Session 12: Round and Round

The party re-entered the trog dungeon for the fourth time, though it is a significant sized space, especially considering there's a whole other half that is utterly unexplored. But this night, the fight was here, with the players entering at (1) and entering the area that had been mapped out previously. They caught sight of troglodytes at once, who promptly skedaddled, as they were just there to track the party as it entered. It did not take the party long to remember that the space was a roundabout, and that the intention of the trogs was to trap them somewhere and attack them from two sides. So they left a hireling, Oddsdrakken, at (2) and proceeded towards (4). The two trogs they'd seen at the corner of (3) assembled with others... the first group attacked at (5) and the party was able to make good meat of them quickly, unlike the earlier combat. For one thing, most of the party had made their saves this time and were sustained by the presence of Zoltan, whereas in their first meeting with the trogs they'd been down both Zoltan and Ti; this time, Ti still couldn't make it, but the extra body made a big difference.

The second group attacked at (6) and, amazingly, Lexent, his dust devil spell and the man-at-arms Fenwick did a pretty good job against them until Zoltan could come down and join them from the other fight. Both fights ended quickly enough, though there were some moments of tension that had plainly worried the party at points. Nonetheless, it worked out in their favour and they chose to continue.

A point about combat... because for the last two runnings it has pretty much been two combats in each session. This really was two combats taking place at the same time, though as the one at (6) was starting, (5) was in the wrapping up stage. I've had some argue that they can run five or six combats in a 4 hour session, but I'll be damned if I know how. At a few points during the combat I was pushing to roll and call the party to act as fast as I could; I did miss some details and was reminded about them, which I always appreciate. I told the players that I was merely trying to keep the pace going as rapidly as possible, which means someone pretty much talking non-stop. There were no moments of reflection during the game; no one made an outside reference to a film, a product, another situation that had happened at some other time. The players were utterly into the combat, 100%... which means, as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter how many combats were getting played, the ones being played was utterly engrossing.

That is what should matter, nyet?

Pushing past (7) on the map above, the party searched this next part of the dungeon, found upon the adjoining page.

This image shows the battle in progression after the party had made their way to the trog's personal lair. The two other passages might have given the trogs an opportunity to get behind the party and trap them in a dead end, but the party picked right of the three choices before them, and thus the final battle is on going. The party were mid-round when I looked at the clock and found we'd already passed our assigned stopping time; I pointed this out and everyone was surprised. We were all in flow, utterly unaware of the time or anything except the game, which I count as a successful run. In fact, I'd call it the best session I've had with this campaign, and among my best ever, so far as engagement counts. I felt a rush the rest of the evening and experienced none of the usual emotional "drop" that follows post-game. This session just went too well.

So, there are 11 trogs left; one is apparently glowing without anyone knowing why, while two are glowing with the party's faerie fire spell just now. Four of the trogs are stunned (red stops) while those players who have yellow crosses have failed their save. The green number is counting the number of rounds the nausea has been in effect (I do not give it a limit, like it has in the original Monster Manual). The green dot is Lexent's loaded sling for the next round to fire. I use the purple dot for someone casting a spell, because I do not permit casting and release of spells to happen in the same turn. This weakens my mages and gives more purpose to the fighters. The two purple dots atop the trogs are the cantrip twitch cast by Mikael the mage.

You can see plainly the trogs will be fighting first when the game re-commences, this Friday.

Session 11: a Death in the Family

This session began with the players retreating from the dungeon to heal their wounds and restock themselves. Lexent the cleric had reached 5th at the end of the last session and so obtained his henchfolk Matyas, whom he'd rolled up for the first running of this campaign only to reveal later that he was wondering about his former cleric from the previous campaign I'd ended before Covid. We'd agreed then that when Lexent reached 5th, he could take Matyas into the party, and so that had come to pass.

Pandred lent a handaxe to Ti, who had broken just about all his weapons, and I believe it was on the 12th of June, two days after leaving the dungeon, that the party returned. Because a player could not make this running, Zoltan and Edvard sat this out, along with the two Croatians and a centaur named Xerxes, who is looking after the party on account of his tribe, so that should anything happen on the outside, the party would receive warning.

Because Ti is so short of weapons, specifically the scimitar that he broke, I suggested the party might take on a small Ottoman encampment of about twenty soldiers, which Xerxes identified as being about four miles away; there would be lots of scimitars there, the centaur said. The party declined, though I had designed the encampment for the running. I won't post it here, because the party didn't go, and I might yet use it. Alas, it is again a spider casting webs to the wind.

The whole running took place thereafter upon this one stretch of hall, so that the players didn't actually do that much exploring:

This is where things were at the end of the game, with the party in full flight from the troglodytes, except for Matyas, who was at -8 hit points, unconscious and effectively unreachable.

For reasons that passeth all understanding, the party decided to recheck the toilets on the left side of the map, specifically that round "urination hole," where again I rolled a wandering monster check, getting a "1," then rolling 1d4 carrion crawlers to emerge from there, as I had the first time in the last session. And like the first time, I got two. If I'd rolled three or four, several members of the party, including the 5th level fighter Pandred. If I had rolled that many, they'd have never reached the trogs.

Just as the carrion crawler fight began, Ti the 4th level fighter had to excuse himself for a family issue and thus the party lost one of their defensive pillars. Pandred and I believe Mikael were soon paralysed and the rest of the party struggled hard to kill one, then the other of the two creatures. Matyas proved to be a piledriver, though, so that the party managed to get out of that scrape. The paralysed players recovered, the party issued some healing and they went forward.

Then, I would say the party had some bad luck by having too much good luck right off. At this corner, behind 2712, the party encountered three waiting troglodytes, two of which were quickly "held" by the cleric for nine rounds. The purple fat number "1" shows how many rounds were left on the spell, before the spell would have worn off. With one trogloydyte left, another came out of the dark and the party easily managed them both. Another single one came the next round and again, the party managed it, moving forward as they did. It all looked so easy. Two more came after, and the party was fine, smacking one of them right off.

But then three more came and it all started to fall apart. The party's "line" had spread out too thin by that point, where the three corridors above formed a large open space. The very next round, five troglodytes came on and the party did not do well for two rounds... which was enough to turn the tide against them. Soon, they realised they'd have to run to preserve their lives... but the stun lock rule seemed to imprison at least one of the party every round, so that if the others ran, the one left behind would certainly be mauled by as many as five or six troglodytes. Yet, they could not manage a round where no party member was stunned... and that when the time came to make a tough decision.

Matyas had been doing very well, but even so, he was getting hit way too much for a first level fighter. He was driven down to -4 hit points when his liege Lexent managed to give him Aid, restoring 17 hit points. Alas, it wasn't enough. Matyas continued to get hit, while the overall strength of the party continued to dwindle as the intense odour of the Troglydytes sapped the party of their strength.

This part was particularly interesting. Every member of the party failed their saving throw against the noxious odour; Mikael managed to preserve Pandred, the party's lynchpin, by bestowing "Freshen," upon him, taking advantage of my rewrite of that cantrip. It meant Pandred wasn't suffering from strength loss, but everyone else was.

And this was particularly fascinating, as my encumbrance rules are built in such a way that the amount a character can carry and how many actions they can take in a round depend very much on strength. So as their strength dwindled, their encumbrance issues grew, as the stuff on the party's backs began to weigh them down more and more. The players were using, I believe (because I'm not using it) a system built by Maxwell, commentor on the blog here, to calculate their encumbrance in an ongoing fashion, so they could tell when they had lost a point of movement because of the strength loss. At the point when the party did have to run, lasting one more round for Pandred to escape being stunned and coming to terms with the reality that Matyas would have to be left, everyone was down in their movement. Thankfully, however, the stride rules enabled them to run fast enough, while the troglodytes themselves were all wounded.

All the orange numbers on the troglodytes, shown on the battle map? That's their present hit points. Every trog with a number has been hit at least once. The freeing of those two that were held would mean two more trogs that hadn't been hit yet, so things were looking awfully dire. Each trog here had 2 HD, but as they weighed more than 290 lbs. (trogs in my game are big and meaty), they had 2d4 per hit die. With them having a minimum of 4 hit points, the party was beginning to feel how hard they were to kill, even for low-level humanoids.

So that was it. Lexent rolled up a new hench, managed to get another 1st level fighter, a dwarf now, again with an 18 strength, and will roll that character out with the next running. Hopefully, Ti and Zoltan will be back and the party will be more buff and ready to take those hobgoblins on again. Assuming they don't clear out and seek another lair, given that this one's been compromised. I tend to do that, because it punishes parties who don't hang in there and see the thing to the end before retreating. But, knowing what I know about these trogs, that's not all that unlikely. This was just the front group, and the party only killed about half a dozen of them. Hardly enough to think the trogs need to run away.

Session 10: Bugs and Slugs, Oh My!

The above is the "troglodyte lair" that the party investigated last Friday, with dotted line beginning at the mid-left and moving around through numbers 1 through 7. White indicates traversable space, grey the walls that were identified and black equals unknown. Thus in the bottom right corner, where black cuts across the white space, that isn't a wall, that's just as far as the party's torches was able to reveal. The gray smattering about the area is "rubble." The party's last position is shown on the map; an enlarged version of that is given below.

The constructing occupants, orcs, abandoned this catacomb 400 years ago, due to dwindling population and, likely, genetic issues, not that a 13th century orc could have understood the latter as anything except a lot of stillbirths and monsters from inbred parents who can't seem to produce healthy children. Even orcs must obey the laws of DNA.

The party fought (1) two giant ticks [AC 4,1 HD,#AT 1,D 1-4] and [AC 3,2 HD,#AT 1,D 1-4, blood drain]; (2) three giant centipedes [AC 8,1/4 HD,#AT 1,D 1, poison]; (3) two giant cockroaches [AC 5,1 HD,#AT 1,D 1-6]; (4) two more centipedes; (5) eleven giant cockroaches; (6) one carrion crawler [AC 5,4+1 HD,#AT 8,D 1-3]; and then (7) two more carrion crawlers. I took a screenshot of that last before the combat started.

The party had been game to fight everything up to this point, but their hit points were being winnowed down and at the sight of the two crawlers, they decided, after a lot of resistance, to give it up and withdraw. Pandred did not withdraw far enough, however, and got caught in an attack; worse, he was paralysed by that attack. So the party changed their minds and rushed forward to save him.

Before the battle was over, Pandred had been dragged by Edvard down from 1417, where he was stunned, to his position after. Zoltan had been paralysed also. Arduin the druid had succeeded in lighting up the two crawlers with faerie fire and Ti had drunk a super-heroism potion that elevated him to 8th level. He was able to clock the one crawler but he has been repeatedly dropping and breaking weapons since they left Budapest, so that he was fighting hand to hand with a javelin at the end here (rolling to see if it would break after every attack). It did break before the other crawler was killed, but Arduin and Lexent, with help from Mikael's good dart throwing, were able to succeed in ridding the world of that one also.

The words "3 load" refers to three rounds loading a heavy crossbow, which Oddsdrakken could do but he could not fire it; Edvard took a shot but missed with it. A hit might have done the crawler in, as heavy crossbows in my game do 2d6+1 damage (3-13).

Earlier, when fighting the 11 cockroaches, five of them had swarmed onto Pandred (I allow up to eight attacks on a hex by small swarming creatures, and giant cockroaches are just 40 lbs.), causing 26 damage including one crit that did 12. This was enough to cause even the rollicking 5th level to slow down... but I think the two carrion crawlers at last taught the party a little humility. Either run away clean or get on with it. They dithered trying to decide and it almost got Pandred killed.

I think, except for that one cockroach hit, that it was one of my worst nights for die rolling, ever. I rolled only one critical the whole night, through all the fights, while with the first carrion crawler I managed to hit only twice in 13 rolls. Egregious!

Zoltan, after all the experience from the different creatures — there was no treasure for the night — went up a level to fourth. He'd missed a running so it took him, again, eight runnings to climb from 1st to 4th. That even though he needed less than Ti the running before (Ti is a fighter), the experience system awards fighting... so fighters usually just make more experience during combats. 

Lexent went up to fifth level and got the henchman that he had rolled initially when he joined the game in the 1st session, back in February. That was from the player not realizing that he could import his character from the old Juvenis campaign where he had run Lexent in Norway. I had not realising the two were the same player... the internet, nyet? 

Anyway, I let the player put Matyas down until Lexent got to 5th, and then he could have Matyas as his henchfolk. The rest of the party all got a lot closer to their next level, doing pretty well. And even though it was just little fights, they declared the game to be very successful because it just felt like the fights folded one onto the other in a rational, reasonable way, so that it wasn't, "Oh my God, we have to fight another group of bugs!" It was more along the lines of searching the well and finding that it had centipedes in it, and searching the bench and finding there were cockroaches under it, in the manner of one long fight. The party was also impressed at the size of the dungeon as they roamed through it; they have not explored it all, as the map above shows.

The game is supposed to end at 11 p.m. Eastern. We ran 40 minutes overtime to finish off the two carrion crawler attack.

Session 9: The Slaughter Room

I find these posts hard to write, which is why it's five days since our last running and I'm only detailing it now.

Our previous session left the party in the wilderness, running short on food, puzzling out how to cross the border into Hungary, having learned they'd been betrayed by someone, not knowing who. This session began with the party being caught off guard by a group of centaur archers, partisans protecting the local Hungarian peasantry from the Ottomans, acting as nomads throughout the Balaton Hills. After learning of the party's wishes to escape, the centaurs agreed to help feed and get them out of Bakony... but the centaurs could not help noticing the armoured members of the party and the presence of their gnome cleric Lexent.

They asked if the party wouldn't mind dealing with a nuisance that has plagued them for some time. A group of troglodytes, operating from an underground lair, inaccessible to their hoofed bodies. This "lair" was once built by orcish Huns who found themselves dwelling in the wilderness after the retreat of Attila (also an orc in my campaign). Thus, the orcs tunnelled, fashioning an underground dungeon that they occupied for 800 years... until 400 years ago, after some left to join the Mongols in the 1240s (again, an orcish people, though larger than orcs), the overall social system collapsed. It had been abandoned, until troglodytes either came up from below or entered from above. Either way, the trogs have been raiding and when the centaurs have tracked them back to their origin, they've found the trogs delving down into a place they can't follow.

The party agreed. I'd set up the first encounter expecting only three players, as Mikael the mage and Zoltan the cleric had both excused themselves from the session. Yet then Mikael showed up for the first two hours of the session, so we had a good number of combatants at the ready. This was the basic scene of the first occupied room the party entered:

This, once upon a time a place where the orc hunting parties would bring in scores of deer and other beasts for slaughter, consisted of drains, tubs, rings for hanging the animals up and so on. Obviously, the blood stains had long turned to dust in 400 years but the players figured out the purpose.

As they entered, they found one huge spider in the large centre room. This they killed in short order. Examining the room on the upper right, they found eight giant bats asleep. They moved down through the other rooms toward the exit at the bottom of the map, where they found a shrieker... which promptly began to scream, waking up the bats. A round later, three more spiders entered the room. One landed a solid bite upon Ti, the fighter, who began to suffer poison damage to the tune of 16 points, 2 per round over the next eight rounds. While fighting the bats and spiders (the former were not very dangerous), a carrion crawler entered from the bottom, passing the shrieker... and caught the Lexent's non-levelled soldier at arms as the first victim inside the door. The crawler attacked eight times... and missed every time. I mean, damn. If you can't kill a non-level, why even play?

Fenwick failed his morale check and fled. Outside, he failed his rally check and decided to stay outside. He'd managed to get 160 experience, however, putting him halfway to being able to start his 1st level fighter training, if the party should so desire.

Well, Ti came up, waded in, took two hits, did a little damage (I think, not sure if I remember that rightly) failed his save and was paralysed. But then Mikael unloaded Melf's acid arrow and the carrion crawler died. I should have made it two, but meh, it was what it was. I didn't know Mikael was going to play.

The spiders, bats and shrieker was mopped up and the party given experience. Arduin the first level druid, henchfolk of Pandred the 5th level fighter, finally reached second level. Mikael excused himself and the party was down to three players.

I should have had more prepared but, well, I let myself indulge in too many of my own projects, so I didn't. I had the party descend twenty feet of stair (finding a dead centaur's body along the way), to find more stairs, some going left, some going right. The cleric smelled both and declared that the left hand side smelled worse than the right, so expecting to find the troglodytes, they descended another 20 feet of stairs to find themselves at an unimaginably large underground temple, too large to reveal with their torchlight. Following the right hand wall, they found one shrine in the room's corner, then followed the wall to the left to find another shrine. They were attacked by three ghasts (which some of the party had fought before in Norway) and dispatched them easily. The next four were a little harder... Ti was paralysed again, Arduin was very lucky, but this second fight was a harder deal. Finally, the ghasts were overcome, experience rewarded, Ti went up to 4th level and the party gave ground. We ended the game with them stumbling outside.

I'll need to better prep my dungeon for the next session.

Skipping over the first session, in which the two did not take part, Pandred at 5th and Lexent at 4th have failed to level... though they're both much closer. Ti began at 1st nine sessions ago and has gone up 3 levels in nine runnings. If Zoltan had come, no doubt he'd have gotten to 4th as well. Mikael, who isn't getting hit very much (because although he's killing key monsters with his magic, if he doesn't actually engage in melee, he hasn't much chance of learning anything), is still 3rd, though he started at 2nd. Arduin has waded into many combats, but strangely, has usually avoided getting hit. Nice to see him finally climb from 1st to 2nd.

The benefit of Fenwick getting to be a 1st level fighter (though it will take plenty of training time) is that, if the party subsidises his training, he'll progress from "hireling" to "follower." Not a henchfolk, so not a fanatic member of the party that the players run, but someone who will come along, receive half as share of the bonus, ask for a share of the treasure and eventually rise, most likely, to act as a steward or someone the party can trust with their property someday, without worrying about being betrayed. He might even one day be counted as one of the party's "retainers," at which point he would become a fanatic joiner of the party, to be run by whomever his liege came to be, either Lexent or perhaps Pandred, as the party decides someday.

Well, that seems to be it. Glad to have this done.

Session 8: "I Love More"

Friday's session on the 15th started with a discussion and clarification of the experiece bonus rule I mentioned in my last post, written the day before. I'd settled on a bonus of 1% per 500 years of age, 2% for the presence of a World Heritage Site and 1% per 25,000 persons. This gave Budapest a total of 11% added experience to any encounter that would take place within a two week period of the characters having ventured there. The cut-off date was Jun 14, 1650.

A map of the player's progress is shown below:

Before leaving, a discussion was had regarding the players perhaps being more willing to enter into combats, perhaps dangerously, being induced to do so. This was particularly brought to the fore when it was discovered that seven vials holding an obscure pink liquid found among the dead at the owlbear combat turned out to be faerie blood, very possibly related to the events of the characters' first session. Deciding to sell the vials, which were treasure earned in battle, the party learned that not only were they stoked by their presence in Budapest to an additional 11% bonus to their experience, this came on top of their ordinary experience... so that at least one member of the party, Lexent, received a bonus of 23% for their share of the vials. Though this really only amounted to a bonus of perhaps 40 x.p., it mattered... and so, yes, the question about the effects of the rule were considered.

True to my post about travelling, I managed the party's intended journey from Budapest to the little river burg of Domos, where they were to be smuggled across the Danube into Hungary, to make a safe journey with their Croatian companions, Barica and Kornu, down to where they would attack the blockhouse. My intentions as a DM, however, were entirely arbitrary; I decided that the party had been betrayed, so that when they got to Domos, they learned that the two boatmen there had been caught and executed for smuggling.  The party discussed alternatives; Barica suggested a safe house near Bodajk, at the bottom centre of the map, where a couple would be able to help them out of the Ottom an Empire and the Sanjak of Bakony, which they entered into by travelling first to Dag and then across the provincial border on what amounted to a wide "cart path."

And thus they travelled, wondering about the executions, wondering about the people they were headed to find (having something to think about helps enormously with travel), while I rolled random encounters for each hex, turning up none. The party reached the village of Csakvar, found it peacable and Ottoman free, and so discussed the best way to get to Bodajk. They decided to pass through the wilderness hex and not the type-5 hex directly west of Csakvar... and I rolled an encounter.

I'd decided before Thursday that if I rolled an encounter in a wilderness hex, I'd make it at least a small dungeon. Thus I rolled on this list of woodland creatures, turning up a cougar. Lexent the gnome, who has the sage ability olfactory acuity, took a sniff at the hole with his authority-status skill and smelled "cougar."  The opening was a sink hole, which presumbly the cougar had used for it's lair; the party talked and agreed, without the Croatians descending with them, to check it out. Odsbottom, a servant, and Edvard, a man at arms, also remained outside the hole.

I did not want it to be a mere cougar lair, so I decided the sinkhole would reveal a cave, which then I rolled for again only to get the answer on a 1 in 40 chance, "cougar." Sometimes the dice are just silly. I took the option after cougar, assumed the option after couger would have logically eaten the cougar, so despite smelling one, the party never did find a cougar nor any sign of one.

Lexent did smell brimstone when they entered the cave. And they did find a strange piece of red glass, that was probably more like a red fingernail, but they made no connections. They chanced not to see the scoring of claw through rock, walking right over it having failed their checks (they didn't check, I told them to roll a wisdom check and they failed).  Thereupon, Pandred decided to roar a fight song while they descended the 40-degree slope into the deeper cave.

At which time, having revealed themselves, the cave filled with fire breathed by a hatchling red dragon with 1 hit dice, 11 hit points, an armour class of -1 and a breath weapon causing 10 damage. Three (perhaps four, I don't remember exactly) of the crew made save. The rest didn't. Fenwick, a non-level with 7 hit points, nearly died, but as he's a soldier, he can be reduced to -3 and live. So he did.

The party sort of hesitated. Mikael decided not to stay. Pandred said that his 1st level druid henchfolk decided not to stay. The rest went down, fought the dragon and...

... it got a little bloody, but no one died. Baby dragon did almost 10 damage for every hit point it had. The party found it very hard to hit the AC, learned that between incidental damage and buffeting, along with an extra tail attack not found in the original Monster Manual, that even a weak version of this beast is fairly dangerous. It was over a thousand pounds but I ruled that the bite was only 2-16, the tail 1-10 and the talons 1-6. About 40% of full for the bite and 25% each for the tail and claws. It was, after all, only a baby.

The party did all right with treasure.

The table above shows the benefit from the "13%" add-on (Budapest and two fresh hexes, 1% each, entered in the last 24 hours) and their own natural bonus. Arduin got experience because he did suffer the breath weapon. Fenwick rolled morale and found the courage to join in, after Lexent restored his hit points with Aid.

Some discussion followed as to whether the party should have pressed on, or run away after the breath weapon, and if the x.p. bonus affected their opinion. My belief is that parties won't run anyway, x.p. bonus or no. I think the party came to the same conclusion. They set off for the safehouse in Bodajk, the encounter taking up about an hour and a bit of game time.

Not only did they find the house with their allies burned out, they also found a troop of hippogriff riders sitting around the house, seeing if someone showed up. The party made haste not to show themselves, retreating into the forest. Augury was employed, which provided them evidence that they had been "betrayed," and not by their two Croatians. On the fifth, they began travelling off road, first north, then west, avoiding encounters and steadily running out of food. This food issue became increasingly difficult. The question of how far the betrayal might go also came up. Eventually, reaching the river where the dotted black line on the map above ends, they spent two days catch fishing, demonstrating that with a large enough party committed to the task, 12 altogether, it was probable that more would be caught then needed to be eaten. Fishing is a low-effort activity, so persons only need 2 lbs. a day when fishing, as opposed to 4 lb. a day when travelling.

And that was it. The note I made on the map is there, as is Pandred's last comment about the new X.P. rule, which I used to title this post. What I like is that it's real, it's level-balanced, but it's not so much that it really makes more than a light benefit. It certainly isn't game breaking, and would still be useful for a 9th level character as it is for a 3rd. Those who doubt it's veracity, it's been game tested. I'll report on future elements of it if anyone shows interest, but for now it should be assumed I'm using the rule.

Each hex the party entered has a little blue dot. It needs a different coloured symbol, I just haven't determined one yet.

Session 7: Yet Another Owlbear Disappointment

Starting with this overdeveloped battlemap of the party fighting three owlbears. Though mean and menacing looking, they did not last long. Still, I wanted the map to capture the attention of the players, to give them a real sense of space. Some of the elements here are A.I., some are features of the publisher program... and some are a mixture of both. For example, A.I. created the grass pattern and the stone pattern, but the actual shape of much of the stone was done using Publisher tools. My design of the map took longer than the actual battle. But then, I still have the map, in Publisher, so it could be used again, or even handed out if the gentle reader wanted to use it.

Though the spellcasters are low level, there is a 3rd and 4th level cleric, a 3rd level mage and a 1st level druid in the party. Between them, using entangled, dust devil, wyvern watch and even the cantrip twitch, which proved too strong for a cantrip and needs reworking, the party were able to benefit from the narrowness of the space to tie the owlbears up rather than getting tied up themselves. The owlbears' lack of intelligence, so that they could not coordinate their attacks (I played them "dumb"), plus their lack of range weapons, made them easy prey. If there had been six, the first three would have soaked up the party's spell use... but alas, it was not to be.

Giving them d10 for their hit points, I rolled amazingly well: 42 h.p. out of a possible 50 for one, and 37 for another (the last had 20). It didn't help. All told, the owlbears only managed to do 38 damage. Total party experience was only 2,806. I don't plan to throw any more owlbears any time soon at the party. If I do, they're damn well going to have a hill giant as a handler.

The wagon and corpses shown on the map was merely to give a precedent for putting some wealth into the party's pockets: 1200 g.p., 600 s.p. and 300 c.p. By my system, 1 g.p. = 1 x.p. = 3 s.p. = 4 c.p. This allows me to give less actual wealth to the party while still permitting and experience boost. Ti, the 2nd level fighter, went up to 3rd. Nice when someone goes up every fight. Certainly doesn't always happen.

Thereafter the party followed a route led by Laszlo, the Hungarian looking after the boy Peter, whom the party agreed to help get to Budapest. Following Laszlo's route shown on the map, starting east of Salgotarjan, where a gap between the hills shows the location of the owlbear fight, the travelled in a circuitous route to avoid Ottoman patrols. Reaching Veroce, where Laszlo knew smugglers who could get the party by boat down to Buda without incident, they stopped just north of the city at a blockhouse, where — with some qualification from Laszlo — they were told that entry into Buda with weapons is strictly forbidden. Even a knife is a danger. Then they were introduced to three Hungarians, whose names were not invented for the session but I'll invent them here for the next running: Gusztav, Dorian and Salamon. Two others were present as well, Croatians, a woman named Barica and a man named Kruno.

Prior to their arrival, Laszlo expressed how impressed he was with the party. He'd watched them fearlessly meet the Ottoman soldiers in the previous running and now he'd watched them easily dispatch three owlbears. He respected the party's help getting the boy to Buda; he spoke of them as "good people," obviously fearless, obviously kind hearted and willing to go out of their way for others. And therefore, with that going for them, the three Hungarians asked the party, "How would you like to help the Kingdom of Hungary strike at the Ottomans, however they might?"

A chartaque (Turk. Çardak), a watchtower and

fortification in the Ottoman Empire.

Several options were pitched. Were the party willing to kidnap a princess? How did they feel about setting a dock on fire? Would they like to protect a fire opal mine in their home town of Ozd against it being discovered by Ottomans? Would they like to help these two nice Croatians attack a strong point on the border between Hungary-controlled Croatia and Ottoman lands? This last caught their attention. As we ended the running, the party started to purchase some things in Buda, deciding to unload their opal with the help of their Hungarians, before following a plan of crossing a closed border into Hungary, then moving west and south until meeting Barica and Kruno's partisans, to take on the blockhouse/chartaque.

That's where we pick up with our next running.

Session 6: Where's the Boy?

The party began on a Wednesday, having returned to Ozd (which, of course, is not the Frank Baum novel), needing two days to find their way out of the wilderness following the cavewight lair. Because Ozd has a weekly market on Sundays, they elected to simply wait for days, at a cost of 2 lb. of food each per day, rather than travel to Miskolc. It would have taken then two days to get there, where there's a market every day, at a cost of 4 lbs. per day travelling food (the body needs more sustenance the harder it's worked) and it would have taken two days to get back to Ozd anyway.

Following some purchasing of goods, organising what they had, getting hold of a few animals to carry their things, the party set off back to the goblin village to discuss an agreement they'd made to return a bronze torc... which the party never found. No matter, the heads of the two goblins that had cut and ran from the cavewight fight were waiting for them; they'd returned, hoping to be taken back in, only to be killed. One had the torc, so problem solved.

However, the goblins showed the party a wounded Hungarian from Koszyce. This fellow, Lazslo, and three others, were taking a boy, Peter, to begin his mage training in Buda, where his father had trained. It was thought that by crossing into the Ottoman Empire through the wilderness forest of the Karancs, they could make their way through... but they ran into a patrol, which killed three of the guards and took the boy. Most likely, away eventually to Constantinople to make a Janissary out of him. The goblins wished to return the injured man to his human people, but dared not do that themselves, so they asked the party if they would.

Now, at this point, the party could have simply returned Lazslo to Ozd and have done with it... but without many prompting, they immediately decided to try to save the boy. Go figure. Using augury, which the gnome cleric Lexent has, and which the newly minted 3rd-level cleric Zoltan took as well, they struggled to identify the exact direction where the boy was taken. They managed to discover that the boy, ten or eleven, had somehow freed himself from his captors and was wandering around the countryside between Ozd and place called Monosbel, about 13 miles to the southeast. The party passed though the Bukk forest, which they'd already explored, only to find themselves turning in not far from where they'd fought the owlbear in session 3. There, Zoltan forgot to set up his wyvern watch spell, also newly taken... which turned out after all, given a choice that the mage, Mikael, had finally made.

Early in the night, Mikael had separated himself from the party to find his familiar, a spell he'd taken at the outset of his career in the old Juvenis campaign, but had never availed himself of using. He located a fox, named it Robin, and thereafter the fox unquestionably proved again and again to be the most useful member of the party. The fox knew the woods well enough to lead them though parts of the Bukk Forest and the fox woke the party up when Ottoman soldiers showed up in the woods looking for the boy (so they didn't need the wyvern watch).  A brief fight ensued, a series of one-round, one-on-one fights, in which three of the party members dropped their weapons.

Lexent "broke" his godentag, but it was fine, because in the woods there was nothing to break it against. Essentially, he tossed it off into the wood on a moonless night... but again, it was okay, because the next morning the fox found it. The soldiers did 12 damage to the party, 5 to their brand new soldiers-at-arms, the gnomish cook Fenwick and the human footman Edvard, then decided it's just one boy and vamoosed. The boy Peter showed up soon thereafter.

Thus the party earned, in toto, 551 x.p. from a fight in which only Mikael did damage, 3 points with a dart, and no one died. I like this experience system. What was funny was that the 5th level fighter, Pandred, was not attacked and therefore did not take part. No X.P. for him.

After some discussion, the players decided to take the boy to school. They still have their opal and there are gemcutters in Buda-Pest, that being mentioned as one reason to go. They don't know the mage father in Koszyce, but that's likely part of their calculation; the last post was part of wiki page for the Thaumaturgical School concept... but I notice it generated little interest.

Further discussion led the party to decide to cut through the Karancs Hills and avoid any possible meetings with Ottomans who might recognise the boy, who will disappear once he begins his studies. I made a random roll, found it generated three owlbears (yay, more) and so I called the session 15 minutes early rather than set up the combat map.  That was more or less the session.  The players suggested me getting more help for the wiki, thus this post I wrote (which also got no answers). They made another suggestion that I'll address in a long post later this week.

Session 5: Fight!

Most of the session consisted of setting up for this fight, having the fight, then sharing out the treasure and experience after. The battle consisted of 9 goblins with 7 to 10 hit points each (goblin soldiers-at-arms, hardened, selected for unusual constitutions) and one "cavewight," which is the equivalent of the AD&D ogre... though augmented through the cult he'd organised around himself, and a total of 44 hit points. In addition, two ochre jellies, whose presence was inexplicable... even more so since they did not attack the goblins but rather ignored them, while freely attacking the party. So, in all, 12 opponents against six party members, levelled 5, 4, 2, 2, 2 and 1.

The battle was close. I am sorry that I did not take screen shots throughout, I simply didn't think of it, trying to manage combat rules that I've forgotten, which the players knew and had to keep calling me out on. It's a trifle embarrassing, but I felt it proved the wiki's value, since the players were using the wiki's rules to correct me. That's how a rule system is supposed to work.

Mikael the mage, 2nd level, suffered most, after likewise probably landing the most successful hit of the game. The black border around the shrine is a five-foot wide pit, which the cavewight was pressed against when Mikael hit him with an attack, knocking him back across the gap and taking him out of the fight at a critical moment. That gave a chance for Pandred to deal with the second jelly (the first had been killed early) while the others managed goblins for a time before the cavewight could get back into it. That breather, I believed, was much needed. Unfortunately, Mikael was knocked down to -3 by an attack by a goblin... then got in the way of the jelly, the average damage of which would have killed him. The jelly did five damage, leaving the mage with -8... whereupon a miraculous 2 in 20 roll was made that allowed the mage to retain consciousness. Left with only the ability to move one hex per round, without the ability to fight, and with his intelligence being essentially between 3 and 4, the character just tried to keep from being hit. Unfortunately, the cavewight had gotten back in the fight by then, had remembered Mikael, and came forward to crush him — only to miss the mage by 1 point. Mikael lived, while Pandred finished off the cavewight; two of the goblins broke ranks by failing morale and the players were able to mop up.

Ti, going into the battle weak, kept to the outskirts and struggled through the fight. Xoltan missed and missed and was missed and was missed. By round eight or nine, he had still not done a point of damage or suffered one. But both characters kept opponents busy and off the backs of Lexent and Pandred, the highest levelled characters. Pandred was wounded early and bled steadily for at least six or seven rounds; Lexent was also wounded, but neither could do anything about it, since they were needed to keep fighting. It's an awesome image... the combatants bleeding from open wounds, still fighting, keeping the rest of the party alive under difficult conditions.

And a call-out to Arduin, Pandred's hench; the faerie fire spell, plus Lexent's dust devil, were unquestionably both effective; Mikael's telling hit would not have landed without the former, and it would not have stunned if the latter had not bled the cavewight's hit points. Well played, all around.

Treasure offered an average of a thousand experience to everyone in the party; I had to be reminded of my proposed rule, that silver give 1 x.p. for every three coins, regardless of silver's value compared to gold, and 1 x.p. for every four coins of copper. I think that rule works well, as it means I don't have to pile up 55,000 copper to make it worthwhile. A few thousand were enough. The total weight of treasure was 170 lb. — though I'm not certain if that includes the gem or not:

This monster common opal, size shown by the 8 in. tall bullseye lantern (not counting handle), weighs 61 lb., 1 oz., and is worth a thousand gold pieces in Ozd/Miskolc, where the party is. If they can get it out of the Sanjak, the political province where they are, it will be worth more. Broken into pieces and polished, it's probably worth ten times as much. The party chose to split the experience for it. An opal of this size is extremely rare; an opal mine might find a head-sized opal once in a lifetime. The above is liable to be found once in a century. The party checked it for magic and it has none. They managed to heft it out, but the risk of moving it is that if found by a random guard, either an Ottoman in the empire they're in, or a customs' patrol should they try to smuggle it into Hungary, they'll either get dinged so hard for the tariff that it won't be profitable, or it'll be simply grabbed. I don't know how much the party understands about this yet, but I'm sure these smart guys have thought about it.

Anyway, that was the running on Friday, pretty much. Next game is the 17th.

P.S.,

Two things I forgot.

The above is the experience for combat only, experienced by the participants.

The other is that the whole combat, using my "complex" system, took about 2 hours and 45 minutes to play. And that's online; it would have been faster in person. I understand this is fast, compared to how normal D&D, and especially 5e, would do with a total of 18 combatants. I know there are some who have trouble with "tactical" combat, but one thing: it isn't boring.

Session 4: Campaign Goes to the Dogs

Friday the 13th's running picked up with the party atop the ridge where they'd witnessed the goblin settlement, where changes were made to the game's participants. Orsos the 1st level fighter stepped down and the search for new players turned up previous participants in the Juvenis game from pre-covid times: Pandred, 5th level fighter and his 1st level druid hench Arduin, and Mikael, 2nd level mage. This considerable increase in the party's strength played havoc with my original number of creatures (the party's strength increased from 7 total levels to 14), which in turn went down easier that expected, but the combats proved interesting. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

After some discussion, Mikael, whose father was an assassin and blessed the mage with a bonus stealth ability, made a run around the goblin settlement and found it to be peaceful, unwatched (despite the presence of an unused watchtower) and busy with the early summer planting, this being May 14th. The party decided to risk stepping forward and parleying with the goblins (with one of them tagging my intended narrative before it happened as one of the "possibilities" to explain the slaughtered freeholder and family). This turned up a story that nine of the hamlet's former goblin residents had joined a cult led by a cavewight, had left the hamlet and had, for nearly a year, been roaming around the landscape killing and looting. Being the toughest members of the settlement, who themselves were occasionally suffering impredations from this rogue group, the settlement was not up to undertaking their putting down... much less the possibility of overcoming the cavewight (a creature outside the party's ken).  Local hunters do know of this "cult," but so far as the goblins knew, nothing had come of that knowledge.

The elder of the hamlet, named "Falva," drew a map for the party as to the location of the cavewight lair, as shown, which the party duly began to follow. After moving through a rocky, dense part of the forest, they broke out into a flat and encountered a slaughtered deer carcass upon a great beech tree, marked with symbols and it's dried entrails hanging out from its crusted body. An application of comprehend languages from Mikael identified the message was essentially, "Go no further, or else," or for Dante fans, "Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here."

Naturally, the party entered and were immediately attacked by three large wolves, though not dire wolves. This was our first "dog" encounter of the night. I wasn't taking notes during the combat, but essentially Pandred thumped, Lexent thumped, Ti thumped and most of all Zoltan thumped, doing 14 damage in a hit and killing one of the wolves by sentencing it to bleed to death.  Arduin dropped once, Pandred dropped once, no harm done. The party moved on.

They came to a large burnt out area, a mile wide, and tried to cross it directly. Zoltan was seized by a sinkhole and was saved before being sucked down by it by a good rolling Mikael, who then needed to be grabbed because the male is just a light-bodied elf and not as big as the 200+ lb. Zoltan and his equipment. But the party jumped to it, then backtracked along their own steps back the way they'd come. After some hemming and hawing, of which there always seems to be some, they went around and made camp.

With a small flame, as the night turned to the 15th of May, a strange sight took hold. By chance, looking to see what phase the moon was in on this night, the year 1650, I discovered that a lunar eclipse took place exactly here. What are the chances?  I made some changes and the werewolf that was due to attack the party in another part of this adventure was upgraded to alive and in wolf form in the here and now, as the moon turned red over the party's heads. The werewolf caught Arduin with initiative and caused 14 damage to the druid, the wound of which was immediately dealt with. The werewolf did not stand and fight but chose to attack individuals by hoping to catch them unawares, one by one. This didn't work, because Pandred got lucky with a crit, followed by Ti getting lucky with a crit, and then I believe it was Lexent getting lucky with a crit... and scratch one werewolf.  Still, there's a 14 in 23 chance that Arduin has caught the disease. The party just doesn't know yet.

The joke was made, "Will I be a super-werewolf because I was infected during a lunar eclipse," which brought the sort of D&D laughter that one wishes for, whereupon I answered that I could always argue he'd be the sort of werewolf that only changed during a lunar eclipse." That brought laughter too. Overall, the session was full of jokes, kidding, smart comebacks and all that a DM could ask for, the kind of thing that made the old school game terrific.

At last the lair was found, and entered. Two giant stone blocks were set to turn upon pins of carved stones, in a way that deliberately baffled. The party entered, found themselves in front of two passages and took the right one, with Ti at the head. Both Ti and Zoltan levelled after the werewolf fight, Ti from the x.p. and Zoltan from a silver necklace worth 500g.p. found around the werewolf's neck.

Here's the scene with Ti leading. Encountering an 18 ft. deep pit, without spikes, and seven ft. long, Ti expressed a desire to leap it. With no special skill for doing so, I nevertheless gave him a +4 advantage to his dexterity, so that he needed a 17 or less on a d20 to succeed. He rolled an 18, then got lucky and took only 7 damage.  But then, at that moment, an ochre jelly emerged from a crevice in the pit and attacked Ti, while the party were figuring out how to get him out, stunning him for 10 more damage.

Pandred leaped in and fought against the ochre jelly, to protect Ti, causing 3 damage but taking six. Whereupon Lexent, still above the pit, saved the day by asking, "Will salt of Ammon have any effect on an ochre jelly?"

Salt of Ammon is the medieval term for sodium chloride, is an item available in my equipment list and, Lexent having medicine as a sage study, decided to buy some. Without any idea, always a pervasive problem with this sort of thing, since there can never be enough rules in D&D, I asked chatGPT:

"Would salt of Ammon be effective against a D&D ochre jelly?"

I saved the answer and here it is:

Yes. Salt of ammon (ammonium chloride) would plausibly be effective against an ochre jelly, depending on how you want to model the interaction.

An ochre jelly in D&D is essentially an acidic, protoplasmic organism. Its offensive mechanism is corrosion: it secretes acid and dissolves organic matter. The creature is typically immune to lightning and slashing effects because those divide the mass rather than damage it, while cold and fire affect it normally because they change the physical condition of the substance.

Ammonium chloride is strongly hygroscopic and dissolves readily in water, forming an acidic solution. When applied to a gelatinous mass that is largely water and organic colloid, several things would happen. The salt would rapidly dissolve into the jelly’s fluid matrix, increasing ionic concentration and disturbing the internal balance of the organism. In biological systems, high salt concentrations draw water out of cells through osmotic pressure and destabilise proteins. For something like a jelly, whose structure depends on hydrated organic chains suspended in water, that effect would tend to collapse or stiffen the gel. In practice it would act as a chemical desiccant and disruptor rather than as a burning agent.

From a practical D&D perspective, if a character scattered powdered salt of ammon onto the jelly, the effect would likely be similar to throwing a corrosive chemical or strong desiccant into a slime creature. The powder would dissolve and locally break down the gel structure, causing the surface to shrivel, stiffen, or fragment. The result would be damage to the jelly without triggering its division mechanic, since the mechanism is chemical disruption rather than cutting or electrical stimulation.

If you want a simple ruling at the table, treating a handful of salt of ammon as equivalent to a small acid attack or alchemical reagent would be reasonable. It would damage the jelly but would not cause it to split the way slashing or lightning does.

In your face, anti-A.I.! I ruled the powder affected the creature as a "burn," equal to a flask of burning lamp oil, and had Lexent roll 2d6 damage. That produced 10 damage, which drove the jelly back into its hole and both Pandred and Ti were saved.

We called the game there.

Two New Players Located

I have two players who are legacy from the earlier Juvenis campaign, so the opening is closed. But message me anyway if you want to get on a list for further openings, if they should occur.

Seeking a New Player

Because one of the players of the present existing game has stepped down, there’s now an opening in the Discord campaign. We're starting our fourth session this upcoming Friday, the 13th. Play begins at 6pm central time and, if previous sessions hold, runs about four hours. The game is played on Discord, so your location is irrelevant if you can fit yourself into the schedule.

I would prefer a player who wants to run a character who is not a fighter or a cleric, though I will not hold you to this. A $3 fee to my patreon is required.  The game is in the traditional D&D style, though with my own set of Frankenstein-like house rules, as might be guessed. 

My previous campaign began on a blog and continued onto a wiki, if anyone wants to see an example of play.

There's no need to make a character ahead of time; I prefer to do so at the start of actual game play, so other players can see the rolls decisions you make.

Comment below upon this post, write to alexiss1@telus.net, find me in the patreon chat room, or upon discord at https://discord.gg/dqkhzsYQ.

Session 3: From Owlbears to Goblins

Friday's running last began with the party having returned to Ozd on the 3rd of May, whereupon I pointed out that, seeing people in the town using charcoal and coal, that they'd left about 50 to 200 lbs. of charcoal on the ground back at the kobald lair... for they had been making charcoal outside when the party had attacked. Charcoal in Ozd sells for 2 g.p. a bushel, or about 56 lbs. Thus, they decided to return to the dungeon, with Lexent this time, to see what was there.

It totalled 220 lbs, for which the party had brought baskets for (the cheapest form of container).  They checked in with Matyas, asked the sprites some questions and established themselves to be "allies" of the sprites, who would likely be there should the party need something of them.  Then, on their way back to Ozd with their charcoal, they encountered a dire wolf at a distance, deciding to keep their heads down and not attract the beast. Soon enough, the wolf was called for by its master, a tall bugbear; the party discussed the pros and cons of engaging, decided not to and let the pair go. Then they headed back to town with their additional booty, which they sold for 5 and a half gold.

Having heard that owlbear feathers served as a magical ingredient for something or other, they investigated this with the local apothecary and were told that if they would simply cut off the scalp of the owlbear, the apothecary would be happy to pay a hundred gold for it. Armoured with this knowledge, the party set out again to find the owlbear that had left signs over the countryside, and whose presence was confirmed by the sprites. They searched a day to no avail, however, set up their camp and, with a fire burning, set up their watch.

The owlbear appeared at 4 a.m., did not catch Ti by surprise and the party was aroused; the cleric Zoltan rushed forward with the others in his wake to face the beast, who managed to give a pretty mean swipe for six damage to Ti, then proceeded to roll a fumble against the cleric; the 1 on a d20 was followed by a second 1 on a d20, so that the beast lost it's beak attack (broken, sprained, whatever).  The party then utterly failed to miss, succeeding in killing the 30 hit point beast in two quick rounds. Easy as pie. I found it very disappointing.

Hurrying again back to town, the party collected their 100 g.p. and went on a buying spree. Because Ozd does not have an everyday market, but only a full market on Sunday.  All week, there is a craft-bazaar, where ordinary wares such as ceramics, woodcrafting, clothing and such can be purchased, as well as an everyday town market for meats, livestock and produce... but the party wanted armour and weapons, so they had to wait for Sunday, which was the 8th of May.

Having geared up, the party, especially Lexent, wanted to look into any gnome residents in the area, learning that they were most likely associated with the local coal and iron mines in the hills. Lexent is considered building a congregation; the owlbear pushed him to 4th level, which is "priest," and he has the ability to preach and proselytise in his religion, which is "gnomish" in form. The party travelled out to Uraj, a hamlet of 33 people, then to the coal mine a mile and a half south, where Lexent spoke to a dozen gnomes. He hasn't decided what to do yet.

Thereafter, the next day, the 10th, the party struck out west of Uraj into the hills, where the way was made easier by a found animal trail. Still, it took hours for them to reach an abandoned freehold, where evidence showed that it had likely been attacked at least a month before.  They went on, finding a sort of archery range, with evidence of goblinish arrows; no goblins, however, nor any evidence of when the range had last been used. The party returned to the freehold and spent the night.

Striking out the next day, they found evidence of a hunter's camp, where it was probably the freehold's family had been taken and slaughtered. Such camps feature stone areas for slaughtering game, ready-made windbreaks and usually a natural water supply like a freshwater creek. The scene of gnawed bones, bloodstains on rock and such disturbed the party, who nevertheless decided to continue. They began to climb the hill where the map shows a "3."  On the far side of the hill, they spied a large hamlet of some kind, and silently withdrew. This is where the game was left.

Now, I may be off on some details. It was six days ago since we played the game, I've been very distracted so I may have misremembered things. I leave it to the party to correct me, to bring us up to scale.

I'd say the party's engagement throughout was very strong. They were acting together, solving puzzles, standing up to me, acting perfectly like four gentlemen with plenty of experience in the game. The outdoor campaign is flowing well and not wasting a lot of time; much of this session was used up in purchasing, very understandable, rather than in discussing strategy from place to place. They haven't made up their mind about the hamlet; they don't know who it is occupied by, they didn't get close enough. Might really be anyone, but the hint is obviously biased for goblins.

I've always been comfortable with this sort of campaign. Players can move around from here to there, having short adventures which are good for low-level parties, leaving it open for a small dungeon to be stumbled across at any time. There's no real need to go marching across the map to find another place that's really just going to produce the same sort of area as this. Everything to the west and southwest of Ozd is unoccupied, with zero infrastructure, while adjacent to a large populated mining and farm land. Perfect for a low-level D&D campaign.

Session 2: Kobalds and Rats

Friday we had another session, a week after the first... the next won't be for two weeks. The situation had been set up by the previous running, in which the players had seen three kobalds above ground engaged in making charcoal. One of these was killed at the end of the running on Feb. 6th, so we picked up Friday last's game with the party on one side of a swirl of smoke and, uncertainly, two kobalds on the other.

After the usual uncertainty about who should do what and how, which always seems to accompany these things (I have lately come to the conclusion that no one wants to force the other players into something not agreed upon, which is why the military assigns that responsibility to a leader), the party braved the smoke. Two kobalds were encountered, a bunch of missing happened and then both were dispatched easily.

Revealed also was a pathway down into a subterranean lair, pictured here:

Once entering the anti-chamber to 1., the party fought a running battle against 7 kobalds into room 2.  These generally had 1d4 for hit points, except the leader which was a "first-level" by my system, my having no trouble with the training that can be applied to humans being learnable by kobalds. This gave one kobald, armed with a dagger and shield instead of a club like the others, an AC of 6 and 12 h.p.; he proved to be quite durable and managed to land a triple-damage hit on Matyas for 12 damage. The hit demonstrated the no-helmet rule perfectly: I rolled a 20-crit, then a 19; Matyas didn't have a helmet. So it goes.

One kobald escaped, the party looted the body for a little copper and silver, found nothing else of worth and decided to press on. They met a second levelled kobald at the top of the stairs at 3.; as I remember, and I might be wrong (I'm old and doddering), it was the cleric Zoltan who managed to thump him twice and short order, leaving him dead at the bottom of the stairs. At that point the earlier escaped kobald released all the pet giant rats down below, 12 of them, so that these surged up and attacked the party.

Overall, they went down quickly... but in one particular round, I rolled two 20-crits against Ti out of three rats; then I rolled another 20 on one of these so that one of the rat hits would cause double, and the other triple damage. Rats do 1-3 damage on a hit; I use a six-sided counting 1-2 = 1, 3-4 = 2, 5-6 = 3 in the usual manner. I grabbed two d6 of different colours and rolled boxcars. Ti took 15 total that round, survived it but was knocked into negative hit points. As the damage was 6 and 9, there were no wounds (Matyas had suffered a wound earlier), so Ti was able to just stagger to the back of the group and let them finish off the rats.

At this point, the party were ready to quit. However, I taunted them into checking the bottom of the stairs (they hadn't gone down) as they counted their resources and hesitated, until I succeeded in getting Orsos to look. There he found the sprite princess in a cage, a sack beside her and scrawled across the door that would have led them nearer the mage purportedly at the bottom of the small dungeon, "Take her and GO!"

The party took the deal; the sack had a hundred gold, they returned the sprite princess to her people, got themselves healed... but unfortunately Matyas picked up a disease from the rats and was set to be laid up for perhaps as long as four weeks.

Joey, player managing Matyas, had participated in my Juvenis campaign once upon a time, when he ran a gnome cleric named Lexent. This being a character from my campaign, I offered an arrangement for Lexent to step into Matyas' place (just 4 x.p. shy of 4th level) and then, upon achieving 5th level, take Matyas as henchfolk. The party were given a veto on this and chose not to take it, so the next running will begin with the party again in Ozd, having met Lexent, while Matyas remains with the sprites to recover. He'll then remain in limbo until Lexent reaches 5th.

There you have it. Basically, a straight-up combat session. We'll see how the next one goes.

Session One, Sprites and All

The Discord D&D game took place on Friday and it's now Sunday evening as I write this. I agreed that it would be a good idea to discuss the game after, but of course that's easier said than done. Usually, during a game, I'm in a state of flow; I easily lose track of time, I don't remember the order of decisions made by myself and the party, I don't remember a lot of what I said. I know I tripped over a lot of words, speaking fast and struggling to describe the image in my head in words vocally, when I've gotten used to be able to write half a sentence, pause, then finish. I suppose, in some degree, I embarrassed myself. Not because I made any mistakes as a DM, or failed to drive attention, or get the players invested... though a first running with a group of players who are also DMs is a climb in that regard. No, "embarrassed" in the sense of maybe getting a little too excited about playing again.

I can report pleasantly that after the event I did not experience a "drop," but rather a continuation of being "wired." This continued uncomfortably for a couple of hours, despite my having a shower and trying to escape into other things. I could have really used a glass of wine, but there wasn't a drop in the house; I haven't bought any liquor since last September, because it's viciously expensive. I might buy a bottle for this Friday, when we've agreed to run again. Two Fridays put us in the territory of birthday parties and I think a wedding, so to be flexible it was either run again in a week or in three weeks. The party voted and it's this Friday.

I'd say the players struggled with investing; they didn't get the rolls they wanted, putting them firmly into the four basic classes of cleric, fighter, mage and thief; no one wanted to be a mage or a thief, so the party sorted itself out as three straight fighters and one cleric. The cleric elected Buddhism as a religion, a good one if the character wants to remain isolationist and self-directed. Personally, I'd prefer to be inside a strong, ordered structure that I can contribute to or feast from, but that takes a specific sort of headspace, which I know most don't have. I've had buddhist clerics in former parties; I don't mind in the least.

The rule-comprehension came very easily. As they're all DMs, no one disputed any rule in any manner whatsoever. The clarifications were certainly in line with the issues presented. I made only a couple of notes for things to be added to the malady table, as players pointed them out, and once I had to go to the original Players Handbook to estimate the weight of a godentag. That's the only reference I made to the Players. I made one reference also to the Monster Manual; I've never actually used sprites in a campaign before, and had to actually look up the original for them. Everything else was managed through my wiki and Discord. It's phenomenal that I can just drag and drop a file into discord, so that if I do have something in a file on my desktop, I don't need to take a screen shot, I can just give a copy. Great way for these fellows to get inside copies of the Streetvendor's Guide, as it happens.

Tried to get through the character background generator as fast as I could; there were a lot of bad rolls and I do wish I'd taken some time to upgrade that before playing with it again. A note for the future: that damn page needs work. If ever I have the time. I could, I suppose, just stop blogging.

We were hung up on buying equipment for time. I expected to be. It's a huge table, deliberately made confusing. Still, it's an excel file and saved to text, so people can just sort it. The players gamely tried to manage it by vendor, which makes a cruel headspace check. You don't find an axehead at the blacksmith's but at the "hacker's," that kind of thing. The players called out answers to each other and I feel the best approach is that if you're looking for anything for more than thirty seconds, call it out and someone else will answer. The issue conflates only when players try to stubbornly solve it themselves. The idea, and I wish I'd thought of this in-game, I only have now, is that you're on a street talking to your friend and saying, "I was just at the blacksmith's and I didn't see any axes."  Whereupon the friend answers, "Oh, I've just come from the hacker's; it's up two streets on your left." Only, of course, without the directions rendered in geography.

The starting game was pulling teeth, though it probably didn't seem like that from the players' perspective. In retrospect, I'm sure they were turning over a few dozen things in their minds, making the choosing of a character name seem superfluous and not at all necessary. It is always hard to progressively describe a party moving up through a forest, in this case along a stream, because the DM says, "You reach the point that represents the furthest you've ever been along this stream from town," and the player quite correctly has no answer for this. In painting the picture of where the players are, how they got here from there, it's often a series of descriptions that land flat in this manner, and it's easy for the DM to think, "Gawd, how boring must this be for them." But it's not really that, I don't believe. It's only that the player can't decide the actual terrain themselves; they can't react to trees or hills or streams except to move around or up them... and there is a feeling that the only reason I am mentioning the stream here, or that hill in the distance, is in some literary Chekhovian fashion: I would not point out this hill unless it mattered somehow. The problem, however, is that it "matters" because you're passing it now, and that actually passing the hill in reality would take time, and would be a little dull, and you would feel a little nonplussed to be marching on. So, though it feels uncomfortable, the actual trek would also be so. Subconsciously, the players need to be made aware of how far they are from civilisation, even as they march away from it.

A similar issue occurred when the lone sprite was encountered. If the party had been properly surprised by it, they'd have seen it run off and been left to wonder if they should follow. Instead, the sprite goofed, made it's presence known, lost initiative and the nearest fighter to the sprite missed. The sprite's fired arrow did all of 2 damage (details that really don't matter), whereupon the party agreed to parley. The sprite gave some salve to the hurt fighter, who got some x.p., and then I did a very obvious thing as a DM: I outlined a simple, straightforward, 2D adventure hook.

These guys needed it. I'd given them some teasing with some 8 ft. creature ripping into trees for honey, only to get back a sort of uncertainty about getting involved. Parties differ. One party will think, "Well, owlbears haven't much treasure, its just a fight, so is it worth it?"  Another party will think, "An owlbear, three or four hours from town? It's our duty to make the land safe for hunters." That kind of thing. In any case, the owlbear went over like a fart in church, so Asiff the sprite took the party to his treehouse settlement, where the party talked to the acting head of the lofty "hamlet," Hara, who explained that their princess had been kidnapped by a mage of some kind, aided by kobalds, and was likely being siphoned for blood for the purpose of potion-making. The party flinched at the idea that this is a sort of "few drops a day thing," and were willing to invest. The sprites explained that a "ward" had been created somehow that disabled sprites from moving past a certain part of the forest, which they suspected hid the princess. The players, not sprites, volunteered without being told (and I wouldn't have) and bravely marched off (hesitating every couple of steps like parties do) to rescue the princess.

It's almost embarrassing that I'm writing those words. But, heck, it's a story that's worked for a thousand years, who am I to argue?

Predictably they found the kobalds, not on guard but busy making charcoal in a valley; they descended, puzzled out the unfamiliar stealth rules from the wiki, made their approach on one kobald, got within 9 hexes, won initiative and killed the kobald. And that is as far as we got. But the party's blood was certainly up by then, so yeah, good all around. We'll pick it up from there on Friday.

Discord, I think, allows for a faster loosening up than text. The Juvenis Campaign and those on blogs were always hard to get off the ground; I expect every game everywhere is. Which is why we should be paying a little closer attention to a first game being like getting a crew together to say cook in a restaurant or work a job site. It doesn't go that great initially. It never does. The first practice of a baseball team is always a disaster, if the players don't already know each other. It's not until they lose that first game by 9 points that the second practice matters. We, and by this I mean every player and every DM in this pasttime, put too much emphasis on the first session. It's not that we need a "session zero," its that we need players who will guarantee three sessions before quitting.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could give each player $25 dollars for their first three sessions, with the understanding that they'd have to pay it back over five sessions if they wanted to keep going? Probably wouldn't work — D&D players are such nasty, ruthless people that a mere $75 would go such a long way toward changing their lives — but it would be nice if some measure of encouragement could be invented that would encourage players to believe that with real investment, it's certain to get better. Perspective, let's call it.

Trust me... anyone who quits after your first game? You don't want to even know that person.

Ozd

Starting to get my ducks in a row; the plan for the "discord campaign" is a soft start around 6 to 7 EST... I think we're going to want another player, if someone wants to throw their hat in. I'm tempted to ask for two, but as I'm unfamiliar with online play in this manner, I don't want to overburden the model. I may have four just now, possibly three; so there's room now if someone wants to raise their hand. Mind you, I want a commitment, not dabbling, so take your time and think it through.

The map here is a combined mix of three hex-sizes. The largest is 6.67 miles across, the middle size 2.22 mi., and the smallest about 1400 yards. The town of Ozd shown is about 1200 yards long and maybe 400 yards wide, so the black shape is to scale. 

I'll likely add to it during the week, but even now it's a good size for a first-level party just starting out: lots of little bumps and corners to investigate. No need for rumours; just pick a stream and start walking.