Gaming in Feb 2023

Having to take a lot of odd days off work before the end of the leave year in March, I thought I would be able to get to some of the regular weekend games I normally have to miss.  Of course, it didn't work out that way...

• 4 Feb - Rambling Through the Shudders - (Dungeon Crawl Classics)
• 7 Feb - The Evils of Illmire - (Old School Essentials)
• 15 Feb - The Evils of Illmire - (Old School Essentials)

Rambling Through the Shudders

A one-off using Dungeon Crawl Classics rule system.  I'm not sure what I make of DCC.  The system itself seems nice, but the (admittedly less than half a dozen) games I've played seem thin.  This is probably because they were one-off 0-Level funnel games with the sole intent of winnowing out characters.

In this game, four of us set out with four characters each, we met ghosties and were subsequently reduced to five characters between us.  So far so good - meh!  But it was an enjoyable evening and a good session.

The DM is giving some thought to running another game with our newly-levelled characters and my regular group is also signed up for some DCC tournament action, so I may get a better feel for it all in the near future.   [Sadly, since I wrote this at the beginning of the month, I've heard that the tournament is off as only two teams signed up for it.  Nevertheless, there may be opportunities for more DCC action as the year progresses.]

The Evils of Illmire

• 7 Feb - Session 3: Let's Give the Elf a Big Hand

The party picked up the pieces following the death of Darius, the more flamboyant of our thieves.  They continued on towards the Loggers' Camp, where they were welcomed with hospitality by Rigdorf.  He told them more of the district's lore and offered them a quest - to stop the raids by the pesky fishfolk.  He even lent them one of his crew - the half-orc Yancy (new PC) - to help in their search for Yorivar, the missing Druid.

Deciding to carry on with this search before taking up any more side-quests, the party skirted around the Impenetrable Thicket, avoided the Misty Lake, and ended up stumbling across the Lost Crypts.

These they entered, immediately encountering a group of hostile culitsts.  Having fought them off, they attempted to interrogate a captive who, though he spouted some interesting doctrine about The Fearmother, gave little information of practical use before managing to comit implausible suicide.  Perhaps the items recovered from the bodies would give more clues...

Delving further in, the party discovered puzzles and iconography that suggested that the crypt-builders had some affinity with raccoons.  They discovered that the crypts weren't empty, having to fight off two determined fire beetles and later finding a half-rotted mummy.  (Much hilarity, when a disembodied hand grabbed at the leg of the Elf paddling in the mirky crypt-pool.) 

We wound up the session with the party trying to navigate a skull-lined room, which they guessed might be a classic step-in-the-wrong-place-and-get-an-arrow-trap, and then confirmed the hard way.

• 15 Feb - Session 4: Did Someone Say "Skeletons"?

Exploration of the crypts followed.  The party carefully (and slowly!) navigated the trapped room, only to find that the next one contained two Guardian Skeletons.  These they fought, rather than retreat back into the potentially leathal room (they didn't trust several hints that they'd disengaged the mechanism). 

 

The Guardians were - naturally enough - guarding the final room, which contained the tomb of the chief of the Racoon Tribe.  Unfortunately, he was also an Undead Spellcaster and a rather tough cookie.  In the fight that followed, not only did they loose their only remaining NPC -  Jonas Redeye the Goatman - but also out longest-surviving PC - Eldar the Thief.  One other PC was serverely wounded and unconsious, and another had received an arrow in friendly-fire.

Sensibly, the survivors decided to hunker down and spend the night barricaded in the tomb room.  Our Friar was able to apply healing herbs and, after a night's rest, call upon divine healing.  Despite strange nightmares, everyone rested and even had the time to rig up prank traps with frying pans.

Cheiftan's tomb looted, time to go home you'd think?  No! Our intrepid crew pressed on...

Further corridors, further rooms....

One contained five more animated skeletons, which were successfully turned by the Friar and ran off into a dead-end.  Rather that leave them harmlessly bumping away into the wall, the party decided that it was best to pick them off one-by-one in case they became unturned later.  Of course, the party had seen a lot of action, and it only took one good hit from a skeleton to kill Yancy our Half-Orc Lumberjack.

Two PCs and an NPC down, and you'd think that it might not be best to open any more doors.  Or, if you did and there was a sarcophagus in the room, to keep clear of it.   Especially, it contained the skeleton of the tribe's pet Dire Racoon...

Our final casualty of the day was good old Friar Ignatius Luncheon.

Of the five PCs and one NPC who'd entered the crypts, only two were still alive.  Now it was time to go home.

Gaming in Feb 2020

After the drought, then the flood!

Face-to-Face

At the FLGS

On 9 Feb we got one of our occasional games of Dungeon Crawl Classics in.  I've written about that elsewhere.

Sunday 16 Feb reverted back to our more usual Barrowmaze.  For some reason after encoutering five Giant Centipedes attacking a Giant Toad we rescued it and decided to take it back to our stronghold where we're nursing it back to health.  We haven't gone so far as to name it yet...

On 29 Feb we had our last trip to the Barrowmaze before the (in-game) six month break for the rainy season.  This marks the end of our fourth in-game year of the campaign! 

For the first time in several sessions we actually entered the Barrowmaze rather that exploring the mounds on the Barrowmoors.  Much fun was had, loot was found, and new stuff added to the map.

No, we didn't go through this doorway!

The Home Team

For one reason and another we hadn't met to to play our Hole in the Oak mini-campaign since before Christmas.  However, on 21 Feb we met up at The Games Table to play a few boardgames (the main game was Ticket To Ride, with Battle Sheep as our warm-up and Exploding Kittens as the wrap-up).  I asked whether we wanted to carry on with The Hole in the Oak and possibly take it a little further: everyone seemed up for this.  I think I'm going to suggest we alternate between RPG and Boardgame nights (it'd be nice if we could do it weekly, but I suspect the diaries won't align).

Sadly, the RPG session we had planned for the last week of the month was again cancelled due to Real Life.  So I haven't yet had a chance to test the Dolmenwood Players' Guide.

On-Line

The Black Hack

I wrote about the games we played in the first half of the month here following the death of my long-term character (5th Level thief) Bil Lee.  After discussions with the GM, I was all prepared to introduce Bil's hapless cousin, taken from his cushy job in the Monkey Cabaret to serve at the pointy-end of Tong business as he was the last surviving male relative able to uphold family honour.

Bolton the Mage

However, our next session wasn't in Mudharbour, but another town of the setting.  So, I thought, I'll play with my reserve character.  And I've fallen for him!

I think the moment Bolton the Mage came to life was when were were required to stop and take rations (one of the results on the encounter table).  Bolton hadn't got any of his own, so a fellow offered one of his (and asked me to roll the Usage Die).  In one fell swoop, the rations were gone.  Suddenly, he became this louche Caspar Gutman/Nero Wolfe figure.  The Fat Mage of Purbury was born!

Google helped by coming up with this fantastic image (which is apparently concept art for Assassin's Creed).  And Dave has created some house-rules for cigar smoking.

The session itself was fun.  After the experiment in the Hive, we returned to more tried and tested ground, pulling of a heist (using more of Dave's house-rules).  We were employed by Lady Elvira Bund, a local femme fatale, to regain an artifact that the local theives' guild have stolen from her father (she didn't realise that we'd pulled of that heist too and indirectly killed her father).

Lady Elvira Bund

It all went very well, mainly due to the groundwork that the heist rules allow us to do in advance (ret-conned, it true heist movie style).  After minor tusssles with the thieves and gnolls, we recovered the artifact and much other loot.  Some of us gained a new patron: though one party member who was on a quest for redemption revealed that he had been involved in the death of Lady Elvira's father and was immediately killed by her.  This worked out well in the end - part of his quest was 'to be given a second chance' and he was revived by his goddess.

We also had another session in another part of the world, where we had anold-fashioned dungeon-crawl under the ruins of a Temple (complete with portal to Another Place and encounters with alligators and kobolds).

Call of Cthulhu

Our second session of the Forget-Me-Not scenario took place on 9 Feb.  It moved on from the slow start of the first session (slow as in 'building-up tension' rather than 'boring').  The party now know who they are, that one of their number is missing and have several leads to follow up.  In addition we had a major outbreak of temporary insanity (a bit of mud-wrestling and pistol-whipping) and coughing up of wriggling things.

Andy had recorded the play 'for training purposes'.  He since (with our acquiescence) decided to broadcast it on his Podcast. 

Episode 1: The Cornfields of Your Mind
Episode 2:

I'm playing Charlie (the one who doesn't speak in the first episode!).

The Legendary 9 Febuary 2020

The observant will have noticed that 9 Feb was a busy day for me!  I played DCC at The Games Table from Noon until 4pm, Call of Cthulhu on-line from 6-8pm, and then the Black Hack from 8-11pm.  I don't anticipate being able to carry off such feats often, though I think the stars will aleign about every six to eight weeks.

At Moonricket Bridge: A DCC Game

Today our face-to-face group had one of our (fairly) occasional games of Dungeon Crawl Classics at The Games Table.

The previous games I'd played had been Level 0 Funnels, where you start with four Level 0 characters of no particular merit and they are eventually picked off.  The survivors have gained enough experience to proceed to Level 1... 

One of the things I quickly found out today is that Level 1 characters are only slightly less squishy than Level 0s!  Sadly we had a TPK on our first time out.

I like DCC, there's a lot of interesting stuff involved in it.  But the size of the rules and the amount of scrambling about trying to find what one wants (to say nothing of the number of bookmarks needed for simple play) makes me appreciate how well-thought-out the lay-out and simple lines of Old-School Essentials is.   The scenario we played, Moonricket Bridge, is a short one (but no less lethal for that!).  This was just as well, as I think we spent as much time discussing and trying to interpretate the rules as we did in actual play.  Obviously there's something wrong there. 

This might improve as we play more often.  Our GM promises that this is the first of a number of loosly-linked modules (the Shudder Mountains setting) that we'll be exploring.  As she has volunteered to run a DCC module she's written at the UK Games Expo, she's got every incentive to get some practice in!

In summary, today was enjoyable (and any chance to get a face-to-face game in shouldn't be sneezed at), but the rules-scrambling was a little frustrating.

Solo Dungeon Crawl #1: Concept and Prep

For domestic reasons I've been unable to go along to our RPG group for a couple of months now, and am unlikely to be able to in the near future.  I even had to abandon the Call of Cthulhu session I was going to run, despite having had quite some fun with the prep, which was a great disappointment to me.  But such is life.

So I'm going to try some solo gaming (in part inspired by the Roleplay Rescue Podcast, which I've been following for some time).  A lot of the most fun bits of RPGs can't be done solo of course, but some can.  I'm going to concentrate on an old-fashioned dungeon crawl.  .

I'm going to try a randomly-generated sandbox (so no theme - 'Temple of the Red Lich').  I've no idea if it will work or not.  It may just turn into "You walk into a room and see Monster X", but even that will be some practice at combat and will occupy me for a little while.  It may make me think a little about what lies beyond dungeon creation.

As regular readers will recognise, my initial thoughts are heavily influenced by my experience of Barrowmaze.

Fluff

Lord Hamar  (Artist: Nate Hallinan)

Lord Hamar has decided to bring Civilization to the southern reaches of his domain.  Unfortunately, his predecessors haven't been so enlightened and allowed the South to operate as a number of semi-autonomous communities.  He has a large number of dissents waiting to be relocated and employed in agrarian pursuits, but before the expensive resettlement programme begins, various trouble-spots need to be cleared.

The government has appointed several Factors in the region and have made it known that they will give adventuring parties licence to clear out a such trouble-spots.  Bounties may be paid, and adventurers will be allowed to keep any loot they acquire through their licenced activities.

The approach to Haybrook

A factory has been established in the village of Haybrook and our party has acquired the licence to explore the dungeon that lies beneath Stone Hill.

The Factor and his assistant

The Adventurers

Now I could create a party of mid-to-high level Heroes, well-matched and kitted out with all sorts of singing swords, but that isn't my style of play.

I like the idea of PCs not being heroes, just people who for their own reasons (possibly heroism, who knows?) are going in search of experience and treasure.  If they survive, they may eventually be what we term as heroes, but at the moment, they're just getting by.  I rather like the concept of the Dungeon Crawl Classic 'Funnel' - that is an adventure where each player starts with a stable of 0 Level characters (butchers, bakers and candlestick makers), most of which are expected to die, but one or two of whom will survive and graduate to Level 1.  I may incorporate some DCC features into my solo gaming, but not yet.

So what I've done is to roll six characters using the B/X Essential rules (I'll graduate to Old School Essentials - the upgrade - once I get my hard-copy).  I've rolled 3d6 in order with no point transfer then chose classes based on the results.  I know that's harsh on the character, but I think that the inevitable weaknesses generated fit in with the 'ordinary Joe' concept.

I intend to keep a pool of six adventures, and for each crawl to (randomly?) select four.  When a character dies, I will roll another for the pool.  For the initial pool I stuck with the basic B/X Essentials classes.  I know I ran the risk of getting six consumptive magic users, but in the end I ended up with a cleric, a dwarf, a thief, an elf and two wizards.  Not a bad mix.  When a character dies (and regular readers will know that I experience that a lot), I will roll a new member of the pool.  With these new characters I will have the option of adding Advanced Classes.

Our starting characters