Post by slloyd14 on Dec 12, 2014 19:27:57 GMT
Hello all! I wrote an adventure for Dragonmeet and ran it there yesterday. It is called Holy Order and you can find the files here:
drive.google.com/folderview?id=0Bw3nCQKxLG5_WUdtRFNZQXJFU2M&usp=sharing
I played it with John from Red Dice Diaries (www.reddicediaries.com/#!about/c1t53) and also a player in the Broken Jade Campaign (www.arion-games.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=695&p=4338&hilit=broken+jade#p4338) and Dave from Dark Cleo Productions (www.darkcleoproductions.com/w/).
They both played on of the pregenerated characters - John played the Dwarf Warrior, which he called Grim and Dave played the Elven archer which he called Jim (Grim n' Jim!).
I added some extras in for them - they could each have an extra talent from this list: Eagle Eyed, Packhorse, Arcane, Natural Linguist. Grim took Packhorse and Jim took Eagle Eyed (my reasoning is here: www.arion-games.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=708&p=4351&hilit=talents+better+than+others#p4351)
I also let them select some bonus items (see the extra rules file for the complete list).
Grim took 2 bands of strength (+2 strength, +1 skill, +1 damage rolls for 30 mins each) and Jim took 20 barbed arrows (+1 damage rolls) and 6 arrows of accuracy (reduce any ranged attack penalties by 4). I wanted the items to help. I especially wanted to help out any archers, who in my last short game were outclassed by wizards and suffered a huge -5 penalty for firing into combat see here: www.arion-games.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=727&p=4397&hilit=barbed+arrow#p4397).
So we started. The heroes start off in Chalice, bidding farewell to Waldo the merchant whose caravan they have just guarded. Waldo is hoping that the people of Chalice will actually buy his Man-Orc sausages in their festival at the moment. He paid the heroes 100gp and off they went.
The festival is the Festival of Peace, organised by the temple of Usrel, goddess of peace. Things have been hairy recently, with the Trolltooth wars and all, but hopefully, this festival will be a good distraction.
The heroes make it to the square where the party is underway. A large stage has been erected outside the temple, where the beautiful high priestess of Usrel, Lunari. However, as she addresses the crowd, something appears in the sky. Jim used his eagle eyes to notice that it is a flying ship with the word 'Galleykeep' scrawled across the side in red paint. It hovers over the stage and black cloaked creatures jump off the side, causing the crowd to run away. The creatures head towards the priestess. She has two templars with her who draw their swords to defend her. Grim runs to the stage and Jim hits another one with an arrow. As it falls to the ground, its cloak hood falls off to reveal a goblin's face, but covered in scales. Mutant goblins!
The fight begins. Grim takes a swing at one goblin then kicks it in the nuts. He's heading for the priestess. Someone on the Galleykeep drops a rope ladder over the side, which Jim grabs. Thinking it's the goblins, he is pulled up. The templars are fighting off about 10 goblins while two have grabbed Lunari and are trying to drag her to the ship. Grim piledrives into them, knocking them all down. He picks up the priestess (using his packhorse talent) and carries her to the temple, where he throws her in. He orders a priest at the door to lock it and not open it until the screams have stopped.
Jim is on the ship with half a dozen surprised goblins. He stabs one in the head, causing them to flee. He then throws his lantern at the sail, which smashes against the mass, spilling its oil. He then ignites it with his burn cantrip (always love it when cantrips get good use).
The ship starts to fly off and Grim makes a running leap for another rope ladder. He grabs it and climbs on board to see the remaining mutant goblins trying to put out the fire that Jim created. They are not doing too well, getting burnt in the process.
While the goblins are freaking out, Jim goes under the deck to find some crates and a glass statue. He can sense that it is magic, but nothing else. Meanwhile, Grim interrogates a goblin who reveals that there is a lair of Evil wizards in the Moonstone Hills.
Eventually, the ship reaches a small hill surrounded by a trench and stops. Eager to find out what happened, Grim and Jim climb off and try to get across the trench. There is a bridge and a tightrope here. Jim tries the tightrope. As he approaches it, a leprachaun appears. He is called Finnegan O' Dinnegan and he challenges him to walk the tightrope. Jim fails and falls, but manages to avoid injury. He then has to make sure he doesn't slip on the highly polished stone floor of the trench before climbing up the trench. He succeeds. Meanwhile, Grim walks across the bridge. There are heads on the bridge that laugh at him, but he ignores it. They then get to the cave.
The first room has a large set of scales. One scale is white and one is black. There is a lever on the scales. There are two identical stones in the room. First they put a stone on the white one and pull the lever. They feel bad and lose 1 luck point. The lever is stuck, but the strong Grim dislodges it and then puts the other stone on the black balance. This makes them restore 2 luck points. Grim and Jim conclude that whoever owns this dungeon is neutral.
The next room contains 5 life sized tin soldiers who swing swords at intruders. Jim spots the one by the door and dodges his blow. The other four are protecting a small doll holding an iron key and wearing a gold necklace. Jim runs the gauntlet of the soldiers, making four dodge rolls. He fails most of them and takes a lot of damage. He drinks his potion of stamina, gets the key and gets back without being damaged.
The next room is a prison cell with Lunari in it. Confused, they approach her, but she makes no response. Using his healing, Grim realises that she has no pulse and Jim notices that she has a magical aura, but not in the way that spellcasters do. Rather that she is magic in the sense that magic items are magic. They leave her alone.
They then come to a room where there is a chest across a chasm. Grim jumps across, opens it to find a pile of cotton wool. When he picks it up, an iron key falls out. He takes it.
They then open a door to a large room to find six evil wizards around the table - Zagor, Zharradon Marr, Balthus Dire, Malbordus, The Snow Witch and Xorton Throg are sitting around a table, arguing. Zharradon Marr is trying (unsuccessfully) to get them to talk about something useful. Zagor, Dire, Malbordus and the Snow Witch are planning their next party, and Xorton Throg is being ignored by everyone because no one respects him (he doesn't even have his own solo book).
Grim and Jim leave them to it and investigate the rest of the dungeon - they find a games room and a fish pond and decide to go back to the wizards.
When they get back, they see Throg sulking in the corner. Malbordus and the Snow Witch are snogging. Marr is grumpily reading a book and the others are playing some war game. Jim sneaks past them and gets to the next room. Grim waits in the corridor.
Jim enters a large room with 3 doors. A voice says 'One door has your prize. The other two have goats. Well, actually, I thought goats are boring, so I found improved goats. Which door will you choose?'
Jim picks a door. The voice says.
'Now I will help you by opening a door that doesn't have your prize.'
Another door opens to reveal a CHIMERA! Not wanting to fight it alone, Jim runs into the next room. The chimera follows, stopping to breathe fire on Xorton Throg who bursts into flames and is reduced to ashes in seconds. That's not how people burn! It seems that it was a stuffed replica of Throg. Seeing this, Grim smashes his lantern on the floor and sets it alight. The other replicas run into the fire and also get torched.
Grim then puts his band of strength on and faces the Chimera (I reduced its stats to Skill 8 Stamina 14 since there were only 2 heroes), while Jim uses his arrows of accuracy to fire on it.
Grim kills it, but is wounded. They open the chest here to find it full of copper coins and junk (the whole lot is worth about 50gp). They then go into the other room. A voice says
'Welcome back. Now, do you want to change your mind about the door you want?'
They decide to do so. This is the Monty Hall problem, where changing your mind gives you a 2/3 chance of success and not changing it gives you a 1/3 chance of success. Seeing that the guys were still pretty healthy, I left it to chance. They would get the right door on a 1-4 on one die. They roll a 6 and another chimera pops out. They both fight it hand to hand and kill it, but their resources are pretty depleted. However, all they have to do is claim their prize, which should have been Lunari, but since they saved her anyway, I gave them 500gp, a vial of silver powder each (which is a dehydrated silver dragon) and something else (I can't remember, I made it up).
They head home. Grim uses his Packhorse talent to carry the chest and the Lunari replica back to Chalice where the temple, though puzzled, rewards them and holds a party. The two guys get knocked out and wake up in a giant glass bottle. They can see a man in green robes standing over them on a flying ship, which has stains of red paint on the side and the name 'Twice Shy' painted there in neat grey letters. The man says 'Aha! I have found some adventurers who passed my test. You'll come in handy in recovering the Pendulum of Fate for me. I'll teach those ruffians not to mess with the RIDDLING REAVER! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA'
Scene fades as ship flies off...
What I learnt:
Talents that seem useless on paper are not useless with imaginative players.
Low stakes tests are good for clues (the balance room)
John also worked out it was the Reaver (the neutral lovingness, the stuffed replicas - other subtle clues were the glass statue and the chimera (both appearing on the Twice Shy in the Riddling Reaver book) and the mutant goblins (the Reaver can mutate creatures).
I have run two games now, and in both of them, the players completely skipped the getting kitted up part in favour of action. I'm going to do shopping as part of character creation.
Improvising is needed. The guys came up with such a good plan to deal with the kidnappers at the beginning, I had to think of another way to get them to the lair and also what the prize will be at the end (it was supposed to be the priestess). I kept the replica in because I figured that the Reaver would have made her before the kidnap attempt and not known that it would have failed.
drive.google.com/folderview?id=0Bw3nCQKxLG5_WUdtRFNZQXJFU2M&usp=sharing
I played it with John from Red Dice Diaries (www.reddicediaries.com/#!about/c1t53) and also a player in the Broken Jade Campaign (www.arion-games.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=695&p=4338&hilit=broken+jade#p4338) and Dave from Dark Cleo Productions (www.darkcleoproductions.com/w/).
They both played on of the pregenerated characters - John played the Dwarf Warrior, which he called Grim and Dave played the Elven archer which he called Jim (Grim n' Jim!).
I added some extras in for them - they could each have an extra talent from this list: Eagle Eyed, Packhorse, Arcane, Natural Linguist. Grim took Packhorse and Jim took Eagle Eyed (my reasoning is here: www.arion-games.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=708&p=4351&hilit=talents+better+than+others#p4351)
I also let them select some bonus items (see the extra rules file for the complete list).
Grim took 2 bands of strength (+2 strength, +1 skill, +1 damage rolls for 30 mins each) and Jim took 20 barbed arrows (+1 damage rolls) and 6 arrows of accuracy (reduce any ranged attack penalties by 4). I wanted the items to help. I especially wanted to help out any archers, who in my last short game were outclassed by wizards and suffered a huge -5 penalty for firing into combat see here: www.arion-games.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=727&p=4397&hilit=barbed+arrow#p4397).
So we started. The heroes start off in Chalice, bidding farewell to Waldo the merchant whose caravan they have just guarded. Waldo is hoping that the people of Chalice will actually buy his Man-Orc sausages in their festival at the moment. He paid the heroes 100gp and off they went.
The festival is the Festival of Peace, organised by the temple of Usrel, goddess of peace. Things have been hairy recently, with the Trolltooth wars and all, but hopefully, this festival will be a good distraction.
The heroes make it to the square where the party is underway. A large stage has been erected outside the temple, where the beautiful high priestess of Usrel, Lunari. However, as she addresses the crowd, something appears in the sky. Jim used his eagle eyes to notice that it is a flying ship with the word 'Galleykeep' scrawled across the side in red paint. It hovers over the stage and black cloaked creatures jump off the side, causing the crowd to run away. The creatures head towards the priestess. She has two templars with her who draw their swords to defend her. Grim runs to the stage and Jim hits another one with an arrow. As it falls to the ground, its cloak hood falls off to reveal a goblin's face, but covered in scales. Mutant goblins!
The fight begins. Grim takes a swing at one goblin then kicks it in the nuts. He's heading for the priestess. Someone on the Galleykeep drops a rope ladder over the side, which Jim grabs. Thinking it's the goblins, he is pulled up. The templars are fighting off about 10 goblins while two have grabbed Lunari and are trying to drag her to the ship. Grim piledrives into them, knocking them all down. He picks up the priestess (using his packhorse talent) and carries her to the temple, where he throws her in. He orders a priest at the door to lock it and not open it until the screams have stopped.
Jim is on the ship with half a dozen surprised goblins. He stabs one in the head, causing them to flee. He then throws his lantern at the sail, which smashes against the mass, spilling its oil. He then ignites it with his burn cantrip (always love it when cantrips get good use).
The ship starts to fly off and Grim makes a running leap for another rope ladder. He grabs it and climbs on board to see the remaining mutant goblins trying to put out the fire that Jim created. They are not doing too well, getting burnt in the process.
While the goblins are freaking out, Jim goes under the deck to find some crates and a glass statue. He can sense that it is magic, but nothing else. Meanwhile, Grim interrogates a goblin who reveals that there is a lair of Evil wizards in the Moonstone Hills.
Eventually, the ship reaches a small hill surrounded by a trench and stops. Eager to find out what happened, Grim and Jim climb off and try to get across the trench. There is a bridge and a tightrope here. Jim tries the tightrope. As he approaches it, a leprachaun appears. He is called Finnegan O' Dinnegan and he challenges him to walk the tightrope. Jim fails and falls, but manages to avoid injury. He then has to make sure he doesn't slip on the highly polished stone floor of the trench before climbing up the trench. He succeeds. Meanwhile, Grim walks across the bridge. There are heads on the bridge that laugh at him, but he ignores it. They then get to the cave.
The first room has a large set of scales. One scale is white and one is black. There is a lever on the scales. There are two identical stones in the room. First they put a stone on the white one and pull the lever. They feel bad and lose 1 luck point. The lever is stuck, but the strong Grim dislodges it and then puts the other stone on the black balance. This makes them restore 2 luck points. Grim and Jim conclude that whoever owns this dungeon is neutral.
The next room contains 5 life sized tin soldiers who swing swords at intruders. Jim spots the one by the door and dodges his blow. The other four are protecting a small doll holding an iron key and wearing a gold necklace. Jim runs the gauntlet of the soldiers, making four dodge rolls. He fails most of them and takes a lot of damage. He drinks his potion of stamina, gets the key and gets back without being damaged.
The next room is a prison cell with Lunari in it. Confused, they approach her, but she makes no response. Using his healing, Grim realises that she has no pulse and Jim notices that she has a magical aura, but not in the way that spellcasters do. Rather that she is magic in the sense that magic items are magic. They leave her alone.
They then come to a room where there is a chest across a chasm. Grim jumps across, opens it to find a pile of cotton wool. When he picks it up, an iron key falls out. He takes it.
They then open a door to a large room to find six evil wizards around the table - Zagor, Zharradon Marr, Balthus Dire, Malbordus, The Snow Witch and Xorton Throg are sitting around a table, arguing. Zharradon Marr is trying (unsuccessfully) to get them to talk about something useful. Zagor, Dire, Malbordus and the Snow Witch are planning their next party, and Xorton Throg is being ignored by everyone because no one respects him (he doesn't even have his own solo book).
Grim and Jim leave them to it and investigate the rest of the dungeon - they find a games room and a fish pond and decide to go back to the wizards.
When they get back, they see Throg sulking in the corner. Malbordus and the Snow Witch are snogging. Marr is grumpily reading a book and the others are playing some war game. Jim sneaks past them and gets to the next room. Grim waits in the corridor.
Jim enters a large room with 3 doors. A voice says 'One door has your prize. The other two have goats. Well, actually, I thought goats are boring, so I found improved goats. Which door will you choose?'
Jim picks a door. The voice says.
'Now I will help you by opening a door that doesn't have your prize.'
Another door opens to reveal a CHIMERA! Not wanting to fight it alone, Jim runs into the next room. The chimera follows, stopping to breathe fire on Xorton Throg who bursts into flames and is reduced to ashes in seconds. That's not how people burn! It seems that it was a stuffed replica of Throg. Seeing this, Grim smashes his lantern on the floor and sets it alight. The other replicas run into the fire and also get torched.
Grim then puts his band of strength on and faces the Chimera (I reduced its stats to Skill 8 Stamina 14 since there were only 2 heroes), while Jim uses his arrows of accuracy to fire on it.
Grim kills it, but is wounded. They open the chest here to find it full of copper coins and junk (the whole lot is worth about 50gp). They then go into the other room. A voice says
'Welcome back. Now, do you want to change your mind about the door you want?'
They decide to do so. This is the Monty Hall problem, where changing your mind gives you a 2/3 chance of success and not changing it gives you a 1/3 chance of success. Seeing that the guys were still pretty healthy, I left it to chance. They would get the right door on a 1-4 on one die. They roll a 6 and another chimera pops out. They both fight it hand to hand and kill it, but their resources are pretty depleted. However, all they have to do is claim their prize, which should have been Lunari, but since they saved her anyway, I gave them 500gp, a vial of silver powder each (which is a dehydrated silver dragon) and something else (I can't remember, I made it up).
They head home. Grim uses his Packhorse talent to carry the chest and the Lunari replica back to Chalice where the temple, though puzzled, rewards them and holds a party. The two guys get knocked out and wake up in a giant glass bottle. They can see a man in green robes standing over them on a flying ship, which has stains of red paint on the side and the name 'Twice Shy' painted there in neat grey letters. The man says 'Aha! I have found some adventurers who passed my test. You'll come in handy in recovering the Pendulum of Fate for me. I'll teach those ruffians not to mess with the RIDDLING REAVER! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA'
Scene fades as ship flies off...
What I learnt:
Talents that seem useless on paper are not useless with imaginative players.
Low stakes tests are good for clues (the balance room)
John also worked out it was the Reaver (the neutral lovingness, the stuffed replicas - other subtle clues were the glass statue and the chimera (both appearing on the Twice Shy in the Riddling Reaver book) and the mutant goblins (the Reaver can mutate creatures).
I have run two games now, and in both of them, the players completely skipped the getting kitted up part in favour of action. I'm going to do shopping as part of character creation.
Improvising is needed. The guys came up with such a good plan to deal with the kidnappers at the beginning, I had to think of another way to get them to the lair and also what the prize will be at the end (it was supposed to be the priestess). I kept the replica in because I figured that the Reaver would have made her before the kidnap attempt and not known that it would have failed.
