Gaming in Dec 2020

• 2 Dec 2020 - Blackmoor(ish) (OSE) - On-line 
• 9 Dec 2020 - Blackmoor(ish) (OSE) - On-line 
• 20 Dec 2020 - Wasters (OSE) - On-line
• 23 Dec 2020 - Grimbo Grotto (Christmas on-off) - On-line
• 30 Dec 2020 - Blackmoor(ish) (OSE) - On-line

Blackmoor (OSE)

As mentioned in last month's round-up, our regular GM is taking a break from his duties, so we're having rotating GMs.  We're maintaining continuity of characters, but the setting is not strictly the same as Dave's Blackmoor hack.

This month it was my turn as GM (my PCs having gone to 'Shroomfest).

• 2 Dec

All they have to do is keep
Gwendolyn safe from harm...

The party rescued a damsel in distress and were taken home to meet 'her mother'.  They seemed to expect her to turn into a wolf at any minute, so didn't enjoy the tea, cake and lashings of ginger-beer as much as they might have.  But they agreed to accompany the young witch apothecary's apprentice on a foraging trip (on the basis that she is guiding them to an unlooted tomb of a Dwarven warrior).  What could possibly go wrong?

• 9 Dec

Death by heraldic beastie...

The group came across a group of Goatmen dragging a Halfling and a Dwarf along as prisoners.  After a rescue, the two were accepted into the party (they were PCs).  This was a decidedly bad idea.  The Halfling (Alignment: Chaotic Stupid) decided that it would be cool if he could creep up on two dozing Wyverns and tie their tales together.  Result: three PCs dead (in addition to one Retainer killed in the earlier encounter) and the rest scattered to the winds.

• 30 Dec

"Look's like goat's back on the menu boys!"

After our Christmas excursus (see below) we returned to the mission towards the Dwarven Tomb.  Giant vampire bats disposed of, the party came across a couple of Goatmen marking their territory*.  They put a well-crafted plan into action, killing the one with the paint-pot and toupee**, and capturing the other.  He was subsequently traumatised by the sight of the Halfling (literally) butchering his workmate and proved very helpful.

*Am I strange in that when I read on a random table of two Goatmen 'marking territory', I immediately see one with a pot and brush painting stones white, while the other loafs with a woodbine hanging from his mouth telling him what to do?

** Oh, I love random tables!

They took up position within striking distance of the Tomb (which they now knew to be the Goatmen's new base), only for an orc raiding party to pass by their camp.  The Dwarf's sense for treasure was all a-tingle, so rather than letting them go, they attacked.  At the cost of a dead Halfling, they now have almost as much*** treasure as their mule can carry.  They are thinking of abandoning their (vague) mission and missing friends, and heading home.

***Randomly rolled.

Wasters

• 20 Dec - written-up here

We took on a job to go and steal a muscle car from one of the gangs in The Wastes, but got nowhere near completing it.  Our first attempt lead to a masacre, with only one party-member surviving.  On the second, we were ultra-cautious, and only covered half the ground necessary.  But we made the Big Score, finding a stash of loot that was so hefty that we couldn't carry it all away.

Grimbo Grotto

• 23 Dec

As a Christmas treat we played this "Christmas Farcial Horror Aventure" written by Goblin's Henchman, and had an absolute blast.

The funniest thing was when the party (having captured a Gnome) asked if there was anything dangerous in the next room.  I had to say in my (Scouse) Gnome voice "Well, there's a Giant Putrid Gravy-Spewing Undead Turkey.").  It took me three attempts to say that without cracking up and (foolishly) they didn't believe him.

The scenario is Pay What You Want on DriveThru RPG.  I was worried how this might go down, but it proved to be the highlight of the month's gaming!

Gaming in Nov 2020

 

• 12 Nov - Blackmoor (OSE) - on-line
• 19 Nov - Blackmoor (OSE) - on-line
• 21 Nov - Wasters (OSE) - on-line
• 25 Nov - Blackmoor (OSE) - on-line

Blackmore (OSE)

• 12 Nov

Art by W W Denslow

Our current three-session delve into the Under-Booh concluded.  We retreated safely after completing our mission for the Grand Wizard of Booh and got a little more entangled in Halfling politics before reporting to the G-Wiz himself, who decided that there were bigger fish to fry.

My Cleric of 'Shroom levelled-up to Lvl 3.

• 19 Nov

Art by Vlad Voronchiukov

Following the events of the last session, the Grand Wizard wanted us to go to Vestfold to garner some intelligence.  As it happened he had a caravan (of giant snails) going in that direction which required guarding...  

We were ambushed by bandits (one of our long-standing PCs being killed) and encountered sprites in the Greenwood.

• 25 Nov

The conclusion of our caravan-guard mission.  We wrangled the Snails through forest, over river and across swamp.  On the way we met some very strange folk, a trio of Hags, and Giant Leeches.  All nasty stuff, leading to two character deaths.

Our regular GM is standing back for a little while as he's changing jobs (a couple of hundred miles apart), so to ensure continuity of the game, we've decided to rotate the GM-ing.  From next week it'll be my turn...

Wasters (OSE)

• 21 Nov - written-up here.

Artist unkown to me

A new game for me, though with some of the guys I've been playing with from the Discord.  Basically, a play test of a Cyberpunk RPG that being developed for B/X systems (in this case OSE) rules.  I talked about the set-up here.

In this session at least, there wasn’t a lot of ‘cyber’ and it was more of a post-apoc scavenging set-up.  That suits me fine.  Anyway, we went out into the ‘Wastes’ with a seek-and-return mission.  In effect a Hex-Crawl, in which as we went on, we generated a map (and thus set the scene for future sessions).  We had several encounters or near encounters with inhabitants – animals, muggers, gang-member and cops.  One player lost four characters! 

Gaming in October 2020

 

• 4 Oct - Blackmoor (OSE) - on-line
• 7 Oct - Blackmoor (OSE) - on-line
• 10 Oct - Boardgames - face-to-face
• 14 Oct - Blackmoor (OSE) - on-line
• 18 Oct - Without Warning (Call of Cthulhu) - on-line
• 21 Oct - Blackmoor (OSE) - on-line
• 25 Oct - Sunday in the Shire (Under Hill, By Water) - on-line
• 28 Oct - Blackmore (OSE) - on-line

Blackmore (OSE)

• 4 Oct

Back to the Abbey of Fitz.  We acquired war-dogs from passing trader and went back to clear out the ruins of the Abbey.  We found a large grizzly bear and the matriarch of the clan of Reavers we thought we'd cleared out.  Not all the dogs (or my PC) made it out, but we did rescue a mutilated unicorn.

• 7 Oct

There were spiders

In the Under-Booh.   Pluteus my Cleric gained an acolyte (Myxomycetes) and after much discussion we decided to go on a boggart hunt.

• 14 Oct

We continued our mission for the Grand Wizard of Booh to clear out the nest of Boggarts.  We were succesful in that, but unfortunately their hostages and one of our retainers died in the process (the last surviving hostage - and more importantly, "witness" - at the hands of our thief).  The retainer was the pretty-boy Klaus.

• 21 Oct

More exploration of the Under-Booh on behalf of the Grand Wizard.  In this one we finally took him up on his mission to destroy 'Outsider' eggs (after all, he had given us a Wand of Fire Balls to do this).  First though, we went back to the Shroom Shrine to collect some more mushrooms - Myomycetes, our Acolyte of Shroom, being transformed into a giant mushroom during one of the rituals.  

Sadly, we'd left the mission so long (weeks since we accepted it), that the eggs had hatched and wiped out the gang of Teddy Boy Halflings.  We battled with Facehuggers, but still haven't met Mother.  The session ended on a cliff-hanger, Holmund sending a Fire Ball into a pool filled with eggs.

• 28 Oct

A continuation of the last session.  We defeated the Outsiders but have been cut off from out usual exits.  Going around the long way, we ran into some (well-signposted) patches of Blackdamp - fatally.  The Zombie Cat remains a mystery.

Jason Connelly taks about the 21 and 28 Oct sessions on an episode of his podcast.

Under Hill, By Water

• 25 Oct

It's always fun to try something new, and this is one that I've been looking forward to since it came out.  I've written about it here.  Basically a pie-quest.

Board Games

• 10 Oct

The Home Group (or the majority of us anyway), met up at The Games Table for a evening of board games.  We played Scrawl (much better when you actually understand how to play), 7 Wonders and a opening couple of rounds of Pandemic to introduce some of us (including me) to the rules.  

Board games played in October: - 3

New games tried - 1

'Without Warning' (Call of Cthuhlu)

• 18 Oct 

This was an on-line session run as part of Miskatonic Repository Convention 2020.  It was the first play-test of a new scenario from Bill Adcock.  A routine flight to resupply an Early Warning Post in the romote Arctic leads to more than was expected...

Obviously influenced by 'The Thing from Another World' (but not slavishly so), this was great fun.

Blackmoor (OSE): No 3 - Vermin and Clockwork

Played online – 16 Sep 2020 

Dave is running games using Old School Essentials set in Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor.  Wednesday games have been the “main” quest of exploring the Under-Booh: Sunday games have been side quests. 

16 Sep 2020 Session: Centipedes and Rats 

 

Dave	Games Master
Me	Pluteus	Cleric of King ‘Shroom (Lvl 2)	Retainer:  Holmund the Mage (Lvl 1)
Spencer	Juss Overhere	Hafling (Lvl 1)	Retainer: Scutter (Lvl 1 Thief)
Seph	Sir Robert the Fearless	Fighter (Lvl 1)	Retainer: Eric (Lvl 0 Human)
Ian	Radlea of Booh	Halfling (Lvl 1)
Swiper	Ballard	Magic User (Lvl 1)
Guy	Dexter	Thief (Lvl 1)

 

Previously... 

I’d like to say that we started our session in media res, but our beloved GM (now the Professor), tells us the ‘in media res’ is always grammatically wrong and that “it’s in medias res (accusative) if you are going into the middle of things and in mediis rebus (ablative) if you are left in the middle”.  Does that set the tone?  I think so.

You can imagine what fun we have parsing rules or deciding whether the plural of arquebus is arquebi or arqubuses (it’s the latter).  We decided to use hackbut/hackbuts. 

So, we were in mediis rebus... 

 

The write-up of the previous session is here.  Some might suggest that my note-taking tailed-off towards the end.  I would point out that after Gandalf is killed and the rest of the Fellowship make a fighting exit from the Mines of Moria, they kill a roomful of orcs.  That is covered in a sentence.  I would suggest that we were in a similar situation. 

This Time in the Under-Booh... 

 

 

 

So, after the death of Scruffy and Scutter, we defeated the giant ants.  We made a half-hearted attempt to find their nest in the hope that it was lootable.  However, when we found it, it was far from empty – occupied by numerous creatures the like of which we had seen bite a dwarf in half.  We moved on and found a safe place to camp. 

 

The next day (Day 4 of the current delve) we continued our trek towards the northwest. 

 

We were surprised to bump into two new adventurers – Dexter, a thief, and Ballard, a magic user.  They were in the employ of the Tunnel Fighters’ Guide of Booh (for whom the rest of us had previously worked).  We exchanged information.  Hearing from us how dangerous the Under-Booh was proving, and of the rumour about the Clockwork Fortress, they agreed to join with us.  In return, they told us about the Guild’s secret camp – the Lonely Lodge – and entrance into the Under-Booh. 

 

We did consider leaving the Under-Booh and taking advantage of the Guild’s resources – possibly even travelling back to Booh overground.  After some debate, we decided that the Guild wouldn’t welcome our presence in a ‘secret camp’, and ask too many questions about our current employers.  We were still uncertain about how to handle conflicts between these Halfling factions 

 

The rest of the day was spent following the same passage to the NW.  It terminated at a crossroads, where we camped for the night.   

 

Ballard demonstrated an ability to read hitherto hidden Dwarven signs.  These read 

 

• “True Gnome” (NE passage) 

• “Bottomless Shaft” (W passage) 

• “Black Damp” (S passage) 

• “Clockwork Factory” (SE passage – the direction we’d come from) 

 

We realised that if we were to continue looking for the Battle Throne, we’d have to double-back on ourselves.  A whole day (Day 5) was spent doing this, before we camped at the junction with an unexplored passage leading eastwards.   

 

 

Again, we were attacked during the night – this time by three giant centipedes.  One was destroyed by Juss’ hackbutt, the others put to Sleep by Holmund before being despatched by Dexter (who was interested in extracting their poison).   

 

After further rest, what was left of Day 6 was spent travelling east into unexplored territory. 

 

 

 

Here we found a group of five giant rats chomping down on the bodies of four dwarves.  After fighting the rats, we stripped the bodies and moved on.  Coming to another junction, we decided the take the passage north in search of the elusive Clockwork Factory.  We left the dwarven workings into more natural passages, eventually coming to a cavern crossed by a raging river. 

 

 

Crossing this 80ft river took some finessing.  First, we stashed the loot we’d collected so far and tethered our trusty (but not very trusting) mule.  Then with a combination of our thief's climbing skills, and a lot of rope, we made a makeshift bridge which we were able to cross without mishap.  We were acutely conscious that we would be in trouble if we tried to make the return trip in a hurry. 

 

Pressing Northward our scout, Dexter, spotted some gems embedded in the wall.  Heedless of the noise he was making, Pluteus took a crowbar to them and managed to prise several out.  In doing so, however, he appeared to have alerted others to our presence.   

 

Three very large copper-coloured humanoids – clearly products of the Clockwork Factory – loomed out of the darkness.  A long battle followed, made more risky by the fact that Dexter became separated from the rest of the party.  Fortunately, he was able to use his agility and skill at hiding to good effect and the automata were defeated.