Bugbears for Breakfast

Chapter 2: Pieces in Motion - Draft Complete

2012-02-13T07:00:00.000-06:00

This weekend I finished the draft of Chapter 2 of my sci-fi novel. Right now I'm looking at 7 chapters total, with each chapter having multiple scenes. I will stick with that through the first draft, but may make each scene a chapter and have tens of chapters. It depends on what chapters 4-6 end up looking like - I expect them to be rather large.

The working title of the novel contains a big plot point, which is why I've not shared it beyond my writing committee. I'm torn between making it a secret and going with a more indirect title or just putting it out there and telegraphing a story element to the readers. Still dithering on this right now and really have no plan on making a decision until the draft is finished.

That's it for right now. Another update when the draft for Chapter 3: A Trigger Is Pulled is finished. Later!

Chapter 1 - Draft Complete

2012-02-08T07:00:00.000-06:00

I've completed my draft of Chapter 1 of my novel and started work on Chapter 2. As a result, all of my other writing has come to a standstill. I'm doing this on purpose so I can stay focused on the story and get the whole thing written. The last novel I started I got pretty far into, but really didn't know where it was going and got into a point where I didn't know where to go next. It is titled "Getting Educated" and can be found on The Podge Cast Forums, here.

This time, I did a storyboard using my living room wall and a bunch of sticky notes of different colors. I hashed it out with my focus committee (my wife and a friend familiar with the roots of the story) and worked out a better flow. Simply explaining it to them helped focus the story for me and make it more concrete in my head. I've then did a much more detailed story board of the first major arc and converted that into bullet pointed lists for each scene or group of scenes and ran it by my focus committee. This helped point out some timing issues in the story and some gaps in the story. I've moved the scenes that needed moving and added those missing. Now I'm convert all those notes into the text of the novel.

I'm torn between sharing the material as it gets finished and wanting to wait until the entire draft is done and sharing the bits as I edit them. I'll probably go with sharing the edited version, so you'll have to wait a while. I want to have the first draft done by the end of March, which currently seems do-able with the restricted writing time I have now, so the wait won't be for ever, it'll just seem like it.

I'll post here as I get chapters done to keep folks up to date.

Later!

Freedonia Falls

2012-01-31T15:33:00.003-06:00

[This is the beginning of what I'm working on right now. Would you read more?]

Sol Asteroid Belt, 2235 CE

“Captain, I’ve got engine traces on my screen. Military ships, based on their velocity.” The rest of the bridge crew sat upright at this announcement.

Captain Darnell Witfield, a fit black man in his late forties, stepped over behind his sensor officer’s station to see her screens. “Where are they, what’s their heading, and can they see us?” Delivering supplies to the asteroid colony wasn’t exactly illegal (yet), but military ships arriving in response to the colony declaring it was not part of the United Government of Earth was not a good sign. Better to play it safe.

“They’re on the system plane, at 90° from our current vector and heading to Freedonia,” Devorah McCandlish, a woman in her late thirties with curly blonde hair, responded. “With our latest company sensors we have a roughly 25% advantage in range over them, so I don’t believe they see us yet, but at their current velocity…” She pressed a few keys and the display changed to show the approaching ships estimated sensor coverage.

“I see it. They’ll get a glimpse of us soon.” The captain returned to his own station and spoke to the helm officer, Jason Brownlee, a black man also in his late thirties. “Mister Brownlee, power down our engines completely.” The captain then opened the intra-ship channel on his comm unit and stated, “Attention all crew, switch to quiet running. Repeat: switch to quiet running,” and then shut off his comm unit. “Comm, send a focused message to Freedonia and warn them they’re about to have UGE visitors. Then keep our ears open.”

Most of the crew was familiar with this drill and quickly responded as the background hum from the ships engines quickly died out. Jo Wagner, the communications officer, a pale woman with long brown hair in her late twenties, was relatively new to the crew of the Rhinesburg and after sending the message to the asteroid colony, she turned and asked the captain, “Why are we hiding from UGE ships? If they catch us here, won’t they just fine the company?”

“The UGE military has a…history…of over responding,” Captain Witfield replied, biting on a thumbnail. “This isn’t likely to end well if the UGE sent a military taskforce in response to Freedonia’s declaration of independence. If Freedonia’s actions have been declared illegal or even treasonous, then any ship caught having just delivered supplies to the colony would be just as guilty and share in the penalty.”

“Which would be…” Jo asked.

“Well, I’m certain their letters of condolences to our next of kin would be very convincing.”

“Ah,” was Jo’s only reply before returning to her console.

“UGE ships are arriving at the colony now,” Devorah interjected.

“I’m getting transmissions on the public frequencies,” Jo added.

“Put them on the main screen and display throughout the ship,” Captain Witfield ordered.

The main viewscreen switched from an exterior view to showing a man in a UGE Navy uniform with a touch of grey in his otherwise black hair. When he spoke, he had a British accent of some sort, Captain Witfield could not pinpoint from where. “I am Captain Evan Claibourne of the UGE Fleet. Per the UGE Charter, no independent governments are allowed. As you are not a registered Orbital Corporation, you are in violation of UGE law and found to be in open revolt. As a representative of the UGE, I have been tasked to end this revolt expediently. Weapon’s Officer: fire.” The transmission then abruptly ended.

“McCandlish, show me what they’re doing,” Captain Witfield snapped at the sensors officer and the main viewer switched to a display of the UGE ships and the colony. The paniced response from someone in the colony could be heard over the public channel.

Captain Witfield was able to identify the three UGE ships as a Hound-class destroyer and two Hammer-class corvettes. The destroyer was just firing its five missile launchers at the colony. The missiles raced to the asteroid and detonated their nuclear warheads. The few surface structures on the asteroid were scoured away and the surface of the asteroid fractured. There was a brief inferno inside the passages and chambers of the colony as the heat from the five nuclear warheads ignited and consumed the air in the colony. All transmissions from the colony ceased. The bridge of the Rhinesburg was just as silent.

As the fury of the blasts died down, the UGE ships turned and headed away from the now lifeless asteroid, returning the way they came.

“McCandlish, will any of the debris hit us?” Captain Witfield asked quietly. When he got no response he repeated himself loudly, “McCandlish! Will any of the debris hit us?”

This snapped the sensors officer out of it and she looked down at her screens. “No, sir. Not for a couple of hours. We are nearly ten light-minutes away.”

“Good,” Captain Witfield replied. “Brownlee, once we are out of the taskforce’s sensor range, plot an elliptical course to Mars and then make best speed. I do NOT want want to run across that taskforce on our way to Mars.” Captain Witfield got up from his chair and headed towards the exit from the bridge. “Brownlee, you’re in charge until I return. I’m going to my cabin to throw up.”

Copyright 2012 by Patrick Walsh
All rights reserved.

An Unusual Beginning to the Year

2012-01-23T07:00:00.000-06:00

So, normally (as in for the last 10 years or so), the beginning of the year is a slow time for me at the DayJob and I can easily spend lunch time writing either blog posts or game stuff.

This year...not so much.

I've been solidly busy with a large document where the subject matter expert is a PRIME example of why engineers need technical writers. If you cannot get your thoughts across in writing and explain your results, that year long study you just did is actually a waste of time. So I'm at 200+ pages of document so far and I think I have another 200-300 pages to go to get the draft done so his boss can review it and verify he did what was asked. Of, and the draft is due Feb. 10. That's do-able for me, but not much time for slacking.

Additionally, the company I work for has recalled all company laptops for a security upgrade they are pushing out through the corporate network. This will take 3-5 days as the push outs are random to keep the network from getting overloaded, with no way for remote workers to trigger it so we could get in and out in a timely fashion as we are under 10% of the workforce.

Long story short (too late!), I don't have my regular laptop and my back up is about 5 years old and has a bum power cord that keeps the batter from charging, meaning I have to always keep it plugged in when I'm using it. Not very conducive to going out to some place and writing for an hour or two when most places don't have public plugs.

OK, now I'm just whining a bit. I'll stop.

In other news, I've got a story for a sci-fi book I want to write and most of my writing time I have is now going to that. I've been story-boarding and have the first arc outlined. I'm fleshing out the major points right now (still in story-board format). When I have some material for folks to look at, I'll post a notice here and request solicitations for reading and feedback. That won't be for a couple of months as my writing time is somewhat crimped right now. I'll keep you updated.

Oh, and I now have 6 sessions of Aldelle Group notes needing transliteration into readable format (with another one happening by the time you read this). Sigh.

Later!

2012 Board Game Review – Part 3

2012-01-10T07:53:00.002-06:00

This is a continuation of my game reviews of games played at Lone Star Gaming Fest 2011. In Part 1 I reviewed Hamsterrolle (a.k.a. Hamster Wheel), Inca Empire, Defenders of the Realm, and Martian Dice (along with Zombie Dice). In Part 2 I reviewed Endeavor, Shogun, Age of Steam, Fortune & Glory, and Factory Fun.

Mondo (1-4 players)
Mondo is an odd little game where the players are racing each other and a clock to build a world for point. Each player has a world board, which is a small grid of empty spaces. One side has water borders, the other’s edge is quartered with each quarter having one of the four environment types: water, desert, plains, forest/jungle. When the timer starts (7 minutes for a 3 player game), the players draw from a common pool of tiles to fill out their world board. The tiles have one to three of the environments on them and you use the multi-environment tiles to form the borders of each biome, which is important as you lose points for mismatches and you can’t move the tiles once they are on your world board (honor system rules used here). There are tiles with bonus points for first to stop building (completed world or not) and you have to grab those. Once you take one of those, you may no longer add tiles to your world, even if you finally spot that perfect piece that will complete your world. Oh, and the pieces are double sided, so the cool piece you want that perfectly borders your desert and ocean biomes? Another player may have played that tile for the flip side, a blank ocean square. Tough luck.

Once time runs out or all the players are done building, scoring happens. Points are scored for animals on tiles, completed biomes (bordered all the way around like a city in Carcasonne), and order you finished. Points are lost for active volcanoes (and all the best pieces seem to have active volcanoes), tile mismatches, and empty spaces. Then you clear the boards and play two more rounds, highest score at the end of the three rounds wins.

I liked this very much and will likely buy a copy sometime this year. The down side is my wife doesn’t enjoy this style of game, wanting more time to contemplate her selections and not having to compete with the other players for tiles, so I won’t get to play it at home a lot without having enough people over to run two games at once so she can play in the other game. Luckily, this happens about once a month when she hosts a tea, so the game is viable for me. In college, this game would have been played often.

King of Tokyo (2-6 players)
In King of Tokyo you play one of six giant monsters fighting each other to be King of Tokyo. The game has stand-ups for each of the monsters, which include a giant ape (The King), a giant robot controlled by a rabbit (Death Bunny), a Godzilla knock off, a Cthulhu knock off, and two others I can’t remember off the top of my head. The board has three locations: the suburbs (where all the monsters start), Tokyo (big enough for one monster stand up only), and Tokyo Bay (equivalent to Tokyo, but only used in 5 and 6 player games). There are 8 dice, but normally you only use 6 of them. Each die has a clawed hand, a heart, a lightning bolt, and the numbers 1, 2, and 3 on them. You get three rolls, keeping what you want each time and rerolling the rest. After your third roll (or if you stop earlier) you apply the icons you have. The numbers 1, 2, and 3 score points if you have a three-of-a-kind and score the number shown, so three 3s scores three points. Each extra of the same number scores a single point more, so five 2s scores (2+1+1=4) points. Hearts heal damage you’ve taken, unless you are in Tokyo. Claws do damage to the monster in Tokyo if you are in the suburbs or ALL the monsters in the suburbs if you are in Tokyo. If you are in Tokyo and get hit, you can yield Tokyo to the attacker (remember you cannot heal while in Tokyo, only take an do damage). Lightning bolts score power cubes, which can be used to buy power-up cards from a deck, the top three cards of which are face up beside the board (so you have a selection to purchase from and know how many cubes you need). In addition to scoring points from the dice, you score one point when you enter Tokyo and TWO points if you start your turn there. First person to 20 points or last monster standing wins the game.

This is on my must purchase list. I had so much fun playing it the first time (even though I died early) I immediately played three more times. Strategizing which dice to keep and which to reroll provides just the right amount of strategy for a game like this. My favorite card was “Throw a tanker”, which gave me two victory points whenever I did three or more damage on my turn, simulating my monster throwing an oil tanker on the other monster(s). Least favorite: poison spit – it was too easy for monsters to get rid of the poison tokens, so I never did more than a single point of extra damage.

Cargo Noir (2-5 players)
In Cargo Noir you are playing a pulp era criminal group fighting for control of ports so you can smuggle goods to buy things: extra freighters, syndicates, extra warehouses, or things for sheer victory points like dive bars, the film industry, or even a principality of your own. “Combat” is done by committing resources in the form of one of you freighters and a stack of gold coins. Control of the port goes to the highest bidder after the other players either don’t send anyone there or withdraw their bid if they did send a freighter there. The port gives you one to four cargo tiles (number is fixed and based on the port and randomly stocked from a bag of tiles), which you either store in your warehouse or turn in sets to buy the cards showing the things mentioned above. At the start your warehouse only holds six cargos and you only have three freighters, so an expansion plan is necessary to get the cargos to pay for the more expensive goods (victory point cards) and the means to expand. Additionally, you can send freighters to either the Black Market or casino in Macao to swap cargo tiles/draw a new one from the bag (Black Market) or make 2 coins (Casino), which is the only way to get the coins to bid for control of the ports to get the cargos to buy the victory points.

There’s a lot going on in this game and I’m skipping a few bits to simplify this, but it is a very fun game. Since the convention I have purchased my own copy of the game and plan on playing it at the tea this weekend. If you get a chance, play this game – you’ll probably want to get your own copy shortly after that.

One note, you cannot return to a port you’ve abandoned in the same turn and syndicates are single payouts, not each time you abandon a port. We missed this one game and it warped game play to an unfun spot. Afterwards we re-read the rules and found our mistake.

Olympos (3-5 players)
In Olympos you are moving your tribe (in the form of counters) across Greece, parts of Turkey, and three isles of Atlantis (which appear on the board south of Greece, but not in the real world). The turn structure is fairly unique: the outer edge of the board is a time track and you move your marker based on the cost of the action you performed. When you finish, whoever’s counter is further back goes next. It often happens that one player gets to take a few small turns in a row if the other players make expensive actions on their turn. Placed on spots around the time track are Olympos cards that represent the gods getting involved and either help or hinder a player based on the god and who has the most or least Zeus tokens.

On your turn you can do an explore action or a discovery action. The explore action involves moving one piece on the board and involves combat if you land in a territory previously controlled by another player. You always win, but how many actions it takes depends upon your combat “technology” (for lack of a better term). Discovery actions involve allocating resources you have under your control to make tech discoveries or build wonders. Examples include horse riding (which makes movement on land dirt cheap in actions), medicine (which makes it cheaper to bring new tokens into play), and things that have swords on them (representing fighting technology – more swords is better). You have two pools of tokens: personal and general. General is used on the tech chart to grant a bonus of some sort for discovering a tech (examples include tokens for your personal pool, one use resources, or hour glass tokens that reduce the cost of your next action). The personal pool is all of the tokens you have to place on the board. As you need to leave a token on a territory to claim its resource (to buy discoveries), you always need more, especially if you are feeling ambitious. Points are scored once all the players pass the last Olympos card, which marks the point where each player gets one last turn. While this could mean that several players have to wait while the other player(s) finish, in practice the players tend to hit this point at about the same time.

This is described as a “gamers game” and I agreed. Sending a piece across the board may look tempting, but it takes a lot of actions to do, meaning it will be a while until your next turn and you may get bored waiting. I plan on buying this game this year. It probably ranks above Mondo and Age of Steam, but I don’t NEED it right now.

Done
That’s it for this year. I’ll post reviews if I play anything new this year before the next Lone Star Gaming Fest. In the meantime, I’ll be posting Aldelle Group adventure journals until I catch up – I’m five sessions behind now as it is and Things Have HappenedTM.

Later!

2012 Board Game Review – Part 2

2012-01-05T07:00:00.000-06:00

Endeavor (3-5 players)

Endeavoris set in the Age of Sail and you are attempting to build your empire to scorethe most points when the game ends. Yourempire is a separate board from the main board where you keep track ofbuildings built and resource “tech” levels, plus resource cards from overseascolonies.

I was hoping for a more “conqueror theboard”-style game and this isn’t it. This is more of a “build up our ability to do things so you can do morethings”-style game. You start with thesame “tech” as everyone in four categories: “buildings”, “people”, “recyclepeople”, “hand size”. These are nottheir actual names, but what they do. “Buildings” determines what level of building you can build, with higherlevel buildings being more flexible in granted abilities or just more ofthem. “People” is how many tokens youget at the beginning of the turn to do things with. “Recycle People” lets you pull people off ofbuildings (jobs) they were put on last turn, both giving you more people to dothings with this turn and clearing the buildings to be used again. “Hand size” is how many resource cards youcan hold at the end of your turn, starting at one and going up to five.

Buildings are the primary way to get actionsbeyond “put a guy in an empty space in Europe”. You need buildings to sail to the other parts of the world, buildings toattack places settled by other players, and buildings to draw resource cards.

I did everything wrong in this game. I built a barracks to seize a site in Europefrom another player to grab a resource when I should have either built abuilding to improve the resource or (more likely) built a building to so Icould sail to other areas and get the resources without losing a guy tocombat. Because my ability to gooverseas was limited to the use of one-shot tokens I captured during play, Iwas hindered in doing just about everything else. Not surprisingly, I came in last.

I want to play this game again, knowing what Iknow now. This seems to be that kind ofgame where the first time you play you get drubbed but learn how the gamereally works. I’m not certain I’d buythis game right now, it depends on how my replay goes. If you like a resource development game, thisgame should work for you.

Shogun (2-4 players, but really, you need 4 players)

Shogunis an old fashioned “conqueror feudal Japan” game, which I like.

The game is technically eight rounds long, witheach round being a season (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter), but the winterseason is mostly checking for revolts due to lack of rice and scoringpoints. In each round (except winter),ten actions are taken in a random order determined by shuffling a deck anddealing out the actions. The first fiveare dealt face up, the second five face down. Players perform each action together in player order. Actions are assigned at the beginning of eachround by placing one of your territory cards face down on your action board(shows the ten actions and gives a place to play one card for each) in eachspace. You also have five cards forbidding on turn order, which can also be put on regular actions to indicate youare not performing that action. You haveto place a card on each action and only one card, so you are going to do eachaction only once per round, including gather rice to feed your army and raisetaxes to pay for things (like building castles, temples, and No theatres andraising more troops). There are twoattack actions, so you can attack twice, but from two different regions.

Oh, and remember that you only know the order ofthe first five actions when you are planning, the next five will be revealedone at a time as the round progresses. Hope your raise taxes action happens before that territory is captured.

Armies are represented by cubes and combat isdone by putting invading cubes and defending cubes into a dice tower andcomparing what comes out. Cubes will getstuck in the tower and reappear later, which adds randomness to the combats. Territories produce different amounts of riceand taxes, so you want to place better territories on those actions, but eachtime you do those actions that territory gets a revolt marker. Once you get above one marker, a revolt willbe triggered and you have to fight peasant armies. And peasants stay angry, even when a newplayer conquerors the territory.

The winter phase causes rice usage and spoilagebased on a mechanism I won’t go into here, but is well done. Run out of rice and you get revolt markers onrandom territories and, as above, if you get two or more on a territory, youhave to fight the peasants. Then youscore points. Points are scored forterritories owned; castles, temples, and No theatres built; and having the mostof each building in a region (group of about 8 territories).

I played a three-player game of this andremembered why three-player games like this are bad: they end up being twoplayers versus one player games, not three player games. I, of course, was the man in the middle. Plus side, the game is relatively short, sothe agony was finite. Minus side, youREALLY need four players to play this.

I might buy this game eventually, but it is not a high priority unless I can get it cheap.

Age of Steam (3-6 players)

Age of Steamis a rail game where you place track tiles and move cargo from source cities todestination cities. The resources arerandomly placed at the beginning of the game (they are represented by coloredcubes), so no game should be identical, providing a high re-playability. Money for doing things is gained by issuingshares. Money is used to lay track,costs dependent upon what you have to build over and how complex the trackdepicted is, and bidding on turn order. However, at the end of the turn you have to pay your shareholders andupkeep on your train, so spend your money wisely.

That’s really about it. There are expansion sets that add new mapsand tweak the rules. We played on themap of Ireland, which is in Expansion set 1. I liked this game a lot. I wasleery about a rail game with shares (I’m not a fan of the 18xx series ofgames), but this is abstracted and no representations of shares are actuallyused, just a track to keep track how much you owe at the end of each turn. It is about as complex a rail game as I careto play and kept my attention. I couldteach this to an average person and not lose them. I will probably track down a copy of thisgame and buy it so I have access to it. It will be the upper end of railroad games I teach at my wife's tea get-togethers.

Fortune and Glory (1-8 players)

Fortune and Gloryis a game about pulp action heroes searching the world for ancientartifacts. This game can be playereither competitive (the basic game) or cooperative, which is something I lookfor in a game nowadays (the cooperative part, not the ability to do both,although that is cool as well). In thecooperative mode, you race against Nazis or Mobsters, trying to gain enoughfortune tokens before the opposing vile organization meets their (lower) quota.

Artifacts are comprised two cards, an artifact(like a crown or hammer or throne) and an adventure (of Poseidon, of the MonkeyGod, of Lost Souls). Each deck is 30-40cards (I haven’t counted them), so the odds of a repeat combination is veryrare. The players go to various locationsacross the world (drawn randomly when the artifact is drawn) to find the artifacts. There they have to overcome 2 to 5 dangersbefore they can claim the artifact. Thedangers require the adventurer beat a test based on one of their four stats:Agility, Lore, Cunning, and Combat, with each character being ranked between 2to 4 in each. The stat tells you howmany dice you get to roll, the test tells you the target number and how manysuccesses. Many danger cards give you anoption between two dangers, but sometimes you just get one option.

Ok, bad news up front: this game is $100. The good news: it’s worth it. The production quality is high, there are aton of components (something like 11 decks of cards to draw from, plenty oftokens to cover the board, pieces sculpted to look like all the characters andthe major villains, pieces for Nazi goons and mobster thugs, dice, and even asoundtrack CD), and the game is a lot of fun. There is a very high replayability factor game as the combination ofartifacts, locations, and bad guy results varies from game to game.

I’ve only played cooperative mode, but others borrowedmy copy to play competitively. I’veplayed a couple of games where we got close to losing to the vile organizationand a couple of times when the bad guys weren’t much of a threat. I think the difference is in the random placementof the artifact locations: if they are clumped together near the characterstarting points, the game is easier than if they are spread far away.

I would have bought this if I had not been warned I was getting it for Christmas.

Factory Fun (2-5 players)

Factory Funis about quickly placing machines on your factory floor and connecting them toreservoirs (you start with one each of four colors) and output reservoirs (sothey don’t spill on the floor). Note, ifyou have trouble telling colors apart due to color blindness, this game maycause you some trouble.

Each player starts with a stack of 10 randommachines and simultaneously flips the top one over with the other players. You then grab one you think you can place(not necessarily your own), put it on your factory board, and then place thereservoirs and/or connector pipes. Eachmachine is worth a certain number of points (I saw values from 4 to 13). Adding pipes, source reservoirs, outputreservoirs, or moving previous placed items cost points. Subtract the cost to legally place themachine from the points the machine gives and adjust your score. At the end of the game there are bonus pointsfor connecting the output of one machine to the input of another.

This sounds simple, but you have a limited numberof sources (one of each color) and only three output reservoirs, so about halfway through you have to start getting creative to connect the machines in,using over/under pieces and T-shaped pieces to get things where you need them.

The game needs a rule that states you cannot pickup a machine until you are ready to add it to your factory. There may be such a rule, but I did not get achance to fully read the rules and learned from folks who were playing nice. The second group was more competitive and hadan annoying habit of picking up the most valuable machine and then seeing ifthere was any way to actually place it, holding on to it until they werecertain they couldn’t actually use it and then tossing it back. This behavior slows the game down as playerswait to see if a better piece will get thrown back by someone who had no reasonto pick it up in the first place.

This game was a lot of fun for me as I enjoyedpuzzling out how to add pieces, but if you are not quick at this, this game canbe very frustrating as the other players grab all the better stuff first, especially if they grab for points and not for usability. I plan on buying this game, but instituting a house rule about players getting prematurely grabby.

Next:

Mondo, King of Tokyo, Cargo Noir, Olympos - some of my favorite games all convention

2012 Board Game Review – Part 1

2012-01-03T07:00:00.000-06:00

I’m back from Lone Star Gaming Fest again, fourdays of nothing but boardgaming. Thisyear we were at a new hotel as the previous one was remodeling (something knownabout), but part of that remodeling was a reduction in conference space by half(something found out only at the end of summer). The new facilities were good physically, butthe hotel had air conditioning issues, especially during the middle of theday. My room was OK, but the conferenceroom got warm and the public men’s room was as warm and humid as an indoor pool,including the chlorine smell.

(Note: Yes, it was New Year’s weekend and we arein the northern hemisphere. Airconditioning was none-the-less necessary and I spent the weekend in t-shirtsand shorts, wearing flip flops. Welcometo Houston “winters”.)

That aside, it was a great con and I had thechance to play several games I wanted to check out and several games I’d neverhear of. Here is my first set of reviews of thegames I played at the convention, all for your edification.

Hamster Wheel (2-4 players)

This is a German game and is actually namedHamsterrolle. Sadly, it is out of print at the moment,which will make it more difficult to track down a copy and I want one. The game is a block balancing game where youare trying to be the first person out of blocks. The trick is that you are balancing theblocks on short ledges INSIDE a wooden wheel about a foot in diameter. Everyone has to put them on the same side,which causes the wheel to roll, moving along the table as each new piece isadded. As previously added pieces climbthe “backside” of the wheel, they will eventually fall out. If that happens after you place your piece,you get all the pieces that fell out of the wheel. Now you have to place those as well beforegoing out.

It sounds simple and at its core it is, but thestrategy comes from placing your next piece in a way that forces the nextplayer to have to play on the next “spoke” up, a spoke that might be angled sotheir piece will not actually stay or, even better, cause several other piecesto fall when the wheel rolls.

We played on a table with a table cloth, which Ithink slows the wheel from turning. On ahard surface, the wheel should roll easier, making the game more challengingand jerk-moves even jerkier.

All the components are made of wood and consistof the wheel and four sets of seven pieces, each piece in a set a differentcolor and shape (although 5 of the 7 are planks of varying lengths).

Inca Empire (3-4 players)

This was a Christmas gift from my in-laws. I saw a picture of the board when doing aGoogle image search for something else and new I needed to own it, so I put iton my Christmas list. The game did notdisappoint, although we were doing scoring wrong the first time we wereplaying, which soured my wife on the game. The second time I played it, we did the scoring correctly and it made abig difference. Turn order changes atset point in the game and is set so the person losing goes first and the personwinning goes last. Early in the game,going last can suck. Later in the game,there is some advantage to going last.

Inca Empireis mostly about placing sticks (one-inch long wooden pieces) on the board toclaim paths from the starting area to city sites (where you can build citiesand then temples on cities, all for points), outpost sites (where you can buildoutposts for points), and to territories to conqueror (which both score pointsand contain the city and outpost sites you want to build on). You can also build terraces which grant asingle victory point each, but also provide more workers. Conquered territories provide one to threeworkers and zero to four victory points based on the markers randomly placed onthem (face down) at the beginning of the game.

The game plays over four eras, each era havingone to three rounds with scoring at the end of each round (except the firstround, but that is an exception). Therounds have a number of phases based on the era with four types of phases: IncaPhase (get workers), Sun Phase (place sun card, which help and hinder, on theSun Board - more on this later), Worker Phase (where things get done), and theSupa Inca Phase (at the end of the each round and when scoring happens). The whole thing is laid out on the board witha piece marking the current phase, so players can easily see what phase iscoming up next and how long the game has. The board has a three-player side and a four-player side, the onlydifference being the starting territory being split for three or four players.

This is essentially a rail building game with anIncan theme, but it has the right level of complexity that makes it fun to playwithout being overwhelming for new players. Once cities, temples, and outposts are built and scored, any player canbuild a path to them and get points for them, but only one path per link on theboard, so strategy involves playing paths to get you what you want, but make itdifficult for others to access thing you built. The points for building is better than the points for merely beingconnected during the Supa Inca phase, so building is very worthwhile.

The Sun Cards, as stated, do either somethinggood or something bad and you have a hand of three of them to select fromduring the Sun Phase. The tricky part isthat you play them on the Sun Board in turn order and the Sun Board is dividedup into sections equal to the number of players, each section bordered by twodifferent player colors, and limited to on Sun card play per section each SunPhase. This means any card you play willalways effect two players, for good or ill, and you might not be able to playthat good card so it affects you if you are late in the turn order.

I’ve now played two games of this with threeplayers and it plays well (especially when you do the scoring correctly). I look forward to playing it again with fourplayers.

Defenders of the Realm (1-4 players)

Defenders of the Realm is Pandemic with a fantasy theme and dicerolling for movement and fighting minions (what would be disease cubes inPandemic). Instead of curing eachdisease, you have to fight the general leading each villain faction, each ofwhom is slowly marching in to Monarch City, a space in the center of the board. The amount of dice you roll to attack thegenerals is based on what cards you discard and you have to discard cards withthe correct color. Then you roll thedice and count how many dice beat a target number (based on which general). Then you check to see if you rolled enoughsuccesses to actually kill the general, which requires about seven or eightsuccesses.

As per a collaborative game, there are many waysto loose. If one of the generals gets toMonarch City, the players lose. If yourun out of minions of any color, the players lose. When you reach critical minion mass in aplace (based on number of counters, not per color) you place a taint counterAND spread minion counters to adjacent areas. If you run out of taint counters, the players lose. The only way to win is to defeat all fourenemy generals.

As you may be able to guess from my shortsummary, I am not a fan of this game. The dice mechanism just makes the game take longer and can befrustrating, especially against the generals. There is a ton of free material for this game online from the designer,but after playing it and getting a feel for it, I think I’ll pass.

Martian Dice (2-however many players you have)

Martian Diceis a dice rolling game where you are Martians gathering samples from “Earth”,trying to determine who is actually in charge there: the chickens, the cows, orthe humans. You roll all 13 dice at thestart of your turn, each die having one tank, one human, one chicken, one cow ,and two death rays. You set aside tanks(which are bad for you) and then select all the dice showing one of the otherfour symbols (chickens, cows, humans, death rays). Set aside the tanks and whichever set you choseand decide: stop here or roll again. Ifyou roll again, you re-roll the dice you did not set aside. If you stop, you check to see if you scorepoints. To score points, you have tohave death rays equal to or more than in number than tanks. If you do, the other dice score one pointeach with a bonus of three point if you collected at least one each of thechickens, cows, and humans.

To complicate things slightly, after you roll andset aside any tanks you just rolled, you cannot keep dice matching dice youpreviously kept (except death rays, which you can always choose). Stated another way, if you kept humans on thelast roll, you cannot select humans for the rest of this turn. If you every roll dice and the only thingsyou rolled are things you already have (except tanks, which are bad, and deathrays, which are an excepting), you stop rolling and score.

This is fun and quick and plays anywhere you havea rolling surface. The one house rule I’mthinking about adding states that any death rays you keep over the number oftanks you have score one point each. I’veseen folks with 2-3 tanks and eight or more death rays because of how the dicerolled.

As an aside, I strongly recommend Zombie Dicefrom Steve Jackson Games. A similarstyle game and the game Martian Dice wanted to be without getting sued. You roll three dice at a time and the dice notin use stay in the cup. Dice havebrains, footprints, or shotgun blasts. How many of each depends upon the color of the dice: red dice have 1brain, 2 feet, and 3 shotgun blasts; yellow dice have two of each; and greendice have 3 brains, two feet, and 1 shotgun blast. There are three red dice, four yellow dice,and six green dice and you blindly draw dice from the cup, so you are nevercertain what you are going to get. Whenyou roll, you set aside brains to one side and shotgun blast to the other,footprints are kept for re-rolling. Thenyou can stop or draw dice (until you have three) and roll again. If you accumulate three or more shotgun blastsyou fail that turn, put the dice back in the cup, and pass the cup to the nextplayer. If you stop, you score thebrains you have accumulated this turn, put the dice back in the cup, and passthe cup to the next player. When oneplayer gets to 13 or more points, everyone else has one last round to beat theleaders score or lose.

Next Up:

Endeavor, Shogun, Age of Steam, Fortune & Glory, and Factory Fun

Starting This Week: Board Game Reviews!

2012-01-02T14:46:00.002-06:00

Starting this week I'm going to post a series of board game reviews. These will all be games I played at the Lone Star Gaming Fest this past weekend. I will also intersperse these with Aldelle Group adventure logs so I can catch up on those - I'm only five behind at this point! :)

The Aldelle Group – Session 55 – Lucien, Meet Ra.

2011-12-29T07:00:00.000-06:00

Session 55 happened Tuesday, November 29, 2011.

This campaign used the Dyson’s Delve dungeonpages on A Character for Every Game [http://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/maps/dysons-delve/]as a starting point, but has now moved on to new material from theDM. I heartily recommendDyson's Delve as a beginning adventure.

Adventuring Group:

Tre-ba Bel a sheer (female elf alchemist)

Elspeth (female half-elf rogue)

Frankie Hu, Master of the Distracting Fist (maledwarf monk)

Harkaitz of the Red Soul (male human cleric ofRa)

NPCs:

Aziz of the Light (male human paladin, cohort ofHarkaitz)

Sarisvati the Sun-touched (female Ifrit oracle,cohort of Aziz)

Midnight (female half-elf witch, cohort ofFrankie Hu)

Macha (female human fighter, cohort of Elspeth)

Estrela (female Aasimar druid, cohort of Tre-Ba)

Asmo (male halfling sorcerer)

Carnish (male gnoll spellcaster of some sort)

Professor Walsh (male human expert)

The Red Keffiyeh (human warriors, followers ofHarkaitz)

Short John Copper (male halfling cook, hirelingin the employ of Harkaitz)

Evening, August 7, Year of the Earth Rabbit

Praise Ra, who purifies the unclean.

After a short consultation about how to deal withthe smoke and its likely source (an ever smoking bottle), Estrella led usforward, shifting into an air elemental form and blowing the smoke ahead ofher. When Estrela reached the door tothe entry area, the female vampire stepped out of the smoke and struck Estrelatwice, draining life force with each hit. Estrella fell back and the rest of us advanced – the fight was on.

We quickly discovered we were not facing just thefemale vampire – Lucien and another of his spawn were also in the smoke. The smoke limited visibility and the fightwas a confusing jumble of close-in fighting. Aziz strode into the thick of the battle, dealing heavy damage to thevampires with his sword and the channeling of positive energy over them(something I was also doing). All threeof the vampires struck Aziz, Lucien striking the killing blow. Lucien taunted us, calling out, “Where isyour god now?” We renewed our assault onthe unholy trio.

The female vampire was felled first, dissolvinginto mist to escape and reform. Estrelastopped this in her air elemental form, shaping winds to contain the mist and thenflying out of the pyramid and into the bright, bright afternoon sun. The female vampire boiled away under the cleansingpower of Ra.

The other spawn fell next, turning to mist andtemporarily escaping us. We thenconcentrated all our wrath on Lucien. Iwas ready when he fell and turned to mist – I cast stone shape and englobed himin a perfectly sealed sphere. We thenfound and sealed the ever smoking bottle and I healed those I could. Midnight cast locate creature to track downthe missing vampire spawn and Estrela again used her air elemental form to dragthe mist out into the sun. We rolled thesphere containing Lucien far out into the sun and cracked the sphere open. My last words to the vampire were, “Here. Here is my god. Now burn!”

Aziz’s body has been cleaned and wrapped. Tomorrow morning I will summon a divineintermediary and report our success at securing the gate. Rather than teleporting us, I will ask for assistancein raising Aziz from the dead. This iswithin my capabilities as a priest of Ra, but we are missing necessary materialcomponents. After that, I will communewith Ra to determine if we have completed our mission. We may have to secure the gate near Terranor,lands that now swarm with demons and devils.

I will say a prayer over Aziz’s body and thenturn in.

Morning, August 8, Year of the Earth Rabbit

Praise Ra, who lifts his servants from the sand.

I reported our success and requested aid inbringing back Aziz. I may have been abit testy about the whole thing. Eatingbreakfast next to a deceased friend seems to have that effect on me. I have not received an answer on my requestyet. Am I in the proper frame of mind tocommune with Ra? I do not really thinkso, which is why I am writing this down. I hope it will calm me somewhat…

…I noticed a gleam in my handy haversack,something that, due to the magics of the haversack, should not happen. Investigating, I found a large diamond,flawlessly cut. It is the missingcomponent I needed to raise Aziz from the dead. It seems I have my answer.

Noon, August 8, Year of the Earth Rabbit

Praise Ra, who reveals shadows.

I completed the ceremony to raise Aziz and he isback with us, ready for whatever comes next. This is good as my commune with Ra (done after raising Aziz), indicateswe still have much work ahead.

We have not completely saved the world yet. We must seal the Terranor Gate within a month’stime. This is complicated by the demonsspread across the lands of Abeloft who will work to stop us.

We are going to need an army.

Today and tomorrow I will be making sendings tothose we know and have met on our quest (I can only make five sendings a day). My message is simple:

“Greetings.
The lichand his vampire are destroyed. We raisean army to free Abeloft from demons and save the world. Are you in?
~Harkaitz”

This message will go to Alathin, the brass dragonat Lagaskia; Lorastin, High Priest of Ra at Lagaskia; Doran, the High Priest ofRa in Uru; the leader of the storm giants we met in the Uskar; Feranhal inTtaeladra; Nionel in the Drow City; and Ashias of the lizard men. Beckett, HighPriest of Ra in Terranor and still among the living, and Wednesday will get differentmessages. Wednesday will be asked to goto Orzimar to recruit the dwarves and Beckett will be told relief comes thisyear. We do not want to tip our hand, but Beckett needs to know help is coming.

After today’s sendings are made, I will startmoving our group to Lagaskia via wind walk.

*End of Session*

The Aldelle Group – Session 54 – The Vampire Side-Steps Us

2011-12-27T14:22:00.000-06:00

Session 54 happened Wednesday, November 23, 2011.

[We’ve been playing regularly over the last monthand a half, I’ve just been working on other things and lax in getting theadventure summaries posted. Excitingthings have been happening and yesterday we finished what I’m calling Chapter 2(Chapter 1 having been the exploration of Dyson’s Delve).

We are discussing the possibility of folkschanging characters and I’m tempted to switch from Harkaitz, Aziz, andSarisvati to new characters at roughly the same level. The reason I’m tempted is that Harkaitz hasplans and responsibilities that require him to stop adventuring for a while(you’ll see when I get the adventure logs posted). The DM is putting a time gap between the endof Chapter 2 and the beginning of Chapter 3 and I think that whether or not Icontinue with Harkaitz depends on the length of that gap.]

This campaign used the Dyson’s Delve dungeonpages on A Character for Every Game as a starting point,but has now moved on to new material from the DM-in-training. I heartily recommend Dyson's Delve as abeginning adventure.

Adventuring Group:

Tre-ba Bel a sheer (female elf alchemist)

Elspeth (female half-elf rogue)

Frankie Hu, Master of the Distracting Fist (maledwarf monk)

Harkaitz of the Red Soul (male human cleric ofRa)

NPCs:

Aziz of the Light (male human paladin, cohort ofHarkaitz)

Sarisvati the Sun-touched (female Ifrit oracle,cohort of Aziz)

Midnight (female half-elf witch, cohort ofFrankie Hu)

Macha (female human fighter, cohort of Elspeth)

Estrela (female Aasimar druid, cohort of Tre-Ba)

Asmo (male halfling sorcerer)

Morning, August 7, Year of the Earth Rabbit

Praise Ra, who righteously smites the unclean.

Brek’nok sent word that the phylactery wasdestroyed. The lich is now consigned tooblivion for all time. Some celebrationis being made and Short John is cooking a celebratory breakfast before we re-enter theThrone of Ra.

Midday, August 7, Year of the Earth Rabbit

Praise Ra, our comfort and guide.

After an excellent breakfast and in high spirits,we entered the Throne of Ra again. Wekept watch on the pyramid during the previous two days and we were fairlycertain that the female vampire had not escaped, but now I’m not so certain.

We entered the pyramid and took the left passageacross the entry chamber. We discoveredthat the mist had returned, obscuring the far corner. Midnight cast dispel magic to remove themist, uncovering four animated skeletons: two are bloody skeletal champions andtwo are bloody and burning skeletal champions. The skeletal champions immediately charged,attacking Midnight and Macha, who were our front line at that moment. They failed to injure Macha in the slightest,but Midnight was not so heavily armored and was seriously injured. She promptly stepped back and Frankie tookher place in the front line. Estrelasummoned a swarm of monkeys (I have no idea where the monkeys came from) and Iactivated my nimbus of light to suppress the fast heal of the skeletalchampions [Harkaitz does more damage per round than they fast heal perround]. Sarisvati cast resist energy(fire) on Macha, so when the burning skeletal champions exploded after she andFrankie crushed them, Macha would not be injured.

After that, we made quick time to the elevatorchamber, facing no other resistance. Aziz, Macha, Tre-ba, Estrela (in bat form), and I took the elevatorup. It rose 100 feet, ending in arectangular chamber with no obvious exits. Additionally, there was a very real gap between the platform and theledge around the room that we had to leap across. That was not pleasant for those of us inarmor.

Frankie and Elspeth searched the area and foundtwo concealed switches, each of which exposed an opening on opposite sides ofthe chamber, 10 feet below the ledge. We lowered ourselves with rope and checked the one wedeemed to be on the left (per our standard procedures) and found a chamber with onedoor. Elspeth also found a secret doorin that chamber, one which was clearly trapped, but the mechanisms were all on the other side or the door. Sarisvati used stone shape to create a newportal through the heavy stone door. Elspeth was then able to disarm the trap, a combined fireball andanimate dead trap, tied to the remains in the five stone coffins in the chamber beyond the (once) secret door. Once we were allthrough and in the room, I blessed the stone coffins so the skeletalremains would continue their slumber uninterrupted.

This new room had a locked and trapped door out,which Elspeth was able to clear and unlock. When Macha opened the door, she was rushed by a person in plate mail,bearing the sign of Ra! The paladin (itturns out) paused when he realized we were not minions of the lich and wetalked. He is a half-elf named Teralis and he wasplaced here recently by an angel to guard the key to the sacred chambersguarding the portal. He was greatlydisheartened to discover that the lich had bypassed the trials and achieved theportal. He cheered up slightly when wetold him that we had destroyed the lich, but pointed out that until wedestroyed the lich’s phylactery, it would rise again. I will admit I felt a sly grin on my facewhen I assured him we had that covered and the lich was permanently destroyed. Teralis nearly collapsed from exhaustion andrelief at that point. He has been here fornearly a week and has had almost no sleep. Aziz has agreed to stay and stand watch over Teralis while he slept andthe rest of us continued to explore the chambers on this level. Everyone else is ready to go and waiting onme to finish this entry. Time to finishthis then.

Later in the afternoon, August 7, Year of theEarth Rabbit

Praise Ra, who provides insight when we areshrouded in mystery.

While worthwhile, our search is complete and westill have not found the female vampire.

We followed a series of chambers around theperimeter of the elevator shaft. Halfway around we found a shrine to Skylar with a statue of Skylar on apedestal. I asked for it to be searchedand Elspeth found a hidden compartment in the pedestal containing the Shield ofSkylar. I retrieved it for Aziz’s use.

After finishing our circuit around the elevatorshaft and not finding the vampire we sought, we have returned to the Teralis’schamber and wait for him to finish resting. He has a ring of sustenance, so he will only need to sleep for anotherhour or so. In the meantime we arediscussing what to do next. Aziz now hasSkylar’s Sword and Shield. We know whereSkylar’s armor is, but I hope we will not need it.

~*~

Teralis awoke and we talked the situation overwith him. As he is no longer needed here,he has agreed to travel with us. Midnight finally thought of a way to find the vampire and cast locatecreature. It was below us, apparently inthe entry area. We believe it is trappedby the afternoon sun.

We quickly headed back down to the entry area andfound the passage to the entry area obscured by smoke. We are contemplating our options.

*End of Session*

Assault on Dextrose IV – Mecha of the 1/23rd Battalion

2011-12-20T07:00:00.000-06:00

This is some of the mecha designs I came up with for our little playtest campaign for War of the Mecha by JB over at B/X Blackrazor. I'll post more as they come into play. I don't have the mecha sheets for the other players, so it may be after the campaign ends before I can post theirs (hint, hint guys).

Model: Archangel
Assault mecha
Total AP (80+1d20): 87, Walk/Run: 4/6, Jump: No, Heat Sinks 30
Weapons: 3 Large Energy Weapons

Quick on their feet and with long range weapons, the Archangel is a solid threat.

Model: Artemis
Assault mecha
Total AP (80+1d20): 93, Walk/Run: 3/5, Jump: No, Heat Sinks: 30
Weapons: 4 Large Missile Weapons

A fairly simple long-range attack mecha, the Artemis can fire all of its weapons while running and generate no heat.

Model: Bodyguard
Heavy mecha
Total AP (60+1d20): 78, Walk/Run: 5/8, Jump: No, Heat Sinks 20
Weapons: 2 Large Ballistic Weapons, 1 Large Energy Weapon

Surprisingly fast for a heavy mecha, the Bodyguard can run and fire all its weapons, generating no heat. It favors close in combat, but it can get in some damaging potshots while moving in.

Model: Brickhouse
Assault mecha
Total AP (80+1d20): 81, Walk/Run: 3/5, Jump: No, Heat Sinks 25
Weapons: 3 Large Ballistic Weapons, 1 Large Energy Weapon, and 1 Small Energy Weapon

The Brickhouse pilot has to be careful about heat as firing all weapons generates more heat than the basic array of heatsinks can handle. In close, all those weapons hitting will devastate the target, which is very tempting for most pilots.

Model: Fireball
Light mecha
Total AP (20+1d20): 29, Walk/Run: 8/12, Jump: Yes, Heat Sinks 10
Weapons: 1 Small Energy Weapon

Fireballs are designed primarily for scouting purposes and screening heavier units on the move. They are some of the fastest mecha on the battlefield and their jump capability will get them behind an enemy mecha for quick, cheap hits when fighting in urban of heavily forested terrain.

Model: Pharos
Assault mecha
Total AP (80+1d20): 96, Walk/Run: 3/5, Jump: No, Heat Sinks 30
Weapons: 8 Small Energy Weapons

The Pharos (a.k.a. Death-blossom Special) is a rude surprise for any opponent it closes with. This mecha rewards a pilot that makes use of cover to close with the enemy until stepping out at 90 m or less and then “lighting them up”. A full strike from a Pharos will vaporize light mecha, destroy a medium mecha, and deeply wound or kill a heavy or even an assault mecha.

Model: Sentinel
Medium mecha
Total AP (40+1d20): 41, Walk/Run: 6/9, Jump: Yes, Heat Sinks 10
Weapons: 2 Large Ballistic Weapons

The Sentinel was designed for fighting in urban terrain or very uneven terrain with many canyons or foothills. The designers sacrificed heat sinks for the ability to jump, so it has a tendency to run hot in combat, something the pilot has to pay attention to. Most pilots jockeying one appreciate the tactical flexibility granted by the high speed and jump-capability granted by the Sentinel.

Assault on Dextrose IV - Mission 2: RHO Ambush!

2011-12-19T07:00:00.000-06:00

The Mission:
Bolstered by a heavy lance of House troops (Elk Lance), the mercenary company The Red-Head's Own (RHO), decided that an ambush of forces of the 1/23rd Mecha Battalion was in order. Intel indicated that elements of the 1/23rd's 2nd Company was on scouting patrol near the small industrial center of Carbomer. This was a standard patrol the 1/23rd had maintained since seizing control of the area and the RHO/Elk forces suspected the patrol would be complacent after the RHO lost all of their heavies and assault mecha last week.

The Elk Lance assault mecha and two heavies were hidden in the largest cluster of buildings at Carbomer with the remaining RHO forces (1 medium and 5 lights) plus the Elk medium mecha placed in two clusters of buildings opposite the kill zone. The path of the patrol always took it between these building clusters and the nearest safe location for the 1/23rd was past the large cluster containing the Elk heaviest mecha.

The 1/23rd forces were the 1st and 2nd lances of the 2nd Company, led by Captain Petra Leonidas in her Bodyguard mecha "Yojimbo". The rest of her lance consisted of a Clint variant and two Sentinel variants. The 2nd lance was four Fireballs, led by Lieutenant Hong Pashal. They were not expecting any activity and were bunched closer than proper for a "scouting patrol". THEIR intel indicated that the RHO was down to light mecha only and the current force would be plenty strong to inflict heavy losses on the RHO, if not wipe them out. This attitude lasted up until Pilot Ronni Irigoyen in the far left Fireball spotted one of the Elk heavies hiding in the buildings to the west. Then they spotted the Elk assault mecha ahead and to the left of them and the 2 medium and 5 light mecha all on their right.

Quickly realizing the danger her forces were in, Captain Leonidas ordered the 2nd lance to jump into the large cluster of buildings for cover and then get out of the area. Petra knew the Fireballs could not take more than a hit or two before exploding like their namesakes. The 1st Lance was ordered to hook left and escape the killzone by keeping the large cluster of buildings between themselves and the assault mecha. To some extent this worked, but the Captain's Bodyguard was a natural target for the majority of weapons fire from the RHO/Elk forces and she died before getting to cover. The Elk heavy took some return fire and had its feet knocked out from under it, but it was not out of the fight at all.

In the mad scramble that followed, the Fireballs got some shots into the Elk mecha before getting clear of the fight, thier fast mecha able to jump 240 m at a time, with Lieutenant Pashal the last to leave. The jump-capable RHO mecha were too far away to close before the Fireballs escaped. The 1st Lance was not so lucky.

Pilot Wendy Ha attempted to hide by jumping in a corner between two hardened buildings. This protected her until the fallen Elk heavy got back up and moved right behind her and fired. The heavies weapons blew Ha's cockpit off the Sentinel, killing her instantly. Sergeant Jacinta Irizatti was able to use a copse of trees to hide from the majority of the RHO forces. This would have placed the Sergeant's Clint in good position to escape...until the second Elk heavy cleared the trees. A brief exchange of fire later and the Sergeant was forced to surrender or be destroyed. The only mecha from the 1st lance to escape the ambush was Pilot Dee Chrestman and her Sentinel. She was ablt to jump from cover to cover, making an impossible target to hit of her mecha.

Clean-Up:
The 1/23rd lost a Bodyguard (heavy), a Clint (medium), and a Sentinel (medium).

The RHO/Elk forces lost no mecha and were able to salvage a Clint and a Sentinel, bring the RHO back up to 2 full lances.

The Assault on Dextrose IV continues.

The Future:
The next mission happens in 3 days after this one and will be a Pitched Battle. The 1/23rd wants revenge!

Thoughts on the Game
We had a friend sitting in for a battle and it seemed likely that his forces (he rolled a Lieutenant - a lance of mecha) would supplement the RHO forces which were decimated in Mission 1. Making them a House unit (instead of a mercenary unit) meant they could be pulled elsewhere when he was not available.

In the post-game post-mortem, we all agreed that the RHO forces were too heavily bplaced in the back of the ambush, meaning once the 1/23rd started bolting, they were too far away to stop them or shoot them down. We set up to BattleTech city maps with the long sides together as the play area. We probably should have placed a third map on the side the 1/23rd had to escape from to give the RHO/Elk forces more time to shoot at them, but this kept the game short (three turns and it was over). Next time we'll use a third map.

This is something missing from the War of the Mecha campaign rules - suggestions on set-up. I can see why due to space constraints, but if JB does this as a small product, I'd recommend at least a sentence or two about setup.

Rules-wise, we had a short discussion about splitting fire from a mecha. In BattleTech, this is allowed and inflicts a -2 to each shot. We decided that the underlying principle of "Simplicity First" suggested that splitting fire not be allowed and so we went with that. It should probably be included in the Weapon Fire rules. We also lowered the movement cost to move into buildings by two for all classes, but added that mecha can only enter buildings while walking. This seems to keep it in line with the War of the Mecha rules for elevation changes.

We took pictures of the game, but they are on a friend's phone at the moment, so they'll be delayed for a bit. I'm out of time this weekend to post the pictures for last game, but that should happen this week, probably when I get the seond set of pictures so I can do it all at once. I will also post several of the Mecha designs I'm using this week, again as I have time and husband points to do so.

Traveller - Fragments: Session Reports

2011-12-18T15:38:00.000-06:00

This page is a collection of links detailing my first attempt at a Hero Traveller sandbox campaign.

Pre-Crash Player System Knowledge:
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6

Session 1: Guruphon Jump
Part 1: Getting to Guruphon
Part 2: Guruphon Station

Session 2: Guruphon Meltdown
Part the Only

Session 3: Maresfield Shootout
Part the Only

Session 4: Bhuddas and Bubbas
Part 1: Caraturth
Part 2: Krakatoa

Session 5: Whatever Happened to the Acojah?
Part the Only

This covers the entire first arc of adventure.

Assault on Dextrose IV – Mission 1: Seize the Dam!

2011-12-12T13:50:00.001-06:00

This game happened Sunday, December 11, 2011.

I and a friend are playing around with the War of the Mecha rules by JB over at B/X Blackrazor. You’ve probably noticed the postings porting some supplementary stuff from the source. Last weekend we rolled for starting units and put together several mecha using the rules. I rolled well on commands (I had an entire battalion, 36 mecha, to my friend’s company, 12 mecha) and mecha types (my third lance ended up with 7 assault, 3 heavy, and 2 medium mecha in it).

This morning, as my planned G+ game was rescheduled due to the GM having something crop up, I finished putting together the rest of my force and we played the first mission so we could test out our understanding of the rules and see how the campaign rules worked with such lop-sided forces.

[Pictures to follow later, once I get them uploaded.]

The Invading Forces
1/23rd Mecha Battalion:
1st Company: 1 heavy lance and 2 light lances, Commanded by Major Rodger Wilco
2nd Company: 2 medium lances and 1 light lance, led by Captain Emily Yuen
3rd Company: 3 assault lances, led by Captain Macarthur “Mack” Archer

The Defending Forces
The Red-Head’s Own (RHO):
Command Lance (assault lance)
Skirmish Lance (medium lance)
Scout Lance (light lance)

The Assault of Dextrose IV
Jumpships left Tektura Station and travelled one day to reach the system jump point. Transition to the Dextrose system was near instantaneous. Flight time to the planet was four days, during which the aerospace fighters knocked down the planetary defenses (such that they were) and the 23rd Mecha Battalion was landed uncontested.

Mission 1
The Mission: Capture Objective
A river-side power plant near an occupied industrial sector was identified by both sides to be critical to their respective agendas. Both sides sent two lances to seize control of the power plant and keep the other side from claiming it. [We decided to limit the game to two lances on each side as the rule’s allowing a single commander to field a full company seemed more appropriate when there were more than two players.]

The Allocation:
The Captain leading the Red-Head’s Own, knowing the importance of the power plant (and having few options) took his Command Lance and the Skirmish Lance to secure the site. Major Wilco, having plenty of options, assigned the job to the 3rd Company, particularly the 1st and 2nd Lance, the command lance and the point assault lance.

The Battle:
The early portions of the battle were occupied with the forces getting into position. Two RHO mecha got into a pile-up when a medium mecha attempting to cross a river and move past a fellow mecha fell, sweeping the legs of the smaller mecha and causing it to fall as well. [This was the result of several failed Piloting rolls for both mecha.] Both mecha eventually left the river…only to promptly fall on their faces on the banks. The captain made a note to doc repair costs out of the pilot’s pay.

Both forces started converging just north of the objective. The RHO forces were up on a large hill under light cover from a fringe of trees. The 1/23rd forces were faster than anticipated and made good use of cover, running their mecha to within 200 m of the RHO forces before presenting any targets.

Much shooting happened in Turn 4. The first mecha down was a BDG-1E Bodyguard mecha on the 1/23rd side that was forced to signal surrender or be destroyed. This heartened the RHOs, until the “Flashlight” [an assault mecha] ran up to within 60 m of the RHO commander’s assault mecha and fired eight small energy weapons, knocking down the commander’s mecha. Additionally, a concentrated fire on a RHO medium mecha in the river [different from the klutz mentioned earlier] caused reactor damage and knocked that mecha down into the river, where the pilot was able to avoid a shutdown of the overheated reactor.

Surprisingly, the RHO forces concentrated fire upon the Brickhouse mecha of the lieutenant in charge of the 2nd Lance. This destroyed the Brickhouse (killing the lieutenant), but motivated the mecha pilots of the 1/23rd, who piled fire upon the assault mecha of the RHO commander, killing him with several strikes to the cockpit. [Three crits were invoked due to damage done in the round, resulting in two critical hits to the head and one to the arm.] Additional fire also destroyed one of the two RHO heavy mecha.

With their leader dead and their blood up, the RHO forces tried to gain revenge where they could, destroying one of the Bodyguard mecha. However, in choosing to do so, they ignored the steaming Flashlight [currently at 10 heat from firing all those lasers], which again fired all eight small energy weapons on a single target, the remaining RHO assault mecha, killing it. The resultant heat forced the Flashlight to power down, at which time the pilot triggered his surrender switch.

Down to two lights, a medium, and a heavy, the RHO forces started to disengage, but the heavy decided to make it a fighting retreat, attempting to kill another mecha. He failed and was burned down by a hail of damage. The remaining medium took some damage as well, enough that he decided to surrender rather than chance another hit. The last two RHO lights flee at top speed, using the hill as cover.

Clean-Up:
The 1/23rd lost a “Brickhouse” (assault) and a “Bodyguard” (heavy) and was able to claim a “Slosher” (assault) and a “Paynix” (medium), maintaining numbers if not strength.

The RHO lost everything but two “Sniper” (light) mecha, including their entire command lance. This leaves them with six light mechs (and a serious morale problem) to hold the planet against a full strength battalion. A change of tactics is mandated.

The Assault on Dextrose 4 continues.

The Future:
The next mission happens 4 days after this one and will be…Ambush!

Thoughts on the Game
We were both satisfied with the game system. The campaign system seems to need more than two players to help balance out forces from a game balance perspective. From a verisimilitude perspective, it works fine. After rolling starting forces, we both decided that the RHO forces were clearly on defense and the 1/23rd forces were the attacking forces as the other way around would be improbable.

There is nothing specifically keeping me from just keeping throwing my assault lances in every battle, destroying the remaining opposition mecha after another mission or two. To combat that, I think I’m going to add a rule stating that mecha (or mecha lances) needing repair cannot participate in the following mission. I might add something about loss of leader as well, but maybe not.

I’m split on my thinking on advancement of characters. Strict reading of the rules says only PCs get better. The RHO PC died and the 1/23rd PC was not involved in the fight, so no improvement happened. I’m not certain how I like that.

Finally, after the fight, I discovered that there is no movement cost in War of the Mecha for changing elevation. The only restriction is that elevation changes can only happen when walking. This would have changed a few things. Next game we will remember that and see what happens.

Our next game will be on the 17th and we are picking up a new player. For fairness, His forces should go on the defending side and will probably represent a unit stationed too far away to participate in the first mission, but now arrived. This will complicate my decisions as I am the target of the ambush and cannot waltz it by overpowering six light mecha!

More War of the Mecha

2011-12-08T07:00:00.000-06:00

Here are a few more rules bits for use with War of the Mecha. I'm working on these in my spare time or to take a break from other things I'm doing. Enjoy!

Dropping Mecha

Mecha can be air-dropped over an area by dropships (as opposed tothe dropship landing and them walking off). This requires the mecha pilot toselect a target hex and make a Piloting roll. A failed roll does falling damageat one level of elevation per point roll is missed by. Additionally, the mechascatters one hex point the roll was missed by, with a failure by five or moreindicating the mecha missed the map and is destroyed for the purposes of thescenario. The direction of scatter is determined by rolling 1d6, with “1” beingnorth and counting clockwise around the target hex.

Dropped mecha land during movement, but cannot attack the turnthey land. They may be targeted for attacks at +1 to the roll.

Mecha Lifting Capabilities

Mecha with a functioning arm may carry things (usually objectivesof some sort). The maximum capacity is based on mecha size.

Mecha Size	Lifting Max.
Light	3 tons
Medium	5 tons
Heavy	7 tons
Hardened	9 tons

A mecha taking its first critical hit to the arm while carrying anobject has a 50-50 chance of hitting the arm carrying the item. Roll 1d6: on a4-6, the arm carrying the item is hit and the item is dropped. If the mechatakes its second critical hit while carrying an item, the item is automaticallydropped.

Fragments – Session 5: What Ever Happened to the Acojah?

2011-12-06T07:00:00.000-06:00

Session 5 happened Friday, November 4, 2011, and was the last session of this story arc.

This campaign uses the Hero System, 5th Edition, with much Traveller material grafted on. I am making use of the Hero Traveller books published by ComStar Games. Sadly, these books went out of print when Mongoose Publishing purchased the rights to produce all things Traveller. Mongoose is doing good things, so no hate mail.

PCs:
The Company:
Maxwell Sloan (male human, communications and sensors specialist)
Cyrano Steel (male Lante, computer systems specialist)
Braddock Grar, Lector (male Low Waldi, archivist)

NPCs:
The Crew:
Echo Salazar, Ship’s Captain (female human)
Ted Yahn, Ship’s Navigator (male human)
Albertha Trufin, Ship’s Engineer (female human)
Dr. Quinton Picknell, Ship’s Doctor (male human)

Maresfield Trade Representative:
Deadra Pagenkopf, Maresfield Trade Liaison (female human)

The Passengers:
Brother Kurts of the Order of the Sacre Illuminae
Sister Gunita of the Order of the Sacre Illuminae

Week 7, Day 5:
While the away team was making contact with the locals, Deadra Pagenkopf took the time to go through the Acojah records taken from the dead ship (see Session 4, Part 2 for details). At the morning briefing, she informed everyone that the Acojah ship had been carrying escaping Acojan colonists in its cargo bay when the nuke hit it.

This led to discussions on whether or not any Acojah might still be alive on Krakatoa. While Grar and Max had been able to determine there were sentients on the planet (loosely speaking), they had not checked to see if they were all humans. This would require smaller search areas for any chance of success. Brother Kurts was asked to perform a planetary survey to determine which areas would be best to search. [They were bemoaning the lack of a planetologist in the ship’s crew until I pointed out that Brother Kurts was a planetologist – that’s why he came with them. They had forgotten that.] The survey would take a day to perform and Brother Kurts promised a preliminary report the next day.

Week 7, Day 6:
After spending the previous day (and much of the night) performing a quick survey of Krakatoa, looking for habitable areas that might house Acojah, a very tired but pleased Brother Kurts made his report. He reported five areas that were habitable and large enough to support viable populations and three areas that were possibly habitable but sub-optimal (either desert, downwind from an active volcanic region, or barely large enough for a sustainable population). Each of these areas is isolated from the others by volcanic badlands. He was able to locate seven large-scale strip mines in the volcanic regions. Finally, he also located five irradiated crates located in one of the otherwise habitable zones.

Based on Brother Kurts’s findings, the PCs decided that one of the mines near(-ish) to a crater might be a good place for Acojan refugees to hide and concentrated mind scans in that area. They found no sentient minds in the area. Concentrating the ship’s sensors on the nearby radioactive crater, they could detect the ruins of a city. Brother Kurts estimates that, based on the levels of radiation still present and the size of the crater, the weapon used was either a poorly made home-made bomb or a purposely-made dirty bomb. He leaned towards it being a dirty bomb.

Suspecting that there were no living Acojah left on Krakatoa, the PCs shifted their focus to a different mine and decided to go down and investigate, hoping for some sort of surviving records. Parallel to this effort, an additional salvage run on the Acojan ship was made. [This moved PCs whose players were not at the game off stage.] With Oscar taking the Iron Pig and the captain not wanting to risk the ship’s boat (with the only fuel scoop the ship has), the investigating away team took an air/raft down from orbit. As the vacc suits also provide radiation protection, this did not bother the PCs. They also took one of the repaired security bots from Guruphon Station and Grar established a mind link with Sister Gunita.

It was a long, elevator-like trip down.

Once on the surface, Grar landed the air/raft adjacent to a small cluster of buildings near the edge of the strip mine, on one of the highest terraces of the mine. In the distance, they could see an immense excavator (example). It was inert, but it made the PCs wary. Of the buildings they were near, one was obviously a holding area for ore, one was three stories tall and had windows on the upper floors, and one was much taller and larger but had no windows. All of the buildings showed signs of receiving weapons fire in the past and the windowed building had (empty) sandbag emplacements around the doors. The PCs decided to investigate this building first.

This building seemed to have been used as a barracks, but was re-purposed from something else. The outer walls of the building were quite thick and made of a strong form of concrete. The inner corridors showed signs of combat, with a scattering of bullet marks. The ground-floor rooms were large (possibly conference rooms?) and had been converted to barracks. The next two floors seemed to have been offices originally, but were converted to individual quarters or gun positions, probably machine guns of some sort based on the occasional cartridge shells found. Based on the anti-Acojah graffiti found all over, the PCs surmised that the human populace had held out here against Acojah attackers.

The roof held two sand-bagged anti-aircraft positions (minus the weapons now). Looking around from the roof, the PCs noticed what was likely the wreckage of a downed aircraft and made note of it for later investigation. They also verified the excavator was still where they last saw it and still immobile.

Having finished their investigation of what was likely the administration building for the strip mine, they headed over to the next building, expecting it to be a smelter of some sort. There were three immense doors on the front side of the building (facing the admin building), one of which is not quite closed. Looking around carefully before opening it any further, Grar locates a tripwire connected to an explosive charge wrapped in ball bearings. He disabled the trip wire and inspected the explosive charge. The charge had degraded to the point where it might fizzle at best. Checking further, Grar found booby traps on the other two doors as well.

The inside of the tall (5-6 stories equivalent) building was mostly made up of smelting and processing equipment (making this a mill), with catwalks and equipment on suspended tracks still filling the upper area. This front area took up two-thirds of the front of the building. In the back could be seen rolling doors blocking off three smaller areas. There was a heavy layer of dust and/or bird droppings on everything.

Investigating the machinery in the front area, the PCs worked out that the machinery was designed for sorting out types of ore, for processing iron ore, and for milling iron into steel. Checking the back area to the right, they found the machinery damaged but not irreparably so. The equipment seems to have been stopped mid-process. Grar and Cyrano jury-rigged a crane to safely lower the six-foot tall cup it still had suspended. The cup was found to be mostly full of gold. Several characters did a happy dance at this point.

[At this point my notes ran out, so the rest is from memory.]

With this indicator that the back areas were processing areas for valuable metals, the PCs eagerly moved to the center area to see what it processed. They instead found the center area mostly destroyed and full of mine tailings. Confused by this, they exited the building and circled around to the back side. There they found a large shipping container [think four times as large as a modern shipping container in all dimensions] standing on its end, partially embedded into the back of the building. Looking away from the building, they could see other piles of mine tailings in strange, low rises. It occurred to the PCs that someone had been dive bombing the mill, using cargo containers full of tailings as kinetic bombs. When the last one hit the building but failed to destroy it (or even really damage most of it), they must have stopped. Or got shot down (thinking about the downed flyer spotted from the roof of the admin building).

Returning to the interior of the building, the PCs checked the last back chamber. This room was more damaged than the first one, but not as completely damaged as the middle one, which had taken a mostly direct hit from the tailings bomb. The smelting cup in this area was on the floor, partially crushing some other machinery. Inside was metal, filling about half the cup. After some quick field testing (Max is a field geologist, among other things), it was determined to be Berynium, approximately 1.5 cubic meters (50 cubic feet) of it! [Another happy dance may have happened here.]

With two sources of precious metals located, the PCs decided to finish searching the mill, locating the offices. These were on a raised platform with a commanding view of the main work area. The walkway around the offices had solid sides instead of just railings and seemed to have hardpoints for mounting weapons. Climbing the stairs to the office platform, the PCs noticed that the single entrance area was heavily bullet-ridden. The two rooms that made up the offices themselves were heavily vandalized and shot up. One room appeared to have been a conference room with a large table, now on its side and full of bullet holes and the skeletal remains of a humanoid sophont, minus its head, slumped in front of it. The walls and scraps of things mounted on the walls were covered in anti-Acojah graffiti. The other room was an office with storage cabinets, all looted. Looking through the wreckage of the storage cabinets, Grar located two data crystals in the bottom, under the lowest drawer. There was nothing else of interest here.

Grar used his mind link with Sister Gunita to request that the Iron Pig fly down to the surface and pick up the gold and Berynium the away team had located (it was too large and much too heavy for the air/raft to lift). While the away team waited for the Iron Pig to arrive, they investigated the downed flyer. The wreckage showed signs of being burned long ago and was now mostly overgrown with grasses. In the remains of the cockpit were skeletal remains, which Max’s medical training allowed him to identify as Acojan. Eventually the Iron Pig arrived with gear to pull the cups holding the metals out of the mill, a multi-hour process. The Iron Pig returned to the ship very late in the day and everyone retired for the evening, tired but much wealthier.

Week 7, Day 7:
After a good night’s sleep, the two data crystals were checked for the presence of the VIRUS (they were clean) and then the data was reviewed. The first crystal contained HR records of the mine prior to the Crash, covering a period of eight years. The second was in Acojan and covered the running of the mine some time after the Crash was known to have happened, covering a period of six years, starting after the seizure of the mine and ending roughly 70 years prior to the present. The Acojah records clearly stated that the human workers were now slaves.

With the materials secured from the planet and possible evidence of a hostile power operating after the Crash, the PCs decided it was time to head back to Maresfield and report what they had discovered. Captain Salazar was given the order to make for the nearest jump point and make jump to Caraturth. She gladly set the crew to doing just that.

Week 8, Day 7:
The Just Lucky arrived in Caraturth system and made for the nearest gas giant to start re-fueling operations. Once those were complete, the Just Lucky headed to Caraturth. There they landed Brother Kurts and Sister Gunita, picking up a small delegation in their place. They also provided the Order a copy of all the data they collected in Krakatoa. At the end of the day they left Caraturth and (reaching a jump point) jumped to Maresfield system.

Week 9, Day 7:
The Just Lucky arrived in Maresfield.

*End of Session 5*

[By the end of the exploration of the mill offices, it was getting late, so we just kind of hand-waved the trip back to Maresfield. This was also the last session of the campaign, or at least this part of it. I needed time off as a GM to work on some other writing projects and just had to step away from running a weekly game to do so. In several months I will resume running, possibly returning to the Fragments campaign, but several years down the timeline.

I think one of the mistakes I made with this campaign was running what should have been a long-term exploration game in the short time I was still willing to run. I should have had a definite storyline ready for the players to interact with rather than putting together a sandbox campaign. I should have also run a more standard background rather than a “picking up the pieces again” background. Running an adventure happening during the Crash with the PCs trying to get to some sort of haven as the VIRUS wreaks havoc in the background would have been better suited to the time I had available. Then running the Fragments campaign after my hiatus would have had extra meaning for the players. Something to thinks about.]

Additions to War of the Mecha

2011-12-05T07:00:00.000-06:00

[So I'm messing around with the War of the Mecha rules, a simplified set of rules for playing BattleTech. The original rules fit on one side of a single page and cover the basics. I've come up with some rules for interacting with buildings and here they are. I haven't play-tested them yet, but will soon. Leave me a comment if you beat me to it so I know how they play.]

Patrick’s Additions #1

Buildings

Mecha can move into or onto a building. If the building cansupport it, a mecha can jump to the roof or climb onto a Level 1 or 2 building.If the building cannot support the mecha, the building collapses and the mechafalls, taking falling damage (1d6 damage per size class of the mecha) plus 1d6damage per level of the building’s elevation. Mecha can enter the upper levels of buildings from the roofs of adjacent buildings.

Moving into a building causes a Piloting roll, modified bybuilding type and distance moved so far that turn. Exiting a building requiresan additional roll. On a successful roll, the mecha takes no damage, but the buildingtake 1d6 damage per size category of the mecha. On a failed roll, the mechatakes damage equal to the buildings current SP, but does not fall.

Building	SP	Supports	MP Cost	Piloting Mod.
Light	15	Light mecha only	2	0
Medium	40	Medium mecha or lighter	3	-1
Heavy	90	Heavy mecha or lighter	4	-2
Hardened	120	Assault mecha or lighter	5	-3
Piloting Roll Mod. For Movement: -1 for 1-4 hexes, -2 for 5-8 hexes, and -3 for 9+ hexes

Buildings may be shot at, providing a +4bonus for being immobile. Buildings reduced to 0 SP collapse into rubble. Mechainside a building that collapses takes 1d6 damage per category of the buildingtimes the levels of the building above the mecha (so a mecha in the groundfloor of an elevation 4 hardened building takes 16d6 damage when it collapses). Mecha on the roof oran upper floor also suffers falling damage.

Fragments – Session 4: Bhuddas and Bubbas – Part 2: Krakatoa

2011-12-01T07:00:00.000-06:00

Session 4 happened Friday, October 21, 2011. This is the second part of the adventure log for this session.

This campaign uses the Hero System, 5th Edition, with much Traveller material grafted on. I am making use of the Hero Traveller books published by ComStar Games. Sadly, these books went out of print when Mongoose Publishing purchased the rights to produce all things Traveller. Mongoose is doing good things, so no hate mail.

PCs:
The Company:
Maxwell Sloan (male human, communications and sensors specialist)
Cyrano Steel (male Lante, computer systems specialist)
Braddock Grar, Lector (male Low Waldi, archivist)
Nomen Fire-eyes (male human hybrid, negotiator)

NPCs:
The Crew:
Echo Salazar, Ship’s Captain (female human)
Ted Yahn, Ship’s Navigator (male human)
Albertha Trufin, Ship’s Engineer (female human)
Dr. Quinton Picknell, Ship’s Doctor (male human)

Maresfield Trade Representative:
Deadra Pagenkopf, Maresfield Trade Liaison (female human)

The Passangers:
Brother Kurts of the Order of the Sacre Illuminae
Sister Gunita of the Order of the Sacre Illuminae

Week 7, Day 4:
The Just Lucky arrived in Krakatoa system and started scanning the system, first using passive systems. They immediately picked up a beacon in Krakatoa orbit, an Acojah beacon, not a human one like they expected. This made everyone a bit nervous. The PCs decided to play it safe and headed to the system’s other gas giant (the one Krakatoa is not in orbit around) and start refueling operations.

While there, the passive systems picked up evidence of debris fields in orbit around Krakatoa. Once the Just Lucky was refueled, the PCs chanced active scanners. The active scanners confirmed Krakatoa is ringed with debris fields – there is no sign of the class B port that should be there. Additionally, the scanners detected an inert ship in orbit around the gas giant Krakatoa orbits. Suspecting the VIRUS hit this system hard, the PCs decided to investigate the derelict ship first.

A couple hours later, when they got within visual range of the derelict ship, they realized that it was an Acojah ship. There was obvious damage on the side, near the cargo area, and the high rad count told them this was the result of a nuclear weapon. The PCs took the Iron Pig over to the Acojah ship, looking for answers and maybe some salvage. Oscar started removing the jump engine nacelle from the ship, something that would take him and Ro and Albertha several hours to accomplish [conveniently keeping Oscar and Ro in NPC-mode as their players could not make the game]. The rest of the group made their way up to the front of the ship, keeping the body of the ship between them and the radioactive parts of the ship, and entered the bridge through an emergency access hatch.

The away team found most of the command crew, all Acojah women, dead at their posts. The only crew member with an obvious wound was the captain and she appeared to have died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the palate of her mouth. Max’s limited medical training told him that, except for the captain, the crew died of slow asphyxiation, suggesting the ship’s hull is breached and it was unable to maintain atmosphere. They located the ship’s black box and removed it, returning to the Iron Pig.

Back at the Iron Pig, the PCs accessed the black box and started going through the Captain’s Log. The ship was the Sargtlinen Cahallin and was a cargo vessel. It ran supplies to Acojah forces apparently operating on worlds that were human worlds pre-Crash. The Acojah captain (Maynolu Claddath) had received the ship new at a date the PCs knew was after the Crash started and the captain complained about some of the systems being difficult to work with due to the “anti-VIRUS modifications”.

There were months of standard log entries. At the end of the log, the ship was sent to Krakatoa with all other cargo ships, but with no explanation why. There were a few entries showing the captain’s frustration about being kept in orbit and not told what was going on. The penultimate entry is hurried and terse, explaining “the rivvil have broken their bonds and are driving the Acojah from the planet”. The final entry is a day later and shows the damage to the command deck the away team observed. The captain is obviously having trouble getting enough breathe to speak. She barely gets out “I’m sorry,” before the sound of a pistol being cocked is heard and the screen it shut off.

The PCs speculated on what they had learned. They decided that the Acojah had attacked neighboring worlds during the Crash, taking advantage of the chaos caused. Krakatoa was one of the worlds they appeared to have conquered and enslaved, but the enslaved humans had revolted and pushed the Acojah off the planet. This could mean that the Acojah still had space travel and may control the next several worlds along the main route through the sub-sector. This was very troublesome, especially as one of the systems past the known Acojah world was a major shipyard prior to the Crash, and had the capability to produce warships, something Maresfield never had the capacity to do.

Once the Sargtlinen Cahallin jump drive nacelle was removed and secured inside the Just Lucky, the ship headed over to Krakatoa to see what more could be learned. In orbit, Max and Grar used mind scans to see if there was anyone alive on the planet. They discovered there were 100’s of thousands of sentients on the planet, but the ship’s scanners picked up no electronic communications of any sort. Broadcasting to the surface produced nothing but static in response, so the PCs decided to attempt a landing. The planet’s surface is broken up into arable areas isolated from each other by stretches of volcanic terrain, areas where the planet was being flexed by the gas giant’s gravity. Many of the arable patches seemed to be inhabited based on the mind scans. Uncertain of what sort of response they would receive, the away team decided to land the Iron Pig on the fringes of a settled area and make contact where the population was not as dense.

As they descended, they could see evidence of agriculture and some roads near the settlement they had selected. As they landed the Iron Pig in the middle of a crossroads (of two dirt roads), they caught glimpses of wooden and stone buildings making up the settlement. They could also see locals running around, having noticed the Iron Pig’s descent.

Cyrano, Nomen, Grar, and Max (the only non-blue entity in the party) descended from the Iron Pig and waited for the locals to show up. A relatively small group did show, carrying what looked like muskets and hoping from cover to cover. Eventually the locals got close enough and the PCs called out greetings to them. One of the locals then approached and a conversation was had. Two things became immediately obvious during the conversation: the locals were under-educated hicks and noticeably xenophobic, talking directly only to Max, the only obvious human in the group. [This led to Cyrano’s player quipping “space travel turns you blue”.]

After a few minutes of extremely tense conversation, the PCs left, returning to the Just Lucky in orbit to report what little they had learned and decide what to do next.

*End of Session 4, Part 2*

Fragments – Session 4: Bhuddas and Bubbas – Part 1: Caraturth

2011-11-29T13:11:00.001-06:00

Session 4 happened Friday, October 21, 2011.

This campaign uses the Hero System, 5th Edition, with much Traveller material grafted on. I am making use of the Hero Traveller books published by ComStar Games. Sadly, these books went out of print when Mongoose Publishing purchased the rights to produce all things Traveller. Mongoose is doing good things, so no hate mail.

PCs:
The Company:
Maxwell Sloan (male human, communications and sensors specialist)
Nomen Fire-eyes (male human hybrid, negotiator)
Oscar Dougray (male human, salvage expert)
Ro Owen (female human, team security expert)
Braddock Grar, Lector (male Low Waldi, archivist)

NPCs:
The Crew:
Echo Salazar, Ship’s Captain (female human)
Ted Yahn, Ship’s Navigator (male human)
Albertha Trufin, Ship’s Engineer (female human)
Dr. Quinton Picknell, Ship’s Doctor (male human)

Maresfield Trade Representative
Deadra Pagenkopf, Maresfield Trade Liaison (female human)

Week 5, Day 1:
The Company decides that the next system they want to explore is Krakatoa System. It will take two Jump 2s to get there, but it was known to be a source of Berynium, a metal necessary to produce the cores of jump engines and not naturally found on Maresfield.

Krakatoa is a T-type world, but is a large moon orbiting one of the system’s gas giants instead of having an orbit of its own. Its orbit is unstable and the world is slowly spiraling in to the gas giant, with an expected impact in 4,000 to 5,000 years. The pre-Crash star charts indicate it had a Class B starport, so The Company is somewhat hopeful of survivors and some level of technology.

Additionally, Caraturth, the mid-point of the trip, is the home of the Order Grar is a part of and he has a vested interest in stopping there. When he reports back in to the Order, he is entrusted with a copy of all records of the Order on Maresfield for the last 80 years. If the Order is still active on Caraturth, he is to submit the records to the head temple for approval. This includes Grar’s induction into the Order and elevation to Lector.

Week 5, Day 2:
Nomen files a flight plan with the Maresfield Exploratory Committee. It indicates the Just Lucky will jump from Maresfield to Caraturth to Krakatoa and then back along the same route. Normally, getting the flight plan through the Committee can take a week or more, but Nomen knows where all the right people sit and has all the right paperwork prepared, so the entire process only takes a day. The downside is that Nomen and his wife now have a dinner appointment with one of the chief bureaucrats and his wife, a couple they loathe. Nomen’s wife sets the date for the get-together two days after the Just Lucky is expected back. And he better not be late.

Week 5, Day 3:
The Just Lucky jumps out of the Maresfield system, heading to Caraturth. During the one week jump, Cyrano constructs five McGuffins, using one of the bars of Red Gold Phoenix Salvage held onto from the run to Guruphon. Grar spends the week memorizing all 80 years worth of Order records.

Week 6, Day 3:
The Just Lucky arrives in Caraturth system. An active sensor sweep of the system brings to life an old navigation buoy in orbit over the planet Caraturth. A recorded message from the buoy provides instructions on where to land and what frequency to contact Caraturth Station, which is down on the planet. The Company and crew has some worries about the buoy being VIRUS-infected, but they quickly determine that the buoy is too simple and small to hold the VIRUS.

During the flight in from the jump point, Max calls in on the frequency specified and gets a very surprised junior member of the order on the other end. After a delay to get a more senior member of the Order, contact is made and the Just Lucky arranges to drop off an away team while the ship itself goes to refuel. When the ship enters orbit, Grar and max use their psionics to verify there is a population on the planet. They do, plus they notice a few minds verifying them. Grar is able to get a lock on one of the minds, but does not have the power to get a message across from this distance. Max has the power, but cannot establish a lock. [This is a recurring theme between the two of them.]

The Low Port for Caraturth is a grass field – the only grass field on the planet, as Caraturth has no native biosphere. The Order of Sacre Illuminae on Caraturth consists of several interconnected monasteries built into adjacent peaks of a large mountain. They are sealed from the high CO2 atmosphere, but there are large window-walls exposing open areas to the sunlight from the red primary. A sealed walkway, consisting of several large sections of transparent material extends to the Low Port landing field, where it connects to a larger reception chamber with airlocks. There are several dignitaries there to greet the PCs. Grar can identify robes indicating all five branches of the Order amongst the assemblage.

As Grar is a lector in the Order, he is the primary speaker for the PCs. The primary speaker for the Order introduced himself as Abbot Balvis. Grar explained that the PCs are an exploratory/mercantile company, of which he is a member. He then presented the combined records for the Order on Maresfield to the Abbot for verification and validation. The Abbot accepted the records, handing them off to a member of the Archivae for review. He then invited the PCs to a meal while the records were reviewed and the Just Lucky was away refueling.

During the meal, discussion was had about how the Order had weathered the period since the Crash. The abbot explained that the monasteries were designed to be maintained over the long term with minimal resources, so they had not had any social upheaval or loss of life. The data systems were isolated from all external systems and so the VIRUS had not been able to spread here. They had been running short on supplies to maintain the datasystems and had initiated a project to hand copy the material into books for preservation.

After a quick discussion amongst themselves, the PCs offered what spare parts they had themselves and the computer core they had secured from Guruphon Station. The monks were overjoyed at receiving these items and offered access to all of the preserved astrogation data and technical specifications they had. The PCs tried not to drool too much while accepting the deal. The abbot also requested passage for a delegation to Maresfield so that formal communications could be re-opened between branches of the Order and official ordinations could be delivered. The PCs agreed to this, but explained they were going to Krakatoa first. The abbot asked if they could use a trained planetologist (albeit one with little field experience) for that part of the trip and the PCs stated they would be very grateful for the loan of one. And so Brother Kurts and his bodyguard, Sister Gunita, joined the crew of the Just Lucky.

Week 6, Day 4:
In the morning, Grar is informed that the Maresfield records have been reviewed and all ordinations approved, including his own. A small Ceremony of Ordination is planned for mid-day, where Grar will trade his provisional robes (which all members of the Order on Maresfield wear) for a set of confirmed robes appropriate for his rank. The ceremony would have been sooner, but they needed to get Grar’s measurements and have properly tailored robes created (as a Low Waldi, he is a foot and a half shorter than the other members, who are all human).

After the Just Lucky returns from refueling operations, the trade of computer parts and core for complete pre-Crash astrogational data and other technical specifications happens. At mid-day the Ceremony of Ordination happens and Grar receives his robes as a fully confirmed Lector of the Order of Sacre Illuminae. A few hours later, the PCs and the new crew members return to the Just Lucky, head out to the nearest jump-point, and initiate the jump to Krakatoa.

*End of Session 4, Part 1*

Update

2011-11-28T13:23:00.001-06:00

So the weekend before Thanksgiving I had a relapse of my cold and was miserable the whole weekend and Monday back at work (which was not the best idea, but I had already turned in my time for the week and felt obliged to meet that commitment). Then we had tons of folks over for Thanksgiving and I had to help in preparations/keep my wife close to sane Wednesday through Thursday. I was not terribly successful, but folks had a good time and were glad they came.

Friday was supposed to be low-key, but guests had to leave due to them falling ill or folks deciding to sleep in (plus some confusion in my wife's invites), so we ended up in our jammies watching DVR'd recordings of several seasons of Ladies of Ninja Warrior.

Saturday I slept in, still shaking off the vestiges of my cold while my wife was out with a friend, seeing a movie I had no interest in (the one with the vampire/werewolf/drama queen love triangle). I slept most of the day and watched a few things on the DVR I'd been meaning to watch for months.

Sunday was chores around the house and grocery shopping for the week.

You may notice that no where in there did I mention writing. There's a reason for that.

Now, however, I'm over my cold and the yearly chaos-fest of Thanksgiving has passed, so I can get back to my writing. Expect Aldelle group updates and a batch of Traveller updates so I can close out my notes on that campaign. I'll finish that up with some thoughts on what I did wrong (too much material for too little time) and where I plan on going when I resume running it (that part is secret for now).

That's it for today. I will post several times this week to make up for the silence of last week. Hope you enjoy and thank you for reading.

The Aldelle Group – Session 53 – The Unbeating Heart of Darkness

2011-11-17T10:18:00.001-06:00

Session 53 happened Tuesday, November 15, 2011.

This campaign used the Dyson’s Delve dungeon pages on A Character for Every Game as a starting point, but has now moved on to new material from the DM-in-training. I heartily recommend Dyson's Delve as a beginning adventure.

Adventuring Group:
Tre-ba Bel a sheer (female elf alchemist)
Elspeth (female half-elf rogue)
Frankie Hu, Master of the Distracting Fist (male dwarf monk)
Harkaitz of the Red Soul (male human cleric of Ra)

NPCs:
Aziz of the Light (male human paladin, cohort of Harkaitz)
Sarisvati the Sun-touched (female Ifrit oracle, cohort of Aziz)
Midnight (female half-elf witch, cohort of Frankie Hu)
Macha (female human fighter, cohort of Elspeth)
Estrela (female Aasimar druid, cohort of Tre-Ba)
Asmo (male halfling sorcerer)

Evening, August 4, Year of the Earth Rabbit (continued)
Praise Ra, who protects fools.

Aziz engaged in a duel of taunts and bravado with the lich, buying us enough time to cast some last moment spells. I cast protection from evil on Aziz and Sarisvati cast blessings of fervor on all of us. Tre-ba drank an elixir and the rest of my compatriots prepared themselves for the fight. Then, with a final, “Have at you villain!” Aziz charged at the lich.

The lich was prepared too.

Before Aziz made it halfway across the chamber, the lich surrounded itself with a forcecage. A rather potent one. Thinking we were ready for such an eventuality, Macha, Frankie, and Midnight moved to Aziz and then Midnight cast her last dimension door to move the group of them into the forcecage with the lich. Frankie, having readied for this, immediately struck the lich with an elemental fist. It passed right through the lich with no effect. It was an illusion.

The lich was very prepared.

Laughing maniacally, the lich cast circle of death on the group of us still at the doorway, felling Sarisvati [the rest of us were, luckily, too high of level for it to effect]. I immediately used my last breath of life to bring her back from death’s door. The rest of my companions attacked as best they could. Frankie located the lich in the back ten feet of the chamber, completely blocked off by the forcecage. Asmo and the revived Sarisvati threw fireballs against the back wall, burning the lich slightly. It responded with a prismatic spray that poisoned and killed Aziz, drove Tre-ba mad, and burned or electrocuted several others. [Frankie barely resisted be sent to another plane, which would have been disastrous and likely led to a TPK.] Frankie started attacking the forcecage with a continuous flurry of blows. The lich responded with Evard’s black tentacles, grappling most of us, but not Midnight nor Asmo. [Yes, I know it is not called Evard’s in Pathfinder, but that is what I will always call it, grognard that I am.]
Frankie (with help from Tre-ba, who was able to keep her mind focused a few seconds longer) finally sundered the forcecage, immediately followed by Asmo successfully dispelling the black tentacles. This allowed me to move up to the corner where the lich was (spotted thanks to Midnight’s casting of see invisible on Frankie). I then activated my nimbus of light and channeled positive energy, burning the lich’s unholy bones with the light and power of RA!

Asmo then dispelled the lich’s improved invisibility, allowing me to stare the lich directly in the eye-sockets. I then slapped the lich across the skull, my hand imbued with the power of a cure critical wounds spell. Combined with the nimbus of light and the positive energy I was channeling, it was more than the lich’s bones could stand and they started to crumble. The lich’s last words were, “Fools! I will only come back stronger!”

I grinned at the lich as it disintegrated under the power of Ra. I know where its phylactery is and have already dispatched the others to seek and destroy it. If they step quickly, they should get there either just before or just after the lich re-forms. The vile thing won’t know what hit it. Ha!

Sarisvati and I immediately set to healing ourselves so we would stay conscious. The lich’s last spell was similar to a symbol of pain [I don't remember then name of the spell] and continued to cause us pain for nearly a minute after the fight ended, nearly knocking Sarisvati and I into unconsciousness.

Estrela cast quiet repose upon Aziz’s body and Sarisvati and I carefully wrapped it up for transport. While this was happening, the others claimed the lich’s possessions (Elspeth removing a trap from its spellbook) and investigated the gate. The glyphs around it were in Celestial and indicated that this locus of power was being used as a prison, not a gate. Satisfied with that, we left, returning to our rude camp outside the pyramid.

I have made a sending, providing Wednesday with an update of what has happened here. We are exhausted, injured, and without any spells but our cantrips and orisons and my best friend is dead. Tonight will be long and not very restful.

Morning, August 5, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, who honors his servants.

After my meditations at dawn, I restored the last effects of the bodak upon myself and with new insight granted by Ra [we leveled], I was able to restore Tre-ba’s sanity [cast greater restoration, which just became available]. I then summoned a planar ally, so gate we cleared at great cost would remain in the power of the light. I may have been curt with the messenger, possibly even rude, something I will have to do penance for later. I informed the agent that we had secured the gate and would very much like Aziz either resurrected or to be delivered a diamond of sufficient quality that I could do the job myself. We would wait here for an answer.

…

While writing this entry, I noticed a sudden gleam in my haversack. Investigating, I found a diamond of great size and clarity. I have my answer. Time to bring my friend back to the lands of light.

Evening, August 6, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, Guardian of the True.

I have spent the last two days using wind walk to bring those left at the Red Temple here, to the Throne of Ra. They were much pleased to see me and hear that we had succeeded.

Tomorrow we re-enter the Throne to finish clearing it out and hopefully destroy a vampire or two. Ra’s will be done!

*End of Session*

[This was a very tough fight and the DM ran the lich very smartly. If Asmo had not dispelled the black tentacles or Frankie had been sent to another plane, we would have likely all died except Elspeth, who stayed back outside the room as she had no way to harm the lich. If we had fallen, she would have had to flee and get help. Plus, her player was not available for the game due to a last minute switch of when we were playing.

Half way into the fight, we were convinced this was going to end in a TPK, but we kept fighting. As it was, at the end of the fight, most of us were down to single digit hit points, dead, insane, or with no power to harm the lich (Midnight was in this boat with Elspeth, although Midnight could buff the other players, like that critical see invisibility spell). We were also completely out of spells and elixirs.

THAT was a good session.]

Aldelle Group Teaser for Session 53

2011-11-16T12:47:00.001-06:00

We fought the lich last night.

Two characters died.

Details to follow...tomorrow.

The Aldelle Group – Session 52 – Only the Penitent Man Shall Pass

2011-11-15T07:00:00.000-06:00

Session 52 happened Tuesday, November 8, 2011.

This campaign used the Dyson’s Delve dungeon pages on A Character for Every Game as a starting point, but has now moved on to new material from our DM. I heartily recommend Dyson's Delve as a beginning adventure.

Adventuring Group:
Tre-ba Bel a sheer (female elf alchemist)
Elspeth (female half-elf rogue)
Frankie Hu, Master of the Distracting Fist (male dwarf monk)
Harkaitz of the Red Soul (male human cleric of Ra)

NPCs:
Aziz of the Light (male human paladin, cohort of Harkaitz)
Sarisvati the Sun-touched (female Ifrit oracle, cohort of Aziz)
Midnight (female half-elf witch, cohort of Frankie Hu)
Macha (female human fighter, cohort of Elspeth)
Estrela (female Aasimar druid, cohort of Tre-Ba)
Asmo (male halfling sorcerer)

[In game, this session only lasted an hour or so, with little time for Harkaitz to make notes in his diary. As a result, this entry is a bit sketchy on when it was written. “Why?” you may ask? Wait until you get to the end and you’ll see…]

Evening, August 4, Year of the Earth Rabbit [Maybe]
Praise Ra, who protects fools.

If the vampire was close, we missed it.

After catching our breaths and quickly checking the boneyard for valuables (we found a variety of gold items worth 3,000 in gold coin), we pressed into the next chamber. Beyond was a small room with a door on the far side and a passage leading back along the wall, hidden from the door we were entering through. Elspeth checked around and found no traps, but we all felt an oppressive atmosphere to the area. Down the side passage was a desecrated altar to Ra.

This was unpardonable. The lich and his cronies have infiltrated and perverted many sites holy in the eyes of Ra, but this was too far. Sarisvati cleansed the altar and re-consecrated it to Ra, dispelling the unholy aura and re-establishing the magnificence of Ra. We then pressed on to the next chamber.

It was quite odd and suspicious. It was rectangular and about 100 ft long by 30 ft wide. There was a perforation in the floor, outlining a five foot area around the room. The floor inside this perforation appeared solid and had a 10-foot square with a perforated border in the center of it with a small stand. There were no apparent enemies.

Elspeth took the time to thoroughly search the outer ledge for traps and then the inner area, finding no traps. Investigating the stand in the center square, we found a lever with three settings – it was in the center setting. I tried to move the lever before thinking it all the way through, but it was locked in place. We located the key hole and thought for certain the two-piece key we had acquired would fit. We were wrong in two ways: it did not fit and we only had one part of the key – Wednesday has the other half!

Luckily, the lock was not beyond the skills of Elspeth, who disengaged the lock expertly. I then moved the lever down to the lower position. The floor around the 10-foot square area in the center moved back and retracted into the side walls below the 5-foot ledge around the edge. Elspeth, Macha, Tre-ba, Estrela (in bat form), and myself were lowered on the center square 100 ft to a lower level.

The shaft was 40 ft wide and ended in a square chamber of matching width. The platform was surrounded by a 10-foot gap between it and a 5-foot wide ledge. The gap appeared to be bottomless. I tested this by dropping a copper piece. The copper piece hit floor immediately – the pit was an illusion! This was a relief as I was not looking forward to attempting a jump in my armor. As we looked around, the others made their way down using rope or fly or running down the walls (monks!).

There was only one door out and there was a plaque beside it, warning we were about to face six trials: The Trial of Stone, The Trial of Fire, The Trial of Air, The Trial of Water, The Trial of Darkness, and The Trial of Speed. Only one of us could face each trial and we could only face one trial each. After some discussion, we set our order as follows:

The Trial of Stone to be faced by Tre-ba
The Trial of Fire to be faced by Sarisvati
The Trial of Air to be faced by Estrela
The Trial of Water to be faced by Midnight
The Trial of Darkness to be faced by Harkaitz (myself)
The Trial of Speed to be faced by Frankie

The Trial of Stone

Tre-ba entered the first room. It was a 30 ft by 40 ft room with a door in the south wall (she entered at the far end of the east wall). Fifteen feet in was a summoning circle made of two intertwined squares inscribed on the floor. There was nothing else. Elspeth checked the door. She found it untrapped and unlocked, but it would not move. After we all stepped out of the room but Tre-ba, she stepped into the circle. We saw a wall of force shimmer into existence between us and her and nothing else, until she started reacting as if struck by some invisible force. After a bit, the force wall dropped and she staggered out of the circle, clearly injured. The far door opened of its own accord.

What Tre-ba saw was entirely different. To her, when she stepped into the circle and the wall of force appeared, the room itself expanded to twice its size and she was able to move freely. In the room were now four statues, which animated and attacked her. She used an elixir of fly to get above the statues, but they levitated up to her. She flew away from them and drank an elixir of stone skin as they were hitting her with ease and she needed to stop the damage she was taking. Then she started throwing acid bombs at them. Each statue took two bombs to destroy, but as they could only levitate while she could fly, she was able to stay out of their grasps and destroy them all.

Based on this, we decided to change up who would face each test. Asmo would now face the Trial of Fire and Aziz would face the Trial of Water. While Sarisvati and Midnight could survive the environments those trials suggested (respectively), neither could harm creatures of those realms.

The Trial of Fire

Asmo entered the next room, which was physically identical to the first room with the exception of door placements. It became obvious that the trial rooms circled the central shaft. Asmo faced a large fire elemental in his trial, defeating it with cold spells. He did not elaborate much further. [This was an NPC-on-NPC fight.]

The Trial of Air

Estrela entered the Trial of Air expecting to face an air elemental in the same way Asmo had faced a fire elemental in the Trial of Fire. Instead she faced a roc in the middle of an immense, treeless plain. Faced with this unexpected opponent, she apparently panicked a bit and wildshaped into an air elemental when the roc started attacking. Once she got her wits back about her, she was able to out maneuver it, switch back to her natural form, cast call lightning, and then switch back into an air elemental. She then started up a whirlwind to ramp up the call lightning and out flew the roc, eventually killing it with lightning bolts from the sky.

The Trial of Water

Aziz was given waterbreathing by Tre-ba, I gave him freedom of movement, and he received haste from a wand before stepping into the circle for this trial. He faced a “snake lady” (what we eventually worked out to be a lamia matriarch). As he described it, he dashed “to and fro, bravely striking many a blow until she was undone.” He then pinched Tre-ba on the rear. Really. In addition to inflicting heavy wounds, the lamia matriarch apparently drained of much wisdom. A few lesser restorations healed up some of the wisdom loss. Some.

The Trial of Darkness

When I entered the Trial of Darkness, the chamber was without light. I expected this and immediately activated my nimbus of light. This allowed me to see the bodak approach and attack. Its touch drained me of vitality and I became less puissant. I decided to power my way through this and continually channeled positive energy into the area around me, quickly burning up the bodak with the glory of Ra.

The Trial of Quickness

Frankie Hu faced four quicklings in this trial. With his boots of speed he cornered them one after the other, unleashing a furious cascade of blows from his fists, elbows, and feet. The trial did not last long. When it finished, the final door opened. The last chamber contained the Uskar Gate, surrounded by dark glyphs of power, twisting its energies in an attempt to free the Nightshade.

It also contained the lich.

*End of Session*

[This was our 52nd session, and after a year of excellent gaming and growth by the DM-in-Training, we had a party on Sunday to celebrate the game and toast the DM. We ate great pizza from an awesome shop nearby and played boardgames (to give the DM a break). We had both the weekday group and the weekend group in attendance (sadly missing Luna’s player) so folks could meet each other as both groups had a person that was had never met the other group. We also told stories of what each group had been up to since splitting in Orzimar 9 sessions ago. A good time was had by all.]

War of the Mecha – Testing It Out

2011-11-10T07:00:00.000-06:00

Back on November 5th, a friend and I went to out LFGS (Little Wars of Houston) to try out War of the Mecha, a one page set of rules by JB at B/X Blackrazor for having giant mecha combat each other, providing a feel that is similar to FASA’s BattleTech. They read fairly straight forward and seemed much more streamlined than BattleTech of old that I wanted to give them a spin.

So we packed a bunch of minis of different types (on 4 of which were actual battle tech minis) and what we thought was a pile of old BattleTech maps and went over to Little Wars. I brought extra stuff as I wasn’t certain how long this would take to play, so I also brought a copy of By This Axe I Rule, some fantasy minis rules by Chris over at Hill Cantons that I’m play-testing for him, Counterterrorist by Privateer Press (way out of print), and Wings of War – a WWI airplane combat game (by Fantasy Flight games) that I have minis for.

The first thing we realized was that that was not a stack of maps, it was a stack of mech sheets with two maps that happened to be on top. Then we worked out that most of the actual BT minis we had were too big for these maps. So both maps and minis went to the side and we looked through what we had. I ended up using three Ork gargants from my Epic 40K minis and a mech I didn’t recognize for my lance. He used two ostmechs, a blue plastic mech of some sort, and a Necron trooper mini for his lance.

We used three medium mechs and an assault mech for each lance and then equipped them. We used the basic weapons load out option (2 large weapons and 1 small weapon for the mediums and 4 larges and 1 small for the assault mechs), but selected what weapon systems we wanted. My mediums were armed with a ballistic weapon, an energy weapon, and jump jets (I took the option to swap the small weapons for jump jets). My assault mech had three missile weapons, a ballistic weapon, and a small ballistic weapon. My friend ended up using missiles instead of energy weapons for his mediums and took two energy weapons instead of two of the missile weapons on the assault.

Next we needed a map with terrain. As we were at Little Wars, I looked through their extensive amount of store terrain that is free to use. It is impressive in scope and quality, but we needed hexes and all of the store terrain is for games that don’t use hexes. So I made a quick trip home for my set of Heroscape and brought it back with me. We used that to create a good-sized map with a few hills and LOTS of trees.

Then we started playing.

I missed the addendum in the War of the Mecha 2 page of rules, so instead of alternating mechs, we alternated sides, which caused a few peculiarities, but we were still satisfied with the game we had played when we found those rules. I did a lot of jumping and shooting, which caused me heat problems with the energy weapons, but put me in good shooting positions often enough for it to be tolerable. My friend’s missile weapons kept his heat low enough that he rarely suffered heat issues, but his damage rolls tended to be poor. By the end of the game I had destroyed his assault mech, knocked one of his medium mechs down to 3 armor points, and put 18-20 points of damage on the other two mediums. One of my mediums was down to 7 armor points, but the other two still had better than 50% of their armor and my assault mech was untouched. I offered his side the cessation of hostilities and a retreat option and they took it. We had both been lucky/unlucky in the fight and were pleased with the game and the way things worked out.

Rules-wise, there are several things I like about this ruleset. I like that armor is just one pool of armor points. I like the simplified movement rules (no backwards movement and no torso twists). I like that the three weapons systems use different damage dice (missiles use 1d20, energy use 3d8, and ballistic use 4d6/3d6/2d6 based on the targets range – longer means less damage). With the heat differences (missile 7, energy 10, ballistic 3) the player got to balance damage done versus heat accrued and select weapons that matched what they wanted to do. My use of energy weapons meant I ran hot a lot of the battle, but my damage was fairly consistent. My friend’s use of missile weapons on his mediums meant heat was rarely an issue, but the damage range on a d20 meant he couldn’t count on what he’d get from shot to shot.

There are rules for swapping out weapon systems for more heat sinks or more speed or more (but smaller) weapons and we will probably give those a tryout in our next game. I need to put together a simple checklist for the options and print out half-page sheets for each mech. We used 6x9 index cards I had handy and had plenty of space, even with two mechs per card.

By this point, dinner time was approaching, so we packed up and headed out. We'll have to try By this Axe I Rule another time. When I do, I'll write up how that goes.

Now you may be asking why I tried this instead of using BattleTech. Two reasons: I have a desire to run a BattleTech RPG campaign and want relatively quick battles as the RPG is the point, not the battles, and the reason I stopped playing BattleTech was the 1001 fiddly rules that made a simple lance on lance fight go on forever. I think these rules will allow for quick battles and let the roleplay aspect become the primary part of the campaign.

An in case you were wondering, there are rules for using the Clans. No, I will not be using the Clans – they suck conceptual-wise and are poorly executed in the backstory. The rules by JB are probably just as functional as the regular rules, but I’ll never know.

Noisms Grab Bag of Topics

2011-11-09T11:07:00.002-06:00

These are my thoughts on “Things Role Playing Bloggers Tend Not To Write About” from Noisms. I’m not certain I can do entire posts on these topics, so I’m covering them all here. Once the DayJob and life slows down a bit, I'll get back to more regular postings.

Book Binding

See Hero System 5th Edition and 5th Edition Revised for how it should be done. You can run it through a dryer and it will hold together (although the pages will be a bit folded). Plus, it will stop bullets from handguns. Really. Look for demonstrations on YouTube.

Tangentially, I prefer paper I can write on, so I can write notes (or text corrections as some publishers are prone to typos – AEG, I’m looking at you). Slick paper sucks at this as ink either doesn’t stick or smears a lot. “Grainy” paper (like newsprint) tends to blob out a bit and is difficult to make small notes on and have them remain legible.

"Doing a voice"

Yes, I do “voices”. Not for every NPC, but for major NPCs or to differentiate groups, either by species or nationality. In my Southern Reaches game, each type of elemental had a different accent. Earth elementals had a Russian accent, which I did every time the wizard summoned one (which was often). Smaller species have higher pitched voices than larger species. Goblins are a bit more nasal while kobolds speaking Common sound like bad Viet Cong extras on a ‘Nam movie (“You die, adventurers! You die now!”). In their own tongue, they are more elegant, but tend to shout a bit.

Breaks

For week-day games, folks step away from the table when they need a bio-break. We keep going unless we need their input (or it’s the DM). When we game on weekends, we tend to game all day, starting just after lunch, making a dinner break around 5:00 to 7:00 (depending upon what’s going on in game), with bio-breaks as needed. We do not currently have any smokers in the group, so that is not an issue, but when it is, they go out on the porch and come back after a quick smoke.

Description

My descriptions are the minimum necessary to get the point across. During combat I may describe cool things the PCs or NPCs do based on how the dice rolled and what the PCs stated intent was (not all of my players give a lot of detail beyond “I swing at him”).

Where do you strike the balance between "doing what your character would do" and "acting like a dickhead"?

Creating a character who is a dickhead is a dick move and I police that. If you can’t play a character who is not a dick at least to the other PCs, I don’t need you in my game or really in my circle of friends. You are not normal nor an adult and I game only with adults, whatever their age. The point of the game is for everyone to enjoy the game, not just one person.

PC-on-PC violence. Do your players tend to avoid it, or do you ban it? Or does anything go?

My player group tends to avoid it (it can cause unnecessary issues), but if there is a story reason for it to happen and both players agree it should happen and are OK with playing it out, I’ll allow it. I would not expect it to end in character death outside of a Cyberpunk/Shadowrun game, where I fully expect it. Usually by ambush.

How do you explain what a role playing game is to a stranger who is also a non-player?

Assuming they ask, I use “It’s like D&D, but with slightly different rules.” A high percentage of the populace will get that, even if they have odd perceptions about it. If that gets a blank look, I go to “It’s like cowboys and indians but using Lord of the Rings characters.” Although really, I’ve never had to use either explanation before.

Alcohol at the table?

I don’t drink, but I don’t mind players having a drink. A drink. They are still responsible for everything their character does in game. Usually not an issue with my current groups.

What's acceptable to do to a PC whose player is absent from the session? Is whatever happens their fault for not being there, or are there some limits?

Usually we find a way to get them off camera for the session – they are doing something time consuming or the equivalent of “watching the horses”. Worst case scenario, they just fade into the background that session and fade back in the next session the player attends. Sometimes they just drop out of the narrative – see Luna in my Aldelle Group adventure log postings. Her player is often missing due to conflicting work and college schedule.

Now days, my campaigns are designed such that the PCs return to a safe point at the end of a session. Next session runs whoever makes it to the game. I have had to skip a session when someone critical to what is going on is unable to make it and then we do boardgames. For weekly games this is not a big issue, but for the monthly games I used to run it could kill a campaign if I was not careful about scheduling.

The Aldelle Group – Session 51 – Mist, Fireballs, Statues, and Bone Heaps

2011-11-03T07:00:00.000-05:00

Session 51 happened Monday, October 31, 2011. Yes, we played D&D on Halloween.

This campaign used the Dyson’s Delve dungeon pages on A Character for Every Game as a starting point, but has now moved on to new material from the DM-in-training. I heartily recommend Dyson's Delve as a beginning adventure.

Adventuring Group:
Tre-ba Bel a sheer (female elf alchemist)
Elspeth (female half-elf rogue)
Frankie Hu, Master of the Distracting Fist (male dwarf monk)
Harkaitz of the Red Soul (male human cleric of Ra)

NPCs:
Aziz of the Light (male human paladin, cohort of Harkaitz)
Sarisvati the Sun-touched (female Ifrit oracle, cohort of Aziz)
Midnight (female half-elf witch, cohort of Frankie Hu)
Macha (female human fighter, cohort of Elspeth)
Estrela (female Aasimar druid, cohort of Tre-Ba)
Short John Copper (male halfling expert, hireling)
The Red Keffiyehs (human warriors, followers of Harkaitz)
Carnish (male gnoll spellcaster of some sort)
Professor Walsh (male human expert)

Yet Later in the Afternoon, August 4, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, whose unblinking Eye watches over us.

I’m taking a moment to update my journal while Frankie and Tre-ba disassemble a wall so we can get to the passage beyond it. I’ll get to that in a moment.

When we awoke from the effects of the nap stack, Macha informed us a small troop of five zombies wandered out of the desert and into the pyramid while we were sleeping. There of course was no sign of the vampire. At this time of year we should have another three hours of sunlight, so if we must, we can retreat out of the pyramid. I prefer pushing through until we seal the gate.

When we re-entered the first chamber, the room still reeked of burned death and acid. Interestingly, the remains of the bloody skeletons were no longer present. I forgot to bless the remains so they could not be raised again. A bit belatedly I blessed the rest of the remains to keep them down.

The back doors still led to two different hallways, but no we could take the time to look down them. Both ended 25 feet down in a bank of mist. Tre-ba went band investigated the mist down the corridor going left and determined the mist was a standing obscuring mist spell. Large amounts of flame counters these, so I asked Asmo to drop a fireball down at the far end of this hallway. He willingly did so. Unfortunately, I had him throw it a bit far and a five-foot band of mist remained, obscuring our view.

It was my fault, so I went and stepped through to verify the fireball worked. While walking through, I stepped on a triggering plate of some sort and I saw four statues animating when I reached the far side of the mist. I immediately backpedaled through the mist warning everyone of the trap and the animating statues, calling for Frankie to step forward. My voice did not break much.

When the animated statues came through the mist, Macha, Aziz, and Frankie were ready to fight them, backed by Tre-ba and Asmo using acid-based attacks. Macha and her adamantine axe and Frankie and his adamantine fists started knocking the statues to rubble while Aziz held the line and kept the statues from breaking through. In the process Aziz took several hits from the statues and I needed to use the wand or cure serious wounds to heal him and keep him in the fight [5 charges left].

After the first statue was destroyed, Macha and Frankie leap-frogged each other down the hallway, destroying the acid weakened statues one after another. Midnight and Sarisvati healed up Macha once all the statues were destroyed, but Aziz waved off their healing (for the moment).

At the end of the hallway was a chamber (now slightly scorched) with half-columns and placed for statues (now missing). There was a door in the back, which Elspeth checked and pronounced clear of traps. The room beyond had no other doors and was full of stacked treasure. To say we were suspicious is an understatement. We checked for magic and it all radiated illusory magic. Investigating more closely, Tre-ba was able to identify it all as the product of the major creation spell. A few hours outside of the pyramid and it would evaporate into the thin air from whence it was created.

After a search for concealed passages (and apparently finding none – I’ll get back to that), we reversed course and went down the hallway leading to the right. This time I had Asmo place the fireball five feet closer and all the mist was eliminated. Elspeth checked for traps but found none. Suspicious, we edged further down the hall. The room at the end was a mirror of the other room (but no animated statues). The room behind it was also full of “treasure”. This was all made of fool’s gold. Again, there were no doors or concealed passages.

Find the path would have been a very useful blessing here, but I am not strong enough to cast two wind walks and it in the same day. Additionally, as a cleric of Ra, I am granted the blessings of Ra at dawn and the sun had not set on today yet. So we started checking and rechecking the rooms and passages. After a thorough (and time consuming) search, Elspeth noticed something in the illusory treasure room that Frankie had missed – a line of missing mortar along the floor at the back. This was the path the vampire must have taken in mist form.

Investigating further, we were able to determine there is a passage behind the wall. Tre-ba is carefully pouring acid on the mortar of the stones covering the passage while Frankie pulls out the freed stones. The smell is particularly acrid and the process is slow.

It’s done.

[In hurried writing]
Later:
Beyond the wall was a series of short passages separated by doors. The floor of one chamber was covered in bones and one of the doors along the way was trapped. The chamber we are in now is also covered in bones, but some of these were skeletons in hiding, including a skeletal dragon! We spotted them with detect magic and held position in the door. Tre-ba threw some acid bombs in, I activated my nimbus of light, and Sarisvati cast blessings of fervor. These actions drew their attention and they rose from the bone piles. Four of the skeletons burst into flames and three started oozing blood. My joy knew definite bounds.

We bottle-necked the door and slowly destroyed the skeletons, including the skeletal dragon. Aziz was heavily injured and nearly fell. We are taking a moment to catch our breath and heal. Then we push on – the vampire and the gate should be very close now.

*End of Session*

[Our 52nd session is coming up next week. This makes one year of weekly game sessions. Our DM-in-training is no longer a newbie nor in training. To celebrate, we will be getting together on the 11th, almost exactly one calendar year from when we started, for a pizza party and social get together.

While I miss the dungeon delve we started in (I’m an explorer at heart), I’ve greatly enjoyed the campaign so far and look forward to continuing on. As a group we discussed what we wanted to do after the Ra-Saves-the-World story arc. The consensus is that we want to keep on with the same characters but put someone other than my characters (Harkaitz/Aziz/Sarisvati) as the center of the plot. I seconded the motion as I’ve hogged the spotlight far long enough – time for someone else to shine.

I think the one thing I’d like to see is time passing a bit more. When I started making the adventure logs Harkaitz’s journal entries it was April in-game and we had already finished the Dyson’s Delve arc in the campaign. It is now just August 3rd in-game and we’ve gone up something like 7 levels (soon to be 8) in 4 months. That’s a pretty good clip and our characters must be getting a bit frayed around the edges. I’m thinking that we should be allowed to take the winter off after saving the world from complete destruction. I’m just saying…]

The Aldelle Group – Session 50 – Wave of Undead

2011-11-02T07:00:00.000-05:00

Session 50 happened Wednesday, October 26, 2011. Play was delayed because the DM was scheduled to work every night this week, despite asking for Mondays off. We almost didn’t play at all, but he was able to get Wednesday night off.

This campaign used the Dyson’s Delve dungeon pages on A Character for Every Game as a starting point, but has now moved on to new material from the DM-in-training. I heartily recommend Dyson's Delve as a beginning adventure.

Adventuring Group:
Tre-ba Bel a sheer (female elf alchemist)
Elspeth (female half-elf rogue)
Frankie Hu, Master of the Distracting Fist (male dwarf monk)
Harkaitz of the Red Soul (male human cleric of Ra)

NPCs:
Aziz of the Light (male human paladin, cohort of Harkaitz)
Sarisvati the Sun-touched (female Ifrit oracle, cohort of Aziz)
Midnight (female half-elf witch, cohort of Frankie Hu)
Macha (female human fighter, cohort of Elspeth)
Estrela (female Aasimar druid, cohort of Tre-Ba)
Short John Copper (male halfling expert, hireling)
The Red Keffiyehs (human warriors, followers of Harkaitz)
Carnish (male gnoll spellcaster of some sort)
Professor Walsh (male human expert)

Later in the Afternoon, August 4, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, whose power smites the undead.

After some quick discussion, I sent the following reply to Brek’nok’s sending:

Go after phylactery soonest. Disguise Wednesday seriously before going down to drow city. Don’t get caught! Entering Throne of Ra now. ~Harkaitz

We made a deal with Nionel to “never see each other again” after killing the drow matriarch and sealing the Drow Gate, meaning they would not invade the surface anymore and we of the surface would not invade them again. I feel bad about breaking that promise and if there was a way to destroy the phylactery without breaking the promise I’d take it. I may have to do something to make up for it to Nionel after we save the world. Maybe Wednesday and her group can do the job without killing anyone or getting caught.

Probably not.

We discussed using nap stack before entering the pyramid, but decided that there was not enough benefit from doing so. Coming around a corner of the pyramid, we found three skeletons (skeletal champions as it turned out) guarding the entrance to the pyramid interior. We took them out fairly quickly, but it made us wonder if they indicated the lich and Lucien are here. Either way, we were committed to the attack at this point and entered the pyramid.

The first chamber we entered was 40 ft square with the ceiling supported by four columns equally spaced around a 20 ft quare in the center. The walls were decorated with scenes of priests fighting the undead. Elspeth searched the room and found a lever on one of the pillars. It was a trapped, rigged to drop the ceiling on anyone in the chamber. She disabled it and then then pulled the lever. This caused sections of the walls to slide down into the ground, exposing two doors each on the back and side walls.

After Elspeth cleared the doors as safe, Frankie opened the left-most door. Beyond was a long room full of evenly spaced stone coffins and no other exits. Contemplating this, we decided to open all of the doors first, and then decide which way to go. The doors on the right and left walls each opened into a long room with many stone coffins. The back two doors opened onto corridors, one leading left and one right.

While we were deciding which way to go, a patch of mist moved into the room from the left door on the back wall. Aziz, suspecting what this was, detected evil on it and confirmed the mist was evil. He warned us that it was a vampire and we stood ready as it formed into a corporeal body. It was a vampire. It was also a woman, not Lucien like we were expecting. She was somewhat expecting us, claiming "the master" said we would eventually arrive. After the usual threats she gave us “one last chance to leave”. At this point there was an awkward silence because this is usually when our opponents attacked, thinking they would surprise us. After a couple of moments of nothing happening, she turned to mist and left – just as several stone coffins in each of the side rooms opened, expelling undead.

Each room contained a different type of undead, with four or five in each room. From left to right there were burning skeletons, regular skeletons, fast zombies, and bloody skeletons. We quickly shouted out a plan to block the doors so we would not have to fight them all at once. We were partially successful as we blocked two of the four doors before one of the burning skeletons and one of the bloody skeletons stepped just outside of their rooms.

I took apposition in the center of the chamber and activated my nimbus of light, which slowly damaged all of the undead while I sent out multiple pulses of positive energy to further damage them. Macha was enlarged and used her enlarged tower shield to completely block off the room with normal skeletons in it. Frankie destroyed the bloody skeleton at that door and, after being enlarged by Midnight, blocked the door to that room and the fast zombie room at the same time.

This combat was long and a bit touch and go at points, but because we controlled the access points to the room, the undead could not swarm us. We cleared the burning skeleton room first. They explode in flames when destroyed, which was an unpleasant surprise. Luckily, Sarisvati was able to provide fire resistance to those fighting them (mostly Aziz and Macha), which kept the burning to a minimum.

After the burning skeletons we destroyed the bloody skeletons. They heal rapidly if left alone, so we piled damage on them until they were destroyed. After that, Frankie finished off the fast zombies with assistance from Tre-ba and Asmo. We then did some healing before Macha let the regular skeletons out of their room and we pummeled them to dust.

At this point we were out of most of our undead fighting capabilities. With the sun still high in the afternoon sky and having access to nap stack, we decided to pull back and camp for two hours to recuperate. Now it is time to sleep for a bit and then take on the vampire minion. The sun should keep us safe, but we will still have a watch and Estrela will cast hide camp to cover us.

I miss having a good meal cooked by Short John at camp.

*End of Session*

The Aldelle Group – Session 49 – Temple to Throne

2011-10-31T07:00:00.000-05:00

Session 49 happened Monday, October 17, 2011.

This campaign used the Dyson’s Delve dungeon pages on A Character for Every Game as a starting point, but has now moved on to new material from the DM-in-training. I heartily recommend Dyson's Delve as a beginning adventure.

Adventuring Group:
Tre-ba Bel a sheer (female elf alchemist)
Elspeth (female half-elf rogue)
Frankie Hu, Master of the Distracting Fist (male dwarf monk)
Harkaitz of the Red Soul (male human cleric of Ra)

NPCs:
Aziz of the Light (male human paladin, cohort of Harkaitz)
Sarisvati the Sun-touched (female Ifrit oracle, cohort of Aziz)
Midnight (female half-elf witch, cohort of Frankie Hu)
Macha (female human fighter, cohort of Elspeth)
Estrela (female Aasimar druid, cohort of Tre-Ba)
Short John Copper (male halfling expert, hireling)
The Red Keffiyehs (human warriors, followers of Harkaitz)
Carnish (male gnoll spellcaster of some sort)
Professor Walsh (male human expert)

Evening, August 3, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, who moves the winds.

We are now encamped a short distance away from the temple Sarisvati’s vision led us to. I spent the last two days using wind walk moving our group from the Green Pyramid to here. Tomorrow we will enter the temple.

In the meantime, Frankie and Midnight have finished crafting some magic items for Frankie’s use. Frankie has also suggested we make a ring of truth – a ring that causes the wearer to speak nothing but the truth. Frankie believes that it will make questioning people faster and easier. The trick is that to craft a ring of truth, you have to be crafting one of two other rings and fail, as a ring of truth is a cursed item.

I started crafting it this afternoon, but I have paused. If I am attempting to forge a cursed ring, what will I actually get? A ring of truth may only be one of the possible outcomes of failure. Might not failing on purpose lead to some different cursed item?

Also, Short John has informed me we are a little past the halfway point on our foodstuffs and we will need to resupply in a week or so, it depends upon how many more “lost strays” we pick up.

Late Morning, August 4, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, who inspires the best in us.

Early this morning we walked over to the Red Temple of Ra. It is an immense structure, even if it is not as large as the two pyramids we have explored so far on this quest. What the Red Temple lacks in size it makes up for in architecture. The central portion is a 240 ft by 240 ft square with an 80 ft square extension in the center of each wall. The walls are 50 ft high and the central square is topped by an immense dome, easily another 50 ft higher. Sprouting from flat portions of the roof of the center square are four towers, each topped by a cone. There are open archways in the center of each outermost wall.

We approached the nearest archway and discovered that despite being open, no sand or dust from the desert enters the temple. Once we were inside, we saw that the entire interior of the structure was one immense chamber. The towers were spaced equally around the large central area and supported the roof. They had four doors each, two each on opposite sides. Between each tower was a platform raised 10 ft and topped with an ornate altar to Ra. The dome appeared to be self-supporting, but I am no architect. To say the walls were decorated does not do them any justice. The entire history of the worship of Ra over the last 500 years was depicted on the walls in the form of legends and stories of the faithful. It was beyond inspirational and I could do little but stare at it agape for several minutes.

My companions, meanwhile, immediately started sweeping the inside for traps and hidden passages. When I was not quite so overwhelmed by the grandeur of the temple I asked Carnish to cast fly on me and he did so. I then took the time to fly to exterior top of the dome and landed, then the tops of the four towers. I did not really believe this would trigger anything like what we were hoping to see happen, but I like to be thorough and I was doing nothing helpful on searching for traps or concealed compartments.

By the time I returned, Elspeth had completed her extensive search of the entire chamber for traps, including the doors to all of the towers. She found none. Frankie had search for concealed passages or compartments and found only one unusual feature: the central floor appeared to descend, but he could not locate the trigger mechanism. Elspeth and Frankie determined that the triggering mechanism was some sort of remote trigger. Frankie wondered aloud if the temple decorations showed scenes of the interior of the table and so Frankie, Elspeth, and Tre-ba started looking more closely at what was shown. Elspeth noticed that all the scenes of healing showed the healer laying hands on the person being healed, even in scenes where it was clear that a burst of positive energy was being channeled.

Based on that observation, Aziz went to each altar and used his lay on hands ability. When that did not cause anything to happen, he did the same to the floor section that should move. This triggered the movement of a 30-foot square of the floor, which descended 20 ft. The walls of the exposed area are carved in heavy bas relief, except for a five-foot wide corridor on the north wall. This passage led to a single room with an altar and a mural on the back showing part of the legend of Sylar, specifically a scene of Sylar healing one of his compatriots. Taking a cue from the mural, Aziz laid hands on the altar. This caused another secret door to open in the dropped floor area. Behind that secret door was a room that mirrored the first and, after Aziz laid hands on the altar in that room, a descending set of stairs was revealed in the floor of the dropped floor area.

Estrela flew into the lower chamber as a bat to scout and reported a raised dais with a single sarcophagus on it. Elspeth searched the area for traps and reported none (Aziz asked if she was sure before entering). Based on the decorations on the sarcophagus, this was the sarcophagus of Sylar himself!

Aziz reverently opened the sarcophagus and laid hands on the corpse of the legendary paladin. While nothing appeared to happen as a result to those inside the chamber, those outside noticed a floating platform appear at the apex of the dome. I flew up to the platform (Carnish’s fly spell was still active) and found a golden altar. I prayed at the altar for guidance and received a vision of an area I recognized just as an immense pyramid started rising from the sands, sand pouring off the pyramid like boiling water. The place was the location of the Uskar Gate, where the storm giants assisted us – this was the Throne of Ra rising above the sands once again!

Knowing where we needed to go next, we exited the Red Temple. As we left, all the shifted floors, concealed passages, and floating platforms re-concealed themselves. It was quite impressive.

As we were walking away from the Temple and back to camp, Midnight’s detect scrying spell went off – the lich was attempting to spy upon me. Thanks to the warning from Midnight’s spell I was able to focus my will and the scrying failed.

It did start a fierce debate as to what our next course of action was. We knew where we needed to go, but it was three days march from our current location. We suspected the lich had a spell of some sort to warn him if the Throne of Ra rose to the surface (he had obviously been accessing it via teleportation) – the timing of the scrying and our raising the Throne seemed too coincidental to be anything other than a response from the lich.

Needing more information as to the lich’s actions, I cast sending and sent the following message to Brek’nok:

Have raised Throne of Ra. Going there to seal gate. Scry the lich – we need to know his location over the next two days. ~Super Rat

The response I received was:

Lich and vampire in stone structure. Skeletal champions on watch outside. Lich studying tome. Close to gate. How goes it on your end? ~Brek’nok

Seeing an opportunity to surprise or get ahead of the lich, I suggested we use wind walk to fly the majority of us directly to the Throne of Ra now and try and take out the gate suddenly instead of over three days from now. The lich does not seem to know about my ability to cast wind walk yet, so we should be at the Throne two days before he expects us. The rest of the group agreed to this and we will be flying out shortly. I will be taking Aziz, Sarisvati, Tre-ba, Frankie, Midnight, Elspeth, Macha, and Asmo. Estrela will stay in bat form and fly along in a pocket. Carnish will stay here with Short John and the Red Keffiyeh guarding the camp. If all goes well, we will return in 2-3 days. If they do not hear from us in five days, their orders are to report to the temple of the city of Uru and report what has happened.

It is time to go.

Midafternoon, August 4, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, who blinds our enemies.

We have arrived at the Throne of Ra, an immense pyramid with deep carvings in each side of the pyramid of Ra sitting on his throne. The top fifth of the pyramid is carved into the shape of an Eye of Ra, looking to the four cardinal directions. We have just received a sending from Brek’nok:

Gate secured. Want us to get phylactery? Could also go to Terranor or just help the dwarves. Any preference? Best of luck at Throne of Ra. ~Brek’nok

*End of Session*

"...She Could Only Answer in Tongues."

2011-10-25T12:16:00.000-05:00

[This is the character background for Sarisvati The Suntouched, the cohort of my PC's cohort in The Aldelle Group game. I meant to write this up back when I wrote the backgrounds for Harkaitz and Aziz, but never got back to it until now in direct response for it.]

Sarisvati was born into a family not expecting her. It is assumed that her mother could not explain why her daughter had hair of flames and golden eyes and not the black hair and dark eyes of the village. Shortly after her birth she was abandoned at a local temple of Surya, god of the Sun. The priest who found her, Sarat, recognized a sign from Surya when he saw it. The child was taken in and named “Little Fire Hair”.

“Little Fire Hair” was raised in the temple and took to the life there quickly. When she reached five years of age she started training at the temple. She learned quickly and when she was eight, she was given the name Sarisvati, after the goddess of knowledge. There was some talk of sending her to the temple of Sarisvati for training. Unfortunately, the one time she was sent to the temple of Sarisvati to see how she took to the training there, she kept accidentally setting things on fire with her hands. She was quickly returned to the temple of Surya, where she stayed.

As she grew, it was noticed she had a knack of being exactly where she was needed, when she was needed, even if she was supposed to be somewhere else. Sometimes she was found in places she should not have been and as a result received punishment – punishment that was moderated by the actual need for her to be there at that time. The first time this happened was in the temple’s inner sanctum during a high ceremony. A rakshasa had infiltrated the temple, intent upon assassinating Sarat (who was now the High Priest) during the ceremony. Just as the rakshasa was moving to attack, Sarisvati stepped out of a hiding place, hands aflame, yelling a warning in a language few knew (Ignan), despite her desire to speak normally. The rakshasa, surprised and no longer with the element of surprised, fled from the fiery temple defender, thinking her much more powerful than she was. After the rakshasa had fled and the ceremony was over, Sarisvati found she could once again speak normally. After being forced to write out “I will not hide in the sanctum during a ceremony I am not supposed to attend” 1000 times, she was praised for bravery and the use of holy flame in defense of the temple. When asked why she happened to be there, she could only answer in tongues.
While most of the young women in the area her age were already married by the time she turned 16, Sarisvati kept her independence – few men wanted a wife with flames for hair and those seeking some sort of social leverage by marrying a child of the temple were convinced to look elsewhere when Sarisvati lit her hands on fire. While admonished by Sarat, whom she considered her father and he her as his daughter, she was admonished lightly. When he asked her why she kept frightening off her suitors, she could only answer in tongues.

When Sarisvati turned 18, she knew the lands around her home temple well and was known in them. She started to explore further and further, looking for something she could not quite vocalize. With the blessing of Sarat, she followed the setting sun, eventually arriving at a caravansary on the fringe of the lands she knew. There she talked with traders from lands farther to the west, including a traveling priest of Ra, Salah of the Burning Valley. The priest’s holy symbol called to Sarisvati, almost literally, and when allowed to hold it, she was lost in a vision of flames for an unknown period of time.

When Sarisvati came to herself again, everyone in the caravansary but Salah had fled her vicinity. He told her she had started speaking in tongues and her skin had turned molten, glowing with a fierce inner heat for the last hour. This had frightened the other travelers and they fled to other parts of the caravansary while he waited. Sarisvati asked Salah why he had not fled and he answered, “Ra protects from flame those who serve the sun.” After talking the rest of the day and through the night about Ra and his worship, Sarisvati decided she must travel further west to the lands of Ra. When asked why, she could only answer in tongues.

Sarisvati travelled generally west for several years, digressing from her path when moved by the flames or a feeling. She occasionally met with Salah when their paths crossed (he often traversed the lands east of the Uskar Desert) and the two shared what they had seen and learned. The last time this occurred Sarisvati was 22 and she received another vision. This time she saw the sun eclipsed and a shadow drown the fires in her vision. When she came to herself again, she knew she had to travel far to the west and amongst elves to find a person. When Salah asked who she was looking for, she could only answer in tongues.

After a year of travel (and occasional adventure) she found herself in Ttaeladra, a city of elves, where she found a human paladin in the service of Ra, Aziz of the Light, and recognized him from her vision. She approached him and stated she would help him. When Aziz asked why, she could only answer in tongues.

The Aldelle Group – Session 48 – The Thieves’ Bazaar

2011-10-20T07:00:00.000-05:00

Session 48 happened Tuesday, October 11, 2011.

This campaign used the Dyson’s Delve dungeon pages on A Character for Every Game as a starting point, but has now moved on to new material from the DM-in-training. I heartily recommend Dyson's Delve as a beginning adventure.

Adventuring Group:
Tre-ba Bel a sheer (female elf alchemist)
Elspeth (female half-elf rogue)
Frankie Hu, Master of the Distracting Fist (male dwarf monk)
Harkaitz of the Red Soul (male human cleric of Ra)

NPCs:
Aziz of the Light (male human paladin, cohort of Harkaitz)
Sarisvati the Sun-touched (female Ifrit oracle, cohort of Aziz)
Midnight (female half-elf witch, cohort of Frankie Hu)
Macha (female human fighter, cohort of Elspeth)
Estrela (female Aasimar druid, cohort of Tre-Ba)
Short John Copper (male halfling expert, hireling)
The Red Keffiyehs (human warriors, followers of Harkaitz)
Carnish (male gnoll spellcaster of some sort)
Professor Walsh (male human expert)

Evening, July 31, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, Guardian of us all.

Sarisvati can be a frightening woman when she wants to be. Her hair is normally flame, but as an Oracle of Ra she can call deeply on the fire of the sun. She can sprout wings of fire and radiate the heat of a wall of fire from her skin, which has the side effect of lighting up her eyes from inside as by the sun. She can call flames to her hands hot enough to melt (small amounts) of sand into glass. (I can do the same, but I have used it to burn down a door in the drow gatehouse).

This impressed our captive greatly. He fairly quickly told Sarisvati that the gang he was with were the Falcon’s Claw, who specialized in robbing tombs and abandoned temples. The dead people we found were not temple defenders but a rival gang that disguise themselves in order to infiltrate their target. They are the Golden Hand. He also claimed that he and those with him were just watching the place until their boss got back from selling a valuable item from inside the pyramid. I signaled to Frankie to knock out our captive at this point. Sarisvati’s act was good fun, but stolen items from the temple are a serious matter. In the morning I will need to commune with Ra to gain some clarity.

Morning, August 1, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, who shows us each day anew.

I have communed with Ra and He has banished the darkness in my soul.

Last night I received a sending from our team in the mountains. It stated:

“Lich heading north on boat. Looks like elf. Starting coup in orc city. Have not seen dragon. Rescuing dwarves. Have not found gate. –Super Rat”

It was good that Brek’nok was occasionally still getting through to scry on the lich. I am curious as to why he is disguised as an elf. I suspect he realized the false priest of Ra disguise was not working for him. I responded:

“Found new pyramid. Stone golems are dangerous. Wind walk rocks. Missing mountain gate troublesome. Hope to raise Uskar Gate soon. Any sign of vampire? –Harkaitz”

Having communed with Ra, I now know we must still enter the Green Pyramid, which is empty of thieves. Ra also confirmed that the dead people with holy symbols were actually thieves, so our prisoner will get to live. Ra also indicated that the item stolen is still important and the lich is trying to cause us problems. Uru is safe, but Lagaskia is only safe “for now”.

The commune also gave me a new perspective on my problem with Estrela. She is a good person at heart, even if her passions override her at times. I am still not happy she killed the prisoner, but this is not part of a pattern of wanton killing and she had been provoked by the bandit (being run through with a sword is provoking no matter who you are). I am going to let this go. If it happens again, I will reconsider then, but until that happens, Estrela is a good traveling companion.

We will be heading into the pyramid once we finish cleaning camp after breakfast. Luna (and her prestidigitation) is much missed by all of us.

Evening, August 1, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, who flies with wings of flame.

This pyramid was much simpler than the last one, but by no means simple. Past the entrance was a single chamber with a secret door on the left side. Behind the secret door was a small shrine. Inside that area was a hidden alcove that once held something, but no longer did (other than a square ring of dust). This seemed to be a dead end, but we kept searching.

I activated my nimbus of light in the back room and this caused a large Eye of Ra to appear on the back wall, which then faded away, exposing a mosaic covered room. The back was a huge mosaic of a phoenix, a creature sacred to Ra and associated with His worship. We searched that room for a secret passage of any sort, but found nothing. Thinking on the symbology of a phoenix, I asked Sarisvati to enter the room and activate her wings of flame.

When she did so, the top half of the mosaic erupted into flame and evaporated, exposing a 10-foot wide “chimney”. I had Carnish grant me with flight and flew up, finding another altar to Ra. I tried my nimbus of light here, but knew that this would take Sarisvati to get past. Sometimes I am a creature of habit.

Sarisvati flew up the “chimney” and prayed at the altar to Ra. She received a vision similar to the one I received three days ago. Hers shows the way to a temple to the southeast, almost halfway to Uru. After discussing it a bit, we flew back down and rejoined the others, explaining what was next on our quest. We all returned to camp to plan further.

Back in camp we spent some some time attempting to decypher a coded message we took from the bandits to no avail. We decided it was time to talk with our prisoner again. This time I did the talking. I offered him a skin of water and directions to the nearest branch of the Great River if he'd answer our questions.

Once we got to talking (and he realized I was serious about letting him go), he was fairly chatty. He told us his boss was heading to a bazaar in the river delta know only to those dealing in goods of questionable ownership. He did not know what his boss had taken from the Green Pyramid, but the bazaar was the place they sold everything. Once I was certain we had everything we needed to find this thieves’ bazaar, I gave him a skin full of water and pointed him in the direction of the river. It is a day away, but he should have enough water to make it there safely.

Once he was gone, my companions and I started discussing what we should do next. Ra indicated the item was still important, even if not part of our immediate quest. It sounded like it might be something the lich or the vampire would want, making it something we wanted to keep away from them. Plus, we knew where it would be soon, so we decided to go after it.

To be quick and make it to the bazaar in time, I would need to use wind walk and fly a small group of us there. I choose Elspeth, Macha, Frankie, and Asmo for a good mix of subtlety and brute force.

We flew to the location the bandit indicated and found a cluster of tents of various sizes. We landed a dune or two away from the tents and I dropped Elspeth and Macha from the wind walk spell so they could walk in and scout the bazaar. Tre-ba had given Elspeth an elixir of blue dragon breath to use as a weapon or a signal for the rest of us to arrive in case things went bad. Good thing, too.

Elspeth and Macha made it into the camp with little problem. Elspeth asked around and did find the correct tent, but also set off the camp (I’m not certain how). We recognized something was wrong when Elspeth and Macha backed out of the tent, weapons at the ready. Elspeth confirmed this by breathing a bolt of lightning into the tent. The rest of us sprang into action.

Asmo dropped in a couple of fireballs and I put a wall of fire around the tent we were interested in. This changed attitudes in the camp quickly and the rest of the camp suddenly decided that maybe Elspeth and Macha were not people they were interested after all. Also, the people in the tent became much more talkative and less ready to fight.

In the end, we learned that the item we wanted had not made it to the bazaar yet and due to the smoke from the fires never would. I turned this around by loudly offering 8000 gold for “the box”. This was the amount of valuables we had taken from the Falcon’s Claw bandits at the Green Pyramid, which seemed fair use of the valuables – buying the item with the bandit’s own money. I stated that if anyone found the item in question, they should contact me through the Temple of Ra in Lagaskia. I then cast wind walk on Elspeth and Macha and we all flew back to the camp at the Green Pyramid. With an 8000 gold bounty on "the box", things should get exciting for the Falcon's Claw.

Later on I warned the High Priest in Lagaskia, Qasim of the Green Heart, via a sending to expect some disreputable people showing up wishing to trade an item for coin. Qasim and I go back several years and I promised to tell the full story if he’d work with me on this. He agreed, curious what I was up to.

*End of Session*

The Aldelle Group – Session 47 – Light and Darkness

2011-10-19T07:00:00.000-05:00

Session 47 happened Wednesday, October 5, 2011.

This campaign used the Dyson’s Delve dungeon pages on A Character for Every Game as a starting point, but has now moved on to new material from the DM-in-training. I heartily recommend Dyson's Delve as a beginning adventure.

Adventuring Group:
Tre-ba Bel a sheer (female elf alchemist)
Elspeth (female half-elf rogue)
Frankie Hu, Master of the Distracting Fist (male dwarf monk)
Harkaitz of the Red Soul (male human cleric of Ra)

NPCs:Aziz of the Light (male human paladin, cohort of Harkaitz)
Sarisvati the Sun-touched (female Ifrit oracle, cohort of Aziz)
Midnight (female half-elf witch, cohort of Frankie Hu)
Macha (female human fighter, cohort of Elspeth)
Estrela (female Aasimar druid, cohort of Tre-Ba)
Short John Copper (male halfling expert, hireling)
The Red Keffiyehs (human warriors, followers of Harkaitz)
Carnish (male gnoll spellcaster of some sort)
Professor Walsh (male human expert)

Evening, July 29, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, who guides my path.

So that went about as well as expected. OK – it was worse than expected, but no one actually died, praise Ra.

So when I placed the stone head, the statue animated, but not as an animated statue. It animated as a stone golem, which we now know are much worse than animated statues. But I get ahead of my self.

It looked down at Aziz and I and asked “Who thinks they are worthy?” This was not entirely unexpected – it is why I volunteered to place the head on the statue. After it asked its question, I raised my hand and stated “Hail Ra.” It immediately attacked me with the stone scimitar we had placed in its hands. And it hit hard. Twice. I quickly stepped back, but could not get outside its reach. [Harkaitz rolled the highest initiative for this combat. It was the first time ever in nearly a year of regular play. It threw us off balance the entire combat.]
Aziz and Macha stepped up and blocked for the rest of us while Frankie slid around and started throwing fists harder than stone. The golem breathed out a cloud of gas that slowed Macha, but Aziz, Frankie, and I were able to avoid the effect. The fight was slowly turning to favor us (even though Macha required regular healing to stay on her feet) when a bright light filled the room and the entire room reset. Except our wounds. While we panted, the golem stood aside and said we could pass. I'm not certain what changed, but we were not going to pass up the opportunity to NOT fight a stone golem.

We took some time to heal up. I then stepped past the golem and went to push open the double doors in the back of the room, but everyone wanted Elspeth to check the doors for traps first, so I waited. Once she cleared the doors, we discussed taking a short break to use nap stack to recover, but decided there was no place secure enough we would feel safe and the pass from the golem might be timed.

I pushed the doors open. They opened noiselessly with little effort. The chamber beyond was octagonal in shape. The 50-foot tall walls were covered in great murals showing legends from the worship of Ra. The mural on the left showed Sylar defeating The Nightshade. The mural on the back wall showed scenes from the First Pilgrimage while the wall on the right tells the story of the spread of the worship of Ra across the Uskar.

We tried several things and looked around for a way to proceed. I eventually cast find the path, which directed me to stand in the center of the room. Professor Walsh, having read the various inscriptions on the walls, asked if there were any other interpretations of “the Light of Ra”. I said, “Well, there’s this,” and activated my nimbus of light. This triggered the opening of the ceiling. The wedges that made up the ceiling arches slid down into the walls and exposed another area above them with a passage into the back wall.

Fifty feet is a long way to climb up and I do not climb well. Luckily Carnish knows the fly spell and is willing to share. I flew up to the top of this chamber and through the entrance into another chamber now exposed. This chamber held an altar to Ra. I prayed at the altar and received a vision.

In the vision I flew back out of the pyramid and then across the sands of the Uskar to another pyramid, one not on our map. The vision settled on the entrance to the pyramid, and then I was back in my body. [The DM-in-Training swears he's never seen The Mummy 2 and was puzzled about why we might want to make sand sculptures. Really.] I then left the altar chamber and flew back down to the octagon room to tell my friends what I had seen. I will admit that I took a moment to float a small distance above the floor of the altar room before descending just to check that the fly spell was still active. I was not certain how long the vision had lasted and was nervous about just stepping off into a 50 drop.

After explaining what I had seen, we quickly made our way out of the pyramid and back to our camp. The Red Keffiyeh were pleased to see us again as most of the day has passed and they had no word from us. Short John is cooking what smells like a very tasty dinner. Aziz and I mulling over our options while we assist in the preparation of the meal. [Most of the party leveled at this point. We’d made the XP necessary a couple of sessions earlier, but could not level until we rested back at camp.]

Morning, July 30, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, whose light inspires.

I have had an idea on how to get to the new pyramid quickly. It will take us four days to march there, but Ra now grants me the ability to cast wind walk twice. This will allow me to move myself and eight others all the way there in half a day. Those taken can establish a forward camp and I can return to our current camp. The following morning, I will move the rest of our party the same way, getting us all there in a day and a half.

I have shared this plan with the others and we have decided to go with it. This will be new and I look forward to it.

Evening, July 30, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, whose light fills the world.

I’m back at our original camp after moving Aziz, Sarisvati, Tre-ba, Estrela, Frankie, Midnight, Elspeth, and Macha to the new pyramid. The stone has a slightly green tint to it, so I am going to refer to it as the Green Pyramid, although it is not actually green.

Mid-Afternoon, July 31, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, whose Eye protects us.

This morning I ferried over the rest of the group to the Green Pyramid. Once the camp was re-established to Short John’s liking, the rest of us moved up to the pyramid. The stairs up ended at a platform lined with columns, like the first pyramid, but unlike that one, this one had dead bodies wearing the clothes of servants of Ra! We suspect they were defenders of this site and we moved their bodies aside and I asked the Red Keffiyeh to give them proper burials.

We then turned our attention to the entrance. After trying several ways to open the door, Elspeth determined it was barred from inside. Suspecting that whoever killed the others may still be inside, we were eager to enter the pyramid. Carnish and Midnight can cast dimension door, so we readied two strike teams. Carnish moved in himself and Aziz, Macha, Elspeth, and Estrela (in bat form), to be followed by Midnight with Frankie, Tre-ba, and myself. The plan was for the second group to wait to see if the first group would be able to easily open the door. This was not the case.

I found out later that the first group in was surrounded by scruffy-looking humans. Aziz asked them to explain themselves and when they declined, Aziz asked them to leave. They attacked, thinking they had the numbers. When we heard the sound of fighting, the second group moved in and appeared in the middle of two groups, one group in the front, the other group in the back surrounding Estrela, slicing her with their weapons. The fight immediately became chaotic.

Carnish evened the odds by mesmerizing two of the bandits and Midnight vomited a swarm of wasps on the group in the back. This was terrifying to see and I am on her side. We eventually turned the tide, but Estrela came near to death several times, which sort of explains what happened at the end.

I englobed the last living bandit from the back group in a wall of stone. Once the rest were down and Frankie had knocked out the final combatant, I called the warriors among us to surround the stone globe so the final bandit would understand the situation. I then used stone shape to turn the wall to pebbles, which dropped down around him, and demanded he surrender.

I could see him doing the math in his eyes and realizing he had no other choice. He started to drop his sword and state his surrender when Estrela cast a ball lightning spell and murdered him. I was aghast. He was about to surrender and she killed him. I am still angry and upset about it. I turned to her and demanded to know why she had done that. She stared at me blankly with no answer at first. She eventually said he had nearly killed her and that I had not stated we were taking his surrender. That was more of an excuse (and a weak one at that) as I had clearly told him to surrender and Macha, Aziz, and Frankie had not attacked the bandit.

I knew I needed time and wanted to walk away, but everyone was still wounded, so I healed everyone. Including Estrela. I am still angry with her, but Ra teaches to heal those who need it, not just those we like.

We have returned to the camp with our unconscious prisoner. Thankfully Frankie knows how NOT to kill our only sources of information here. I need to pray to Ra for guidance. I will let Sarisvati question the prisoner in the meantime.

*End of Session*

The Flu: I Don't Recommend It

2011-10-18T07:21:00.002-05:00

I was ill most of last week, starting Tuesday evening and recovering, well, mostly Sunday, but I've still got after effects, notably a gravelly voice and occasional cough. During this time I read four books (including The New Death and others, a compilation of short stories I liked and recommend), which I had time to do as coughing and sinus drainage made sure sleeping in was not really an option.

What I did not have time nor the inclination to do was write a lot. So, no ready-written posting today, or at least not this morning. I have three sessions worth of notes for the Aldelle Group that I need to type up and post. This will happen this week, so look forward to that, starting tomorrow.

That's it for now.

[Book Review] The New Death and others

2011-10-13T07:00:00.000-05:00

[I received a request to review a book by the author. This is that review. I may do this more in the future.]

I just finished reading The New Death and others, a compilation of short stories and poetry by James Hutchings, who blogs over at Teleleli. I read the Kindle version, which I liked very much. My initial impression is that this is actually two different compilations mingled together, one I liked very much and wanted more of, the other I was more neutral towards, but was willing to keep reading.

The compilation I liked very much was the material about the city of Telelee, its gods, and the world it inhabited. I liked how the short stories were linked implicitly, not explicitly. Each story covered something specific, but borrowed from an earlier story and often contributed to a later story. I liked this world and as a gamer would want to adventure in it. The God of the Poor did a surprisingly good job setting up the stories that followed. The Prince of the Howling Forest was not as strong, but I very much liked The Scholar and The Moon. The only point where this collection breaks down is when Mr. Hutchings uses the gods in a modern setting, particularly Fame's Beloved. Your mileage may vary.

The "other" compilation in this book is Mr. Hutchings writings that are a more modern bent. This ranges from commentary on things going on now (The Face in the Hill and Rumpelstiltskin) to a ribald Sherlock Holmes story (The Adventure of the Murdered Philanthropist and its very entertaining footnotes) to poetry based on stories by other authors (and here I mean Lovecraft, R. E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and Lord Dunsany). Poetry is not my thing, but I appreciate the work that it takes to write. Of these, The Garden of Adompha seemed to work best. I have an MP3 of Fritz Lieber reading A Night in Malneant by Clark Ashton Smith at World Fantasy Con III and that is the voice I heard in my head for all the poetry. The piece I Heard the Mermaids Singing also worked particularly well.

The prose writing was solid all the way through, even in bits where what was being told was not as strong. I think I only noticed one typo (a "then" instead of "than" if I remember correctly), which is damn good as I edit professionally and very much appreciate the effort taken. Considering the sometimes cavalier attitude taken in the gaming hobby industry towards copyediting, I like the sense of pride and professionalism shown here.

Also, I like the cover art. It is simple, but fits the book well, particularly the titular story, The New Death.

Summation: I liked this book and recommend it to others, particularly the Telelee-related material. Also, don't mess with the elephants of Telelee. Ever.

The Aldelle Group – Session 46 – Bottom to Top

2011-10-11T07:41:00.000-05:00

Session 46 happened Tuesday, September 27, 2011.

This campaign used the Dyson’s Delve dungeon pages on A Character for Every Game as a starting point, but has now moved on to new material from the DM-in-training. I heartily recommend Dyson's Delve as a beginning adventure.

Adventuring Group:
Tre-ba Bel a sheer (female elf alchemist)
Elspeth (female half-elf rogue)
Frankie Hu, Master of the Distracting Fist (male dwarf monk)
Harkaitz of the Red Soul (male human cleric of Ra)

NPCs:
Aziz of the Light (male human paladin, cohort of Harkaitz)
Sarisvati the Sun-touched (female Ifrit oracle, cohort of Aziz)
Midnight (female half-elf witch, cohort of Frankie Hu)
Macha (female human fighter, cohort of Elspeth)
Estrela (female Aasimar druid, cohort of Tre-Ba)
Short John Copper (male halfling expert, hireling)
The Red Keffiyehs (human warriors, followers of Harkaitz)
Carnish (male gnoll spellcaster of some sort)
Professor Walsh (male human expert)

Later, July 29, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, who shows us the way, even when we are weary.

After our short rest [not enough to level yet], we resumed our search of the pyramid. Elspeth finished a sweep of the hallway ring we were in and found no other traps. Once we were certain it was safe to move around, Elspeth and Frankie started searching for hidden passages while Midnight used detect magic to check for illusionary walls. A single concealed alcove was found. It contained a lever in the back wall.

Elspeth searched the alcove and declared it free of traps, which left the lever itself. After some discussion and with no other options, Macha pulled the lever while the rest of us remained alert.

We heard the sound of stone grinding on stone in two places. The one we could see immediately was the entrance to the hallway ring. The floor of the pit hidden by illusions rose, blocking off out only known route of escape. A similar noise came from the back hallway area, an area we could not see directly. With great caution, we started searching for a new way to either proceed or escape.

What we found was another pit concealed by illusion. Similar to the route we descended, this was protected by a scorching ray trap, which Estrela found the by flying through as a bat. While I healed her, Elspeth set to deactivating the trap. Frankie investigate ahead by running up the side of the pit to the next level above. He reported it safe and Elspeth followed him up. They reported the level above seemed to be the same hallway ring that encircled the chamber of the giant undead hands. They could even follow our original foot prints. Needless to say, we found this odd and it made us wary.

Looking for the secret door back into the chamber of giant undead hands, we found it had seemingly moved clock-wise forward one segment of the circular hallway. [NOTE: Harkaitz wouldn’t say “clock-wise” here as there are no clocks, but for the ease of reading, that’s what I’m putting.] The chamber in the center was the chamber of undead giant hands and they still lay there where we had destroyed them. But the handholds carved in the wall up to the entrance level were missing. Luckily, the stone coffin that formed the cover to the entrance was still aside and we could see up into the chamber above, the false crypt chamber. Estrela flew up (still in bat form) and confirmed the false crypt chamber was there, but the secret door we used to enter was gone.

We used knotted ropes and a grappling hook to ascend to the false crypt chamber. Searching for a hidden passage out, we found two instead of the single one we were expecting. Opening one, instead of the hallway we were expecting, we found a completely new passage, what turned out to be another hallway circle, this one only five feet wide. Elspeth and Frankie scouted ahead, going to the left first. At the end of this passage, approximately where the entry passage to the pyramid should have been was a small chamber, about 10 feet wide by 15 feet deep. Elspeth found a trap at the entry to the small chamber and disabled it. Inside the chamber they can see a chest against the left (inner) wall. Elspeth and Frankie returned to the false crypt chamber to report what they had found before returning to check the chest.

With Frankie in the hallway, Elspeth checked the chest for traps. She found a fireball trap on the chest, but missed one set to trigger when she opened the chest. This one dropped two walls – one from the ceiling at the entrance to seal the entry and one down into the floor at what was the back wall, exposing a 10 foot wide and five foot deep area holding two animated statues! Four of these things nearly killed our entire group back in the Delve and here Elspeth had to face two all alone.

Elspeth immediately called for help and them moved into a corner and took a defensive stance. She hoped to avoid being hit too much before the rest of us could arrive. Frankie called back down the hallway for help and then moved to the newly dropped stone way, hammering it with fists hardened to the consistency of adamantine. As we moved up to provide assistance, Frankie unleashed a flurry of blows and shattered the stone wall. Even during this short time, the animated statues had hit Elspeth several times and she was heavily bloodied.

Frankie went after the statues, knocking chunks of stone off them each time he hit, and he hit often. Once the statues were rubble, Midnight and I pooled healing capabilities to heal Elspeth’s bones and flesh from the beating she had taken.

Inside the chest we found a stone head. It looked like part of a statue, but there was no evidence it had been broken off. It detected as faintly magical and Tre-ba identified the magical residue as “door opening magic”. Aziz packed it away in a bag of holding. Frankie believed the chest should contain more than just a stone head and took it apart looking for a hidden compartment. There was none.

Having reached a dead end at this point, we reversed course and followed the passage back to the right of the secret door. This passage led to a large chamber before continuing on past it. The chamber was tall and lined with statues of paladins in the service of Ra. The back end of the room narrowed down to an immense set of stone doors. Standing in front of said doors was a larger than life-sized statue of a man in armor, likely another paladin. It was missing its head and its hands rested where a sword hilt would have been if the sword were not also missing.

It was very apparent that the stone head we found would fit on the top of the statue, so now we had to find the missing sword. Clearly it would be down the remaining passage, so Elspeth and Frankie proceeded that way while the rest of us waited in this chamber. Apparently Elspeth found a trap in the far corner of the passage and accidentally triggered it while attempting to disarm it. We discovered this when we heard the sound of walls slamming down, isolating the part of the passage they were in. However, by the time we got there, Frankie had already punched his way through the wall between us, spilling out the poison gas that had filled the area he and Elspeth were in.

Once the gas dissipated, Frankie knocked out the back wall of the trap and he and Elspeth entered into a small chamber that was a mirror of the chamber where we found the stone head. This time Elspeth defeated all of the traps in the chamber and on the chest, revealing a stone scimitar in the chest. Aziz and Macha have carried it back to the statue chamber and we are about ready to reattach the head and the sword to the guardian statue. Aziz and I will place the pieces as this will hopefully allow us passage and open the doors to the next chamber without a fight. We’ll see.

*End of Session*

Fragments - Session 3: Maresfield Shootout

2011-10-07T07:45:00.002-05:00

Session 3 happened Friday, September 30, 2011.

This campaign uses the Hero System, 5th Edition, with much Traveller material grafted on. I am making use of the Hero Traveller books published by ComStar Games. Sadly, these books went out of print when Mongoose Publishing purchased the rights to produce all things Traveller. Mongoose is doing good things, so no hate mail.

PCs:
The Company:
Maxwell Sloan (male human, communications and sensors specialist)
Nomen Fire-eyes (male human hybrid, negotiator)
Oscar Dougray (male human, salvage expert)
Ro Owen (female human, team security expert)
Braddock Grar, Lector (male Low Waldi, archivist)

NPCs:
The Crew:
Echo Salazar, Ship’s Captain (female human)
Ted Yahn, Ship’s Navigator (male human)
Albertha Trufin, Ship’s Engineer (female human)
Dr. Quinton Picknell, Ship’s Doctor (male human)

Maresfield Trade Representative:
Deadra Pagenkopf, Maresfield Trade Liaison (female human)

Week 3, Day 3:
The Just Lucky arrived in Maresfield system. After properly identifying itself to the Maresfield orbital authorities, the ship received an updated System Map for the Adab subsector and J2 System Survey Report from the Maresfield Scout Service. Most of the day is spent moving from the jump point to planetary orbit.

Week 3, Day 5:
Phoenix Salvage [the players] receives payment from Maresfield government for shipment of red gold made by the Just Lucky. Phoenix Salvage decided to keep 2 bars of red gold for their use. With a great deal of credit in the company’s accounts, the Just Lucky was put into dock for routine maintenance.

Week 3, Days 6 and 7:
Phoenix Salvage starts purchasing items they found they needed on their first outing. Orders were placed for 4 body sleeves, lightweight armor with some environmental support capabilities. Ro was also able to secure a fiber optic intrusion camera for Grar’s use.

Grar also requested updated body armor (to ballistic cloth) from the Order of Sacre Illuminae. While talking with his superior in the Order, Grar related that the Just Lucky would next travel to the Caraturth system. In exchange for the armor upgrade, Grar was provided a pile of scrolls containing the history of the Order on Maresfield over the last 90 years and asked to deliver it to the Founding Monastery on Caraturth.

Week 4, Day 1:
Cyrano compiled a list of components he needs in order to start building McGuffins for Phoenix Salvage’s use. In order to avoid the notice of the Maresfield government, he needed the other members of Phoenix Salvage to secure several of the items. Ro, Grar, and Oscar agreed to help.

Oscar located sources for several of the more technical components and secured a supply of them. Grar went to his Low Waldi contacts while Ro, taking the single mundane item on the list (several spools of fiber optic circuitry) simply went shopping for it. After checking a few places, Ro ended up in a technically-oriented bodega where few questions were asked if payment was in cash. She waited at the front counter while the owner was putting together her order (the FO circuitry was kept behind the counter). Waiting in the back of the bodega for his contact to show, entirely by coincidence, was Sherwood Switch, head of a pirate gang and sworn enemy or Ro. As far as he knew, Ro Owen died on the island he marooned her on several years ago.

Imagine his surprise when one of his flunkies pulls him aside and points to the front of the shop. His exact words were, “Ro Owen?! What the hell?!”

Ro recognized the voice and spun, pulling her automatic pistol, and started shooting at her blood enemy. Switch responded in kind with his 9 mm magnum pistol, ordering his two flunkies to start shooting. This started a shootout down the length of the store (and the chips and soda aisle). Ro took cover by flipping over the sales counter while Switch stepped partially behind a display of canned foods at the end of the aisle.

In the storage area in the back, Grar was talking with his contact (and cousin), working out the details of getting the components he was asked to get. His cousin (and contact) immediately fled the building when the gunshots started ringing out. Grar, curious by nature, moved around and into the cold locker so he could see out through the beer shelves. Seeing that Ro and several unknown assailants were evenly matched, he cautiously moved to a point where he was flanking the guy who seemed to be the leader and waited for an opportunity.

This opportunity came when one of the other customers of the bodega took offense at some of the remarks the flunkies were making and started beating down the flunky trying to flank Ro. Unaware of this, the second flunky moved forward to get a better shot at Ro, leaving Switch along in the back. Grar silently opened the cooler door and squeezed through the shelves, flanking Switch and covering the man with his gauss pistol. In a calm voice he ordered Switch to drop his weapon.

Switch, surprised to find a Low Waldi with a pistol behind him, attempted to push over the display of cans onto Grar. Grar pulled the trigger first, firing multiple flechettes through Switch’s torso, dropping him. Ro, seeing this happen, hopped the counter and ran up to Switch, intent on killing him with the same gun switch killed her last lover – only to find that she had not brought that pistol with her today. So she kicked him in the head and stalked out.

During her run up to Switch, the flunky who was mid-aisle attempted to shoot Ro in the back and missed. When he realized Switch was down and there was another shooter in the store, one who might have killed his boss, the flunky ran out the front of the store. The other flunky was pummeled into unconsciousness by the offended patron, despite having a gun in hand. He would not wake up until the police were there arresting him.

Grar took off out the back, slowing down only long enough to grab the security tapes from the store security cameras. Hopefully there was not a second set of recorders up at the front of the store.

Both Ro and Grar decide to lay low until the ship finishes its maintenance.

Week 4, Day 4:
Cyrano, using other channels, finally acquires the rest of the components he needs to start making Phoenix Salvage-brand McGuffins.

Week 4, Day 6:
Maintenance on the _Just Lucky_ completed and the members of Phoenix Salvage re-board.

*End of Session 3*

Fragments – Session 2: Guruphon Meltdown

2011-10-04T07:00:00.000-05:00

Session 1 happened Friday, August 23, 2011.

This campaign uses the Hero System, 5th Edition, with much Traveller material grafted on. I am making use of the Hero Traveller books published by ComStar Games. Sadly, these books went out of print when Mongoose Publishing purchased the rights to produce all things Traveller. They are doing good things, so no hate mail.

PCs:
The Company:
Maxwell Sloan (male human, communications and sensors specialist)
Nomen Fire-eyes male human hybrid, negotiator)
Oscar Dougray (male human, salvage expert)
Ro Owen (female human, team security expert)
Braddock Grar, Lector (male Low Waldi, archivist)

NPCs:
The Crew:
Echo Salazar (female human, ship’s captain)
Ted Yahn (male human, ship’s navigator)
Albertha Trufin (female human, ship’s engineer)
Quinton Picknell, Doctor (male human, ship’s doctor)

Maresfield Trade Representative
Deadra Pagenkopf (female human, governmental trade liaison)

Week 2, Day 1: Evening
The away team quickly got Max into the medical bay on board the Just Lucky, where Dr. Picknell went to work. The doctor performed some minor surgery on the bullet hole in the thigh and stitched up the foot wound. After that, he applied a set of smart bandages and Max was in functioning condition (if not exactly fully healed).

This was a good thing as Guruphon Station was powering on and Max was the primary sensor technician on the ship. Now that power is running on the station, Max was able to identify the station power plant, the main computer cluster, and locate which cameras and weapon mounts are still active on the station. He also determined that there were three security bots still active, one guarding the power plant and two on the computer cluster level. The power plant was giving off odd readings and the team called in the Ship’s Engineer, Albertha Trufin. Albertha looked over the readings and stated that the power plant is unstable and she’s surprised it has not detonated already.

After some planning, the away team returned to the station on the Iron Pig, while Captain Salazar adjusted the orbit of the Just Lucky to beyond the horizon of Guruphon to protect the ship. The team’s plan is to use the emergency shutdown panel to shut down the power plant and then cut their way through the deck above them into the computer cluster and secure the station computer core. To facilitate this, they bring two cutting lasers with them. To shorten their approach, they are entering the main structure through a breach on the side. Sensors indicate a ship’s boat was rammed into the station here, but it does not reach into the power room. Probably.

Oscar flew the Iron Pig back over to the station and parked it adjacent to the breach caused by the ship’s boat. Ro made her way over into the station and anchored a slip line so the less dexterous members of the team could safely navigate the four meter gap between the station and the Iron Pig. The rear thruster pods were facing directly at the entry point and much of the surrounding structures were somewhat melted. This made the team nervous, but Max assured them the sensors showed the boat was out of fuel. Probably.

Back on the Just Lucky, Ted was running the ship’s sensors, but at this range the best he could do was keep the away team updated on the relative positions of the active security bots. This was good enough for them, initially, but while the team was looking around for a way forward, a security bot showed up and took shots at Grar. One of those shots hit Grar in the head, knocking him unconscious. Max pulled Grar back and applied slap-patches to seal Grar’s suit while Ro agilely moved forward and burned the bot down with her laser rifle.

While Max pulled Grar back to the Iron Pig for emergency medical treatment, Ro, Nomen, and Oscar explored further. They determined the ship’s boat had crashed through the station gravatics machinery, knocking out artificial gravity throughout the station. An adjacent room once housed the station life support plant, but this room and the machinery in it were thoroughly trashed.

Once Grar was patched up with some smart bandages, he and Max returned to the exploration. Deciding to let those more adapted to it explore, the Low Waldi took one of the laser cutting tools and started cutting off rear panels of the ship’s boat. Oscar also jury-rigged one of Nomen’s seismic sensors to detect vibrations in the station hull, providing a form of early warning if either of the two remaining bots started approaching. At the end of this period of time, Gar could see into the cargo area of the ship’s boat and discovered it contained crates. Fishing one out, he found it contained 10 bars of processed red gold! The team took the time to cut off the back of the ship’s boat (the thruster section) and moved it and the eight crates of red gold to the cargo area of the Iron Pig.

Returning to exploring the station, Ro discovered an auxiliary parts storage room. This turned out to be full of repair parts for security bots. The team paused exploring again to salvage the entire room of parts. At this point they had been active for over 16 hours and two of them had gunshot wounds. Exhausted but pleased with the salvage they had acquired, they returned to the Just Lucky. If the station detonated while they rested, the ship would be safely over the horizon with everything they had come to get. If it didn’t, they could return and resume looking for access to the power plant room.

Week 2, Day 2
After some much needed rest, the away team returned to the station in the Iron Pig. Sensor readings taken over night indicated that the power plant was unstable and getting worse. They had maybe four hours to shut it down or get to a safe distance before it detonated. It would take an hour to get to the station from the Just Lucky.

Grar took a quiet moment during the transition to mind scan the planet to verify there were sentient beings on the surface. There were, but the team chose to delay attempting contact.

They were able to gain entry into the power plant room after another 30 minutes of searching. They found that the reactor control panels were damaged from the ship’s boat crashing into their back. The critical emergency shutdown panel was partially ruined. Oscar set to work jury-rigging it to some form of functionality. This took another 30 minutes to accomplish, but was ultimately successful in shutting down the power plant.

With the immediate threat neutralized, the team started cutting through the ceiling to reach the computer cluster. With no power to the station, the security bots maintain the patrols they were last ordered to perform and did not interfere with the extraction of the computer core. The core was returned to the Just Lucky and set up in to test for Virus infection. This took Cyrano the rest of the day. While he did that, the rest of the team returned to the station and salvaged anything of value they could remove from the station. Ro eventually hunted down the remaining security bots, cutting them down with her laser rifle. All of the bot remains were taken back to the Just Lucky for later use.

Week 2, Day 3
The core is tested and it is heavily infected. Cyrano uses the McGuffin to wipe it and reinstall a basic operating system. He does the same to the bot processor cores.

At this point the team decides they have more than enough to make the trip profitable and order the captain to take the ship back to Maresfield. Several hours later the Just Lucky is far enough from the gas giant Guruphon orbits to enter jumpspace and makes the jump.

*End of Session 2*

[I’ve implemented some basic timekeeping in order to provide a better sense of continuity. As this is going to be a short campaign, I’m not getting fancy and I’m just counting from the beginning of the campaign, Month 1, Week 1, Day 1.]

[Also, Cyrano Steel’s player was out of state for a few weeks and he missed this session. This was moderately awkward as he had some needed skills. I ended up subbing in the Ship’s Navigator, Ted Yahn, under the assumption they were skills he could reasonably have. The sequence of him testing the station computer core is something he had stated Cyrano would do if the chance became available, so I ran that for him. It was late and we were looking to wrap things up, so this was just stated and it was done.]

[Guruphon Station let me set player expectations as to what kind of devastation they could expect as they explored the space lanes. It also allowed the securing of a critical piece of material, the red gold. I had quickly realized that making the McGuffins as rare as I had caused significant story issues and there needed to be more of them. I had originally planned on the red gold being available in the crashed ship’s boat, but if the players did not cut into the boat or ignored the station, they could have secured some on planet, it just would have cost them.]

The Aldelle Group – Session 45 – The Pyramid, Top to Bottom

2011-09-29T10:16:00.000-05:00

Session 45 happened Monday, September 19, 2011.

This campaign used the Dyson’s Delve dungeon pages on A Character for Every Game as a starting point, but has now moved on to new material from the DM-in-training. I heartily recommend Dyson's Delve as a beginning adventure.

Adventuring Group:
Tre-ba Bel a sheer (female elf alchemist)
Elspeth (female half-elf rogue)
Harkaitz of the Red Soul (male human cleric of Ra)

NPCs:
Aziz of the Light (male human paladin, cohort of Harkaitz)
Sarisvati the Sun-touched (female Ifrit oracle, cohort of Aziz)
Estrela (female Aasimar druid, cohort of Tre-Ba)
Macha (female human fighter, cohort of Elspeth)
Short John Copper (male halfling expert, hireling)
The Red Keffiyehs (human warriors, followers of Harkaitz)
Carnish (male gnoll spellcaster of some sort)
Professor Walsh (male human expert)

Late Afternoon, July 29, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra.

As the legend we are following is unclear (or rather, vague), we had Elspeth scout the top of the pyramid before attempting an entrance. Carnish cast fly upon her and she flew to the top. There she found only the eroded tip of the pyramid – no place for the “Chosen of Ra” to sit or stand.

While there is an unknown amount of the stairs to the entry buried under the sands, the exposed part is still 30 to 40 ft and ends at a platform flanked by columns. Elspeth checked the area for traps and cleared it for the rest of us to proceed. The entry hall ended about 30 ft in at a T-intersection and a mural of Sylar fighting the Nightshade. Sylar’s sword is shown in detail and it is identical to the one Aziz carries now.

Following our standard procedure, Elspeth moved down the left passage, checking for traps. The narrow passage formed a large square with small shrines at each corner. There were four traps (two lightning bolt and two stonewall/poison gas) and Elspeth disabled three of them (she set off the first lightning trap and needed healing as a result).

Suspecting, almost knowing, there was more to this pyramid, we searched again, this time looking for hidden passages. Our diligence paid off and we found the (trapped) entrance to a large square chamber that fit within the boundaries of the passage. There were many stone coffins and the room appeared to have been searched and looted long ago. This is a common piece of misdirection used long ago and often still to discourage tomb robbers, so I knew to look closer.

The tops of the coffins were carved to appear in the likeness of the one ensconced inside and only three of these were paladins, the rest priests of Ra. Only one of the paladin coffins was trapped. After Elspeth disabled the trap, Aziz and I opened the coffin. The remains of a paladin in the service of Ra were inside, clasping his (or her) sword. I noticed the index finger of the left hand was straightened, not curved around the pommel. It was pointing at the next coffin!

We checked the next coffin (a priest) and found its index finger also pointed. Moving down the line, we had Elspeth check each for traps and skipped to the coffin on the end of the row, the only one trapped. After Elspeth disarmed the trap, Aziz and I opened the coffin. The priest interred here had his index fingers crossed in an “X”. Tre-ba observed that there were scratches on the floor, suggesting the coffin could be moved to the side. Aziz and I pushed and exposed an opening in the floor to a lower chamber. Cut into the wall were hand and foot holds, forming a ladder down.

Elspeth descended down the ladder (after receiving darkvision from one of the wands). The chamber below was about the size of the one we were in, but occupied by five giant undead crawling hands that dropped from the ceiling and moved to surround the base of the ladder. She immediately returned.

We formulated a plan of attack, with our combatants (Macha, Aziz , and myself) descending the ladder in rapid succession to draw the attention of the hands while Carnish used dimension door to bring in (Elspeth, Asmo, and Tre-ba) in a flanking maneuver.

This did not work out like we hoped.

The hands were quicker than we anticipated and surrounded Macha the moment she set foot on the floor, blocking me from descending and further. I did surround myself with a nimbus of light, which helped, but Macha took a pounding from the hands. I eventually just dropped on one of the hands, using it to break my fall. When it shrugged me off, I was able to land on my feet and press the attack. Carnish used a very powerful necromantic spell [undeath to death] to destroy many of the hands, finally tipping the balance in our favor. Carnish is more powerful than he lets on. Luckily, his heart seems to be in the right place.

We are almost done taking a break after the fight with the hands. Many of us were injured, some, like Macha, were heavily injured. I have healed everyone back to full health. The room seems to be a dead end, but we all suspect there is a hidden passage in at least one of the walls.

Later
There was a hidden passage and Aziz was the one to locate it. He also swears he found a second one, but after careful investigation, it turned out to just be his eyes playing tricks. The first (actual) passage led to a wide corridor that encircles the chamber of the hands. While searching the hallway for traps, Elspeth found an illusory floor – by falling through it. One of the walls in the pit was also illusory and Elspeth stuck her head through to see what was on the other side. On the other side were two scorching ray traps, both of which hit her.

Once Sarisvati healed Elspeth, Elspeth set to disabling the traps so we could move forward. I will admit that my faith in Elspeth’s ability to locate traps was slipping at this point, but she later redeemed herself.

The illusory wall led to another ring corridor, this one slightly lower than the one we entered it through. A thorough search of this hallway resulted in the location of a summon monster trap (by stepping on it and which did not summon a monster but put us on maximum alert, leading to some very tense moments) and a concealed alcove in the far wall. Aziz opened the alcove door and was promptly dropped into a short pit with poisoned spikes. Luckily, Aziz missed the brunt of the spikes by landing on a dead body. The body was of an adventurer of some sort who succumbed to the spikes and the poison. He was carrying a rapier that detected as magical [+4] and a bag full of jewelry and coins [8000 gp worth of loot]. The coins mostly dated from 300 years ago, when the worship of Ra first spread across the Uskar Desert.

Inside the alcove was a small box, which was heavily trapped. Elspeth found and removed all three traps on (or near) the box, losing a set of lockpicks in the process. Inside the box was a golden amulet in the shape of a sunburst, an early symbol of Ra. Tre-ba has taken the time to identify its workings, during which time I have updated my log. The amulet empowers divine spellcasters, particularly those who serve Ra, enabling them to cast additional blessings [+1 spell slot for 4th and 5th level spells]. In the meantime, it is time to resume our explorations.

*End of Session*

Working on Edits

2011-09-27T12:31:00.000-05:00

No post today (other than this one, of course). I'm performing some edits on a series of posts from Bat in the Attic on creating a fantasy sandbox. I've been delaying it as I was waiting to see if he would finish the series, but that does not seem likely for a while, so time for me to get it done. This is voluntary for me and a gift to him. The series is well thought out, I'm just polishing it for him.

The other thing I'm doing right now is putting together the parts for a minis campaign. I'm looking at the Paizo Kingmaker AP for the domain management rules (although I might jettison it if Hill Cantons: Borderlands gets released), rules gleaned from Tony Bath's Ancient Wargaming, and a set of miniatures rules that still need to be determined. More on that project later.

Pathfinder Kingdom Sheet - Version 2.1

2011-09-23T17:33:00.000-05:00

So my wife and I ran a playtest of my updated Kingdom Sheet spreadsheet. Good thing as I found some things I missed. I also expanded the number of turn sheets to Turn 9. The version 2.1 is now available for download in the Downloads box to the right.

Be aware that the cost of creating farmland still needs a blank of its own (I realized in this test that the cost is variable based on terrain and my flat multiplier based on number of hexes created was not valid. That will be fixed in the next version. I also want to create a sheet listing all the buildings and their mods to the kingdom attributes.

More later.

The Aldelle Group – Session 44 – Hiking to the Pyramid

2011-09-22T07:00:00.000-05:00

Session 44 happened Tuesday, September 13, 2011.

This campaign used the Dyson’s Delve dungeon pages on A Character for Every Game as a starting point, but has now moved on to new material from the DM-in-training. I heartily recommend Dyson's Delve as a beginning adventure.

Adventuring Group:
Tre-ba Bel a sheer (female elf alchemist)
Elspeth (female half-elf rogue)
Luna (female elf sorcerer)
Harkaitz of the Red Soul (male human cleric of Ra)

NPCs:
Aziz of the Light (male human paladin, cohort of Harkaitz)
Sarisvati the Sun-touched (female Ifrit oracle, cohort of Aziz)
Estrela (female Aasimar druid, cohort of Tre-Ba)
Macha (female human fighter, cohort of Elspeth)
Short John Copper (male halfling expert, hireling)
The Red Keffiyehs (human warriors, followers of Harkaitz)

Evening, July 24, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, who guides our path.

We finished the today marching west. It should be another five days before we get to the pyramid.

[NOTE: I received a reply from Wednesday on my sending, but I didn’t get a chance to write it down. I’ll add it here when I can get the text from the DM.]

Late Evening, July 25, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, source of inspiration.

While making camp this evening, we spotted a blue dragon land relatively nearby. Elspeth and Carnish went out to scout it and see what it was up to. When they returned, they stated it was a female young adult blue dragon and it was digging for something in the sands.

Aziz stated his intent to slay the dragon and started quickly laying out a plan of attack. We heard the dragon roar and realized it might be leaving soon, so we started moving in its direction. We came into sight of it just as it was taking flight. Thinking quickly, Aziz ordered our spell casters to attack it with fire. Unfortunately, it dodged most of the damage from the volley of fireball spells and easily flew around my obstructing wall of fire. It quickly outdistanced the range of our spells, heading north, roughly in the direction of the Mountain Gate.

We decided to investigate the pit the dragon dug in the sand. Near the bottom we found the top of a stone pillar. Whatever the dragon took, it was sitting on the pillar and had a rectangular cross-section. The stonework on the pillar identified it as part of a temple to Ra. This is not a good sign. I am sending another message to Wednesday to warn her and the others.

“Young female blue dragon dug up something rectangle from buried Temple of Ra. It is heading north. Let us know. It is scorched. –Harkaitz”

Evening, July 26, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra and His dazzling brilliance.

We ran across another patrol of skeletons, this one heading south. The most significant thing to happen during the fight was Carnish casting enlarge on Macha, but it was mostly overkill at that point.

Shortly before Dawn
A wind storm came up during the night, but died down a few hours past midnight. While Luna and I were on watch with her, Tre-ba noticed something in the darkness reflecting the light of our fire. We went out to investigate, leaving the Red Keffiyeh on alert. We found the partially buried skeletal remains of a paladin wearing magical full plate armor. The winds must have uncovered the remains sometime during second watch.

We have uncovered the rest of the remains and carried them back to camp. In the morning I will speak with the spirit of the fallen paladin.

Morning, July 27, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, His light brings humility to us all.

The fallen paladin was of the family Excelor, in Lagaskia, and was traveling there from Uru to visit his family when he fell. I wrapped up his bones and secured them. When next we are in Lagaskia, I will deliver them to the descendants of his family so he can be buried with his kin.

Late Morning, July 29, Year of the Earth Rabbit
Praise Ra, light of the heavens and protector of us all.

The last two days have been quiet, but we have now arrived at the pyramid. It is immense, even partially buried it is easily the largest structure I have ever seen. We will make camp nearby and prepare to explore afterwards.

*End of Session*