"I am Othelia." The skeleton says as it starts to get out of the chest. "And I want to play! Pookie has been very nice but he doesnt' talk or play like you did brother." The thing says shaking the mangy stuffed bear.
And what evil befell you that you were locked inside that chest?
Um Mathias, what if it was because she was already undead?
The only evil was Mother Comfort The skeleton says stepping onto the attic floor. I wouldn't eat that burned toast. So she locked me up here in the chest to teach me a lesson. I cried, and I cried and I cried. First because of the dark, and then because I was lonely, and then because of the pain in my stomach. And then the pain stopped. Now I want to play. And hug.
The boney skeletal thing steps forward arms outstretched towards Mathias.
Placing his staff as a barrier between the child and himself.
Your soul is tethered to a world that is no longer your own.
turning to the others.
Are you satisfied that Mother Comfort has been properly laid to rest?
{sigh} Be at peace, finally.
Beswaur pours the vial of holy water over the tiny skeleton.
Marcus shrugs a bit at Mathias' question.
I don't know about properly. Sorry child. IOMEDAE GUIDE MY SWORD!
Marcus calls upon the power of his goddess and takes a mighty swing.
The holy water sizzles upon making contact with the skeleton. Marcus's blow smashes the skeleton at the torso. The bones scatter across the floor. After landing they remain immobile and inert.
The party dig a grave for the bones out the back in the graveyard. The soft earth is easy to dig into and it only takes a short while for Beswaur and Mathias to dig a suitable hole. Marcus locating another large stone chisels that name Othelia into it so that it can be used as a headstone.
After Beswaur says some final prayers for Othelia's soul he and Mathias drag the other two chests down from the attic. Marcus gathers a number of the children's toys into a pile and uses them as kindling to ignite a fire.
The house catches alight easily with this. Soon red and yellow flames are dancing and licking the dilapidated building. In the light of this fire Beswaur opens the two remaining chests. They contain a number of silver and gold plated items, from candlesticks to plates to vases.
The orphanage burns completely to the ground. Leaving the smoldering ashs the party head back towards Falcon's Hollow.
Falcoln's hollow is in a little disarray. It would appears that Father Athul is dead, and the original reports are that he hung himself. In addition to this the sheriff has arrested Velcastos for blackmailing the cleric and has sent for an inquisitor of the justice to pronounce judgement.
Doubtful that their haul of loot will fetch a good price in this town the trio set off for a larger city to convert their items to spendable currency and to continue adventure.
I am going to call it there. I've certainly learnt quite a lot about PbF DMing with this jaunt so thank you all for being such a good sport throughout. Your dice certainly hated you to start off with, but your second attempt was a lot more successful.
I wasn't quite sure what you were going to do with Othelia, but your actions certainly worked.
If you are interested the dungeon comes from The Campaign Setting - Undead Unleashed. Despite ostensibly being for level 3 adventurers I now have my doubts. If you weren't as prepared as you were it could have been exceptionally messy.
Lastly now that you no longer have to worry about the wrath of a peeved GM - how did you find the jaunt? Anything in particular you didn't like? Or anything that other PbF Dm's do that I should try to do next time
Haha did I freak out and smite a standard 4 hp skeleton?
I have a couple of questions about the campaign if that is cool.
First, is there a "solution" to the rat room?
Second, would Othelia have attacked us if we kept trying to talk to her?
Last, how did you expect us to deal with the corrupt priest business? (I don't mean this in the this is impossible why would you do this way)
About the difficulty, I agree that it is potentially too rough for level 3. The ghost and shadow fight is basically be prepared for incorporeals or die.
About the game in general:
First, I want to apologize for not posting when I wasn't sure what to do. I am sure it slowed down the game and made it harder to keep up momentum.
I think parts of the game were just unavoidably hindered severely by PbP. Specifically the moral conundrum around the priest and the thug would have taken pausing the game for like a month to have an in-character conversation to play it out adequately. And that is a conversation I definitely would have lost track of anyway. There is no way around this that I can see.
We also got a bit lost in the orphanage, both just physically on the map and with what we thought we were expected to do. The first could be helped by having a list of where we haven't explored and periodically posting it. I think this could be done in a way that wasn't cheating/hints if it was basically just a list of doors we have seen but not opened.
The second is more difficult. It felt like the game almost broke there at the end where we thought there was some mystery to solve and didn't know what the clues were, but really we just had to go back up and crack open the last two chests. I don't blame you for this at all.
Unfortunately a suggestion I have is to avoid hard choices. I don't like this because hard choices are one of the best parts of stories. But they take so long to be done properly with character discussion and agreement. Definitely take this with a giant pile o' salt because it is probably wrong and taking choices out of adventures ruins the point.
Lastly, thank you very much for running this I had quite a lot of fun through most of it.
Questions is good. It was a 30 hp skeleton.
The rat clones have half the number of hit points each round. There can be 10 clones per original. Their clones last 10 rounds and then vanish. Splash weapons, cleave, and total defense are friends.
The short answer with Othelia is I don't know. I wasn't expecting her to be a hard choice. I was expecting a smite or to find a cleric. She is statted as a monster but with no commentary as to if she is automatically hostile.
Valcastos is running a slave trade and brothel. Whilst he's blackmailing the priest it's actually in response to the priest hiring a slave for the night. On several occasions. The deacon suspects and a gather information check in the town will provide a clue as its frequent enough for a rumour. Additionally if Valcastos thugs hadn't been very lucky (or if you'd elected to go in the second story where he is ... occupied) he would have told you. It's not going to resolve well because nobody is good. Valcastos is a thug, and the priest shouldn't be in his profession. The priest will promise to reform if confronted but yhats not ideal. I did deliberately keep my mouth shut. I'm a big fan of play to see what happens and didn't want to smack that missing piece out there.
I do appreciate your comments. I was feeling the little piece of loss at the end. I was expecting you to keep opening the chests the first time through. But I didn't want to force the solution.
Your comment about the map however is taken. I think the very open ended floor plan didn't help. I should have stuck the stairs at the end of each level. Less realistic but easier to play with.
Glad that you did have fun!
I had a good time I think that allowing us to play through the harder parts and puzzles is definitely more difficult in PbF but still doable. Admittedly this has been the downfall of most of my in person games as well when the GM had a really cool puzzle for us to work out but we squirreled and couldn't get it until the GM either forced us through or burned out.
I completely agree with the map idea or putting the stairs at the end of the level, it would have helped us not jump right to the end game fight and then have to play around trying to get the puzzle.
This was my first undead game ever (and my first non-evil character) so I was trying very hard to always make sure I took the monk approach of thoughtful responses which also slowed us down. All of my other characters to date would have just said "screw it, lets kill it!" so the pace of the game is partially my blame, but PbF is slower and while I would have liked to post more than once a day the time lapse gave ample opportunity to think things through and ensure you were staying within character.
I think that most cases player knowledge was our downfall, I don't think any of us would have known how to deal with the rats other than slaying everything and we didn't have the sneaky rogue type who would have said lets go through the second floor window. So while I can see Marcus' points I think we would have gone about it differently pending other class makeups.
All in all I had a fun time with this.
I had fun and hope you did to.
I sometimes got confused on what descriptions were meant for which rooms. But that often happens in PbP, so no worries.
The rat thing was a bit wierd. Not sure I would have ever caught on to that. But that isn't all bad either.
Thanks for running, hope to see you around again some time.
Glad you had fun. I did also. I don't think there is a register of completed Pbfs, so short of being told something I'll leave it thereand see you around.
Thanks also for your feedback, I'll see you around