Shadows of Keron Episode 25: The Enemy Revealed

Previously, on Shadows of Keron… Disguised as nobles attending a royal wedding, Nessime, Gutz and The Warforged believe they are about to become embroiled in a civil war, following a falling out between Valk warrior nobles and the disappearance of the intended bride. After dithering for some time about whether to steal the wedding gifts and run for it, they decide to head east with the army of Tokharim Shah, one of the aforementioned Valk warrior nobles…

-o0o-

Three days’ hard riding brings them to a border fort that has seen better days, where the leader of the other faction (as they see it) is in hiding, with his army camped in the open outside the main gate.

The war has be nipped in the bud before other enemies take advantage of the army’s absence and sack the city. In council with Tokharim Shah and his generals, the party decide on a spec ops mission to block the gate so that their foes can’t retreat inside to more defensible terrain, while their allies attack the camp.

The stealthier members of the group infiltrate the fort; Nessime simply teleports to the top of the main tower. While The Warforged bars the gates, Nessime uses Beast Master to turn the Valk ponies inside against their masters, and a savage melee of warpony vs rider erupts. Meanwhile, Gutz climbs the wall and by dint of rolling 34 on his Stealth, infiltrates the war council of the faction leader in the flickering firelight which is the tower’s only illumination.

Nessime fires a rainbow bolt into the foggy sky, signalling to their army that the battle may begin, which it duly does. The two contingents of Valk lay into each other with a will offscreen, while The Warforged uses Blast on both friend and foe indiscriminately – during the course of the campaign, the character has developed an abiding hatred of all Valk. Inside the tower, Gutz resolves the pending civil war in a direct and brutal manner, cutting the faction leader’s head off with an axe. The missing princess appears to be present, but during the course of the melee she assumes the form of a bat and escapes through the tower window.

"Dark sorcery," says The Warforged. "I knew it!"

The Warforged uses Blast on the armies battling outside the fort to attract their attention, and announces to them that the fort’s leader is dead and the missing princess is not inside.

GM: Are you making any attempt at all to avoid hitting your allies?

The Warforged: No. I hate Valk. I’ll tell them the bat sorceress did it.

While all this is going on, a ransom demand arrives by messenger from the guys who really have the princess. Her father, Tokharim Shah, is incapacitated; his rival is dead; the armies are uncertain what to do next, although they tacitly agree to stop killing each other while they figure it out.

The party go into a huddle and discuss their options. The Warforged, who has never been very keen on this mission, argues that they should loot what they can and make a run for it; the spirit of the sandbox is strong in this one. Nessime, a true-hearted paladin, is for rescuing the princess. Gutz’ player is by now doodling portraits of various characters and has no strong opinion.

Further debate results in the idea that they should return to their patron, the noble Gutz is impersonating, and ask for more money to reflect the ongoing mission creep. Shortly afterwards, The Warforged hits upon the idea of killing the original noble, substituting Gutz, and seizing control of his fief; however, the players decide that they would rather carry on having picaresque individual adventures and aren’t interested in ruling a city-state, so they speak to their patron and ask for more money and additional troops. His reaction to this stops short of having them executed out of hand, but not by much, so they leave the city under a cloud and make for the exchange point specified in the ransom demand; Nessime still wants to rescue the princess, The Warforged has decided (based on very little actual evidence, but having recently read all R E Howard’s Conan stories) that a cult of dark sorcerors are involved and he may be able to learn something from them, and Gutz “just wanna have fun”.

-o0o-

I was distracted while running this session by the gamer-in-training, young Leo, sitting on my lap gurgling at me, so I went quite a way off-piste myself. I lost track of where the princess was and put her in the tower, so had to recover from that by turning her into a bat and having her fly off; fortunately the PCs had by that point killed the people with her, avoiding awkward questions about why this substitution had not been discovered by her intimate friends. So there’s a spoiler for you; at no point during Shadows Over Ekul does Princess Karmella turn into a bat.

I think Shadows Over Ekul will be the last multi-session adventure I run for a while; sessions are short and disjointed at the moment due to our various real-life situations, so it’s getting hard for us all to keep track of the story. After the end of this scenario, Tenchi (Gutz) will run the next part of the Shadowrun adventure path Dawn of the Artefacts for us, then I’ll switch back to single-session adventures, starting with some one-shots from Beasts of the Dominions.

In broad outline then, June will be taken up with Shadows Over Ekul, July, October and December with Shadowrun, August with holidays, September and November with Beasts of the Dominions; by the end of 2013 we should have finished Dawn of the Artefacts and Gutz, Nessime and the Warforged should have reached Legendary in Shadows of Keron. That’s far enough ahead to be planning for now.

Shadows of Keron Episode 24: A Troubled Wedding

New readers begin here…

Arriving in the Ekulan city of Teluk’Ammar, the party attempts to pass itself off as a noble and his entourage attending a royal wedding. Gutz (a thief originally from Northeim) is pretending to be the noble, not terribly well; Nessime is his advisor; and The Warforged is his personal chef, in which role he is somewhat hampered by having no sense of smell or taste, and absolutely no relevant skills.

"He’s a lousy cook," Gutz explains to the NPCs bulking out the party, "But he’s a clockwork robot. How cool is that? How many people can say they have a clockwork robot chef, eh?"

Fortunately, the NPCs bulking out the party include an actual chef, two servant boys, a real courtier, and 12 surviving Amazons (including the cute one Gutz is trying to pick up, and the one known as "You, Amazon at the back," who despite having no skill managed enough aces on her d4-2 to successfully identify an evil artifact they recovered from an assassin a little while ago). The rest of the Amazons fell victim to the river pirates mentioned in the previous episode.

-o0o-

It’s a fine, sunny day, which makes the thunderclaps downriver puzzling. Lookouts advise the crowd waiting at the docks that an… unusual Amazon hawk ship is approaching. With over half the rowers killed by pirates en route, The Warforged has created a low-tech version of Project Orion, and is using Blast under the No Power Points setting option as an ad-hoc propulsion method; fire off a Blast behind the ship, and use the resulting wave to boost the ship forwards. Their wake is full of dead fish.

As he describes it, this is so cool that I invoke one of my metarules and allow him to get away with it once, on the understanding that this does not establish a precedent.

The crowd thins out considerably, as the townspeople want no truck with Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, but the dignitaries and Valk guards don’t want to lose face and tough it out. The explosions cease and the ship is manoeuvred into dock by more conventional means.

Now this isn’t actually in the adventure as written, but given that Teluk’Ammar has a large contingent of Valk cavalry, I could not resist having Kumal the Smiling pop up again.

For those new to Shadows of Keron, Kumal is a long-time antagonist of the party who leads a charmed life. He has no special advantages, but the dice love him. The party has shot him, stabbed him, thrown him down a well (twice), and blown him up with Blast spells (multiple times), but he keeps coming back for more. At least he did, until a failed Fear check left him with a Major Phobia of Warforged, since when he has been trying to avoid Our Heroes. He was last seen at the Citadel of the Winged Gods, being carried off by a brace of ferocious giant fighting birds. However, I feel that having him ripped to pieces offstage is less than he deserves, so he now finds himself working as a mercenary in Teluk’Ammar.

Fortunately, the dice were kind to him again, and the party decided not to press their advantage; so he wormed his way to the back of their escort and slipped away, while The Warforged and Nessime used their Beast Friend and Puppet powers to ensure Gutz impressed the Valk with his (nonexistent) horsemanship.

-o0o-

This session focused on social roleplaying rather than combat – well, except for the swordfight in the pit of cobras, but that hardly counts – as the party attempted to ingratiate itself with the local nobility, hunting, dancing, engaging in political discourse and so forth.

"Let me show you the breakdance of my people," said Gutz, before getting several raises on an Agility roll boosted by Acrobatics, and doing The Worm across the ballroom floor.

Predictably, by the end of the session the bride-to-be was missing, a number of Valk warriors were mortally offended, and Our Heroes had decided that civil war was were about to break out.

"Now, I know this may sound immoral," said The Warforged, "But while the army is getting ready to leave, we could grab the wedding presents and make a run for it. It’s what Conan would do."

However, after extensive debate on this point, they decided by a narrow margin to throw their weight behind their erstwhile host, and ride out with the army.

Shadows of Keron Episode 23: A Prince’s Life

It’s been a loooong time, but we’re back! It’s been about four months since the last Shadows of Keron session, due to a mixture of deadlines at work, family events, and Tenchi (AKA Gutz) running the first part of the Dawn of the Artefacts Shadowrun adventure path for us. But now, we’re back in the Dread Sea Dominions.

As always, I’m trying to balance a session writeup against avoiding spoilers for the adventure, which is GRAmel’s Shadows Over Ekul. The session began in a tavern (naturally) with a bar brawl (naturally) and a subsequent visit to the local potentate, who offered to overlook their misdemeanours if they would just do this one little job for him… and thus the party, currently reduced to Gutz, Nessime and The Warforged, found themselves on an Amazon-crewed hawk ship bound for a neighbouring city, en route to involvement in palace intrigue surrounding an arranged marriage and a royal wedding.

Not much scope for bloodshed there, you might think, but if you did you would be overlooking the known proclivities of Our Heroes.

-o0o-

The most memorable part of the session was the earliest, in which The Warforged found himself challenged to an arm-wrestling contest in a bar by a group of Lhoban sailors. Gutz amused himself by betting on his colleague with money stolen from other people’s purses and taunting The Warforged’s opponent (named Dragon), while Nessime shouted encouragement from the sidelines – she had decided that as a paladin of Hulian she ought not to use Lower Trait on Dragon to give her friend an unfair advantage.

The match ended in a victory for The Warforged, followed by accusations of cheating from the sailors. This was especially galling as The Warforged’s repeated attempts to use Puppet to force his opponent to concede had all failed. The obligatory bar brawl ensued, ended decisively in the party’s favour by an overpowered Blast spell from Guess Who, which killed most of the patrons and set fire to the tavern.

Gutz decided Dragon had put up a good fight, so dragged his unconscious body from the blazing building, emerging right in front of a patrol of Amazon warriors.

“Awkward,” said Gutz.

However, with no surviving conscious witnesses in earshot to contradict their story of accidental lantern spillage, and the Amazons only having seen them helping injured victims from the flames, they were escorted into the presence of the local ruler, Ulesir Shah, who said they would be well rewarded if they’d just do one little job for him…

“They always say that,” said The Warforged. He was for ignoring the mission and pressing on, feeling the pay was too low, but Gutz’ Hindrances argued against him giving up easy money or the chance to stay close to the drop-dead gorgeous Amazon leader for a couple of weeks. So it was decided that they would help.

The later encounter with river pirates was, of course, merely a courtesy detail; and by the end of the session, all three had achieved Heroic rank. I think this is now the most experienced party I’ve ever run under Savage Worlds; it’s interesting that the feel of play doesn’t change that much – SW is very tolerant of increasingly capable characters, with the basic Fighting d6 pirate still being a credible threat, and I can’t think of another RPG system where I could run a set piece battle with the party and a couple of dozen NPCs on one side and several dozen pirates on the other, and still finish it in under an hour.

The main change from the early days is that now Gutz has the full set of initiative-improving Edges, he usually draws 5-6 cards per turn, so we chew through the action card deck faster than before; but with a second deck of cards and whoever goes last reshuffling after a Joker, it has no real impact on play.

-o0o-

Finally, we had a new guest player for this session…

At the right of the picture with the giant blue d12 you see Anna (Athienne) holding Leo (character’s name unclear, although it sounds like “Guh”), the latest addition to the family, who is one of the nicer reasons why our gaming sessions are shorter and further apart this year.

As you can see, we’re starting him early.

Beasts & Barbarians Adventures at February 2013

By request, here is a higher-resolution version of the map showing adventures in the Dread Sea Dominions. I had planned to tidy it up a bit, change the token colours and so on, but haven’t had time this week – I tell you what though, I’ll update it periodically as new stuff comes out.

There’s a key below the picture.

KEY

Pale blue is my party, red tokens are official B&B adventures we have already played, green and purple ones we haven’t played yet – green are B&B adventures, and purple are from other product lines.

• BDxx: Beast of the Dominions, where xx is the page number for an adventure in this location. Most of them can be easily relocated.
• CNS: The Carnival at Nal Sagath (official location, we moved it to the Independent Cities).
• CQC: The Cliff Queen’s Court.
• CWG: City of the Winged Gods.
• DoaT: Death of a Tyrant.
• GE189: Vengeance of the Branded Devils, the adventure in B&B Golden Edition.
• GW: Green World.
• MNOG: Moonless Night Over Grimsdell.
• SOE: Shadows Over Ekul.
• SoS: The Skinner of Syranthia.
• TitT: Thieves in the Night (in Savage Worlds Insider #3). And I just noticed I abbreviated that incorrectly on the map. Oh well, next time…
• WHM: The White Haired Man Kith’takharos adventures, of which there are at least 10, all set within a few miles of a swamp village. Not strictly speaking Beasts & Barbarians, but they would fit in nicely. (The 10th one is in Savage Worlds Insider #4, if memory serves.)
• WitB: Wolves in the Borderlands.

In my version of the Dominions, a hex is 125 miles; your hex size may vary.

Shadows of Keron–Season 2

Last weekend the group gathered, but we were all in a very low-energy state and spent the afternoon playing videogames and watching TV instead of tabletop gaming. Shame on us.

Still, this concealed the fact that I hadn’t actually planned out season two in any detail yet; I had, as always, a couple of emergency scenarios up my sleeve, but they’ll stay there a while longer, it seems. Rolling up my metaphorical sleeves, I pulled out Hex Map Pro and used a hex gridded map of the Dread Sea Dominions to place scenarios we have yet to play; then I thought, it might be useful to other GMs to see where they all are, so I’ll add the ones we’ve already done as well.

Here, then, is a map of the Dread Sea Dominions with all the Beasts & Barbarians adventures I know about marked on it – should be fairly self-evident, but there’s a key below the picture in case.

KEY

The colour code is for my benefit; pale blue is the party, red tokens are official B&B adventures we have already played, green and purple ones we haven’t played yet – green are B&B adventures, and purple are from other product lines.

• BDxx: Beast of the Dominions, where xx is the page number for an adventure in this location. Most of them can be easily relocated.
• CNS: The Carnival at Nal Sagath (official location, we moved it to the Independent Cities).
• CQC: The Cliff Queen’s Court.
• CWG: City of the Winged Gods.
• DoaT: Death of a Tyrant.
• GE189: Vengeance of the Branded Devils, the adventure in B&B Golden Edition.
• GW: Green World.
• MNOG: Moonless Night Over Grimsdell.
• SOE: Shadows Over Ekul.
• SoS: The Skinner of Syranthia.
• TitT: Thieves in the Night (in Savage Worlds Insider #3).
• WHM: The White Haired Man Kith’takharos adventures, of which there are at least 10, all set within a few miles of a swamp village. Not strictly speaking Beasts & Barbarians, but they would fit in nicely. (The 10th one is in Savage Worlds Insider #4, if memory serves.)
• WitB: Wolves in the Borderlands.

While Umberto Pignatelli says the Dread Sea Dominions are as big as you want them to be, based on his comments on the Savage Worlds forum I reckon a hex on the map above is roughly 125 miles. So that’s as big as I want them to be.

SEASON 2 EPISODE GUIDE

I want to send them down the eastern side of the big mountain range – they’ve already seen the west side on the way from the Independent Cities to Gis and beyond. I think we’ll start them with Shadows Over Ekul (4 sessions at our present relaxed rate), then along the north side of the Brown Sea, and along the Sword River towards Askerios, then by sea to Caldeia, which will take in five of the Beasts of the Dominions adventures (one session each); then a quick gallop through the Kith’takharos adventures, which between them add up to about 14-15 sessions. That gives a total of about 24 game sessions, which will take us to the end of 2013.

And as you can see, by now there is enough material for season 3, too. I fancy Jalizar and environs for that; since several of the party are involved with the Temple of Hulian, which has an interest in that city, it would be easy to send them there.

Of course, The Warforged now has a long-term plan to set up a real estate and giant fighting bird business in the former City of the Winged Gods. I think when the time comes for this party to retire, that is where he will end up, as an irascible and eccentric mage patron for future parties.

Shadows of Keron Episode 22: Vengeance of the Branded Devils, Part 3

I didn’t want to leave this one hanging any longer, so we pressed on even without Athienne and Garstrewt.

To recap, the players were tracking a group of bandits away from a village. Since Athienne is the only one who can actually track, the party were forced to improvise, and this really started to diverge from the script when their overnight camp was attacked by a Lizard Of Unusual Size – about as big as a rhino. The Warforged decided to grapple it, intending to add it to his menagerie (currently one giant fighting bird, one warhorse, and two desert scorpions).

After watching it drag him about the camp, yelling and flailing, for some minutes, the group decided to use a combination of Beast Friend and Puppet powers to gain control of it, which worked.

Under party control, the dominated beast tracked the bandits to their lair, whereupon The Warforged used "OMG It’s A Giant Fire-Breathing Lizard Attack" as a trapping on his Fear power to scare two of the guards into the open, Puppet to get another one to reinforce the trapping with shouted warnings, and Bolt to set fire to the nearby bushes. (I allow people to change trappings pretty freely, especially for powers like Fear and Puppet, which I imagine work using illusions).

All this flushed the enemy out into the open, whereupon Gutz took them out with archery and thrown axes. I have never seen blow-through with a thrown axe before, but now that he has Dead Shot he got up to 38 damage, and considering he had enfilade fire on them, his Quick Edge had seen him draw both jokers, and they were right next to each other, I did allow him to get two with one axe.

The 20-odd other bandits, still thinking they faced a giant lizard because of the warnings from the Puppet-controlled guard, formed a phalanx across the mouth of their cave lair, and were obliterated by a Blast spell, leaving the group with possession of the field. Throughout, Nessime had supported the others with Boost/Lower Trait and Beast Friend to control the LOUS.

Astonishingly, prisoners were taken this week – the first time ever, I think – and some NPCs and beasts were allowed to escape with their lives. They’re going soft, I tell you.

No spoilers on the Big Secret of the scenario, but The Warforged got a benny for working out what was going on just from the description of the cave. The party left with a prisoner of considerable interest to the Sister Queens of Ascaia, and the intent to share the Big Secret with the Temple of Hulian, who are well-placed to make use of it, but not with the Alchemists of Gis, whom they believe will misuse its power. Meh, they could be right on that one.

We leave them heading back towards Gis, although their actual destinations are undecided. Dramatically, it makes most sense if The Warforged goes to Gis, Athienne and Garstrewt return to Ascaia, and the rest of the party head for Jalizar; but we can sort it out later.

And with that, Season 1 of Shadows of Keron draws to a close. As a group, we’re taking a break from that for a while now, with the intent to play some Shadowrun and All Things Zombie. I already have enough material for another season, so I expect us to return to the Dread Sea Dominions sometime in 2013.

Shadows of Keron Episode 21: Blood in the Snow

A small group again this weekend although Athienne and Garstrewt did join in by Skype partway through. Since I still want them present for the denouement of Vengeance of the Branded Devils, I turned to the Viking adventure in the SWD core rulebook, transplanted it to Northeim, and advised the group that in a flash-forward adventure taking place after Vengeance, Gutz had taken his pals back to his home village to show off his bling and prove to his doubting childhood friends and family that he had made good.

The parallels with Beowulf were sufficiently strong to convince Athienne’s player, who is an English teacher, that they were in fact replaying that story. This was a theory close enough to be useful.

Nessime’s player sought divine intervention, and after a ridiculous number of raises on her Knowledge: Religion roll, managed to contact Ymir, King of the Frost Giants, and ask for his advice on the best route to the nearest ice troll. He answered truthfully, and after a long trek and a tough fight, they managed to kill a five metre tall ice troll. This would have been really useful if the ice troll concerned had had anything to do with the assorted murders and kidnappings they were trying to sort out.

On finally tracking down the miscreants responsible, adroit use of Puppet to start a brawl among the kidnappers and to mind-control the hostage through the party’s rescue plan (ensuring she went the right way at the right time), followed by The Warforged’s signature Blast power into the dogpile, resulted in a bloodless success for the group.

Pity about the ice troll, but its head has greatly increased Gutz’ reputation in his hometown, so not all was lost.

Shadows of Keron Episode 20: Windborn

Another short Savage Worlds session with few attendees this weekend, so I ran a flash-forward adventure after the end of Vengeance of the Branded Devils – the Zandorian adventure from Beasts of the Dominions. (I don’t want to finish Vengeance without Garstrewt and Athienne being there, as it might have been written for them.) As usual, no spoilers, but this is a nice four-page adventure featuring one of the titular Beasts.

The party made short work of most of the encounters, thanks to the careful use of Puppet and Blast powers by The Warforged, Boost Trait by Nessime, and thrown axes by Gutz. A hostage was rescued, bad guys were fried, a considerable quantity of bacon was taken as loot, and only the Big Bad caused any real problems – you have to be canny how you take the boss monster down.

They weren’t canny, but they pumped enough Blast and Bolt powers into the boss that it didn’t matter. Peace, as they say, through superior firepower. Although they did get covered in filth as usual, and Nessime realised that she no longer has the Holy Handkerchief, which she successfully delivered to the Ninth Alchemist a couple of sessions ago.

The Warforged, being the character who plays most often, is a few experience ahead of the rest and has just reached Heroic. Since I expected the campaign to go a few advances into Legendary, this is almost exactly the halfway point; he has expressed a desire to retire as one of the Alchemists of Gis. We’ll see, plenty of time for that later.

A short, simple scenario with three players is just in the sweet spot for me, and I think that is more about my style as a GM than anything else. Regardless, as often happens with the Beasts & Barbarians scenarios, I find my normal jaded attitude replaced by enthusiasm and a will to play. I can’t decide which I’d rather play, SW or 5150; mind you, I don’t have to – I can play both, and more.

Shadows of Keron Episodes 18-19: Vengeance of the Branded Devils

An unusually long session this week, in fact two sessions back to back. In the first one, the party polished off Wolves in the Borderlands, although they made another enemy in the form of a Caled druid. In the second, they reached Gis, unloaded the Holy Handkerchief of St Veronica for laundering, and were then summoned by the Ninth of Twelve, one of Gis’ master alchemists, who sent them on a mission into Zandor, allowing me to run the introductory scenario in the setting book, which might have been tailor-made for Athienne and Garstrewt.

No spoilers, but here’s pretty much what I said after they had set a trap for some bandits in a small village… You know the village I’m talking about, Umberto… 

“So, if I understand you correctly, this is your plan…”

“The Warforged is concealed in shrubbery outside this hut, holding on to a rope you have buried in the dirt; as the bandits ride into the village, you will pull the rope taut, unhorsing the leaders. Garstrewt has moistened the same area with oil and is hiding in the hut opposite with his McGyvered catapult, ready to launch a burning cloth or something into the oil. Abishag has loaded his Potion of Blast, which he bought in Gis, into a sling and will fire it at the bandits while they are getting up and sorting themselves out. Athienne is standing here, where everyone is inside her Command radius.”

“By the way, you do realise that will have no effect whatsoever, as the rest of the party refuse to acknowledge her as leader. Yes? Doing it anyway? Fine.”

“Meanwhile, to entice the bandits into the village through that opening, Alihulk and Peter Perfect are displaying themselves doing manly things to show what good slaves they would make. Specifically, they are sitting on the pile of cabbage you brought to the village, drinking beer.”

What could possibly go wrong? Not much, as it happened. They even took prisoners, although The Warforged and Alihulk interpret their Bloodthirsty hindrance to mean not only can they not take prisoners, but nobody else in the party can, either; so the prisoners lasted about 90 seconds, that being how long Alihulk’s player (who has medical training) advised someone would take to bleed to death through a severed brachial artery. As he said later, “Cutting people’s arms off is not a viable interrogation technique.” As The Warforged replied, “I’m not trying to interrogate them.”

It astonishes me sometimes what the party are vicariously capable of; but when some years ago I researched what their actions would really mean and described it to them in detail, it was not much fun for anyone, so now I just drive on.

If only the party would acknowledge a leader, he or she could order them not to do things like that; but they won’t. See previous comments re: Number of Scoobies in party… Fortunately, Athienne has good Tracking skills and a background allowing her to use Common Knowledge to figure out some of what’s going on. Meanwhile, the posse has saddled up and is riding out after the bandits, following their tracks back to wherever they came from.

Shadows of Keron, Episode 17 – Wolves in the Borderlands

After a long hiatus over the summer, the campaign is restarting; the regular Saturday session last weekend found Our Heroes in the Borderlands, en route to Gis.

Wolves in the Borderlands is the scenario that persuaded me to buy Beasts & Barbarians in the first place, so it’s special for me. It’s very reminiscent of Conan’s adventures, and in particular Beyond the Black River.

People turned up late, and it took a while for the group to shake down (mostly because the first couple to arrive started playing Trine with me while we were waiting, and we got a bit carried away with it), but we eventually got started, and they pursued a group of Caled kidnappers into the Black Forest. A certain amount of violence ensued, followed by a hasty escape through the rain, and the party are now holed up overnight under a large oak tree. Garstrewt is cautiously sipping the stagnant green water caught in the branches, and The Warforged has declared an intent to chop it to pieces, because he has convinced himself their main enemy for this session is hidden in a cave beneath it. Everyone is covered in mud, and Garstrewt is also covered in decayed human remains from  an earlier explosion.

I have given up keeping track of the state of the Holy Handkerchief, which also has those substances smeared on it from a surprisingly successful Greater Healing attempt. Suffice to say that a 40 degree delicate wash is not going to cut it.

Reflections on Campaign Pacing

The rate of progress is somewhat slower than I expected; now that I have a longer baseline, I can see that we’re actually averaging just over two sessions per month rather than the three I expected earlier; they will reach Gis in a couple of months, and I still haven’t figured out what I’m going to do with them there. Maybe I should just gloss over it and take them straight to Jalizar, which would be a good place to settle them down for a while.

Reflections on Group Makeup

If you haven’t read Lise Mendel’s piece on Designing Your Team the Scooby Way, do so now. I’ll wait.

Finished? Good.

When I look at the group, I think we have the following:

• Fred: Peter Perfect the Paladin.
• Daphne: Athienne, Nessime.
• Velma: The Warforged (in combat).
• Shaggy: Abishag, Alihulk, Borg, Gutz.
• Scooby: Buster, Garstrewt, The Warforged (most of the time).

The overall team mix varies from session to session, depending on who turns up. The usual core team is Daphne, Shaggy and Velma-Scooby; sometimes we get another Daphne and another Scooby, and less often more Scoobies and a Fred. As you’d expect from that and Lise’s analysis, the group goes so far off-piste in the average session that it’s hard to tell where the piste was originally, which means there isn’t much point me spending a lot of time making them a nice, clean piste.

Most of the last session was taken up with Garstrewt trying to persuade one of the NPCs that he had built The Warforged, and the subsequent argument between their players. For the next campaign, I must make a more forthright statement about the tone I’m aiming for; maybe that will make a difference. I should also deprecate gnomes and warforged in any subsequent fantasy game.

But: It’s just a game. As long as everyone’s having fun, you’re doing it right.