be a simpleton, but he introduces himself as “Den Den” and offers to take them to the village chief.

The chief tells them that beyond this reef lies the island of Rori Rama but that no one ever returns from it, save one. Karinna guesses this one is Raiden, her old commander who betrayed her during the War of Seven Sorrows, and the entire point of her quest. The chief confirms this, but tells her cryptically that the man who returned from Rori Rama was both Raiden and not Raiden anymore, that the jungle burned away what he once was. Slowly the clues dawn on Karinna: a man calling himself Den Den, a silver key around his neck, the glowing of the pendant Zennatos gave her to find Raiden... the simpleton that greeted them at the island’s gates was Raiden, or what is left of him. His mind has been burnt away by jungle fever and the answers she seeks as to why he betrayed her may be forever lost in that mind.

Karinna has to decide what to do. As GM, I expect there are two options: either kill Den Den, knowing that he was once the man who betrayed her, or move on—unsatisfied, but perhaps empowered by knowing that satisfication is not required, that Karinna could allow herself to let go of something without resolution. Instead, Karinna creates a third option: find the truth no matter what, even if it means tracking Raiden’s steps in the jungles of Rori Rama. And since I strongly believe that a GM should listen to their players and think about the kind of game their players want to be in, I decide to run with it and start working on a way for her to access Raiden’s memories.

Karina, Abenthy, and Tyrion head into the jungle, leaving most of the crew back on the Gate Island. They do take Tywin’s old shipwrecked companions, Xaviee, Samuel, and Biggs, and Verrick of course refuses to leave Karina. Several days of travel ensue, with some encounters I’ll describe later.

Then, a little ways into the jungle, Karina decides to make use of an item I invented a while back and added to the Pit of Thudd treasures. It is like a crystal ball, only it shows events from the past as ghostly re-enactments of these events (if the emanations of the event are strong enough, ie. they have a strong emotional significance attached to them AKA I’ve got some history to share on that area or some story to tell there). I don’t actually have anything planned where Karina uses the item, in the middle of a large lake fed by two jungle rivers, but I decide to make up something on the spot to push forward the Raiden plot. So she sees a ghostly boat manned by Raiden and a strangely dressed man. The image makes no sound, but it looks like Raiden and the man have a fight and Raiden cuts the man’s throat and drops the body in the lake before rowing to the far shore.

This is meant to set them up to find Raiden’s camp (which I’ve just invented), a journal he’s left there (also just made up), and a special hand crossbow for Karina (spoiler: improvised on the spot) which will let her use her reaction to shoot projectiles out of the air as they come. But what I don’t expect is that Abenthy will leap off of their raft and dive into the water to search for the corpse and loot it.

Random made Reasonable

Random encounters are best used to either break up monotony or force the team to action. Instead of using "random" encounters, I suggest DMs make a list of monsters that they would be alrite using in their environment (and based on the level of difficulty they wish to present). If you are using a campaign module, like I often do, and it has random monster tables, then half the work is done for you: pick and choose from that table what seems most interesting. You don't have to use every encounter. If you can't decide, roll a few times on the table and use the results. Stat these encounters out as "just in case" encounters, then use them as you best see fit.

In our session, we had several. The first day on the river, I throw some Stirges at them. I knew they wouldn't be too difficult of an encounter, but I liked the way it fit with the theme of the jungle and would break up the monotony of travel. I make it a little more exciting by having them carry disease, jungle fever that gets contracted when they bite.

Next up is a T-Rex encounter, occurring when they try to ford a waterfall. The T-Rex encounter I knew was probably going to be a tough fight. But it was listed on the random encounter table for the campaign and I thought it too cool to pass up, so I worked it in as an escapable combat. In this case, the players hid under their boat and the T-Rex, on the prowl for big game, overlooked them. They didn’t end up fighting, but they didn’t have to to leave an impression. It was one of those "what the hell are you going to do?" situations where I genuinely did not know how the players would respond. If they had a good plan and good rolls, they could escape notice. If not, they would fight. And who knows? Maybe Tyrion would use his animal control spell to make it his pet for a while, ride it into combat or something. In general, I keep my eyes open for encounters that I, as a player, would like to be a part of. If I see one, I usually mark it for inclusion in the game. And in addition to the fun of meeting a T-Rex, the monster serves as a great way to push players forward. If they rest too long, or don't seem to want to move forward, I can have the T-Rex show up to nudge them in the right direction. It's in the category of Big-Frickin'-Monster. They are useful tools.

Lastly, when Abenthy decided to unexpectedly dive to the bottom of the lake to search for treasure, I felt there had to be a guardian. So a Giant Alligator shows up, tracking him through the water, pulling him into the lake just as he reaches shore, and forcing the players to deal with trying to free their friend in an environment (the water) that they are not accustomed to. The Alligator was also on the random encounter table supplied with the campaign and simply made the most sense for the situation. I had thought it a cool encounter, so I’d stated it out before the session just in case I needed it. Didn’t know I would, yet out of it came one of the cooler fights of the session. Unplanned, but prepared. That's the key to a good random encounter. They are set pieces you can throw in to make your game better at key moments.

In the last case, Abenthy is pulled under water by the alligator and has a difficult struggle ahead of him. Tactically, he is grappled and drowning and without his armor (which he left in the raft). Breaking the grapple means he still has to swim to the surface of the lake to breath, and that gives the alligator a chance to use an opportunity attack—which, if it hits, reinstates the grapple. Abenthy is a tough son of a gun, so he can take the hits, but he can’t survive drowning. Meanwhile, his companions on shore cannot do much. The alligator keeps diving underwater to hold Abenthy down, and that means Karina’s arrows won’t hit it and Tyrion can’t target it to cast most of his spells.

Eventually, Abenthy manages to break the surface of the water just long enough to attract the Aligator within line of sight of Tyrion, who quickly casts Hypnotic pattern, freezing the alligator long enough for Abenthy to power swim towards shore and for the party to flee before the spell wears off.

Abenthy surfaced, spluttering and thanking the gods (chief among them his father) for blessing his body with a resistance to disease. He had no idea what sort of filth or amoebas he had swallowed during his battle in the lake and he didn’t like to think long on it.

“Well, fucking hell!” Tyrion exclaimed. The halfing had become more excitable since the monastery and much of his music had been replaced by shrieks and curses, though the magic of his voice still seemed to have the desired effect on his enemies. “I hope that was worth the little side trek.”

Opening his hand, Abenthy looked down at the strange circular device he had retrieved from the bottom of the lake, where he had found the body they had seen in the vision. “We shall see,” he said.

Raiden’s Demise

Beyond the lake lies an abandoned camp. A quick search among it surprises a young lizardman, who cries out in fear and goes racing off into the jungle. Karina and Abenthy give chase and after a short time succeed in rolling high enough to cut the lizardman off, tackling him to the dirt and threatening to kill him if he does not tell them what he was doing there. Fortunately, Karina has comprehend languages as a spell, and casts it.

The lizardman (naming himself as “Small Threat”) doesn’t know what happened at the camp, but he is surprisingly forthcoming about his tribe, who lives in the jungle by a second lake and knows the true paths of the jungle. He offers to take them there, and they agree, setting us up for the Next Session: Tinkering.

He also gives them a backpack he stole from the campsite. In it is Raiden’s journal, and as Karina studies it over the next few days, it tells the following tale of Raiden’s fall, filling in the gaps of what he did before his mind was burned away, leaving him the witless Den Den on Gate Island:

“I will take the job, for Karina’s sake.”

Raiden’s diary begins with a summons to Zennatos, his old comrade during the war of Seven Sorrows. Zennatos tells him roughly the same story he will later tell Abenthy, Karina, and Tywin—of his search for the Tomb of Haggemoth—but also elaborates on the curse that will kill him if it is not found. Raiden agrees to take on the job. He does not elaborate on what he means when he writes he will do it for Karina. He also writes of another woman, Monita, but briefly and sadly. Though the name seems familiar to Karina, she cannot place it.

Raiden’s journey mirrors the players’ in intent, if not in content. He does not go to the oracle. Instead, he heads straight for the monastery, Zennatos having told him that he stole the book about Haggemoth from the monastery. There he disguises himself as a scholar, gets access to the library, hides until eveningfall, and breaks into the secret room, getting the location of Rori Rama and of the Pit of Thudd, which he realizes contains the key to the tomb.

His trip to Frezerazov is also one of secrecy and stealth, and he manages to find the back way into the giant’s cave and catch a look at the star map while the lord of the snow snores in his chambers. Raiden also manages to hire on three dwarven adventurers here, enticing them with tales of Haggemoth’s tombs and discovering their ancestor’s riches.

Next is the Pit of Thudd, which he clears and gets the key to the tomb—but unlike Karina, he does not take the Rod of Storms, leaving it in place and thus keeping the desert as it was. Owing the leader of the Oasis a large sum of money as part of his ploy to get into the desert, Raiden pretends he has perished—sneaking away at night with his Dwarven companions by enticing a merchant ship to his cause.

With the last of his money, Raiden pays the merchant ship to take him to Rori Rama. He also takes on the services of a tinkerer who is traveling on the ship. The tinkerer claims he can make periapts of health, which will protect against any disease that may lie in the jungles of Rori Rama. Raiden sets him to work making the devices. During the voyage, Raiden has nightmares, always of Karina, that she has returned to murder him for his crimes against her.

At Rori Rama, Raiden and his men are attacked by Stirges and one of the men falls ill, despite his periapt of health. The Tinkerer saves his life, but the dwarf’s mind is gone, burned away by the fever. The Tinkerer claims he can save him and designs the circular device Abenthy found on the bottom of the lake. The Tinkerer proposes that through blood magic the device, which he calls an Essence Recaller, will let them enter the man’s essence and free him from his trapped mind. Raiden, fearing the dwarves will turn on him if he does not try to save their nephew, agrees and they all participate in the blood ritual. Nonetheless, the device is flawed and the ritual fails. Shortly after, the other dwarves fall ill.

One of the dwarves catches the Tinkerer at work on the device and realizes that when he said blood magic, he literally was taking blood from the sick man and mingling it in the rations of everyone. When confronted, he says that they all had to imbibe the man’s blood to enter his essence, but the dwarves are furious, knowing this is how they have contracted the fever. They mutiny, and Raiden and the Tinkerer flee on board a raft, heading out to the lake and leaving the dwarves to die in the jungle.

Here, the tinkerer admits he is only an apprentice, and that he never knew how to build the periapts of health properly. Raiden, in a fit of anger, murders him and throws him into the lake with his final, flawed device. Rowing to shore, he sets up camp and plans to head back to civilization, hire a new crew, and try again. He thanks the gods he has not caught the fever.

Alas, he gives thanks too soon. The next morning he wakes up ill and realizes that while his took longer to gestate, he is nonetheless sick as the dwarves were. He begins to hallucinate and his entries become more erratic and less precise, many of them describing events as if they are still in the War of the Seven Sorrows, and he often speaks of Karina coming for him through the Jungle. His final entry regains some clarity:

“How fitting, that I have been abandoned here, the same way I abandoned her. I would tell her everything, if only I could see her again.”

#playthrough #DND 5e #Tomb of Haggemoth #epic #Dungeons and Dragons #Journey Log #Wizards of the Coast #fantasy #RPG

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geexplosiontheories · 7 years

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I ran my 1st DnD campaign the other day, here's what happened:

- The elven ranger would accidentally jump over enemies while trying to kill them. He eventually hit his head on a ceiling. - The elf also tried to hit on a barkeeper, but he was very literal in everything he said. He asked for a room for his companions, then asked if he could use hers while she was in it. He did not succeed. - The dwarven cleric ran up a hill towards goblins, not with a weapon out, but flexing his arms and yelling at the top of his lungs, “THESE GUNS ARE A BLAZIN’!!” He also slammed his battleaxe on the floor to “Test the durability of the floor.” - A human wizard wouldn’t listen to the narration of the story, because he was lost in his books. - The wizards son (who gave everyone nicknames and was a ninja who got kidnapped and possessed by a volcano cultist) started to dive underwater but remembered he had an intense fear of drowning and started to flail wildly, waking a group of stirges. - A half orc nomad was the butt of most jokes, and broke a table in the middle of battle to get a table leg for the sake of having it.

#dnd #dnd 5e #dnd character #dnd campaign #elf ranger #half orc #dwarven cleric #human wizard #ninja #dungeon master

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multimask · 6 years

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Session 5 Rundown

We literally shamed our paladin under the table holy shit that was amazing. Session 5 was amusing and lead to some interesting quotes that got thrown up on our personal log. Not too much happened, most of it was taken up by cautious exploring and combat. Oh but that first combat, that was good (no, i'm not sorry for putting our paladin on blast here, she knows what she did)

So, we last left our band of characters in the forest outside of town, camped about an hour away from the temple ruins they'd found. Nothing much happens overnight, and we break camp in the morning to move it. We cautiously and stealthily approach to discover that the druid woman and the gnoll we didn't kill last night were alive and they take off into the woods, not in the direction of the town. We briefly debate following them, but they would have quickly outpaced the rogue going at 90ft a round, so we abandon that idea and go inside.

We make our way in and pass a y-split. The path with the door leads to what looks like the gnolls "sleeping quarters" but none were there. There are a couple offshoots that we peer around corners in, and then we go back to check out the y-split before we go through anymore doors. Turns out, there was a small room with a neglected statue and a hole in the ceiling near it. Most of the party is good with a quick look around before returning to the rest of the temple (i think) but noooo. The paladin had to embody a straight white teenager passing through a doorway in high school.

She jumped to swat at the hole, which had some roots dangling down from it. There just so happened to be a stirge nest up in that hole. Dammit Poppy. We manage to fight off some, but more keep coming every round (the DM later said that they'd keep rolling d6's until we left). Once we were free from the scourge of stirges, our empath cowboy gave the paladin a good scolding. As they kept talking, the paladin's player sank lower and lower in her chair, eventually finding herself seated on the ground under the table. We were all cracking up and having a very hard time keeping straight faces.

Back to the story at hand, we continued back through the first door until we hit the second one. Behind that door was a ritual circle with fading necromantic magic and the bones & pelt of the gnoll we'd killed the previous day. Creepy, but just bloody and otherwise empty.

We continued down the passageway to the next door and cautiously opened that door. A face appeared in the small crack and sent Candle reeling back. The door flings open and we encounter Medhekavim, the crazy dude behind the gnolls being organized. We exchange some words and blows with him before he reveals that his attack on the town Castlerest has already begun and then bamfs out of there. We book it back to town and make it there about 3 hours later (the temple was quite a ways away from town...)

Once back at town, we find the townsfolk fending off the gnolls with the druid woman and a couple of other gnolls standing back like commanding officers of the assault. So we go fight them. Our DM brought in Matt Colville's system of unit combat from "Strongholds & Followers" for us to all try out, and I enjoyed the system, for as simple as we kept it since it was the first time any of us were playing with it.

We managed to take down the gnolls and the druid woman, but we keep the woman alive with the paladin's last single point of Lay On Hands bc we had questions for her. After combat and the gnolls fled, we carried the woman back to town and all collapsed in the woodcarver's shop since it was convenient.

The woman's name as told to us by Medhakavim was "Anka", but in our brief conversation with her before ending the session, we discovered that she was very much so the blacksmith's daughter Alina (unless the gnolls had carted off some other girl from the town that we knew of - which was pretty unlikely). She had been "rescued" by the gnolls from her life in Castlerest. Well then. We called the session since it was getting late and so that we players could come up with some things that we wanted to ask Anka/Alina.

Candle has some thoughts about being carried away from your previous family, even if they only learned the other day that that had happened to them. They have Thoughts on family and familial relationships bc they grew up on the city streets.

I still can’t get over the paladin though. That had got to be my favorite thing of this campaign (and maybe of my sessions with that group of nerds)

#isa babble #candle's misadventures #nix's misadventures #session notes #aaaaaaahhhhhh #that was a fun session #long post #this was a shorter session and session rundown bc of combat #i expect lots of talking next session

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ocuk-dnd-5e-blog · 7 years

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Session 5 - 17/08 - Owlbears and Bear Riding

Dave N - DM

Stu – Hendel – Barbarian

Dan – Darvin – Sorcerer

Dave R – Galath – Ranger

Andrew – Eriden – Druid

John – Dwon Fai – Monk

Missing

Alex H – Chance – Bard

Alex D – Fyvel – Fighter

Dwon, Eriden and Darvin were gathered at the edge of town impatient to be away and about their business but were not having much luck with Chance, Fyvel, Galath and Hendel all missing. As they were musing on what to do next when Galath wandered into town from the woods with a huge bear in tow, trailing along behind him.

“What’s that?” Eriden asked.

“My pet.”

“Did all the women say no then?” Eriden quipped back and the group sniggered.

“What’s he called?”

“Gauvain.”

“Gavin?”

“Gauvain.”

“It’s like a leftover scrabble name.” Sniggered Dwon.

“I’m calling him Gavin.” Said Hendel as he came trundling round the corner, he was wearing a new suit of leather armor but with large metal spikes sticking out of it at random, offensive looking, angles.

“You look like an angry, metal hedgehog.” Someone muttered and Hendel glared at the group trying to find a culprit who didn't appear.

“It’s my new armor, spiked armor, even my hugs are dangerous now.” Hendel shot back and everyone, wisely perhaps, stayed quiet at this point.

As they were getting back into their normal routine of arguing and bickering Sildar walked up to the group hailing them.

“Where are your other companions.”

“Sleeping, probably together” Hendel snapped, now in a bad mood.

Sildar glossed over this and continued. “I have been impressed with your actions thus far and would like to know if you would be interested in representing the Lords Alliance moving forward. Out interests loosely align with your own, the destruction of those who would threaten the safety of the Sword Coast.”

“Does it pay well.”

“It can, dependent on the job.”

“We may be tempted, if the offer was right.”

Sildar looked at the group considering their merits for another moment. “I will pass word back to the Alliance that if they wish your aid, they can ask, whom do I tell them to seek out.”

“The Justice League of Faerun.” Darvin declared boldly.

Silence and a muttered “I preferred the Children of Mordred” greeted the statement, Sildar nodded and set off leaving the party alone.

“I was hoping for something a little more.” Darvin groused.

The group set off from the outskirts of Phandalin and set off east down the Triboar Trail, now that the immediate threat to the safety of Phandalin had been dealt with there was money on offer for intrepid adventurers and the group had every intention of claiming it. Rumors abounded of a group of Orcs which had been gathering at the Wyvern Tor and Harbin Wester had been offering a reward if this threat to the trail was dealt with. The group set off with gold in their hearts and minds with the intent to claim it and get rich, they marched along through a misty day with Galath in the lead and nothing for company apart from mist, rain and at one point a group of passing merchants who had not recently had any Orc trouble. As night approached the group made and as they did there was a screech from the darkness, grabbing up their weapons a group of Stirges swept into camp attacking all in site. Gavin let our perhaps the most camp roar a bear has ever made and took up a chunk of turf rather than a Stirge as the group got stuck in. The beasts, whilst a pest, were quickly dealt with Eriden and his old reliable Shillelagh crushing more than a few skulls aided by Darvin’s fire bolts.

“Have you found a gay bear?” Hendel asked incredulously. “Not that I mind gay bears, a bear can swing any way it wants.”

“It isn’t a gay bear, he’s just emotional.”

The group settled down for an evening’s rest, everyone taking a rest apart from Hendel who was showing an alarming interest in the bear and Galath was now keeping a close eye on him and Darvin added “I don’t trust Hendel awake, never mind when I’m asleep.”

The morning after as the group rose Hendel noticed his armor was covered in Stirge corpses which had been artfully added to his armor, he missed Dwon sniggering as he declared. “My foes now adorn my armor!”

Another days marching passed uneventfully as the group drew closer to the foothills of the Sword Mountains, the verdant grass starting to change into a coarse grass and dry rubble. Hendel marched closer to the bear and repeatedly asked if he could ride the bear. “No.” Snapped Galath after the fourth or fifth attempt.

Perhaps it was laziness or sheer bad luck but as the group settled for the evening there was a roar from the night and an angry looking Owlbear came rampaging into the camp roaring in fury. It ran directly for Eriden tearing a huge chunk out of him with its beak sending him sprawling (DM Note; 14 damage in one hit) the Owlbear rampaged round the camp tearing into anyone who got close until Hendel screamed “Double axe to the back!” and dived on the beasts back slamming both axes into its skull sending it crashing to the ground dead. “That’s how you do it!” Hendel roared at the sky.

Waking the next morning Hendel’s efforts had been rewarded as his armor was still adorned with Stirge corpses but also his hair had been braided with flowers, perhaps more surprisingly was Gavin who was snuggled up to him much to Galath’s disgust. (DM Note; A suggestion spell from Darvin to convince the bear was a great use of a spell slot for a practical joke!)

Midway through the next day the group were moving cautiously through the mostly desolate hilly terrain when in the distance they say the Tor towering into the sky, they headed for it cautiously, hearing the sounds of Owlbears all around but not close off enough to engage with. Eventually they came over a gentle rise and ducked back into cover, below them, the ground sloped steadily away to a darkened cave entrance which sat at the foot of Tor itself, covered by the overhang and outside stood two Orcs lazily scanning the terrain.

“What’s the plan” Darvin asked.

“We will sneak up and see what’s waiting in the cave.” Galath replied motioning to both himself and Dwon.

With that they stood and moved slowly over the hillside, slowly until Dwon tripped over his spear in a scene reminiscent of Cragmaw Cave he cart wheeled down the hill with a scream landing prone at the feet of the two bemused Orcs. Galath looked up in alarm at his companion and manfully ducked backed into cover behind the rise before he was noticed.

“I think we’re in trouble” Galath managed to say before they heard roars and screams from the bottom of the hill where a group of eight Orcs were delightedly stabbing Dwon full of holes (DM Note; somehow with eight attacks against him Dwon suffered 16 damage and survived with a single hit point left!) Stumbling to his feet the last Orc took aim with a spear at Dwon who nimbly caught it, spun and launched it back at the Orc killing it as the spear went straight through its skull (DM Note; in some marvelously fun rolling Dwon rolled to catch the projectile, used a Ki point to launch it back with a critical hit and max damage killing the Orc stone dead despite having only a single hit point left. I love moments like this.)

Feeling inspired, or shamed, Galath arose from cover and marking a target killed an Orc with his first arrow. With a roar Gavin appeared over the rise and charged down the hill, on his back sat Hendel waving his axes in the air and screaming a war cry, as Gavin reared up Hendel slammed his axes into the nearest laughing maniacally. Eriden followed him down the hill to heal Dwon as Darvin offered covering fire (DM Note; with his standard misses with the Fire Bolt)

The Orcs were on the back foot as the crazed dwarf and bear combo rampaged among them when a roar, much more fearsome then Gavin’s, echoed from the cave and a huge Ogre emerged, slamming its club into Hendel (DM Note; for 16 damage!) it sent him pin wheeling through the air losing his grip on Gavin. “Bastard!” Hendel screamed going into rage and charging back in to face the Ogre though he was so angry he instead slammed his axe into the floor with a huge clang. Eriden and Hendel harried the Ogre as Galath and Gavin picked off the Orcs (DM Note; Dwon was as useless as his worst in the second session with double critical misses abound and general ineptitude matched only by Darvin’s inability to hit with a firebolt) The battle was finely balanced as a huge Orc, taller than the other emerged from the cave bellowing orders and pushing the group back, Darvin muttered a spell suggesting that the boss Orc had threatened to kill the Ogre. The Ogre apparently agreed with this and instead of crushing Hendel turned and destroyed the large Orc with one huge swipe of his club (DM Note; a critical hit after Darvin’s suggestion spell killed the boss Orc in one) Heartened the group attacked anew with Eriden’s ole reliable taking the head of an Orc clean off and as the last Orc fled Hendel screamed “axe to the back!!” and launched his handaxe at the retreating creature planting it squarely in the back of his skull dropping him dead (DM Note; Hendel’s inability to hit with his thrown handaxe is legend, a critical hit strike kill was perhaps the most shocking moment of the night)

As the suggestion was released on the Ogre he turned to Hendel. “Dick!” He roared, perhaps echoing many people’s sentiments and attacked once again, Dwon danced in and unleashed his one two spear and punch combo felling the distracted Ogre. “Who's the dick now?” He demanded of the corpse.

As the group gathered up the loot from their victory, and Hendel tried to remount Gavin against Galath’s protests, Darvin suggested they put some packs on Gavin and he could carry the loot. Gavin gruffed, camply, at this and Galath snapped. “He isn’t a horse and he isn’t a fucking donkey.”

The group, weighed down with loot and expectations of the reward awaiting them back at Phandalin set off into the early evening without a rest. As they were forced to set camp there was a pair of roars from just outside the camp light, perhaps seeking revenge two Owlbears came charging into the camp. Hendel was gored and fell to the ground bleeding out and Eriden was dashed aside by the swipe of a huge paw suffering grievous wounds. As the group began to fight back (DM Note; and as usual Galath retreated) Dwon was also wounded; they wore the Owlbears down with superior numbers and Gavin, eventually, proving his worth by battering one of the Owlbears to the ground as Eriden’s ole reliable caving in another skull as the last Owlbear was felled. Taking the opportunity to continue the tradition Dwon ran over and kicked Hendel square in the groin sending him rolling and vomiting on the floor in pain.

Eventually, after finishing laughing, the group helped Hendel to his feet.

“Surely.” Darvin began. “There must be money in killing these big things, someone must care about it. I think we could use Gavin as bait, let’s get an Owlbear farm going!”

“No, no bait” Galath insisted protectively.

Instead as the next evening set Darvin paraded round the camp, waving his posterior in the air and screaming into the night “Twit-twoo-grrr” in what he thought was the mating call of an Owlbear (DM Note; the suggestion and the quite magnificently pathetic attempt at an Owlbear mating call by Darvin was enough for me to grant them their wish to face some more Owlbears) Darvin was apparently right as two more of the giant beasts appeared from the darkness taking a swipe and a chunk (DM Note; and 13 damage) out of Darvin’s behind the group responded with alacrity though as Hendel and Dwon got stuck in with some impressive blows Galath’s bowstring snapped and he gave himself a solid punch in the face from the recoil. Eriden fired in an Ice Knife wounding both bears which apparently infuriated them and responded ripping Hendel open (DM Note; 29 damage in a single shot) Gathering his feet Galath finished off one of the Owlbears as Dwon sprinted across the camp and vaulted through the air, spear clasped in both hands ready to plant it into the Owlbears spine, unfortunately for Dwon but hilariously for the group he misjudged his leap vaulting off Gavin, flying over the Owlbears head and face planted straight into the turf, spear quivering and face hurting. Before the Owlbear could tear him open Darvin unleashed a magic missile and it blew the Owlbears head off, corpse flopping to the floor. As the group nursed their wounds Gavin wandered over and gave the wounded Hendel a big soppy lick. “Awwwwwwwwwwwwww!! He likes me!!” Hendel crooned.

The group reached Phandalin without further event and on claiming their reward from Harbin Wester and warning him rather smugly there may be less of an Owlbear threat in the area now, the group, under the urging of Hendel, decided to set out to find Thundertree and the dragon Hendel was so determine to find and face. As the group moved the through the forest, stealthily and without event for once, they came across a large castle.

“Is this Cragmaw Castle?” Darvin asked.

“I think so.” Galath replied.

“So we found it by accident.” Darvin snorted, laughing.

Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor the group made note of the location on the map and set off to find Thundertree, awaiting their companions before challenging the might of the castle. Perhaps they had been witnessed by a watcher in the castle but as they settled down for a midday break eight Hobgoblins charged into their camp surrounding them. Not to be cowed the group piled into combat with Darvin once again sending out subtle magical suggestions leading to 2 of the Hobgoblins trying to kill one another enthusiastically. Galath followed his normal brave routine by running as far away from danger as possible to the shout from Darvin of “Far enough away yet Galath” (DM Note; he either has no shame or is wise, either or.) The group efficiently dealt with the threat presented by the Hobgoblins, being far too mighty a group for their threat (DM Note; apart from Dwon who, as usual, was stabbed to death) the Hobgoblins tried fleeing but the group were merciless with Galath, Darvin and Hendel finishing off the fleeing members of the group.

With the Hobgoblins finished the group, even more cautiously now, followed the treeline for next two days eventually coming across the ruins of Thundertree in the crux of the river and the forest edge. Settling in to rest and taking particular note of not being ambushed for once, Galath set out to whisper to some pigeons to summon aid from their missing companions before they set forth into the ruined village.

(DM Note; I have never known a group be so unlucky (or lucky as they viewed it by the end of the session thanks to the experience gain) when it comes to random encounter roles, of 14 rolls they had 5 ambushes which is terrible luck. Fortunately for the group they are now expert Owlbear hunters of immense renown!)

#DnD 5e #dnd #d&d 5e #d&d shenanigans #d&d

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ciathyzareposts · 5 years

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Game 359: Might & Magic: The Lava Pits of Aznar (1983)

I feel like we’ve seen that dragon before. Interesting logo for Sanctum (bottom right).

Might & Magic: The Lava Pits of Aznar

United States

Sanctum Software (developer and publisher) Released 1983 for Apple II

Date Started: 27 February 2020

Date Ended: 29 February 2020

Total Hours: 6

Difficulty: Moderate-Hard (3.5/5)

Final Rating: (To come later)

Ranking at Time of Posting: (To come later) This is an interesting but frustrating game, created three years before its more famous namesake debuted. It’s so obscure that I can’t imagine Might and Magic Jon Van Caneghem creator ever heard of it. A search today finds a couple file hosting sites, a MobyGames entry, and a single ad from a 1983 issue of Creative Computing. Sanctum Software (of Springfield, Virginia) seems to have existed only for this game, and I can find no trace of author Rick Hoover.

Aznar was one of many early-1980s attempts to mimic the tabletop RPG experience in a text-based computer game. Its approach is similar to the better-known Eamon (1980): the player creates a character which is stored on a “hub” disk. Once loaded from that disk, he can then set out on adventures in any number of “module” disks. Hoover only ever created one Might & Magic “module,” but he clearly intended to create more.

There are some ways in which he accomplished his goal admirably. Aznar is much larger and longer than an Eamon adventure or even any of the Maces and Magic titles. It takes place in an interesting setting: a ruined fortress sitting atop a volcano. I was never able to find any documentation for the game (there’s a lot of in-game documentation, but it’s all about the mechanics), but the goal seems to be to find and defeat the High Lord of the fortress and retrieve his magic amulet. The fortress is a sprawling place, but with logical clusters of rooms forming living areas, a dungeon, and guard quarters, as well as places where the man-made parts of the fortress transition memorably to caverns and underground hot springs.

My map of the game (click to enlarge).

The game is a proper RPG and makes use of its character elements. During character creation, players choose the character’s race (human, elf, dwarf, hobbit), alignment (chaotic, neutral, good, evil), and class (warrior, wizard, and thief). Of these choices, the class is the most important. Each comes with a set of skills or (in the case of the wizard) spells that will see them through the adventure and must be used judiciously. Each class has its own way of navigating through the dungeon and solving puzzles, much like the later Quest for Glory series. So where a thief might pick a lock, a wizard will cast “Open Lock” and a warrior will just smash the door. But one thing I like is that warriors are not just unnuanced brutes. They have their own set of skills–“Power Leap,” “Tower of Will,” “Battle Lust,” and “Death Blow” (as well as the aforementioned “Smash”)–to see them through the adventure.

Character creation.

The character’s race matters less often, but it does matter. Elves and dwarves are alerted to some traps, for instance, and hobbits avoid damage that some other characters take. On studying the code, I don’t think that alignment matters at all. Of the four attributes (strength, dexterity, wisdom, and charisma), I’m not sure charisma is ever called into play, but it’s possible (I think) to create a character so dumb he can’t even read, which blocks several parts of the dungeon and may even prevent winning.

The wizard gets across a lava pit in his own way.

The game also has a more advanced combat system than most text-based RPGs of the era. The game brings up your enemy’s statistics along with your own and asks what type of attack you want to make. You either enter the name of a weapon or a special type of action like BACK STAB (for thieves), DEATH BLOW (for warriors), or BURNING HANDS (for wizards). Each class has to be careful about over-using skills during combat because they have a limited number of “class points” and need to save as many as possible for puzzles. You get experience for combat and solving puzzles, and you level up several times during the adventure. There are also (trivial) considerations of food and sleep.

Doing battle with an ogre.

Unfortunately, the game undoes itself with a horrible approach to its parser. I’m going to assume that it came with a document explaining the most common commands and thus forgive it for making me figure so much out on my own, but even then there are lots of problems. I’m no programmer, but my sense of most text-based games is that the commands are independent from the immediate situation. So if you’re playing Zork, for instance, the game recognizes GET LAMP as a valid command even if there’s no lamp in the area. It then feeds you back with a context-specific error message like “there is no lamp here.”

What Mr. Hoover seems to have done is to define the list of valid commands for each room at the moment that you’re in the room. Thus, if you type OPEN DOOR in a room that has a door, no problem–the author anticipated that. But if you type OPEN DOOR anywhere else, the game has no idea what you’re talking about, and you get a generic error message (“I do not understand this”) as if you’d typed gibberish.

I’m in front of a golden door. I have a golden key. It shouldn’t be this hard.

What makes this approach particularly infuriating is that the author wasn’t consistent in his anticipation of commands. Sometimes the room is waiting for you to type LOOK, sometimes EXAMINE, and sometimes SEARCH. There are times that the verb is enough and other times where you have to specify a particular object. This is particularly annoying in places where the game didn’t even bother to highlight the object in the description of the room, or even mention it. There’s a hallway where, in order to get a password to a later room, you have to SEARCH WALL even though ever room has walls and there’s nothing special about this one’s. There’s a room where you have to SEARCH OGRE to get a set of keys, but the game didn’t bother to tell you that the dead ogre is in front of you. There are a couple of rooms in which you have to intuit that LEAVE is the way out despite the command not being used anywhere else. I had to inspect the game’s code when I was stuck in some of these situations.

Another oddity is that there is no sense of permanence. You can’t drop objects, for instance, and the game just adds most items you find to your inventory automatically. It’s common for the game to immediately transition you to the next room when you find a secret door or pick a lock, but when you return to the original room, the door is hidden and the lock locked again. Although it’s generally good about remembering that you already killed certain monsters, there are a couple of rooms in which you can type ATTACK repeatedly to fight the same monsters indefinitely.

And then we have the spelling. While most of the text is well-written, it is peppered with the occasional howler of an error, as when in the instructions the author seems to think the singular form of THIEVES is THIEVE. Even worse is when you have to deliberately misspell what you want to do. A thief has to SNEEK throughout the game, and if you want to find the 300 gold pieces hidden at the bottom of the COULDRON, you’d better spell it that way.

A misspelling mars an otherwise decent description of a torture chamber.

The game begins at the locked door to the fortress, where right away the character has to use of his skills or spells to get in. A bridge crosses a moat of lava on the other side, and a dexterity check determines if the character makes it across (with a loss if hit points) or dies immediately in molten rock. A trap must be disarmed on the next door or else the player experiences another instant death. In the fourth room, he has a limited amount of time to search it (for an orc sword and a note) and to reach the attic (for some gold, a battle with a stirge, and a golden key necessary to exit the fortress later) before the room collapses. If he gets out before he collapses, he finds himself in a hallway with no way to get back to the entrance, and things are quite a bit less deadly from then on. There are only a few instant deaths and the player can save anywhere.

An early room.

The main part of the fortress has some memorable encounters:

A group of half-orc guards drunk on ale in a storeroom. One of them is sober enough to fight and must be defeated. In an alcove of the room, the player discovers a troll feasting on one of the half-orcs and must kill it, too. A watery cave with a broken sword in the water. If the player tries to investigate the sword, a slime drops on him from above and must be defeated. A waste room with a plank crossing it. Careful players must find a quiet way to cross; otherwise, an otyugh erupts from the water and does battle. There’s a magic sword called “Ewansil” and a suit of leather armor hidden among a pile of bones in a fountain room. If the player enters a kitchen, the terrified staff jumps down a trash “shoot” to escape him. If the player follows them down the “shoot,” he finds (fatally) that it goes directly into a lake of lava. I guess he was so scary that the staff was willing to commit suicide. Entering a small cave, the player finds a bunch of statues of previous adventures in realistic, lifelike poses. He has only a moment to think “uh-oh” before he’s attacked by a basilisk. The creature gets very favorable rolls with its gaze attack and is tough to defeat.

That’s never a good sign.

In a “great hall” upstairs, the player finds a secret door in a fireplace. This goes to a series of tunnels that end in a cell in the dungeon. (There are prisoners, but they’re all mute and insane from torture.) Searching the other cells results in getting surprised by an ogre and tossed back into jail, so once it happens once, you have to pre-emptively ATTACK the ogre the next time, get his cell keys, open up the sixth cell, and get a hint to use the magic word ELWENTHRAL when stuck on the water.

Later, in a lower area, some stones cross a boiling underground lake and lead to the treasure chamber, where the player loots 500 gold pieces. (There other opportunities to get smaller amounts throughout the fortress, but no place to spend it.) Using the magic word produces the boat, which the player can then sail downriver to a hydra’s lair. I think this was supposed to produce a hydra, but the game was bugged and no command worked while in the lair, so I just left. You then have to climb down a well, and go through some other passages.

Summoning a magic boat.

There’s a secret door that only opens with a password; a set of runes only tells you to “speak the word” to open the door. You can spend a frustrating hour trying to figure out what the word could possibly be, or you can remember your “obvious clues” in cryptic crosswords and realize that what you want to say is literally THE WORD.

Later, there’s another room where you’re asked a password, and you’ve had to search a wall to find that the “gambler’s password is look backwards.” But it’s not LOOK BACKWARDS; it’s LOOK, backwards, or KOOL.

You pass through a room with a genie by just giving him your real name and defeat a two-headed troll in a “shaft room.” Climbing down the shaft puts you in a cool cavern, and this is where my game ends. There’s something bugged in the program that prevents the command prompt from loading in the cavern, so the game just hangs.

The last screen that I can experience.

However, I can tell from the game file that I’m very near the end. I’m supposed to search the cavern to find a wight, kill it, then search again to find a trap door in the floor. This leads to an encounter with the High Lord. Killing him lets you take his amulet, and the gold key found very early in the game (pity the player who didn’t think to type SEARCH in the attic) opens the doorway out. The fortress rumbles and crumbles behind the player as he switches back to the “genesis” disk to save his progress. I was so close I’m going to call it a win, though if someone who knows more about what they’re doing wants to fiddle with the code, I wouldn’t mind seeing if there was a final graphic or something.

My character aged six years in the dungeon, and judging by the code, it’s possible for you to spend so long trying to solve the game that the character literally dies of old age.

My character towards the end of the game.

Without the ability to at least scan the text in the code, I wouldn’t have gotten very far in the game–the parser would have defeated me–and in the day, I would have felt that the game’s advertised price of $39.95 was absurd. I presume other players felt the same way, which is why we never saw a second adventure.

The game has an okay combat system, but the “most advanced combat system” might be pushing things.

Aznar gets a 18 on my GIMLET, doing best in “gameplay” (4) for its modest length and replayability, “character development” (3) for the way it actually uses the character during the game, and “magic and combat” (3) primarily for the use of magic in puzzle-solving as well as a few combat tactics. It has no NPCs and no economy, and I set “graphics, sound, and interface” to 0 since it has no graphics or sound and the interface is punishing. (I normally wouldn’t punish a text-based game for a lack of graphics and would have given it at least a 1 if the text hadn’t been full of errors and the parser hadn’t been a nightmare.)

My final battle, against a two-headed troll.

This is certainly one of the last text-RPG hybrids that we’ll see. It’s interesting how so many of these games didn’t quite come out right despite (presumably) the greater ease in programming a non-graphic game. I think a truly excellent text-RPG hybrid, fully evoking the experience of a tabletop gaming session, is possible, but I suspect we’ll never see it.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-359-might-magic-the-lava-pits-of-aznar-1983/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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wdhsquad · 6 years

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Episode 1: Waterdeep Wonders

"swap out one villain for another at any time" Villain: Manshoon "feel free to embellish and change what you will" "given how strictly laws are enforced in waterdeep, it's possible that the adventure could end with one or more of the characters being exiled, sentenced to several years of hard labor, imprisoned, or put to death. If that's how their adventure ends, so be it. Hopefully, your next group will fare better." Friends: Rake is friends with Jalester Silvermane Spade is friends with Meloon Wardragon Aelar is not friends with anybody. Roland is friends with threestrings Korthkepesk is friends with bonnie Aychem Houre is friends with Yagra Stonefist

The party of 6 are drinking and playing bone dice in The Big Hole. They sit around a sturdy wooden table lit by a brightly burning candle and littered with plates cleared of food and half-drained tankards. The sounds of gamblers yelling and drunken adventurers singing bawdy songs nearly drown out the off-key strumming of a young bard three tables over. Then all the noise is eclipsed by a shout: "Ya pig! Like killin' me mates, does ya?" Then a seven-foot-tall half-orc is hit by a wild, swinging punch from a male human whose shaved head is covered with eye-shaped tattoos. Four other humans stand behind him, ready to jump into the fray. The half-orc cracks her knuckles, roars, and leaps at the tattooed figure - but before any blood is drawn, a crowd of spectators clusters around the brawl. Rake turns to the group "Any o' you know them?" while Aychem practically overturns the table with a shove from his massive arm as he starts towards the fight, grimacing. Korth glances between Rake, Roland, Spade, and Aelar, who looks amused at Aychem's apparent anger, and shakes his snout slowly. Spade shrugs and watches Aychem nearly flip another table, sending two chairs flying with his legs as he reaches the back of the crowd. Roland does a visual scan of the perimeter then watches Aychem roar "OUT OF THE WAY!" (intimidation check 1+4CRITFAIL) at the exact same time, two of the four men jump in on the fray while roaring themselves. The crowd is deaf to Aychem’s bellow. Aychem begins shoving the crowd out of the way and reaches the fight.

initiatives Aychem 21 XanatharBandits 7 Krentz 2 Yagra 17 aychem sees that Yagra has Krentz pinned and attacks one of the other two bandits who are trying to pull her off him. 16+7HIT 1+5 6DMG/11HP yagra ignores the two trying to pull her off and beats on krentz 15+2HIT 3dmgKO xanatharbandits see that their leader has been knocked out and flee krentz lies unconscious

Yagra stands and dusts herself off "Thanks Aychem, but you know I had that." Aychem chuckles "I know." Yagra grins "You just can't resist a fight, can you." Aychem replies "You're welcome." And turns to head back to the group. Durnan clears the crowd away and picks up Krentz' unconscious body then looks towards the door. Waiting is the last quiverying, fearful Xanathar bandit. Durnan heads towards the door so his bar can be rid of this scum when shouts of alarm suddenly ring out. A hulking creature climbs up out of the big hole in the ground - a monster with green warty skin, a tangled mess of wiry black hair, a long, carrot-shaped nose, and bloodshot eyes. As it bares yellow teeth and roar-howls, you see a half dozen bat-like creatures fly up behind it in pursuit. Everyone in the tavern moves away from the monster except the barkeep, who drops Krentz and runs towards the bar while watching the beast and shouting "TROOOLL!!' The party is stunned as the 9-foot tall troll before them roars away the crowd, leaving their table the closest. 3 of the batlike stirges flitter over to Aychem and Spade and attack. Initiative stirges 8 troll 13 durnan 20 rake 7 spade 17 aelar 8 roland 24 aychem 7 korth 16 Roland fires his longbow at the approaching stirges 15+6HIT 2+5 7DMG KO Durnan jets forward from behind the bar, now weilding a massive, shining greatsword and slashes at the troll 12+8HIT 11DMG 51DMG/84HP 5+8WHIFF 1+8WHIFF 2+8WHIFF Spade swings at a stirge with his hammer 6+2WHIFF Korth casts firebolt at a stirge with chaostide advantage 11+2WHIFF Troll +10hp 41DMG/84HP attacks durnan claw 4+7WHIFF claw 5+7WHIFF bite 7+7WHIFF Aelar casts magic missile at the remaining 2 stirges and the troll 3dmg/3hpKO 2dmg/2hpKO 5dmg 46DMG/84HP & stirges on the troll fly back down the big hole in the ground aychem rushes up to the troll and slashes with shortsword1 13+9HIT 4+5 9DMG 57DMG/84HP sneakattack 2DMG 57DMG/84HP and also with shortsword2 19HIT 3DMG 60DMG/84HP & rake runs up to the troll brandishing quarterstaff and attacks 5+5WHIFF and bonus action kick 5WHIFF

ROUND 2 troll 11 durnan 5 rake 6 spade 9 aelar 3 roland 12 aychem 14 korth 10 aychem swings away sword1 13HIT 3+5 8DMG 63DMG/84HP sneakattack 6DMG 69DMG/84HP sword2 19HIT 6DMG 75DMG/84HP Roland fires a longbow(18/20) at the troll 14HIT 8+5DMG KO Troll regenerates 10hp, stands up, claws durnan 8+7WHIFF claws durnan 5+7WHIFF and bites durnan 4WHIFF Korth looks worried and shouts out "did we not just kill it?" as he grips the 6 foot wooden staff with a spirat at the end and points it at the troll. Magic particle effects surge out through his arms into the staff and burst forth as he casts Chaos Bolt 8+5WHIFF wild magic surge as tides of chaos restores but *POOF* Korthkepesk turns into a potted plant. Spade looks bewildered at where Korth once stood "Wha-?" turns to the troll "Uhh." Looks back to the potted plant as he runs towards the troll and swings his hammer 14HIT 1+2 3DMG 77DMG/84HP Rake attacks with quarterstaff 16HIT 7+3 10DMG KO Durnan runs over to the nearest lantern, grabs it, runs halfway back and chucks it at the unconscious troll lying on the ground. The oil splashes across its torso. "Burn it! It's gonna come back unless we burn it!" Aelar grins "gladly" and casts burning hands downwards at the corpse. His eyes light up as the flames cackle and consume the troll, fueled by the oil.

Durnan turns to the group as Korth *POOF* becomes a silver lizardfolk sorcerer again "you fought well." Rake grins "Thanks!"

A figure approaches the party against the tide of people keeping their distance from the danger and stands before the party. He strokes his mustache, adjusts his floopy hat, and tightens his scarf. "Volothamp Geddarm, chronicler, wizard, and celebrity, at your service. I trust you've noticed the violence in our fair city these past tendays. I haven't seen so much bloodshed since my last visit to Baldur's Gate! But now I fear i have misplaced a friend amid this odious malevolence. "My friend's name is Floon Blagmaar. He's got more beauty than brains, and I worry he took a bad way home a couple nights ago and was kidnapped - or worse. If you agree to track him down with all due haste, I can offer you ten dragons apiece now, and I can give you each ten times that when you find floon. May i prevail upon you in my hour of need?" He holds out small pouches of gold. Rake answers "Sure!" glancing at the rest of the party eagerly. Aychem answers "Yeah, we'll take your gold." Spade says "We'll find your friend." "Gladly." Roland says. Aelar and Korth accept their pouches silently. Rake continues "So, got any clues as to his whereabouts? Where he was last seen or anything like that?" Volo answers "He's a handsome human male in his early thirties with wavy red-blonde hair. He was dressed in princely garb when I last saw him. Two nights ago we were drinking at the Skewered Dragon in the Dock Ward. I recommend you start there." Roland scans the perimeter for a man that matches this description. Spade pipes up "A trip! To the dock ward! Ayy!" as he begins walking merrily towards the door. Rake nods to Volo and Durnan and the party exits into the streets. They turn left out of The Big Hole and zig-zag their way southbound on Snail Street. Along the way, one of the side-streets is cordoned off by the City Watch. Lying on cobblestones are a half-dozen corpses, seemingly the victims of some terrible skirmish. Watch officers have disarmed and arrested three bloodied humans and are in the midst of questioning witnesses. One of the officers is ushering passers by "Go on, nothing to see here." The party passes quietly. As the party gets deeper into the dock ward, tall, densely packed tenements cast shadows over most of the ground. Most streetlamps are smashed. The smell of salt and poop alternate as the party walks past rows of run-down buildings. The characters turn left off Snail street and continue on fillet lane. Korth asks "It's one of these, right?" Roland answers "We're in the right general area." Aelar adds "Should be between Fillet lane and Net street, so it could be one of these or could be around the corner." The party scans the buildings, but most of them are dilapidated or utterly barren. One nearby building stands out from the others. It has a deep purple facade, and in its window hangs a stuffed beholder. Above the door hangs a sign whose elaborate letters spell out "Useless Knicknacks." The beholder catches the eye of Spade "Spooky." The party stops, intrigued by this apparently open store surrounded by a veritable sea of collapsing, abandoned architecture. They enter. A cloud of lavender-scented purple smoke trails out of the shops door as the party walks in. Every wall is painted purple, and every dusty item on the shelves is dyed violet. The hairless old gnome sitting cross-legged on the counter wears plum-colored robes. His cheeks are decorated with nine purple face-painted eyes. The gnome lowers a pipe and exhales a cloud of lavender smoke before raising his hand. "Hail and well met! Come browse the shelves of the most curious curiosity shop in the world!" "Curious indeed" mumbles Aelar. The characters begin to browse the shelves. Rake finds a petrified mouse "Gross." Spade finds a purple glove "Nice. How much for this?" The gnome responds "4 gold." Spade is taken aback. "What does it do?" The gnome pauses a moment and opens his mouth but stops himself, looks around and says "Keeps...the hands warm." Spade looks at the glove and at the shelf. "Do you have the other one?" The old gnome responds "...no." Spade looks down at the glove and then back to the shopkeep. "2 gold?" The gnome grins "2 gold." Spade purchases a purple glove and grins brightly as he dons it. Aelar finds a purple mechanical canary inside of a lamp. He thinks to himself 'Burn it. Set it ablaze. That canary has no business being there.' He looks to his teammates, valuable meatshields, and continues walking the aisles. Roland finds a rank insignia and picks it up, admires it, and puts it back. Korth finds a tiny silver icon of a raven with purple eyes. He turns to the gnome "Does this do anything?" The gnome, getting peevish now begins "The items here are storied and decorative..." Korth puts it back, ignores the gnome, and begins heading towards the door. Aychem finds a silver skull the size of a coin. "Cool" he says, as he pockets it. Sleight of hand check 6+5 11 on DC12 SUCCESSWITHATWIST. The party leaves with the gnome yelling angrily "AND DON'T COME BACK!". Aelar mumbles "Agreed." Next Time: The Skewered Dragon

#waterdeep #dragon #heist #waterdeep: dragon heist #dnd5e #dnd #5e #episode1 #wdhsquad

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