5 Player Group: The Dark Shrine of Ruin Part 3: Bugbear fight

"Why does that one have a lute?"

"She's a Bard, Kovath. They're artists, which explains why you don't know anything about them."

"She's gonna get eaten by those Bugbears. What's she going to do, sing them into submission?"

"Ah, well -- actually..."

"...She just sang that one into submission then stabbed it in the throat."

"Yep."

"Bards are terrifying."

We started a new dungeon called the Dark Shrine of Ruin. I've gotten way behind on posting recaps so I'm recruiting players with points as a bribe to do it. This one is written by Colarmel The log for these two sessions is found here.

5 Player Group: The Dark Shrine of Ruin Part 2: Giant Apes

 “But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,

So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind...”

“What’s that Zarlzazz ?”

“Oh just a poem about the inevitability of consequences.”

“What’s it got to do with the dungeon?”

"The injured Half-Ogre just stuck his head into the room full of giant apes."

Poem fragment from  Rudyard Kipling The Gods of the Copybook Headings

 We started a new dungeon called the Dark Shrine of Ruin.  I've gotten way behind on posting recaps so I'm recruiting players with points as a bribe to do it.  This one is written by Colarmel  The log for these two sessions is found here.

2 player Dungeon: The Temple of Maitimun the Archmage Part 1

"Why apes?"
"What do you mean, 'why apes', Zarlazz?"
"I mean, why do apes seem to be giving these people so much trouble?"
"Well, a sociologist might say that it's because - as primates - they're more advanced and intelligent than the usual animal, and that leads the adventurers to underestimate them as 'mere creatures' rather than the dangerous and cunning opponents they are."
"You're not a sociologist, Kovath."
"So?"
"So, why apes?"
"Because none of these idiots ever brings a Druid along for backup and I really want to see that swashbuckler get squashed by a 40-foot monkey."

A little while ago I realized I'm so far behind on session recaps that if I don't get help I'll never get caught up.  I asked my players if they would mind doing some of the writing for session recaps and Kalzazz offered to step up for the group he's in with Stripe.  The previous session recap explains some of the group dynamic.  The monsters in question this week are Giant Apes, who we've discovered require some tweaking in terms of CER.  The option to trample is of particular concern to the wizard who was unable to get out of the way because levitation doesn't let you retreat and his dodge is... suboptimal.  That said, in hindsight Stripe pointed out later that he should have used blink to defend instead, which likely would have saved him the death checks we saw tonight.

Without further ado here is Kalzazz's recap of events from the first 2 player session of DoA  (The session log for this recap is available here)

2 player Dungeon: The Temple of Khabuugan the Terrible

"There are only two of them? What sort of adventuring party is that?"
"I count three, Kovath."
"The hireling doesn't count."
"How do you know he's a hireling?"
"He's got that lean, hungry, I'm-not-being-paid-nearly-enough-for-this look about him."
"And what is he not being paid enough for?"
"That depends."
"On what?"
"Whether or not the bears wander into the garbage smasher while the adventurers are getting cut to pieces by the Watcher at the End of Time."

A little while ago I realized I'm so far behind on session recaps that if I don't get help I'll never get caught up.  I asked my players if they would mind doing some of the writing for session recaps and Kalzazz offered to step up for the group he's in with Stripe.   The 2 player dynamic was very interesting to me and the fact that the dungeon spit out fights that they could win just based on their CER was very encouraging to me.  The campaign looked like it was going to be pretty silly in tone from both the characters I received at the outset, so I decided to roll with it and named their 62 point hireling Healbot.

Iginio is perhaps the most optimized 250 point character I've ever seen in terms of never missing a turn to do very respectable damage.  Kalzazz plays Fiona in the larger group and expressed some frustration at not being able to make some sort of attack every turn.  Colarmel created a character tailor made for Kalzazz's concerns.  He swings his katana for 3d+8 (and has reach 2 doing it) and when he can't close, he can chuck a sai for 2d+3 imp which is pretty respectable as a main weapon, much less a fast-drawable ranged secondary attack.

Strudelbork is a fantastic support wizard, and is capable of some significant buffs (Great haste) as well as inflicting some major ailments on foes (strike blind, death vision, glue).  His standard operating procedure of staying levitated outside of normal melee reach makes him a tough one to pin down in a fight while providing fantastic support.

Without further ado here is Kalzazz's recap of events from the first 2 player session of DoA  (The session log for this recap is available here)

5 Player Group: The Dark Shrine of Ruin Part 1: Throttlers and a Troll

"Wait, what's that one doing?"

"Sneaking ahead."

"Why?""Because he doesn't know the throttlers are there."

"Wow. He's gonna get cheesed.""Cheesed, Kovath?"

"Cheesed. It's like creamed, but it takes longer and you come out in chunks."

"...yep, he's gonna get cheesed." (Hat tip to Sir Terry Pratchett)

 We started a new dungeon called the Dark Shrine of Ruin.  I'll post the map and settings to generate it after my players clear it.  The log for these two sessions is found here.

Skeleton Army

The opening setup

"Really, Zarlazz? Skeletons?""What's wrong with skeletons?""A bit low-rent, aren't they? Couldn't you come up with something that hasn't been done to death?""What, you'd prefer we give the adventurers a more meaty challenge?""That pun was beneath you, Zarlazz.""Puns are beneath us all, Kovath."

Wandering in circles

"Kovath."

"Zarlazz?"

"This tunnel - it doesn't go anywhere."

"Well, so?"

"I mean, we're paying for these tunnels by the yard. Why is there a completely empty hallway with three entrances to the same room and -- forty-eight, forty-nine -- yes, fifty -- FIFTY yards of pointless twists and turns?"

"That happens sometimes."

"And that's somehow okay?"

"Honestly, the amount of time and effort we save on planning is worth five thousand yards of hallway." 

"...Huh."

Here we are walking in a looong circle.

This session (Chat log here) featured no combat just a great deal of trap finding.  And some laughing at the time wasted in the dungeon.  Traps triggered once, and were evaded and disarmed once. I wasn't super thrilled with how the session went just in terms of all the rolls exploring empty halls but the loot was okay.

First, they handled the loot from the fight with the dinomen last session.  Then they moved on and uncovered a secret door using See Secrets, then they uncovered a secret door that led to a hallway that led to ... 2 doors back to the room with the secret door.  The party managed to choose the one door that was trapped to open.  Teetonka triggered the trap but yanked his hand back in time to avoid the poisoned needle. (side note, I need to write up some more door traps, there aren't many in the traps book).  The party continued south to discover a trapped room (liquid ice sprayers in the ceiling).  Vondur got impatient (Impulsive swashbuckler) and decided to leap over the trap. He failed his acrobatics roll and had to burn a luck to escape an icy doom.  Teetonka started to describe how he'd disarm the trap but I cut him short so we could move on.  This is not ideal behavior on my part, players are encouraged by RAW to disarm traps in ways other than just "I roll traps" but I was in a hurry.  I went ahead and rewarded with CP as if he had spent the time and effort explaining how it would be disarmed (Exploits p.92).  Search checks were made and some hidden loot was found in the room (I hid it in a panel on the randomly generated balcony).  The haul wasn't bad:

• 11 eigth-gold, 21 silver, 174 copper ($2144)
• 2 gem like objects (probably tourmaline? Teetonka put these in her boot) 
• fine metallic shield with jeweled inlay  and edging of feathers (magical, effect not known).  
• Potion of Agility (Identified by Gharza sipping it. as a Half- Orc, she can make HT based alchemy pretty well)

They then spent some time considering how to get the Liquid Ice out of the ceiling, before giving up and returning to exploration.  The next room they entered was a boss level encounter: 21 Skeletons.

I've only done it twice, but I'm already getting pretty tired of these huge hordes of monsters.  The party opened the door, saw the skeletons and shut it again.  Stonemaul decided to pray to his god for help in smiting the undead menace.  I went ahead and let him roll based on Exploits p. 90.  The effective skill of 6 seemed unlikely to work out, but he did indeed roll that 6.  After some discussion of possible results, I decided to just throw a Turn Zombie spell loose on the tightly packed skeleton phalanx.  It helped out, all the skeletons started the fight down 4 HP and 4 of them spent the fight running from Stonemaul instead of pitching in.  At that point we called it a night and planned to pick up an a week or so.

This looms for next week

Thoughts: I need to make tokens for trapped doors so I can click to either spring or disarm the traps so things can move faster in this regard.

First time into the Breach

"Zarlazz, what are they doing?"
"Wandering around the hallway. Look, the human just walked into the wall."
"What is it, blind?"
"No, it walked INTO THE WALL. It seems stuck. Are you sure the system is getting walls right?"
"Listen, Zarlazz, I'm getting just a little tired of you denigrating the pro-- oh. Yes. It blocks vision but only blocks movement one way. That's... an incorrect setting. Shut UP I'll FIX IT."

I'm separating session logs from the recap.  The log for this session can be found here.
Things didn't run super fast this session, we had one good fight and got a feel for the characters the party brought.

We brought with us (check back for links to characters once I get them up):

1. Bowgre Stretazuma the Half-Ogre scout played by Douglas Cole from Gaming Ballistic
2. Fiona Firedrake the Human Knight played by Kalzazz
3. Gharza Brokentooth the Half-Orc played by Kevin
4. Stonemaul Ironbeard the Dwarf Cleric played by Starslayer
5. Teetonka the Half-Ogre Thief Played by Bruno
6. Vondur Stouthammer the Dwarf Swashbuckler played by Colarmel

We started with some discussion of marching order, lighting and so on.  The cave was lit with glowing crystals embedded in the wall throughout providing a -4 vision penalty (this was randomly determined).  This light level provided full vision to many of the non-humans in the group, but our token human had some trouble.  The Wizard provided a continual light spell at daylight level to help her out.  Once we got going, we had a player get stuck in a wall behind a vision blocking layer.  Ah, technical difficulties!

We also spent some time learning DFRPG rules as we went.  Every player we brought was a seasoned GURPS player (albiet all with different groups).  What none of us really realized before we started this, how many house rules we used and how many other rules we just don't use in our respective games.  Kevin did a lot of cross checking rules for us mid game (turns out he's a rock star at getting that done, although it makes him uncomfortable to do all the rules lawyering we are asking him to do).  I don't normally recommend this in play, but this project is intentionally trying to use *all* the rules and get it all right.

On that note, we also missed the fact that dropping your crossbow after firing is totally covered by DFRPG rules.  Crossbow as a wooden object has DR 2 (Exploits p.102) and a drop from human waist height is about a yard (1d damage). We rolled it after the fact and Fiona's crossbow got by unscathed.  This is one rule I probably would continue to ignore in normal play, but it isn't a big deal once you've internalized it.

The party ended up sneaking up on the first encounter (16 Dinomen).  We gave the party the benefit of both Ambush and Backstabbing, which it turns out isn't kosher.  If you want to backstab, you need to have half the party conspicuous, if you want an ambush you don't get to place everyone in clear sight-lines of the enemy.

That ambush was a big deal, it took the Dinomen (a lowly IQ 7 and no combat reflexes) forever to recover from the opening stun.  It was a very fast bloodbath.  Most of the PC's did enough damage to weak fleshy bits to inflict major wounds and knockdown.  The reptiles didn't fare well.  The enemy never even got to attack the party before getting mowed down.  We called the fight because we were at the end of time with 3 foes standing, only one of whom would be able to act on the next round.

The loot (so far as the party can tell) is as follows:

• A bundle of furs
• An inscribed stone 
• Some fancy seeming sandals 
• 1 half-gold, 1 quarter gold, 1 eighth gold 79 copper ($429)

Characters gained one point for winning a worthy fight (Exploits p.92)

My big regrets are that my Maptool framework needs to run more smoothly for hordes and that the vision blocking seems to keep causing at least one of my players trouble.   I'll be cleaning it up for the next session.

Positives: the concept worked really well, we got a chance to get out and try a randomly generated dungeon and it worked. My players had fun and the encounter that was statted as worthy was only trivialized by excessive use of ambush and backstab together, I think, we'll see going forward.