Burnt Offerings: The Swallowtail Festival
On Sunday I started my first-ever runthrough of an Adventure Path. After reading through the first installments of Kingmaker, Council of Thieves, and Rise of the Runelords, as well as the messageboard discussions on their respective merits, I went with RotRL, in large part because the goblins made me laugh. A lot.
So I had my players download the free PDF of the player's guide and generate a group of PCs who had some plausible reason to be in Sandpoint, with shameless bribery bonus points for those who were actually from Sandpoint.
Party consists of:
1. Aulus, CN human barbarian (Brutal Pugilist)
2. Fentwick, LN dwarf cleric of Abadar [missed the first session]
3. Nimdhor (already dubbed "Nimrod" by his fellow PCs), LN human specialist wizard (conjurer)
4. Taleek, N human ranger
5. Thaldis, LN human rogue (Investigator)
All the players are longtime veterans of our old homebrew game, but (like me) new to Pathfinder rules, so most of the first session was spent figuring out basic combat and how to use d20Pro, which none of us had any previous experience with. There were a couple of glitches owing to my unfamiliarity with both systems, but overall it went pretty well. I was sad that nobody looted the super cool treasures that the goblins dropped when they fell (and I went to all the trouble of putting in those Roast Rats and half-skinned Dead Cats, too. Hmph. HMPH).
Anyway, this opening session saw the PCs arrive at the Swallowtail Festival and, after wandering around for a bit, get mobbed by goblins. Nimdhor managed to stumble facefirst into just about every goblin swarm that showed up on the map (always a good plan for a Level 1 mage). The PCs bested several small clusters of goblins, rescued Aldern Foxglove (but not his dog, alas), and are now about to break into the Rusty Dragon, which has been overrun with goblins drinking up all the good booze.
Highlights so far:
-- Thaldis murdering a kitten during the first test fight (when I was just programming random things into d20Pro for practice), then crowing over this accomplishment for the remainder of the game. Even after he got slaughtered by a vorpal kitten in the rematch round.
-- Aulus attempting to squash the goblin in the first encounter by overturning the wagon on top of it, but succeeding only in launching the goblin out of reach via wagon springboard, after which he got a dead cat hurled into the side of his head by way of thanks;
-- Goblin using an outraged chicken as a mace... and then using an outraged one-legged chicken for his second swing... and then using a dead one-legged chicken for the third swing. Aulus took the brunt of those hits too (leaving him covered in chicken-blood facepaint, which I'm sure will go over great when he meets Fentwick IC in the next session). To my sorrow, nobody looted the one-legged pulverized chicken afterward.
Next week: Siege at the Rusty Dragon!
Yeah, this sounds good! Looks like you and your group had great time in Shallowtail Festival. Hope you like RotRL as much as I did. I've run it twice to two different groups and both of them liked it a lot. Very good story, exciting and interesting enemies&places.
Siege at the Rusty Dragon sound really epic! You got reader right at the start.
Burnt Offerings: The Swallowtail Festival
On Sunday I started my first-ever runthrough of an Adventure Path. After reading through the first installments of Kingmaker, Council of Thieves, and Rise of the Runelords, as well as the messageboard discussions on their respective merits, I went with RotRL, in large part because the goblins made me laugh. A lot.
So I had my players download the free PDF of the player's guide and generate a group of PCs who had some plausible reason to be in Sandpoint, with shameless bribery bonus points for those who were actually from Sandpoint.
Party consists of:
1. Aulus, CN human barbarian (Brutal Pugilist)
2. Fentwick, LN dwarf cleric of Abadar [missed the first session]
3. Nimdhor (already dubbed "Nimrod" by his fellow PCs), LN human specialist wizard (conjurer)
4. Taleek, N human ranger
5. Thaldis, LN human rogue (Investigator)All the players are longtime veterans of our old homebrew game, but (like me) new to Pathfinder rules, so most of the first session was spent figuring out basic combat and how to use d20Pro, which none of us had any previous experience with. There were a couple of glitches owing to my unfamiliarity with both systems, but overall it went pretty well. I was sad that nobody looted the super cool treasures that the goblins dropped when they fell (and I went to all the trouble of putting in those Roast Rats and half-skinned Dead Cats, too. Hmph. HMPH).
Anyway, this opening session saw the PCs arrive at the Swallowtail Festival and, after wandering around for a bit, get mobbed by goblins. Nimdhor managed to stumble facefirst into just about every goblin swarm that showed up on the map (always a good plan for a Level 1 mage). The PCs bested several small clusters of goblins, rescued Aldern Foxglove (but not his dog, alas), and are now about to break into the Rusty Dragon, which has been overrun with goblins drinking up all the good booze.
Highlights so far:
-- Thaldis murdering a kitten during the first test fight (when I was...
I envy you, along with anyone else, who gets to start running this as their first Pathfinder campaign. Liane, please have fun and don't forget to make funny goblin noises.
Well, we play exclusively online (as was the case with the old homebrew campaign too), so funny sounds are out... but the tradeoff is that I get to GIS "roast rat" and "cat kebab" (and many more such morbid things) and use the results to make nifty little loot items that the goblins drop on death.
d20Pro has some other nifty tricks I'm looking forward to trying, but no spoilers on those just yet, since I told my players they could look at this thread. ;)
It's been a good time so far. The goblins are a great introduction to the AP -- simple enough that the combat's easily manageable even if (like me) you flounder on something or other every round, funny enough to give the players plenty of material to riff off of.
Liane,
I would suggest using Skype in conjunction with the VTT you use. Easy and free.
Congrats on getting started!
I would suggest using Skype in conjunction with the VTT you use. Easy and free.
I've thought about that, and it looks like a lot of other people are finding Skype very helpful, but it doesn't suit me personally. I cannot stand the sound of my own voice*. It is horribleawfulbad. Just the prospect of listening to myself talk for hours is enough to make me want to swear off the idea of gaming ever again.
So yeah, gonna stick to typing. ;)
(* -- this is also why I will never do a public reading. Never. NEVER. Would rather swallow live toads on stage.)
I would suggest using Skype in conjunction with the VTT you use. Easy and free.I've thought about that, and it looks like a lot of other people are finding Skype very helpful, but it doesn't suit me personally. I cannot stand the sound of my own voice*. It is horribleawfulbad. Just the prospect of listening to myself talk for hours is enough to make me want to swear off the idea of gaming ever again.
So yeah, gonna stick to typing. ;)
(* -- this is also why I will never do a public reading. Never. NEVER. Would rather swallow live toads on stage.)
Skype-gaming sounds like just the cure for aversion! *grins*
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I would suggest using Skype in conjunction with the VTT you use. Easy and free.I've thought about that, and it looks like a lot of other people are finding Skype very helpful, but it doesn't suit me personally. I cannot stand the sound of my own voice*. It is horribleawfulbad. Just the prospect of listening to myself talk for hours is enough to make me want to swear off the idea of gaming ever again.
So yeah, gonna stick to typing. ;)
(* -- this is also why I will never do a public reading. Never. NEVER. Would rather swallow live toads on stage.)
Perhaps Skype + Screaming Bee would help. ;)
Out of curiosity, is your aversion to your own voice completely, or your own recorded/over phone voice?
Hey,
I am just about to embark on my second runthrough of RotRL, but for the first time online (d20Pro) this coming Sunday. Do you have any tips, tricks, advice to impart? Thanks!
Out of curiosity, is your aversion to your own voice completely, or your own recorded/over phone voice?
Both, but the latter is worse. Especially recordings. Because then it won't go away.
I am just about to embark on my second runthrough of RotRL, but for the first time online (d20Pro) this coming Sunday. Do you have any tips, tricks, advice to impart?
Good luck! It's a nice program, and the RotRL maps (which you can snag from these links here) are superb. (If you use those maps, as I wholeheartedly recommend, please take a moment to thank the mapmakers and encourage them to keep going. They do a fantastic job and it really helps the game come alive.)
Other than that, the only advice I can give is that it helps to have someone else nearby who can log into your campaign as a player and show you how it looks to them; what you see on the GM screen may not be reflected exactly as you intended. Also, the d20Pro forums are a good place to ask questions. My usual M.O. in figuring stuff out is to plug it in and then whack on it until it does what I want or dies, so I'm really not the best person to ask for actual solutions.
Burnt Offerings: Goblins, Goblins Everywhere...
In which Our Heroes rout the evil goblin forces from the Rusty Dragon, liberating not one but two fair maidens (although you might have to stretch the definition of "maiden" a little for Shayliss Vinder), winning the admiration of Sandpoint's citizens far and wide, and picking up the world's worst bar-buddy in the form of one Aldern Foxglove.
I staged a goblin invasion of the Rusty Dragon largely so that I could have the goblins turn liquor bottles into Molotov cocktails and throw them at the PCs, both because I wanted to try running AoE damage and saves in d20Pro (which didn't quite work out how I wanted, but that's why we practice) and because goblins with Molotov cocktails are always worth inserting into a game. So I blew up a couple of PCs and then blew up a couple of goblins with their own cocktails and it was a good explosive time all around. The PCs survived it, the goblins mostly didn't.
The PCs rescued Ameiko and Shayliss from the goblins (although, had it been necessary, Ameiko could probably have rescued herself just fine, and saved the PCs' collective butts too), earning themselves free rooms from Ameiko and, uh, great admiration and gratitude from Shayliss.
As it happens, Thaldis is the only PC who didn't use Charisma as a dump stat. He's also the PC with the most moneyed background. He's also the party rogue, and, being an Investigator, has got some smoove social skills. So, naturally, Shayliss went for him pronto. He accepted her invitation to "kill dire rats" in the basement of her father's general store, and then accepted her invitation to do more interesting things when it turned out there were no rats, dire or otherwise, to be slain.
When Ven Vinder came downstairs, Thaldis aced his Perception check to hear Vinder coming before he threw open the door, his Stealth check to hide Shayliss under a pile of clothes, and his Diplomacy check to convince Vinder that he was genuinely hunting rats in the basement. Convinced, Ven Vinder thanked him and went back upstairs, and Thaldis went right back to what he was doing.
So, for the time being, the party is in the good graces of both Ven Vinder and his daughter. Win-win... except for Fentwick, who has the room next to Thaldis' and gets to listen to the goings-on all night long. Fortunately, he's a dwarf, so he doesn't need much beauty sleep.
Meanwhile!, Aldern Foxglove developed a hearty man-crush on Aulus, who did most of the goblin-smashing and played the biggest part in Aldern's rescue. Aldern bought a smaller imitation of Aulus' greatclub, invited himself to hang out with the party nightly, and did his best to ingratiate himself with the heroes of Sandpoint.
Alas, his best is not very good, and in short order Aldern managed to annoy the crap out of everyone other than his new best buddy Aulus (who used both Int and Cha as dump stats, and has a lonely, much-abused background on top of that, so is grateful to have any kind of friend at all. Even if it is a super obnoxious "friend" like Aldern).
In fact Aldern got to be so annoying that Taleek, the party ranger, decided he needed to take a quick vacation from Sandpoint before he shanked the dude. He is now off in the woods trying to avoid poison ivy and locate Shalelu Andosana, who has mysteriously gone missing just when Sandpoint could really use an expert goblin-killer.
While he's gone, everyone else is trying to determine how the goblins got into town, what motivated normally fractious tribes to work together, and why they might have ransacked the graveyard to make off with Father Tobyn's bones. The mystery, it is mysterious.
Next week: Tragedy strikes the Rusty Dragon! And: Where in the World is Carmen Andosana!
Burnt Offerings: A Visit to the Sandpoint Glassworks
In which Our Heroes nearly get TPK'ed by the Glass Tong Goblin Band.
At the beginning of this session, Bethana Corwin finished translating Tsuto's note and gave it to the PCs. Upon learning that Ameiko might be in danger, the party immediately set off for the Glassworks, even though Taleek was still off in the woods looking for Shalelu and fending off Lyme disease. To paraphrase Aulus' reasoning, "why would we wait? We met this dude less than a week ago and for all we know he's dead in the woods somewhere." Indeed.
So, following IC logic instead of OOC metagame logic, the four remaining PCs traipsed off to the Glassworks to see what they could see.
They found the doors locked and the curtains drawn, and made some Perception checks to hear the Glass Tong Goblin Band rocking out in the furnace room... so, after polite knocking got them nowhere, Aulus threw a rain barrel through one of the windows and the PCs crawled in thataway. They made a beeline for the furnace room (having figured out that there were corpses burning from the charred-meat stink of the Glassworks' smoke on this particular afternoon, and fearing that Ameiko might be among them) and were promptly confronted by six goblins + two goblin commandos + Tsuto putting the finishing touches on his latest masterwork, "Dismembered Dad Astride His Throne (lol get it 'astride' I chopped his legs off and threw them on either side!!)."
A ferocious battle ensued. The goblins had the upper hand for a while, partly because the PCs weren't expecting to get into a fight immediately and so were strung out across the top half of the furnace room when the goblins spotted them and initiated combat, and partly because the goblins just kept on critting. According to the party's count (I didn't keep my own), they rolled four or five 20s to hit Aulus alone. He got knocked out and almost barbecued in the furnace twice.
Tsuto turned out to be comically worthless in this fight. I was all "woohoo cool monk powers gooo!!" but he just plinked the PCs with a couple of arrows and then Aulus punched him out, so that was underwhelming.
Anyway, eventually the PCs used Channel Energy + two casts of Sleep + general goblin ineptitude and non-coordination to wrest back the advantage, and lo, so disaster was averted. For now. Their near-roasting in the Glassworks should serve as an adequate IC lesson to teach their characters the importance of not splitting the party (something their players were already fully aware of), which is good, because there's a lot worse than goblins lurking in wait.
After defeating Tsuto and running off the three surviving goblins, the party paused to take a breather. They ascertained that Ameiko's corpse was not among the human remains littering the furnace room, but they haven't found her yet. They've also started questioning Tsuto about what, precisely, might drive a man to hack his elderly dad up, sit the corpse in a chair, and pour runny glass over the whole gruesome heap. Apparently the Turandarok Academy isn't big on family counseling services.
Meanwhile!, off in the woods, Taleek found the corpses of three half-starved Birdcruncher goblins, all young males, all apparently murdered by other goblins. A few days later, he also found the burned-out ruins of Shalelu's cabin, with no signs of the elf herself except for a patch of trampled vegetation, a few scattered arrows, and some blood spatters... along with an old trail indicating that someone or something had been dragged north toward Thistletop. Dun dun DUN!!
Next Week: The Party Gets Back Together (Or Else)! And: Why Smart Evil Overlords Don't Keep Journals (or at least, you know, invest in some explosive runes or padlocks or something).
Ditto on the above. I've shamelessly copied your liberating the Rusty Dragon idea for the fun of all in my group!
In any case, I intend on running the Glassworks next session. Do you have any words of wisdom to impart? On another note, does your groups' d20 pro lag as much as ours does (one player had to rely on my narration alone as the map was loading way too slow for him)? Is there any way to make the game run smoother? (the Glassworks map is pretty big and has pretty high res :P)
Thanks guys -- I'm glad you're having fun reading the summaries! I should have the next one up shortly.
Cesare -- our game works fine for most of the players, but one guy has been totally unable to connect. We got it kinda-sorta fixed but he still couldn't load the Glassworks map. After posting about it on the d20pro boards and hearing back from some of their guys, it sounds like the problem may just have been that that particular map is so ginormous. So hopefully the smaller maps will prove less overwhelming and we'll be able to get everyone back in play by next week's session.
But you are definitely not the only one to have problems with that. I wish I knew how to fix it but I don't, apart from maybe not using that map (but come on, what kind of solution is that? The Glassworks map is at least 15% of why I bought d20pro in the first place!).
Shhh my players are reading this thread. ;)
Tintagel's map of the Glassworks is by far the most detailed and high-resolution map in the AP so far (although he has resurfaced to help out with the HMM maps so it's conceivable, albeit a distant hope, that something equally awesome may be forthcoming down the line).
Thistletop is huge and may give the same player problems, it's true. The other maps are significantly smaller and/or less detailed, especially if I end up pulling them directly from the PDFs for the later installments.
Burnt Offerings: Into the Catacombs of Wrath
In which Our Heroes venture into the tunnels below the Sandpoint Glassworks and confront ancient and horrible monsters... and Aulus punches them in the face.
But first! Plottery and sub-plottery abounds.
The PCs rescued Ameiko between sessions (because I wanted to get all the interim plot development done ahead of time instead of starting the session, having them rescue her within the first 15 minutes, and then spending the entirety of the game playing out something that could just as easily be handled in email). They also captured Tsuto and one goblin alive and questioned them both, but didn't get a ton of information out of either, since Tsuto was all "Do your worst! I'd rather die than talk!" and the goblin was, well, a goblin. His main concern was getting back to Thistletop in time to console all the weeping goblin widows and show off his sexy fly-speckled horsehide vest. Unfortunately for the goblin, while the PCs did promise to let him go if he talked, they didn't promise to let him go immediately, so there appear to be no goblin widows in his future.
The PCs dumped Tsuto and the goblin with Vachedi at the town jail, then spent some time info-gathering after Taleek got back from the woods. They hung out with Davinder Hosk at the Goblin Squash Stables and admired his enormous collection of cautery-inscribed goblin ears and the pickled goblin floating in a giant jar in his office. They stopped by Bottled Solutions but chickened out instead of buying any of the potions for sale, because pfft apparently big tough PCs can't deal with a few sandwich crumbs floating in their potions, or a sell-by date that is maybe just a few months ago (but come on, if potions really went bad that quickly, would you drink all the ones you find in 1000-year-old ruins? Exactly. So what's the big deal, I ask you? Besides, everybody knows fermentation is what makes beer, why should potions be any different?).
Meanwhile!, Shayliss Vinder appointed herself nursemaid to Ameiko while she recuperated under Father Zantus' care at the cathedral. If you've seen Deadwood, the dynamic between those two is a lot like Trixie nursing Alma Garrett, except Mrs. Garrett is pseudo-Japanese and not a laudanum addict, and Trixie is... pretty much still Trixie.
Anyway, when Ameiko was sufficiently recovered, she asked the PCs to tell her what happened with Tsuto and her father. They broke the bad news (dad's dead, bro makes Norman Bates look like a model of reason and restraint). She took it stoically, then gave them the backstory of how Lonjiku was the World's Worst Dad (at least to the extent that you can be a terrible person without sacrificing your LN alignment, which is still plenty lousy) and asked them to convey this information to the magistrate in Magnimar so that he'll have the whole picture about Tsuto. This conversation also foreshadowed the possibility that the PCs might have to do a little scheming to help Ameiko retain ownership of the Glassworks against the Magnimar branch of the Kaijitsu family, but we'll get there when we get there.
Around this time the PCs got to read Tsuto's Journal. I love that journal. It is pretty much the best thing ever and I am indebted to Russell Akred and Greg Volz for putting it together. Great work.
The PCs asked Father Zantus some questions about the journal's contents and got more backstory re: Nualia and Father Tobyn from him. In exchange, he asked for their help with an unspecified favor (which they're supposed to check back about in a few days).
Vachedi, who is the acting sheriff in Hemlock's absence, also asked the PCs for some help. Vachedi explained that he'd locked up one of Titus Scarnetti's boys to sweat him for information about the lumber mill arsons, which Vachedi suspects Scarnetti of orchestrating to eliminate the competition and increase profits to the Scarnetti lumber mill. While the guy he caught didn't seem to know anything about that, he did reveal information about a plot to sabotage Sheriff Hemlock (by poisoning his horses, weakening saddle girths, etc.) to delay his return to Sandpoint with reinforcements. Vachedi wanted the PCs to foil this plot. They agreed to help but wanted to explore the tunnels under the Glassworks first. Since they only have one day in IC-time before they need to leave for Vachedi's mission, that means they need to do the Catacombs quicky quicky.
That finished up the Subplots in Sandpoint section. The PCs then left to do some dungeon crawling in the Catacombs of Wrath.
The Catacombs of Wrath mostly ran as outlined in the module. I put a collapsing rock fall in that first empty cavern in the smuggler's tunnel in order to practice setting up traps in d20pro and having the PCs detect them. (You basically build them like monsters, putting the trap's effect in as an Ability and keeping it invisible until the PCs either detect the trap or set it off. I gave all my traps orange borders to distinguish them from monsters or friendly NPCs.)
The PCs cleared out the vargouille and the sinspawn in the wooden-platform cell room without too much difficulty. I thought about adding a couple more sinspawn to the vargouille encounter (the vargouille by itself isn't much of a threat, because it doesn't do enough damage to be dangerous, but if you couple its paralyzing shriek with a few sinspawn, then we're talking about a fight), but since my group was all still Level 1 and they're trying to do the entire dungeon in one fell swoop, I figured that might be too much too fast.
This was probably a good call, since the very next thing they did was break into the cathedral where Erylium was camped out. She summoned her sinspawn, Shattered Taleek's falchion (which he'd previously used to score an absurd number of crits against sinspawn, insta-killing at least two of them outright), burned through most of her combat spells and then ditched to let her minions handle the grunt work. Alas, said grunts proved inadequate to the task, and the PCs soon destroyed them. They never did manage to hurt Erylium at all, though. She's still running around in invis mode, just waiting for her chance.
Next week: The Dungeon Crawl Continues! And: Favors Collected In Sandpoint!
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Very nice.
For the journal, did you happen to find the images someone loaded up onto the boards? ive got them printed out for my players, and I really think that is going to go well. Ive got a couple pcs from Sandpoint, so they might know additional info the others wouldnt (by the drawings), but Im actually kinda hoping they fail to make the rolls, and need to get help to figure out who it is.
I'm not sure. Everything I'm using comes from the educatedgamer site (via the link upthread), so it might or might not be the same version of Tsuto's Journal.
If it's the journal that includes "Tsuto take me now!" then yeah, that's the one. It was a big hit with the PCs, that part especially.
That journal was a hit with my players as well. Our Priest of Calistria had the party's bard make a copy of it for "reference" before they had to turn the original in to the authorities. I think he is going to use it to begin creating his own version of the Kama Sutra.
I love the pulp erra feel you give to your campaign journal. Wonderfully done.
Had similar issues with Tsuto when I ran this a while back. Our tengu monk snuk up on him while he was glassing daddy, and critted with a nonlethal strike, followed by beating him on initiative, and whopping him again and dropping him.
I like the changes you've made, and appreciate the heads up on what works and what doesn't work with d20 pro. Will probably be converting over to the VTT soon, as live play just isn't worked 'round here anymore.
Anyways, please keep up the work, this is pure gold.
Thanks, I'm glad you like it. :)
One thing I forgot to mention earlier, for those considering d20pro:
The most annoying thing I've noticed about d20pro so far is that if a player moves his PC's mini, and you-the-GM are trying to type something, the game thinks you're trying to use keyboard shortcuts to do something to one or more minis on the board. It will knock you out of the game chat window (which, as noted above, we're using to run the game because I'm pathological about the sound of my own voice) and do all kinds of crazy things like put pieces in or out of the initiative roster if you hit "i," prompt for attacks if you hit "a," prompt for healing if you hit "h," and so on.
If you type quickly, as I do, this gets real annoying REAL fast.
Therefore, one key tip is to make liberal use of anything that allows you to minimize the amount of typing you have to do in the chat window.
Use the Boxed Text function. Type up all your static room descriptions, save them in a text file, and copy-paste them into d20pro to be broadcast whenever the PCs reach the relevant areas. Boxed text is annoying in a live game because most people aren't gifted at reading aloud so it's kinda boring to listen to, but in a text-based game it's a lifesaver.
Also use the Description block when creating monsters (or traps) to describe what the PCs see when they first encounter the monster. (If you're using the premade maps from the link above, you should strip out what's preprogrammed into the Description blocks because, as far as I can tell, it's straight Monster Manual/Bestiary entries with all the stats and everything right there for the PCs to see. Plus it's not tremendously interesting reading in the middle of a game.)
Not only does using the Description block for monsters save you the time and hassle of typing everything up during the game, but it lets you do fun stuff like individualize every one of your goblins with a spiffy costume (such as a poorly cured horsehide vest covered in flies!), accessory (such as a shiny necklace of broken glass shards that the goblin forgot to dull before wearing, enabling a PC to rip out the little monster's throat by yanking his neckwear!), or weapon (such as a dismembered human leg used as an impromptu club!).
It's a great tool that rewards PCs for paying attention (and clicking on each monster's description) and lets you be that much more demented, and so I advocate its use.
Good to finally get some info on some of the limitations/quirks of d20pro. The movement-hot key issue sounds frustrating as hell, though hopefully something they will fix in a future patch...
I've heard something about PCs not being able to edit their own character sheet, forcing the DM to do all alterations. Is this true, and have you had any problems with it, or is it something you've managed to cope with?
By the way, I'm pretty close to being the same way about my own voice. I don't like speaking in public, though I've had to get over it (been taking one particular professor's classes for two years, on top of knowing him personally for twenty years, so I get called out A LOT to explain stuff in class when he's busy) and I think my voice sounds horrible when recorded (very similar to butthead from the old mtv cartoon). So yeah, I feel your pain.
I've resolved the lag issue somewhat by running skype and other accompanying programs on a second laptop. As I am enamored by the sound of my own voice, skype is a godsend.
My PCs have skipped the glassworks entirely and are now on their way to Thistletop. They just hit second level, so they are a bit underlevelled. However, there are seven of them and they were brutally efficient in taking out Tsuto and his band of goblins.
Anyways, I am eagerly looking forward to your next installment!
I've heard something about PCs not being able to edit their own character sheet, forcing the DM to do all alterations. Is this true, and have you had any problems with it, or is it something you've managed to cope with?
This is true. It's actually not that big a deal (at Level 1 or 2, anyway; we'll see how I feel about it when they're all Level 15 with a double boatload of spells and special abilities). I have the PCs maintain their own sheets via dndsheets.net, where they can edit their own sheets, and use those as the master reference documents. Then I use d20pro just to track the things that I need in-game like stats, attacks, memorized spells, and so on. Because there are some things like APG feats and spell effects that the program doesn't model perfectly (and a lot more things that I just don't know how to program in right), a "real" sheet outside the program is pretty much a necessity.
Whenever characters level up or they do a round of buying and selling equipment in town, I have them send me summary emails so that I have all the information in one place and can enter it into the program with a minimum of hassle on my end.
It helps that this is an old crew, so I can trust them to get the numbers mostly right. Nobody in this bunch is going to cheat, and the rules-lawyering is kept to a minimum (not least because it will be answered with an anvil to the head).
Cesare -- we got that one player's issue resolved in the last session. Turns out it was his router. I couldn't tell you how or why, because from what little I understand it doesn't make much sense for the router to have been the problem, but apparently it was, and resetting the router solved the connectivity issue. So the lag's been dealt with in our game too. Hoo-ray.
A lot of this week's game progress is likely going to take place in RP emails after the actual session ended, so the next session report will probably be late. Alas.
Burnt Offerings: See You Later, Catacombs!
In which Our Heroes finish breaking stuff in the Catacombs of Wrath and learn that all is not well in the world above.
The biggest challenge this time around came from super mutant Koruvus and his many shiny implements of death. Koruvus hacked Taleek to bits in the first round of combat, knocked Thaldis unconscious shortly thereafter, and prompted me to do a quick review of the Pathfinder death rules before the fight had gone three rounds. Nobody actually died, but it was a close thing, made closer by the fact that mutant skeletons kept coming in as backup for the mutant goblin.
If you use the educatedgamer maps, the Catacombs come pre-loaded with three extra Skeletal Champions in the cells south of Koruvus. Those aren't actually in the module as written (which just lists them as deformed, inert skeletal remains) but I went with them anyway because I like making the PCs' lives harder and up to that point I felt like the Catacombs were a little too easy. However, the Skeletal Champions are pretty tough for a Level 1 party, probably because they're intended to be released one at a time at the PCs' leisure, meaning that each of them has to be a decent challenge on its own.
Since that wasn't how I wanted to use them, I toned them down a little, then had Erylium (who was still running around invisibly after the PCs failed to whomp her) release them one by one into the fight with Koruvus. This put the difficulty about where I wanted it -- very real risk of TPK if the dice went bad or the PCs made tactical blunders, but a winnable fight if they played smart -- and that is indeed how it played out, with about half the group chopped to mincemeat and the other half squeaking out a victory over their companions' bleeding bodies. Good times.
Once they were all healed up, the PCs opted not to release the third Skeletal Champion from its cell (I had Erylium's key jam in the last lock so she couldn't release that one, because even weakened, it would've tipped the balance too far toward party obliteration) which was probably a smart move because I decided not to make that one a Skeletal Champion anymore after all. Instead, they massacred those helpless zombies in the cell pits and went on to the levitation chamber, which completely freaked all of them out.
Nobody wanted to go into the zero-grav room for the longest time. Finally Nimdhor tiptoed in, grabbed the floating treasure (minus the maggot-infested raven, disappointing me YET AGAIN), and fled. The PCs did not investigate either the ominous puddle of filthy water on the defiled altar OR the ominous triangular pool of Cheez Whiz in Erylium's cathedral, probably because they have spent too long suffering abuse in my homebrew dungeons and are now like those sad, beaten dogs that cringe reflexively whenever somebody waves hello.
That finished up the Catacombs of Wrath. The PCs returned to Sandpoint, where Thaldis realized that they had an uncomfortable amount of money and decided to charter them as the Sandpoint Investigative Company, so that when they eventually get their heads lopped off by goblin dogslicers, the survivors will be able to loot their companions instead of having to forfeit their worldly wealth to the other PCs' next of kin. Because who wants to waste sweet sweet loot on widows and orphans?
Next they visited Father Zantus, who couldn't really help them decipher the runes they copied from the Catacombs of Wrath but pointed them toward Brodert Quink. Father Zantus was also all "lol, uh, nevermind" about the favor he wanted the PCs to do earlier, since Intervening Events had overtaken it.
Waaaaayy back in the first session, the PCs saved Alergast Barrett from being murdered by the goblin commando hiding in his closet. However, the goblin managed to gnaw Alergast's face off before the PCs dragged him away and killed the little bugger. So, while Alergast survived, his head basically looks like a meatball with two eyes in it -- no ears, no nose, no lips, pretty grisly. Amele Barrett had a hard time coping with it. Father Zantus was hoping that the PCs could somehow help out as marital counselors, but before they got back from the Catacombs, Amele decided she just couldn't take it anymore, grabbed the kids, and decamped for Magnimar.
The PCs pretty much went "welp" at this bit of news and moved on to Brodert Quink, who (once bribed with Genuine Thassilonian Artifacts, i.e., a sword disengaged from Fentwick's guts) happily agreed to translate the runes they'd copied from the Catacombs. This led to the party's first infodump about Ye Olde Evil Empire of Thassilon, which in turn led to Aulus' player promptly declaring that this information "is clearly irrelevant to this adventure path's larger plot" and Taleek's player agreeing that it must be "the longest, most detailed red herring I've ever seen."
Then they all hit Level 2. Except Fentwick, because dwarves are slow.
Next Week: The Bastards of Erebus!
Burnt Offerings: The Sheriff's Out of Town
In which the Bastards of Erebus forget which AP they're supposed to be in and make a cameo in RotRL. (Minor spoilers for the Bastards follow, so skip this post if you want to avoid those.)
First, a little background:
It's probably apparent by now that I've been knocking out all the significant NPC allies written into the original adventure. Shalelu is missing-presumed-dead, Ameiko is laid up convalescing after her ordeal in the Glassworks, and Sheriff Hemlock is (after this session) also missing-maybe-dead. This is because I take the view that the PCs get no help ever and if they screw up then oh well, rocks fall everybody dies. Also, it makes plot-hooking the PCs easier, because now they have to do everything that could otherwise be delegated to some combat-capable NPC.
So, while Vachedi wanted the PCs to foil a plot to sabotage Sheriff Hemlock, they were destined to be too late before they even got started. Hemlock had already met his fate at the hands of unknown parties in Magnimar. The point of this little interlude was to lay some more groundwork for events later in the AP, hint at what happened to Hemlock, and provide an opening for Meaningful Character Interaction linked to Thaldis' backstory (and, to a lesser extent, Taleek's). Additionally, I was hoping to get some practice with running human(oid) NPCs instead of monsters in combat.
However, things did not go entirely as I had planned.
In this session, the PCs accompanied Kelson "the Butcher," one of Titus Scarnetti's underworld underlings, to a meet in the woods a day or so out of Sandpoint. The PCs were pretending to be criminals and acting as replacements for the Scarnetti underling that Vachedi was keeping locked up in the Sandpoint jail. They successfully Bluffed their way past Kelson and got hired on for the job, but discovered that they weren't going to sabotage Hemlock after all, since someone else had taken him out in Magnimar already.
After conferring amongst themselves, the PCs decided to go through with it anyway so they could find out what else Scarnetti was up to. Kelson told them that Scarnetti was expecting a clandestine shipment from certain Chelish connections, and that their job was to make sure the hand-off went smoothly. He brought them to a safehouse in the woods. There the PCs encountered the Bastards of Erebus, who were said Chelish connections.
Obviously the Bastards of Erebus don't belong in this AP, but I used them anyway for two reasons. First, I needed a bunch of human(oid) opponents with class levels so I could practice using classed NPCs in combat, and I had all these level-appropriate tiefling gangsters handy so I figured I might as well use them here, seeing as how I've got no plans to run Council of Thieves. Saves me time statting up a bunch of my own NPCs for a one-off appearance. Second, Thaldis' backstory has him on the run from certain organizations in Cheliax, and those organizations have plausible connections to the Bastards, so using them opened a door to Character Development.
While it was pure coincidence that the Bastards happened to cross paths with Thaldis, he had good reason to be suspicious of them "accidentally" wandering into the neighborhood -- and, indeed, had they spotted him, they would have tried to capture or kill him for reward (which would have required the PCs to talk fast to either recruit Kelson to their side or convince him to stay uninvolved, unless they wanted him to turn them into meat paste). However, Thaldis knew this too, and so avoided any confrontation with them.
Similarly, Taleek's backstory gives him no great love for Chelish interests, particularly evul ones. He wanted to attack the tieflings on sight, and told the rest of the PCs that he planned to do exactly that. Not wanting an insta-fight, the party conspired to keep him out of sight too.
Because the PCs played this one cautiously, and kept both Thaldis and Taleek away from the Bastards, the meeting never escalated into combat. Kelson secured his illicit package on Scarnetti's behalf, the Bastards never suspected that the PCs were anything other than local criminals, and the encounter ended without so much as a nasty word being hurled. The PCs learned that some group called "the Gallowed" apparently had a hand in whatever happened to Hemlock in Magnimar, but otherwise they're pretty much as clueless as they were before.
The only thing that really came clear in that whole interaction is that the Sheriff is out of town and may be permanently gone.
And now the PCs decide whether they want to return to Sandpoint or press on to Magnimar.
Next Week: City Mouse, Country Mouse?
Burnt Offerings: Assault on Thistletop!
In which Our Heroes take the fight to the goblins and march on Chief Ripnugget's lair.
First, though, they had some subplots to resolve. After last week's encounter with the Bastards of Erebus, the PCs decided to break into Kelson's room and see what exactly was in that illicit package he received from the tieflings. Burglary: it's not a crime if you do it to criminals!
Turns out the package contained a bunch of dried flayleaf and a letter to "Dear Aunt Mamely" from "Your Obedient Niece Lucrecia." The letter was full of allusions to Lucrecia's blighted patch of foxgloves, troubles with a neighbor's corn patch, her plan to use a besotted justice to get an intro to Magnimar's mayor, and a hefty helping of namedrop salad involving Barl, Jaagrath, etc. Hmm. File this one away in "probably significant later, doesn't really make any sense now."
Although nobody had any idea why Titus Scarnetti would want some spoiled rich lady's private correspondence with her aunt, the PCs had more than enough evidence to arrest Kelson for trafficking in dried flayleaf, so that's what they did. They marched him back to Sandpoint, turned him over to Vachedi, and reported that something bad happened to Sheriff Hemlock in Magnimar. Vachedi told them that he'd have his contacts look into it, and meanwhile would the PCs kindly resolve that pesky goblin problem before, you know, the demented little runts finished burning the whole place down.
The PCs hemmed and hawed about this for a while, mostly because they weren't sure if they could take out the entire goblin population of Varisia on their own. Fortunately, they had some reinforcements right on hand. They requisitioned Kelson out of jail to join the party, which he agreed to do in exchange for a full loot share and all his gear back. This whole segment made me laugh, because it's such a PC origin story -- the outlaw forced into adventuring as a get-out-of-jail deal -- and here they are pulling it on some random bit-part NPC thug.
Anyway, now backed up by the unstoppable combat juggernaut of a fighter 2/rogue 1, the PCs had the confidence to storm Thistletop, and so they did.
Soon after entering the thistle tunnels, the PCs ran across the Birdcruncher refugee camp. Although the goblins and their goblin dogs outnumbered the PCs 2 to 1, the PCs had the advantage, for they had the fearsome and terrible Dog Monster on their side.
Back when the PCs talked to Davinder Hosk, they got the "10 Things About Goblins" spiel from him. Nimdhor, upon learning that goblins are terrified of dogs, paid Hosk to make a ferocious-looking dog mask for Aulus to wear when he charged into battle. So, when the PCs ran into the Birdcruncher group, they immediately unleashed Aulus the Dog Monster (and his theme music of illusory snarls and barking, courtesy of Nimdhor's Ghost Sounds) upon the hapless refugees.
The Birdcrunchers tried to take Aulus down in a hail of arrows and dogslicer swings, but their rolls were awesomely pathetic. I haven't seen a string of single digits that long in, like, ever. Two of them broke dogslicers on natural 1s. One of the goblins actually managed to crit against Aulus, but then Fentwick used a Channel Energy to heal the wound seconds later, so the goblins immediately concluded that the Dog Monster must be some kind of regenerating troll thing and surrendered.
The PCs questioned them, broke all their weapons (that didn't already break during the fight), and chased them off. They then proceeded to the Howling Hole, where they found and rescued Shalelu Andosana. After being attacked and temporarily captured by Bruthazmus and his borrowed goblin crew, Shalelu had managed to escape, but was too badly injured to make it out of the thistle tunnels. Instead, she hid out in the Howling Hole, using her spiffy ranger abilities to sweet-talk its occupant into not biting her head off. It wasn't exactly a luxurious vacation resort down there, though, so she was pretty glad when the PCs came by to help her out.
Shalelu warned them about Gogmurt and his companion Tangletooth, hinted that Gogmurt was not super thrilled about Nualia's influence over Ripnugget, and then bailed while the PCs were still distracting all the goblins.
Then the PCs killed some goblin dogs and their NPC thug ally leveled up.
Next week: The PCs (probably) Meet Gogmurt! And Maybe Reach Thistletop Island!
Also, for posterity:
Taleek had to take out a loan from Ameiko so that he could buy Koruvus' longsword +1 from the rest of the group. Ameiko, being a retired adventurer herself and grateful to the PCs for saving her in the Glassworks, was not exactly inclined to get all draconian about the terms of the loan; her view was pretty much "pay me back whenever, don't try to rip me off, and we'll be fine."
She worked this out with Thaldis as the rep for the Sandpoint Investigative Company. This morning, Taleek's player sent out an email asking what the loan terms were (since the original negotiation went through Thaldis, not him).
Within minutes, before I got around to replying with the above, Thaldis sent:
The term is six months. Interest is a flat 7% of the principal, calculated once. If at least 20% of your repayment consists of "rare items," there is no interest. You can see the details of the loan in the "Loans" section of the spreadsheet.
prompting:
Real life: you spend your free time calculating how much interest you owe for buying a car or a house.
Fantasy RPG: you spend your free time calculating how much interest you owe for buying a sweet-ass magic sword.
Indeed.
Burnt Offerings: At the Gates of Thistletop
In which Our Heroes brave the notorious TPK Bridge and assault the gates of Thistletop.
They opened this session by parleying with Gogmurt, who had sulked off into the thistle tunnels to nurse his resentments of Nualia. You give your best to your tribe -- years upon years of faithful service! -- and next thing you know, your chief's kicking you out and giving your room to some underdressed demon skank. There's just no loyalty in this world.
After Thaldis got lucky with his Diplomacy dice, the disgruntled druid was more than happy to tell them everything he knew about Nualia and her human henchbaddies. He was not, however, able to tell them of any alternate route besides the TPK Bridge to get into Thistletop, because at this level there really is no alternate route.
So that was kind of a bummer, but after sleeping on it and failing to spontaneously grow wings overnight, the PCs decided to go ahead and brave the legendary bridge o' death.
They sent Thaldis and Taleek out first, mostly (I presume) because those are the only PCs in the group who have any Stealth. Thus, although Thaldis failed his first check to realize that the bridge was sabotaged, by sheer blind luck they managed to avoid triggering the TPK event that has slaughtered so many other groups because they only sent two PCs across the bridge.
Once on the other side, Thaldis made his second check to spot the sabotage. He and Taleek secured the extra ropes to keep the bridge from falling and signaled the rest of the party to join them. The reunion made enough noise to disrupt the game of Killgull that the goblin guards were playing, and lo!, so began an epic battle at the gates of Thistletop.
This turned out to be a pretty tough (and really long) fight in large part because there were a bunch of goblins (the tower guards came down as reinforcements a couple of rounds in) and they all had ridiculous saves. Nimdhor used up all his crowd control spells and the goblins saved against EVERYTHING, except he managed to knock one of them out with Sleep. Woo.
Further helping matters, Fentwick waded into melee to revive a knocked-out Aulus. He promptly got laid out by a dogslicer chop to the head, thereby eliminating any more pesky healing that the PCs might have used.
In the end it more or less came down to Kelson saving the day, which makes me feel a little bad about laughing at them last week for refusing to attack Thistletop until they got a lowbie NPC grunt. Turns out they were right. Who knew!
Then half the group leveled up and they took a breather to figure out the next step of their strategy.
Next week: The PCs Don't Actually Figure Out the Next Step of Their Strategy.
Burnt Offerings: STILL at the Gates of Thistletop
In which Our Heroes make zero forward progress.
Apparently in the interval between this session and the last, the players spent a lot of time discussing what they wanted to do next. As I understand it, the plan involved trying to make it look like the goblins had mutinied or brawled amongst themselves or possibly committed a Jonestown reenactment outside their fort, so as to fool the remaining goblins into thinking that something other than an attack by adventurers had caused all those corpses. Then the PCs would be able to rest up and continue their assault without worrying too much about reinforcements.
Fortunately, I never had to try figuring out how CSI: Thistletop would actually work, because after spending hours and hours coming up with this plan, the PCs ditched it pretty much as soon as they came across Shadowmist's cage.
An aside: In the module as written, Shadowmist is a giant horse. I erased the horse and restatted Shadowmist as Shalelu's (equally giant) wolf companion, because I don't have any cavaliers or other riding-oriented PCs in the group (plus mounts don't tend to work real well in dungeons so I don't want to encourage the PCs to go in that direction), and restatting Shadowmist into a wolf made more sense for the Shalelu-as-escaped-captive subplot I was running, AND I figured a wolf would be a way better animal ally for the PCs than a horse anyway.
The first two points were valid, but I was wrong about that last one. Really, really wrong.
Turns out that when you change a half-starved, grass-eating animal companion into a half-starved, meat-eating animal companion, the PCs suddenly get a lot more nervous about setting it free. Especially when it growls at them (because they've been carrying around a captive goblin and therefore smell like goblin-friends). Especially when the party ranger totally blows all his skill checks and can't even tell them whether they've got Lassie or Cujo boxed up in there.
So the PCs dithered about what they wanted to do. And dithered. And then dithered some more.
I got pretty bored with this so after a while I had the post-prayer bell ring, signaling that Nualia's underground church service had moved on to the nightly disembowling-of-the-sacrifices stage and soon all the goblins would be coming back up to resume their posts. This succeeded in getting the PCs to do something; however, the "something" they picked was "panic."
In the best Three Stooges fashion, they ran around and then ran away, leaving Aulus to climb onto the roof of Shadowmist's enclosure, bash the door down from that angle, and escape by making a dramatic twilight leap over the walls of Thistletop.
Shadowmist romped around the fortress courtyard for a while and then ran across the bridge. The PCs were temporarily convinced that they'd gotten Shalelu's wolf killed, but I decided that the sight of all the corpse-carnage the PCs had left behind (including one dead goblin partly jammed through the roof of Shadowmist's enclosure, which I guess the PCs put in there to feed the wolf? Really not too sure about the reasoning there, but it made me laugh) would unnerve the goblins enough that they'd hesitate about confronting the monster clearly responsible for it all. So Shadowmist got away.
Meanwhile the PCs retreated back to the thistle tunnels. They tried to talk to Gogmurt again, but this time Gogmurt was having none of it and answered their inquiries with a faceful of fire. Stymied, the PCs decided to build some rafts to reach the island thataway, but other than Taleek they all failed their rolls miserably, which somehow turned into Fentwick trying to build a raft out of rocks for extra sturdiness. This probably explains why dwarves are not noted for their seamanship.
Luckily, Thistletop is largely manned by goblins, and if there's anything more reliable than dwarven sailors' incompetence, it is that of goblin guards. By the end of the second day of not getting attacked, the goblins' discipline had slipped almost back to their pre-attack levels of laxity, and so the PCs were able to run back across the bridge again... taking them to exactly the point they were at before this whole session started. Only now with the alarm raised, and no chance of a giant wolf ally.
Excellent.
Next Week: The PCs Make It Past the Front Door! Maybe!
In our defense: we had almost no spells left, no healing left, were mostly injured and had a maybe feral wolf and our potential enemies were an unknown number of goblins (who had just torn us apart minutes earlier), several NPC's and a possible Demon-Succubus.
Panic, I think, was well advised.
Also, Merciel left out that, after our drunkard barbarian let the wolf out, scaled the wall and returned to the safety of the beach, he promptly punched the wizard (poor, Nimdhor) in the face for making him do it.
Burnt Offerings: Bloodbath in Thistletop
In which Our Heroes venture into the dungeon depths below Thistletop, and Nimdhor gains the sobriquet Ham-That-Walks.
This session was pretty much 100% goblin-fighting fun. The PCs made short work of the tower guards, although one of the goblins did scurry off to warn Warchief Ripnugget of their coming. A grand battle in the throne room followed, during which I learned the following:
-- Goblin bards: only marginally less craptacular than flute-tootling half-elven monks. Very marginally. My warchanter managed to get Inspire Courage off, but after that all her bardic performances were variations of "ow ow OW come on dude stop hitting me."
-- Deadly Aim: definitely a misnomer, at least in this encounter. Taleek emptied out his quiver in short order with Deadly Aim + Rapid Shot combos, accomplishing the sum total of... emptying out his quiver. But he did it really fast!
-- Giant war geckos: AWESOME. Ripnugget on Stickyfoot was a one-shot PC killing machine. Shame he only got two shots off.
The PCs figured out within a couple of rounds that they were much better off targeting Stickyfoot instead of Ripnugget, and the fight ended pretty quickly after that. Ripnugget surrendered once they slaughtered his war gecko and all his backup. Figuring they could use him to make the rest of the Thistletop goblins stand down, the PCs took him prisoner.
Then they did some looting, although it was surprisingly lackadaisical looting because nobody wanted to go after the toilet treasure. They found the key to the potty-pit stash, but refused to actually dig in and grab it. (I want to state for the record, btw, that the toilet treasure is written into the original module and for once this was not just me burying the loot in poop for my own amusement, so you guys can quit blaming me now.)
After passing on the goblin toilet, the PCs headed downstairs with a tied-up Ripnugget in tow. They went to the sea cave first, opted not to tangle with the tentamort (pssh, skipping extra-deadly but totally unnecessary fights, what kind of PCs do that), and found the goblin daycare room. All those caged-up gobbo babies resulted in the PCs exchanging some uncomfortable glances, closing the door, and tiptoeing quietly away.
Things took a turn for the psychotic a couple of minutes later, when the PCs broke into the harem room and caught Bruthy with his pants down. Ripnugget was, of course, not thrilled to see this, nor was Bruthy thrilled to see him... but they managed to set aside their differences long enough to focus on their more immediate problems, namely the PCs. Bruthy grabbed up his giant flail and set to bashing (or tried to; his dice were mostly pretty sad) while Ripnugget roared for his wives to cut his ropes and kill the intruders, not necessarily in that order.
The goblin wives didn't really have any intention of freeing Ripnugget, but the PCs ended up massacring them anyway -- either to prevent them from loosing Ripnugget or to keep them from alerting the rest of the dungeon, I'm not sure. Either way it was a total slaughter. All the goblin wives got killed within a couple of rounds, except for the one who threw herself on Taleek and offered to be his goblin wife if he'd let her live. (Then Thaldis stabbed her anyway, probably because he was jealous. But she survived.)
Nimdhor (who changed his alignment to LG and is therefore the only good-aligned PC in the group) couldn't bring himself to participate in the slaughter of the goblin wives. Instead he tried to cow Ripnugget into shutting up, but succeeded only in completely outraging the goblin, who could not believe that a mighty warchief such as himself had been defeated and taken prisoner by a "ham that walks." He kept on insulting Nimdhor until the wizard, driven to murderous rage by an avalanche of fat jokes, stabbed Ripnugget through the heart.
Aaaand... that's where things ended for that session: with the PCs standing in a still-warm bloodbath of noncombatant goblin wives, having just murdered a helpless prisoner and a bugbear in his underpants. Little bit grisly, but it's probably best to get used to that...
Next Week: Nothing! I'm going to be at a ball game. Week After That: Deeper Down the Goblin Hole!
This is hilarious. And also somewhat disturbing! I love the way you're running all the interactions between the PCs and NPCs; I have learned a lot from your reports and am looking forward to your next one in a couple of weeks.
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I agree. I kinda wish my PCs were as willing to go along with stuff as yours are. Example: the poop room. Yours didnt want to go dig in the poop for the treasure. Mine didnt care, cause its not real poop. Its rpg poop, so who cares. *grumble grumble*
Edit:
Actually, I think my paladin player (of Iomodae) refused to go into the poop room to get the treasure. Probably cause I make him roll Fortitude saves occasionally for his gag reflex if something particularly gross comes up (example: Bruthazmus WITH the goblin wives...if you catch my meaning))
Heh. If my players start digging around in fecal matter I think I'll be getting them to make Fortitude saves against disease...
Heh. If my players start digging around in fecal matter I think I'll be getting them to make Fortitude saves against disease...
I'd use worms. Totally revolting and legitimately contracted through mucking around in poop. Also it's a delayed onset effect so you can have your PC(s) get progressively more lethargic and bloated until one day they find worm segments in their own poop and then the horror sets in. ALSO it takes a while to poop out all the dead worms once you get a cleric to give you that handy-dandy cure, so even if you aren't suffering the adverse effects anymore you still have to be grossed out for a while.
The fact that I've spent time thinking through this -- way, way too much time -- probably goes some way toward explaining why my PCs don't like to dig through poop.
(Additionally, the whole digging-through-crap-for-pennies meme is a long-standing in-joke that dates back to this one really terrible GM we all used to play under. Digging around in a poop pit was his signature event. Really, that was the whole event. It's the only "adventure" I ever saw him run. So yeah, that's been mockworthy since at least 1999, and may well be why my PCs initially assumed the toilet treasure was my addition instead of part of the written AP.)
edit: I forgot, that same GM also had an event where the PCs leapfrogged over lethally poisonous scorpions. That was that whole game too.
God, he was the worst.
A certain member of the group DOES regularly pass out in his own urine and vomit...
Player or character? : s
The worms are a great idea. We rotate GMing duties in our group, with one of the GMs running a homebrew setting where the goblins are lactose intolerant. It wouldn't be that much of a stretch for me to make these goblins able to drink milk thanks to a symbiotic worm. That turns into something entirely less pleasant when it finds a smarter host.
Can you see me rubbing my hands together evilly?
mmm...educational...don't read this thread when I need to go pee and/or there is a sleeping baby within two feet of me...
Burnt Offerings: Showdown at the Chapel!
In which Our Heroes confront Nualia and put an end to the goblin menace threatening Sandpoint, albeit at great personal cost (ain't that always the way).
After finishing up their slaughter of Bruthy and his harem, the PCs decided to collect some heads as trophies, because it's not like they found much else to loot so far. They hacked off Chief Ripnugget's head and Bruthy's, then continued exploring Thistletop. There was nothing of interest in the goblins' dungeons (because up until this point none of the PCs had died and our new player hadn't made his character yet, so I didn't need to stick any convenient captives in the cells where they could join the party), so the party continued straight to the chapel of Lamashtu, where Nualia was busily beheading random-prisoners-who-didn't-turn-out-to-be-PCs.
This resulted in a huddle outside the chapel doors as the PCs discussed how best to attack. While the rest of them were trying to plot some kind of strategy, Aulus, never a big fan of the whole talky-talky thing, decided to take matters into his own hands. He threw open the doors and charged into the chapel, waving around Chief Ripnugget's bloody head and roaring in his full Dog Monster regalia.
As tactics go, Aulus' suicide charge into the chapel definitely counts as "so stupid it's brilliant." Although Nualia and co. knew that Thistletop was under assault, they never actually thought anybody would be dumb enough to crash their prayer service -- because, after all, there were 50-odd goblins in there, along with Nualia and her yeth hounds. Orik and Lyrie were not present, however, since they'd been posted to guard the expected attack routes. Furthermore, since Aulus charged at such an unanticipated moment, Nualia didn't get any of her freebie buff spells up.
In the first round, all the goblins fled in terror, since they were under attack from the Dog Monster, who had just massacred their chief and best warrior (and was flailing his head around like some kind of hairy, dripping jack-o'-lantern). Nualia used her Sihedron Medallion, and Aulus pushed his way forward through the panicked goblin mob.
Side note: I tweaked the stats for this fight a little. Knocked out the yeth hounds' DR, since I didn't have enough PCs who could get past it reliably, and adjusted their hit points very slightly downward. To balance that, I gave Nualia another two levels each in fighter and cleric, since as written she was way too weak to be a meaningful opponent.
Overall it made for a suitably epic fight, so I was pleased. The yeth hounds' fear-inducing yowls caused Kelson and Nimdhor to cower the first few rounds, leaving Aulus alone at melee with Nualia. She took him down with brutal efficiency and began her Death Knell ritual. The PCs interrupted her once, briefly reviving Aulus, but she mowed him right back down, and the second time no one was able to intervene quickly enough to save him. So Aulus died to Nualia's unholy ritual. She drank down his soul and, bolstered, renewed her attacks.
Nimdhor Webbed Nualia, which mostly didn't do a whole lot, and then set the Web on fire, which was a little more effective. However, the party remained in such dire straits that they had to send in their dwarven cleric cavalry to have any shot at survival. Fentwick charged in heroically, war axe a-swingin'... and promptly got his head lopped off and flung halfway across the room when Nualia critted on the poor little bastard, inflicting 23 points of damage when he was at 2 hp. GOAL!!
The rest of the party dropped at a steady rate of one per round, leaving Nimdhor (who couldn't hurt Nualia because all he had left were Acid Darts, useless against her acid resistance) and Taleek (unhurt but hardly a hit-point powerhouse; he basically had time to make one attack before he went down) as the last ones standing. By some small miracle, Taleek managed to take her down with what would've been his final swing, and lo!, so the bloodied survivors of the Sandpoint Investigative Company stood victorious.
Naturally, they ran for their lives.
Next week: More Creepy Ruins!
Burnt Offerings: Shadows Under Thistletop
In which Our Heroes poke around more creepy ancient Thassilonian ruins and I totally screw up the shadow fight in the sarcophagus room. :/
A few days before running this session, I took in a foster dog -- a super sweet but totally untrained mutt from rural Georgia who hadn't quite nailed the concept of "don't pee in my house plz." Also, my resident dog decided to be a jealous little brat puppy and was constantly trying to chew on the foster dog's face, ears, or whatever else he could cram into his mouth. So the whole time this game was going on, I had a fair degree of canine chaos going on in the background. It was not one of the finest sessions I've ever run, let's put it that way.
ANYWAY. The remnants of the Sandpoint Investigative Company returned to town, where they gave Bruthy's skull to Shalelu as a get-well present and turned over Nualia and Ripnugget's heads to Mayor Deverin as proof that the goblin threat had been eradicated. They also delivered Nualia's arm as proof of her demonic corruption. In exchange they got big sacks of money and general acclaim, because psychopathic violence against goblins is HEROIC, by god.
Then they recruited two new members: Harker, an undead-hating paladin of Iomedae (replacing Aulus), and Kurtz, a half-orc fighter (replacing Fentwick). Savvy readers will notice that this leaves the group without a healer. Well, surely that can't go wrong.
Lack of cleric notwithstanding, the party returned to Thistletop and ventured into the ancient Thassilonian complex lying underneath the semi-ancient temple to Lamashtu, which in turn was lying beneath the not-ancient-at-all goblin stockade, because apparently villainous real estate is at a ridiculous premium around Sandpoint and there's just nowhere to build but atop some other vanquished baddie's stronghold. I expect in a year or two we'll find harpy nests on top of the ruins of the goblin fort.
Thaldis disarmed the pit-and-portcullis trap and the PCs proceeded to the pillar-of-coins blockade, which they opted not to open because they thought Malfeshnekor might be on the other side and they did not really want to tangle with a gigantic goblin demon. Instead, they continued to the sarcophagus room, where shadows lurked in wait. Although the rest of the group wasn't really eager to fight incorporeal undead, Harker (being a good little rabid-fanatic paladin) overrode them all.
So the PCs did, in fact, end up attacking the darkness, or at least the floating undead bits of it. I was kind of dreading this fight, because I just killed off half my group with Nualia and I knew this fight tends to get a fair number of deaths from the shadows' Strength drain... but it turned out to be remarkably easy for the PCs to score a victory, in part because I screwed up and had the shadows attacking vs. straight AC instead of ignoring mundane armor and shields like they should. Derp. Oh well.
Next Week: The Rousing Conclusion! Or: Nimdhor Gets Crabcakes.
Burnt Offerings: THE END.
In which, appropriately enough, the Ham-That-Walks gets carved up for Easter.
After taking a week off to recover from the shadows' Strength-sapping touches, the party returned to the Thassilonian ruins under Thistletop to finish their explorations. Still avoiding the pillar of coins, they went the other way, heading for the collapsed treasury in the tidal pool.
Upon realizing that their puddle o' gold was occupied by a giant crab, the PCs sent Taleek forth to shoo it away. He did somewhat better with this than he did with Shadowmist, managing to push the crustacean a whole 15 feet from its original position, but that was about it. (As Harker observed, Charisma isn't really a great dump stat for a ranger.)
Since this was clearly insufficient to let them loot the whole place unmolested, the PCs decided to go with Plan B: Shoot It!
Sadly, their accuracy was no match for their greed. The first few attacks just clanged off the crab's giant-helm shell (which turned out to be a remarkably good investment, survival-wise, for this particular crab). Thoroughly upset, the crab went after Nimdhor, because he was by far the plumpest, juiciest, most delectable-looking PC in the lot. It grabbed him up and hoisted him away, while the rest of the party continued to whack ineffectually at its super-armored shell.
The PCs' rolls were remarkably pitiful -- so many single digits. so many single digits -- so, while they did eventually manage to hurt it, they never came close to killing the beast. After softening him up with several rounds of constriction damage, the giant crab finally scissored Nimdhor in half with its pincers. Waving the two chunks of his body triumphantly over its head, it retreated to the depths of the tidal pool to eat its meal in peace.
The rest of the party, after overcoming their grief in approximately 0.005 seconds, looted the shallow end of the pool and skedaddled.
They went back to the sarcophagus room, where Harker's evil-dar revealed that the malign influences in that area had not been dispelled after the shadow fight. He broke open the nearest sarcophagus and promptly fell victim to a haunt reliving the last, traumatic moments of the occupant's life. Although the PCs were able to lay those bones to rest afterward, the haunt unnerved them enough that they decided to pass on the remaining sarcophagi for the time being.
Finally, the PCs decided to brave the pillar of coins. Thaldis translated some of the stuttering image's message in the communications room, then went into the transmutation workshop and discovered the key to Malfeshnekor's chamber. After taking that key to keep it from falling into the wrong hands, the group headed back to Sandpoint... where, once again, they'll have to recruit a new body or two (probably two) to make up for Nimdhor's loss.
And that concludes my group's playthrough of Burnt Offerings.
Next week: CHAPTER TWO! The Skinsaw Murders!!
Oh riiiight. Sorry. Been busy with other stuff, kinda let this slip by the wayside.
So we're midway through Skinsaw Murders now, and the party has just wrapped up the Misgivings and arrived in Magnimar, where they are presently trying to get an audience with Lord Justice Bayl Argentine and contending with an assortment of hilarious (to me, at least) minor characters from the city of Magnimar write-up, from the pinch-faced secretary Jacildria Quildarmo who likes throwing people down the stairs to the eminently respectable and clever Rassimeri Jaijarko, he of the overpowering sardine breath.
I'll see if I can do up a quick summary of the first half of Skinsaw Murders later today.