Endless Bag of Games

Since the issue was handled in smooth manner so from tomorrow on, I will once again continue as the Merchant’s Domain campaign’s Dungeon Master. Easy solution and doesn’t need lots of work in order to pull off.

We still need to discuss about my ability run only the session every other week, but let’s discuss that tomorrow. One thing that comes to my mind is that we could use that time also the play some boardgames if people are interested. Shops are full of excellent board games just itching to be picked up

Since there has been most interesting discussion within our group, I decided to clear things up – at least in my own campaigns – what it really means when we get bored of our character or our characters simply die. So without further ado, let’s take a look of our new rule:

If a player wants to change his characters, without any particular reason and is willing to sacrifice the fluency of the game with the change, he will create his new character single level lower than the majority of the group. The negative levels last four sessions and skipping a session does not count. However, the rule of cool still applies which means that changing your character is still possible without negative levels, but you must make effort to make it happen fluently. If you follow the rule of cool, you can make your new character with the same experience level as your previous character. In either case, it is up to player to develop ways of implementing his new character to the game, NOT the dungeon master’s. After all, it is the dungeon master who says is it ok or not…

So there you have it. This seems reasonable enough since it encourages you to stay on your character, but does not punish the ones who really want to create a new character. This house rule or clarification just forces you to create a deeper character, avoids sudden mood changes etc. Opinions are welcome. Prove me wrong, challenge me and perhaps we alter it a bit in order to make it more fluent..

I just want to say that I hate 4e rituals and magic.

Here is the recap of the session on Thursday:

Players were asked by Rolo Gemcutter to go on an isle of Mintarn to locate old dwarf mage Gerin Sugrerblade, an old friend of him. Because he is the one currently holding on to the powerful crystal of Frigid Eternum in his remote tower in orc infested Island of Mintarn. Heroes were given some potions to fight the cold in the frozen land and a magical telescope to find the tower which is hidden by strong illusion magic to fool the orcs. Also they were given a small sailing ship called “Countess I” with an able woman captain Krik and a crew. The party was not stunned at all to learn that the captain was a woman and instead of mocking her, Ilyas was trying to hit on her with his swordmage magnetism. Much seen and seafared captain was not impressed about Ilyas’s stories about the seasnake in his pants.

Gildin, the dwarf fighter, asks from one of the sailors if he could use some time learning to crew the ship and Kriv spends most of the days training combat manouvers on the deck. Ilyas and Dabbil exchange rituals below the deck.

During the travel, the party met an another passanger aboard the ship; middle aged Angus Araahiel. A big sized man in a robe locked in his cabin doing research on some leaves. The party knocked on his door in need of one of his boxes in the cargo hold for a table. The arrogant and stubborn man was refusing to give them any of his valuable leaf boxes and closed the door. Ilyas knocked again on the door and as soon as the man opened he punched him in the face and threw him a gold piece for the trouble and took one of his boxes. As he was knocked back by the hit, his handsome human facial appearance was seen behind the heavy robes hood. Dabbil the wizard gnome was the only one who noticed that the man had a deep scar around his neck and from the neck down of the scar was greenish and the thick skin like it could be infected or a part of some other race. Angus was too surprised to fully oppose this barbaric assault of his personal sanctity.

Shortly after Angus come to the deck to demand amends from the captain and Ilyas for this insult but is mostly confronted with laughter of the crew and more threats from Ilyas. The next day Ilyas goes to apologize to the man and feels sorry about bad start and they start to talk little and finds out that the man is a using scientific methods to studying the effects of Feykind on the flora and fauna in the world. He is interested also in the party’s gnome, Dabbil and asks to do some basic tests and to talk to him. Ilyas relays this message to Dabbil that Angus wants to do some horrific and terrible tests on him but wise Dabbil is able to see past his bluff. Reluctantly Dabbil goes to speak with Angus but refuses go give any samples or let him strike some blood out of him, even when Angus promises small reward.

Next day the party is alarmed to the yell from the deck: “New Amn’s Warship is tailing us!” The countess is a faster and smaller ship and could outrun the large heavily armer warship but if damaged by any hits from the cannons they would have no chance. The captain ask’s heroes oppinion about the matter, “Usualy they just want to check who is sailing here since there is some trouble with the pirates in thies waters and trying to avoid them raises suspicious.” Small argument follows what should be done and suddenly big boom is heard as the warship fires its front cannon as a warning over the ship. Theyr options are to hide in the ship and let the ship maby full of werewolfs catch them or try to avoid hits and outrun them. They manage to scare the crew so much that the crew forces the captain to try to run from them. Short race that will delay the journey little follows but afther few shots from the front the warship is allmost out of range and turns to give them full broadside of cannon fire but luckily none hit the ship and countess wins the race. Kriv decides to climp up to the crows nest and lecture on the man who let the Amn warship sail so close to them without giving any warning. The scary man crumbles before the dragonborn and confesses that he fell a sleep during his watch. Later in the evening the man is whipped in front of the whole crew as a punishment.

Few cold, foggy and boring days sailing on the open sea, the party is alerted to the deck by screams at midnight. The ship has run on ice and is stuck the crew starts to chop the ice around the ship with axes when Kriv the dragonborn decides to help them with his breath of fire. The seamen thank him for the help and stop working as the dragon man is now doing all the hard work. Unfortunately Kriv needs a short rest after every breath so his praises are short lived. After some time the crew and heroes decide to wait for the morning to see if this ice is allready part of the island or just some ice floe. In the morning when the fog has cleared and sun starts to shine they see peaks of Mintarn island in the distance across the icy floe. The heroes decide to leave by foot and tell the captain that they will contact them when they need a ride.

The island of Mintarn is turned to harsh, barren and cold land almost stipped of its grand forrests. The middle of the island is the largest mountain and the home of Gildins clan. On the peak Mint of this large mountain is still working volcano that has caused the earth around it to melt and form few lakes. East and west peaks of the map are smaller than the one in middle and south part of the map still has small forest where human settlement was located before the orcs came. Only in the shadow of the mountain the heroes can hope to find some cover from the cold winds, but the mountains are also populated by the orcs. Using some of the potions from rolo the party slowly adventures foward in the deep snow toward the east end of the island since that is where the tower of Gerin is told to be by Rolo. At night fall heroes find out that none of them remembered to buy any tents but using ritual “Prepare campsite” they manage to make the camp some what safe place to spend the night and whole day Dabbil was using spell: “Prestidigation” to clear theyr tracks on the snow they are leaving, the party is hard to spot or follow.

Howling of a lonely wolf are heard through the night as the moon and stars are at theyr brightest. Suffering from the cold and snowblindness the party continues to push on deeper into the island and decided to avoid the mountains and go from the northern pass to eastward. Second morning they discover some tracks of a humanoid creature walking alone, thies are difrent kind of tracks from the tracks of orcs they have seen before. Gildin optimisticly sees them as a tracks of dwarf. Maby some of his clan has survived or not ran away? They decide not to follow the tracks leading to big mountains in the middle of the island. Third morning when more then half of the potions has been spend and only slow progress toward the tower that they cannot even yet see has been made Ilyas decides to use another ritual: “Endure elements” to cover the whole party from effects of cold and heat. It negates the threat of this harsh land almost completly.

Later that day they come to the edge of fast flowing four feet wide river. They decide to try to cross it here as Ilyas uses magic and flyes over the river with no trouble. Kriv and Gildin trying to holding a rope tight between the west bank and Ilyas alone in the east bank Dabbil uses the rope to cross the river. Unfortunately when he is middle of the river his grip on the frosty rope slips and he falls to the fast flowing river. Dabbil finds out he is not a great swimmer while the others in the party try to run in the deep snow after him and throw him a rope but the river is faster and soon Dabbil sinks below the surface. Dabbil tries to hold his breath but after a minute trying to swim in the river he starts to drown and panic.

He tries to hold on to the bottom of the river to slow down but the loose little stones make that almost impossible. By lucky miracle he manages to slow down his speed and swim to the surface jsut where the other party is running. He tries to grab the rope but fails to hold on and is now again running with the river, the coast is getting near and the large ice floe’s near the rivers end would be a death trap to end under one of them. The heroes get one more chance to throw the rope to Dabbil before he is out of theyr reach, Dabbil grabs it. He endures the rivers strenght and manages to hold on to the rope and is finaly pulled to the shore.

—

Note to my players, everyone had great roleplaying in this session so add 200 roleplaying points of exp to the exp you gained from this session. We ended so hastly that i forgot to give exp from the happenings aboard the Countess I

It seems that we’re going to miss few sessions in a row if we don’t arrange something in order to fill the “session gap”. Next Sunday 25.10.2009 I have to visit Jyväskylä again, so unfortunately I also have to skip the next Sunday’s session. However I’m still willing to arrange a session during the week. So how about it?

Next Thursday? 17.00 – 21.00? Thursday seems to be the only day that is suitable for me during the week. Comments as soon as possible, so The Mac knows to prepare.

Tomorrow, Sunday 18.10.2009 we don’t have a session due personal reasons. If somebody comes and picks up the key today, you can still have the session without me though.

-Make-

This post contains MAJOR SPOILERS for anyone thinking to play the Misguided Ambitions so for Gamemaster eyes only. I thought I’d give a report how did our Misguided Ambitions Demo tryout went from the perspective of a DM to give an idea how it works, what mistakes I made, and some general advice for those planning to run it.

We chose premade characters, I’m not going to use the character names but use their disciplines instead as their names would mean nothing to you. So there were four PC characters: Ork Beastmaster, T’skrang Swordmaster, Human Nethermancer and a Windling Thief. As normal Misguided Ambitions begins with Elder Fennon approaching them with the matter of missing lumberjacks, we began our game with a memory within the kaer in order to bring more feeling what’s Earthdawn all about. The memory was about a last practice matchup against young warriors within the kaer, before our heroes set out to the world. So we opened our bags of dice and rolled for initiative.

The actual battle system was great; we tried even the optional way to go with the initiatives. It worked well and I liked the feeling about everything happening the same time. This Initiative based battle brought excitement to the game. You can take a look how it works on Earthdawn 3rd edition Player’s Guide p.216 The battle went down quickly, and only the beastmaster lost few hit points. All in all, it went very well though we tended to forgot that declaring actions became before the initiatives.

Then the memory was over and our heroes were once again patrolling near Tsennan. Soon Elder Fennon approached and presented the task to find out about the delay of the lumberjacks, the heroes took the quest without a doubt. They set out on their journey and soon arrived to the camp. The beastmaster quickly learned about the amount of tracks in the clearing and the nethermancer noticed the bloodprints in one of the tree stumps. Since what ever happened in the camp apparently had happened recently, the beastmaster quickly started tracking and they moved on.

Soon they stumbled upon the carcass of one of the lumberjacks. The corpse was Geleem, and his chest was cut open with an instrument. The beastmaster told others that “No animal especially goes for heart or lungs, since they were clearly missing and here are no teeth-marks.” The nethermancer told others that there are some horrors who used parts in order to create fowl constructs. Other Legends tell of blood rituals that are fatal to an unwilling participant, greatly enhancing the ritual’s power by tapping the victim’s life force. They proceeded with extreme caution.

Soon they approached a clearing and saw some movement. There was a narrow entrance to a cave in the face of a rock formation that has overgrown during the past centuries. To the trees next to the entrance, an ork, a dwarf, and two humans are bound, and they are guarded by rag-tag creatures that once may have been humans, but don’t look quite alive any more. The nethermancer reattuned some spells to his grimoire and they were getting ready for battle. It was imperative to save the lumberjacks as quickly as possible. So it began our nethermancer casting spells among the cadaver men and others attacked directly. Soon the cadaver men were down. Actually, I increased one additional cadaver men to the scene but still it was a piece of cake for the players to overcome the threat. I especially enjoyed about the nethermancer’s Undead Struggle talent.

After the lumberjacks were released they explained that after they were defeated and bound together by a rope connecting their necks, the lumberjacks and their horse were led to this site, taking some of the tools for harvesting lumber with them. On the way, the horse kicked out and hit one of the cadaver men in the head. Te cadaver man few into a rage and killed Geleem, but their captor, a troll, somehow managed to stop the cadaver man from killing them all by commanding the cadaver man in a booming voice. He then slit Geleem’s throat, collected the dead human’s blood, opened his chest, and ripped out some of Geleem’s organs. After that incident, the cadaver mens’ hands were bandaged, presumably so they would not accidentally kill the captives again. Arriving at the current location, the captives were bound, and the troll went into the cave. After some time, he returned and took Tartuk and the horse. The heroes needed not to hear more and they proceeded to the cave.

The windling thief went first and was luckily able to spot a trap and barely disable it before the others triggered it. For a while they delved deeper until they came come upon dim light at the end of the tunnel, which widened into a cave: In the light of torches on stands and stuck into crevices in the walls, you see the tall figure of a troll clad in piecemeal metal armor. His already impressive frame is brought to nine feet tall by the horns protruding from his head, and he whispers in a tongue unknown to you as his long arms weave complex patterns over the cavern floor. No, not the cavern floor. It seems an indentation is filled with… blood… and the carcass of a horse is lying next to it. You notice the blood’s coppery smell, and the surface of the pool of blood glistens red. It almost appears as if something is moving in there, causing ripples. So they finally encounter the BBEG and his monstrous construct Tartuk whose face is no more than a twisted façade now, and from his elbows, axes protrude instead of forearms and hands. As he walks out of the pool, you realize his legs have been replaced with those of a horse, and hooves clack on the cavern floor.

The battle was fierce as the beastmaster took the most of the heavy beating. The windling tried to inflict damage to the troll, but the troll’s armor negated most of the hits. Swordmaster did a good solid job inflicting damage to both, Troll Ladras and Tartuk. When the battle was over, the heroes and lumberjacks had a debate should the troll be killed, but eventually they decided that he should be taken to Tsennan to answer his crimes. Nethermancer knew, that if the Troll was powerful enough to raise cadaver men by himself it would have wiped the floor with the heroes. There was something more powerful behind all this… (the picture is from Kratas: The City of Thieves)

So we concluded the demo. Everybody seemed to enjoy the system and had good time. The adventure was overall really a basic what have we here *gasp and then a cliffhanger sort of story and it provided everything necessary to try the game. The system was quite quick to learn and there wasn’t anything negative about it. I have liked the previous editions of Earthdawn very much and I like the third edition as well. I’m more than pleased to say my players that if we wish to play Earthdawn 3rd in the future, I’ll be more than happy to gamemaster that also.

Ok, here is the first journal entry that I thought to write since I had the inspiration. Today’s session included things that triggered some.. character deepening at least at some parts, so I decided to write a verse or two. It’s nothing special, but maybe the DM will appreciate that player contributes:

Outside, he found he had no idea where he was going. He walked past a burned alehouse once full of life; Just few houses from the place where stood the ruins of the dungeon where Nexus had vanished. He could feel the cold around him, the weight of winter that had finally arrived. Only then did he permit himself to stop, to take a breather and think. Ilyas Pachera was not a man short of determination. A wind swirled against him, tugging at his dark red cloak. During the last few months, a lot had happened. Now he had gotten himself tangled in something bigger than he wished. It was almost too much to bear, almost. Ilyas pulled up his hood and began to walk again. The afternoon was growing old and the sun was already low. The guild’s dungeon was hundred feet away, to his left three city guards were pushing grim body-cart slowly towards the simple cemetery Snowdown had. Ilyas didn’t feel sad because the loss of the guards. He felt frustration and anger. Where she had gone, he couldn’t follow and there, the silence of death was a more than one could ask for.

Ilyas found himself sitting on stairs gazing at his glaive. “It’s dull” he said with a mild tone wandering what it really meant. He had taken the weapon from his father, but he felt that the weapon itself did not do its full potential this way. The shining of the weapon had dimmed. Ilyas scratched his gruff beard. The spirit of the weapon needed a better vessel he thought; a new host to banish the memories of the previous life. Ilyas had been carrying the sins of his pasts until this day, his weapon sharing the burden. Today, when he found himself mourning for his companion, he decided that the time of change was at hand. He rose and knew what had to be done.

The smithy had seen it best days. The house was severely damaged during the burning, but the forge still was sound enough. A foul smell lingered in the air. The source was a slightly overweighed man crushed under one of the support pylons of the house. That didn’t bother him. There was a faint warmth still lingering in the forge. Ilyas swooped away the debris that had fallen over the tables. He pulled the weapon he had chosen to be the new extent of his will. Weapon which was no longer a sigil of the Pachera family, but a weapon wich was cruel enough to cause fear, but noble enough to bring hope. He set the great two handed blade to the fires of the forge. So he worked alone in silence, opening the essence of his glaive, opening the ancient scrolls containing magical inscriptions which were covered by the symbols of the dwarven god Moradin. He poured in to the weapon the essence of his familiar wolf, the spirit of the strong and the anger of the lost ones. He poured in all the malice that had been done to him, all the sorrow which had been burdening him. Moments turned to hours and every hour was a long as life-age. During those hours, Ilyas understood something and felt alive once again.
It was morning when he had finally finished. He stood panting gazing at his creation. The glaive was no more; the long shaft was the only thing what was left. The Pachera family heirloom’s magic had fused with the will of the familiar. Ilyas had given birth to something new, something fierce. He now had a special bond with his weapon. The blade was razor sharp, the balance was perfect. He sat down and felt satisfaction about himself and knew a name for his creation. It was no longer Pachera Deadbane what he was holding. It was The Howler: a perfectly balanced fullblade. He walked to the dungeon where he had seen her for the last time and struck the shaft of his glaive’s remains to the ground. “We will see you again, Nexus. Sooner or later… We will see you again and then the wolves shall howl and burdens of the pasts shall be lifted. I wish you shall be released, like you have released me today…”