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I'm going to try and remember to put down what happens here, from our adventures. We stared playing a few weeks ago and meet once very two weeks. Just gonna give a runedown of our group and how we are playing, along with any changes our GM has made.
The Party:
Me: Zarukt Starhammer (Male Dwarf Magus-Twisting Tree): A 200 year old elderly and curmudgeonly dwarf. A member of a branch family of the Runebinder clan. Esoteric Scholar background. He's fancies himself a wizard that 'just knows how to defend himself.' He's come to work with clan Tolarr so that the Runebinders can get more recognition in historical texts. He's tired of historical texts not giving proper credit to the skilled men and women who make the magic items that the heroes of Dwarven society use.
Caitia: (Male Ammarun Thief Rogue) An Ammarun Native of Highhelm who is a skilled dungeon explorer and looking to raise the status of Ammarun in Highhelm. Primarily uses a whipclaw.
(Forget Name) (Female Dwarven Air and Earth Kineticist). A member of clan Tolarr that has been pushed aside despite her prominent kineticist abilities because she isn't as good at history as the rest of the clan.
Delmerick "Pickle" Scrimgeour (Male Dwarven Cleric) Another, younger, member of clan Tolarr who bounces back and forth between worshiping Angvaad or the Dwarven Pantheon as a whole. He got his nickname from an accident with the rod of wonder as a kid that has turned him permanently green and no one has managed to fix it.
So we meet up in a local in and were told that the festival isn't for a few weeks yet, and that we've arrived early. We heard about plenty of rumors going on, and decided to make a little coin while we wait for the Tolarr historical festival to happen. While there were many rumors, the most pressing seemed to be about a missing Kobold trapped in a dangerous dungeon used as a test for the thief's guild. On our way there we found one of Pickle (and the Kineticist's) stupid cousins that had gotten himself trapped trying to climb down some cliffs, and we were unable to help him (My magus hadn't memorized feather fall that day.)
We get to the beginning of the gauntlet and start heading through. We found some traps, and Zarukt discovered a magical dart.
Because of a crit-success identifying the dart, we discovered it was cursed. We were eventually able to find a level 7 Cleric, one of Pickle's higher-ups at the church, and he un-cursed it. We then transferred the rune to Zarukt's staff.
Navigating the dungeon we manage to bypass most of the traps, and took very little damage. We found a suit of shadowed studded leather armor with a hole in it, and we were able to repair it and give it to the rogue. We found the Kobold, and Zarukt (with a nat 19 resulting in an intimidate of 22) managed to convince him that the life of the thieve's guild would get him killed. He then wrote the young lad a letter of recommendation to join clan Runebinder as a magical trap expert, and since that got him a job, he was happy enough.
On the way out, we had a fight where the rogue and cleric went down because of some poor teamwork (we were a new team after all) We managed to heal the cleric, he brought up the rogue, and we exited the gauntlet.
Afterwords we took a few days off to do substitute teaching for rich snobs learning other languages before we got back to work.
Session 2)
Caitian was eager to figure out what happened to their favorite restaurant, but on the way we had heard about some sick crabs, so we went there first (it was on the way.) We found out one of the crabs was infected with leeches as big as a dwarf's arm, and so we barely killed them in time to save the queen crab. We found out they got in though some illegal tunneling and the crab aquaculturalist who owned the crab promised to look into it. Our Earth Kinetisist plugged the whole with base kenisis.
While on our way from the crab habitat to the shut-down restaurant, we encountered some Knights of Lastwall that were being mistreated because some of their number were orcs or half-orcs. We made some medicine checks to heal them and tried to convince the local foundries to sell to them with mixed success. Zarukt promised to come back when he had set up his enchanting shop (i.e. reached level 4 and got the magical crafter feat), and they were grateful.
Then we explored the abandoned restaurant and concluded some ghorran or leshy had misinterpreted the situation and sabotaged the restaurant. The elf owner of the place decided to be done with it and start a new phase of her life, perhaps becoming a seafood chef with the crab meat from the place we had just been to. Got into a fight with some fungal zombies and the kinetisit got crit and went down in one shot, but luckily the cleric brought her back up easily. Otherwise, standard fight.
On our way back to the inn, we stopped by the cloud district because we had heard their 'head of security' was a dragon that was espousing the communist manifesto and then playing pranks. It took a lot of work and convincing, but we convinced the dragon that making his pranks something both parties could enjoy would improve the overall enjoyment of his pranks and make everyone happier. Zarukt suggested, instead of dumping buckets of water on people, using the cantrip "Rousing Splash" as that still dumps water on people, but also has a positive effect, and they were amiable. They still had trouble not laying down caltrops or filling purses with nettles though.
The next day we heard that the big basalisk game was coming up and they were short of players, so we went and tried out. To no one's surprise the Kinetisit was able to power through tryouts without getting tired. She got on the team and then just outlasted the competition, with some help from the rest of the party, allowing the hometown team to win. Zarukt lamented that Basalisk had 'gotten soft' in the past 150 years . . . a lot (He kept failing checks to know about the game and our in-universe explanation was that he was familiar with 'old' Basalisk. "When did they start using PADDING in these helmets?! Dwarves today have gone soft!")
The day after that was the Stickleberry fair, and while no one in the party was crowned stickleberry king or queen (Zarukt's plan for a suit with magical illusory stickleberries backfired spectacularly (nat 1), spraying him with stickleberry juice before he could even make it on stage), we did much better in the pie-eating contest. Again, to the surprise of no one, the kinetisit was a machine and was able to eat stickleberry pies endlessly (TWO crit successes at the pie eating contest) netting us a +1 spear that we gave to the cleric.
And that was it so far!
Starfinder Senior Developer
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She got on the team and then just outlasted the competition, with some help from the rest of the party, allowing the hometown team to win. Zarukt lamented that Basalisk had 'gotten soft' in the past 150 years . . . a lot (He kept failing checks to know about the game and our in-universe explanation was that he was familiar with 'old' Basalisk. "When did they start using PADDING in these helmets?! Dwarves today have gone soft!")
Dwarf kids these days don't know how good they have it. Back in the Quest for Sky, we had to walk uphill both ways to fulfill divine commandments! And *every* basilisk player had to wear their visors down! And the ball was a knot of vipers! Pfah! Soft indeed!
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She got on the team and then just outlasted the competition, with some help from the rest of the party, allowing the hometown team to win. Zarukt lamented that Basalisk had 'gotten soft' in the past 150 years . . . a lot (He kept failing checks to know about the game and our in-universe explanation was that he was familiar with 'old' Basalisk. "When did they start using PADDING in these helmets?! Dwarves today have gone soft!")Dwarf kids these days don't know how good they have it. Back in the Quest for Sky, we had to walk uphill both ways to fulfill divine commandments! And *every* basilisk player had to wear their visors down! And the ball was a knot of vipers! Pfah! Soft indeed!
Actual quotes from Zarukt (played by me, as best as I can remember.)
"Whattya mean magic isn't allowed anymore? How are you supposed to attack the other team with fireballs then?""Only ten players? How are you supposed to do the massive 200 on 200 person battle?"
"You just put a visor down in front of his eyes? What happened to poking them out with a red hot poker?"
UPDATE: The Ammarun's name is Kasya, misremembered it.
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Update from more wackyness that happened in our game last night (as a reminder, we play every other week)
We started the session by going to a farm with Augdunar (underground cave donkeys) that was being pestered by some prankster or poltergeist of some kind. The GM was feeling particularly silly, so he made Ektar, the rancher, a parody of a popular celebrity (I won't say who on the boards) but we took the opportunity to all take a dig at this much maligned persona.
Also, the GM was still feeling silly, and because the Augdunar don't have official artwork, he just kept on adding random traits to them, eventually the list read:
1) Have eyestalks like snails
2) Noodly arms and hands attached to eyestalks
3) Are hairless except for naturally growing mullets
4) Can reproduce human/Dwarven speech like a parrot
5) Favorite foods, Bananas and snails
6) Have flightless wings, wear boots on said wings (how?)
After a lot of faffing around and a fair bit of aimless investigating, we talked to Ektar's brother (who spoke like the stereotypical poser rapper trying to be cool but failing miserably), and we discovered it was some sort of house spirit fey thing. We tried to make amends, it turned the Augdunar against us, we calmed down the herd and convinced the spirit to stop being a jerk and convinced Ektar to pay them proper respect.
After that debacle, we went to the forges (Burntown) for some temp work and knocked it out of the park, only the cleric feinted from the heat! After lunch we did really well at the administrative work, and then had to wrangle some pyro-weasles or something that had gotten loose, saving an alchemy shop in the process. Everything went according to plan, surprisingly, and we came off pretty competent.
Lastly, we heard that there was some spiritual trouble in the graveyard and went to investigate. Seems someone or something was riling up the spirits by defacing their gravestones. The ancestors of the three Dwarves in the party started haranging them ("Why don't I have great-grandchildren yet?" "Did you finish your studies?" "How could you let the sport of Basalisk get so soft?")
We managed to exorcise our way through the crypt until we found the source . . . some . . . lizard-man-thing? Apparantly he was riling up the spirits for . . . y'know, he didn't say why. He just charged us and then got hit by the cleric's fire ray and then my spell strike, then the keneticist finished him off.
Anyway, that was the session. We also leveled to 2! Hurrah!
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Sounds like you are having fun, and it's always a treat reading session recaps from someone else's game.
How are you finding Sky King's Tomb so far? I've only read the module (not played it), but the first chapter struck me as kind of... aimless.
Congratz on reaching lvl 2! :D
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Sounds like you are having fun, and it's always a treat reading session recaps from someone else's game.
How are you finding Sky King's Tomb so far? I've only read the module (not played it), but the first chapter struck me as kind of... aimless.
Congratz on reaching lvl 2! :D
yeah, the first part is just a bunch of odd jobs around Highhelm, which actually is kinda fun because you are introduced to a bunch of Highhelm stuff and see that there's more than just a few dwarves 'dwarven' around there. Pretty fun. The only downside is that there is a lot of jobs that each take a fair amount to get through, so it's kinda a slog, but it's not bad at all. I really enjoyed all the RP elements.
Oh, so one sweet part is that you get to design your own picture of dwarven craftsmenship while helping to build out part of Torag's Shield, and my character was in charge of that part, so now (at least in our game) there is the story of how clan Runebinder bravely crafted weapons for the great warriors to defeat their foes. My character's story is working into the game slowly but surely.
Oh, so one sweet part is that you get to design your own picture of dwarven craftsmenship while helping to build out part of Torag's Shield, and my character was in charge of that part, so now (at least in our game) there is the story of how clan Runebinder bravely crafted weapons for the great warriors to defeat their foes.
That is so cool! :D
Looking forward to the next instalment.
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Starfinder Senior Developer
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This first chapter is very much an exploration of Highhelm, designed not only to show off the archetypically dwarven elements and innovative aspects that break fantasy "tradition," but also to give the players time and space to discover which aspects of Highhelm and dwarven culture speak to them. I'm glad to hear you're enjoying the adventure overall while still finding the smaller moments that help your character come alive.
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Spoilers for Chapter 2, book 1
Another week, another recap:
This one was far less silly, as we hit level 2 and started our questing proper instead of doing chores around Highhelm (Not that chores around highhelm wasn't fun! It was.)
Big time spoilers, but we got hired by a disgraced member of a clan who might have a Rivethun ability to detect artifacts? He lost an important artifact years ago and wants us to help him retrieve it.
We made a few preparations, got a few new spells in our spellbooks, and headed out.
We found the area where our benefactor lost the artifact is now a giant mushroom forest, some random . . . things attacks us as soon as we entered the area. We beat them easily, healed, and moved on.
We found a house that belonged to the mushroom druid guy that poisoned the restaurant back in session 1. His house had poison death cannons that were . . . really bad, and the entire area was difficult terrain meaning getting to his house to turn them off was really hard. We tried to tell the couple of mushroom people living there that we weren't violent multiple times, but they didn't listen.
Eventually, our kineticsist fired multiple blasts at the second story window of the mushroom house, and I used the Jump spell to Kool-aid man into the second story (OH YEAH! SNAP INTO A SLIM JIM!). I disabled the poison canons but got knocked out by a couple of lucky shots by the guy on the second floor.
Meanwhile, the three others on the ground floor beat the mushroom guy (and his pet rust monster oxidation beast) down there by throwing rocks at him (thank you Earth Kineticist). After knocking me out, the second-story guy went downstairs, immediately got crit by the rogue with his whipclaw, and tried to escape, only for the cleric to Needle Darts him. We stayed at their house that night, picked it clean in true adventurer fashion.
We left the next day, continued following our guide's mystic (maybe) connection to the lost item, happened upon an abandoned umbral gnome village (they are called something new now? Starts with a 'd?') Met some mudmen who were dying of dehydration. We gave them some water (our cleric agreed to memorize create water for the rest of the adventure for us to help with our water situation) and they told us what they knew. We told them about the mushroom grove and how there had to be water there because of how much fungus there was growing there, and they agreed to leave.
We found an abandoned house, figured that would make a good base while we looked around for the artifact, (We found that the artifact had been split in two from our guide/benefactor.) The door was blocked by the half-collapsed structure, but our kineticist used base kenesis to excavate it . . which was a good thing because there was a trap there but since we were all 20 feet away when the keneticist was excavating, it didn't hurt anyone. We got inside and looked around the house just as some creepy dolls and a . . . . thing? animated. We ended the session there just as combat started.
I’m enjoying these recaps, nice work striking the right balance in terms of sharing fun/interesting anecdotes and enough plot go on without overwhelming us with too much detail.
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Okay, more spoilers, today's session:
We went through the house we entered last time, fought some stuff, some tough fights, then we found out that the previous owner of the house had put her soul INTO the pummel gem of the artifact we were looking for and put that into a soul-bound doll. We offered to free her and let her find eternal rest in Pharasma's boneyard, but she decided to attack us for no reason. Also, her psychic agony showed what happened to the town we were in, apparantly some giant worm came looking for the Sky King's artifact that got dropped down here, thinking he was with the artifact, and inadvertently wrecked the town.
After a super tough fight (seriously, the DCs to get rid of the haunt were stupid high), we finished off the soul bound doll and found that her soul is still inside the gem, so we're going to need to clense it. Problem for another day.
We slept in the house for the night, then explored the rest of the upper town the next day. Found a silo full of iron ore. The entrance was blocked 20 feet up, so I used "HELPFUL STEPS" to get us up there. Turns out there were some chokers ready to ambush us one by one as we got up, but since we all showed up on the stairs I made, they surrendered and gave us stuff not to kill them. I mean, I wasn't all about that until they told us their plan WAS to murder us, so then I felt less bad about it.
Next we went to the lower city with a buch of Xolgaths. We met a relativly nice one, he revealed a big weird plot involving a mimic as an alter faking being a god and a super-evil xolgath duping the rest of her tribe. Long story short, we made a deal with the mimic, killed the leader of the cult, installed the kinda-nice Xolgath as the leader, and the mimic gave us the other half of the artifact.
Lots of combat, so not so much shenanigans this time. Negotiating with the mimic was probably the highlight. Oh, and we fought a troop of Xolgaths and they rolled two nat 1s against the Kinetisist's AoE attacks and died terribly.
@VampByDay
As a pro-GM I'm super invested in getting the player feedback end of the scale, and sometimes getting that from MY OWN players is like pulling teeth, so thank you very much for your impressions!
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Alright, another session, another update.
We finally got to the big house Tolorr party that we all were actually here for. The guy who stole the artifact (it's a clan dagger) from a few sessions ago that we went down and got it back with showed up in disguise, and asked for our help once again to convince some of the people there that he deserved a second chance. A lot of people were there, but the people we had to convince were:
Bulgra-The Matriarch of Clan Tolorr, a kindly but stern elderly dwarf
Rosha Coppervein: A Dwarf archivist and scholar (who actually got me into the party in the first place)
Ria-Oread Gnome who is a geophile and also obsessed with stealing waffles
Valhasak-A Lizardfolk mystic who dislikes pomp and circumstance
And Ysgir (spelling?) a super dower priest
Because we had already met Ria and she had given us some of our early missions, we talked to her first to get the ball rolling. Arisa? (our Kinteticist) decided that Bulgra was her 'gram gram' and spent much of the night trying to influence her. I went after Rosha and spent most of the night 'talking shop' with him about arcane, library, academic subjects as he got continually more and more sloshed. Katya worked on Ria, and Scrimjour (Pickle) worked on Valhasak. The two talked about different religious magics and how dwarves could learn a lot from Lizardfolk. Pickle was also trying to avoid family (both Arisa and Pickle are clan Tolorr.) We tried to influence the priest once, but he was super rude and standoffish.
The night started off rough, but we eventually managed to do some convincing. The highlight of the night was the LARP/Battle recreation, where the attendants brought out tables, chairs, and desks to act as terrain pieces, and even a fake castle facade. Katia and Arisa acted as bodyguards for Bulgra, recreating some important scene where an elederly general needed support to win the day. Pickle deliberately goaded Ysgir by casting him as a villain and a heretic against the Dwarven Pantheon, and then deliberately getting historical facts wrong just to make him even more angry ("I even call upon the non-dwarven gods to aid me, Caden Calyean, I beseech you" "He wasn't even a god yet!" "Aroden then" "Him neither! ARGH!") Then Ysgir attacked Pickle which just made him look worse. I teamed up with Rosha and we reenacted a couple of -battle-mages, the climax of which involved me casting JUMP to fly 30 feet in the air, and come down with my larp stick on Ysgir.
Arisa finally managed to convince Bulgra to our side when she used base kenesis (and a crafting check) to make a small puppet stage out of stone for Bulgra, as apparently she (or at least our version of her) likes putting on puppet-plays for the little ones to show history. Bulgra also (as part of RP) presented Arisa with a god-awful crochet-ed ugly 'midwinter festival' sweater.
In the end we won influence on everyone except Ysgir, who started trying to cane a VERY drunk Rosha to death but I intervened, and he was escorted out by security. In the end, with our testimonials, Bulgra welcomed her errant grandchild (the guy who stole the clan dagger) back into the clan.
The next day were informed that we had to go get the permission of the spirits to welcome him back into the clan, which involved an atonement-like ritual. He asked for our help again, and we helped him study for ten hours and then do the ritual. Something went screwey, and we had to fight a few ghost . . . things, but that fight was over quick and we got to meet the ghost of the Sky King himself!
Basically he said that history has been whitewashed, and that his greatest wish was that clan Tolorr reflect the true accuracy of what had happened He charged us (the party, not the repentant thief) with fixing this misconception of the quest for sky by finding his tomb. To do this, we have to talk to someone who saw the cave worm that wrecked the gnome village (evidently, that cave worm knew the sky king back in the day). And the cave worm can lead us to the tomb.
End of the session.
Fun things about this session:
-In the first session, Ria steals your waffles off your plate. We forgot her name, but were reminded of her when the GM mentioned that she was the 'waffle-stealer.' Since one of her influence skills is 'Crafting' we have decided that she has the Gnome Obsession feat, and her obsession is waffles (after all, you use crafting for food). The GM had her constantly stealing waffles at the party, and her biggest dream in life was to find a stone that generated waffles, which Arisa was able to do by using Base Kenesis to make a stone that sprouted stone waffles.
-During the party, as part of the role-play influence check, I told Rosha my character's motivation (basically, that my character's father had died of exhaustion making a magical hammer for a great hero to break back a horde, and that the song of the tale, and the official history, did not reflect my father's sacrifice.) Rosha said he'd look into it. Surely enough, the next day when we went to the archives, the GM made sure he was there, nursing a headache and also looking into proving my case in order to fix the history books! Super fun, and great piviot from the GM!
-While researching the ritual, one way to research them is to go into this museum hall and look at paintings. I'm pretty sure that we are just supposed to infer what to do from the paintings, but the GM made them moving paintings like in Harry Potter that we had to talk to in order to get information. This led to a lot of fun role-playing.
-Another bit of fun RP when we were researching the ritual. We found out that the Sky King didn't want to Genocide the orcs on the quest for sky, and his xenophobic priest friend may have talked him into it. We joked that we found the following transcript from the first interaction between the Sky King and the Orcs when they first met.
(Ancient Stone Tablet Transcript)
Sky King: Hello, fine sirs, I know we are not of the same race, but we would like to pass through your lands.
GM: Roll a diplo-
Priest: FIREBALL!
Sky King: Wait, what?
GM: *sigh* Roll for initiative.