Rift City campaign - session 43

 The party made their... what, let's call it '43rd' visit to the caves in the Rift (it's not really, we missed a couple of sessions due to work issues, and on some sessions, they've made multiple visits, leaving after a good quick haul and going back 'the next day' during the same session... but about 43rd) on 14th Feb. 

Yes I know that's Valentine's Day, but as it turned out, the four players who came to the session are two couples. 

No I didn't do anything particularly Romantic for the session, but in line with some of my recent musings, I made extra-sure to use Reaction Roles and Morale rolls. I know I should do that anyway, but... I made extra-sure.

Anyway... Halvor the Cleric, Berg the Dwarf, Gibbet the Thief and Brigham the Cleric (that was the marching order) made their way towards the towers that they'd found last time. They'd got a treasure map at the last session that looked something like this:

In case you can't read the text, it says "In the Rift there is the Fortress of Skile, two towers with a gatehouse between. Beneath the eastern tower, a stair leads down to a crypt where lies the Fabled Hoard of Riha the Bejewelled. Gems without count and fabulous jewellery are there, adorning the bones of the last of the Sorcerer-Queens. From the tower, take the staircase, and at the landing, turn west. Foul things lurk in the darkness of the eastern stair. In the Deeps, we came to a great room with six corners, but this was a false chamber – we never found the real burial chamber beyond."

Trying to find the place where the jewels might be stashed, they headed down the path, past the spot where they killed the Giant at the last session (his corpse was still there, somewhat chewed by local scavengers, but substantially intact, so the party, deciding they didn't want a Zombie Giant rampaging around and mindful they were supposed to burn corpses, set fire to it using a barrel of oil they had in the Bag of Holding).

Going on a bit further past the smouldering corpse, the party noticed a flock of ... somethings ... flying above them. They weren't sure what they were so the PCs hid in the undergrowth for a bit. Turns out that the flying things were hippogriffs, and there were 15 of them. The party was undecided about what to do - Berg, Gibbet and Brigham kept hiding, Halvor decided to try and attract their attention. Then Berg threw out some beef jerky for one, which took it, but then the flock decided that it would rather go and investigate the burning Giant so flew off.

The party headed on to the ruins of the Fortress of Skile and found their way in. Remembering there was a pit trap, but not exactly where it was, the party unfortunately triggered it again. No-one was seriously hurt however. Now they've outlined it in chalk so perhaps they'll find it easier to avoid next time.

Making their way inside they turned to the left to try and find the entrance to the lower levels. The first room they came across seemed to be deserted, but the second contained a hideous spider-type entity.  Conscientiously rolling for the spider's reactions, the dice came up snake-eyes so straight into a vicious combat. To be fair, there's only so much interaction I'd be able to role-play as a Giant Spider I think. When they searched the room, they found a chest with some money in it, but unfortunately ripped the old tapestry hanging from the ceiling.

Pushing on, the PCs found a room decorated with a frieze of faces. Searching these carefully they found that one was hinged to come away from the wall. Behind it was a kind of safe - trapped, which Gibbet disarmed (they still don't know what the trap was, but Gibbet detected a trigger mechanism and disabled it) - and containing a potion-bottle and a bag of cash.

They'd reached the end of the corridor, but I reminded them that there were other corridors and rooms they hadn't explored in the other direction (this time they'd entered and turned left; last time they turned right). I don't often do that sort of thing but I thought it was justified in this instance. It was a month ago that the players last explored the dungeon, but for the PCs, it was yesterday. I think that the PCs would perhaps remember that there were further unexplored passages to the right even though the players didn't. So, they started to make their way back to the areas they'd explored the game-day before.

On the way they encountered some 'grey worms' - Caecilia from  the Expert rulebook. These were actually fairly straightforward to deal with, in the end. Somewhere, and I'm not certain where now, they also encountered some Giant Weasels, but as I have no real recollection of this fight I'm not sure they really gave the party much trouble either.

Having retraced their steps, they moved off to the right (east), back through some rooms they'd explored previously, and then on to new territory (actually, they may have run into the Weasels here). This led them to a room of Ogres, who the party, probably sensibly, decided would be a serious threat and a fight ensued. Halvor made good use of his Sticks to Snakes ability (the snakes this time were Spitting Cobras, which blinded several of the Ogres) and the Ogres (6 of them) were disposed of without too much damage coming to the party. However, the fight had alerted other Ogre guards and 5 more then barged into the room when the party were searching. The snakes were still around and had been tasked with guarding the door so the Ogre ambushers were themselves ambushed and soon defeated.

By this time it was the end of the session. The PCs had searched about 90% of the tower but not yet located the steps mentioned on the treasure map. I guess, they'll be heading back here next session... but one never can tell, they often end up going off in all sorts of unexpected directions.

Gaming the Labyrinth - the inhabitants

I started posting about 'Labyrinth'. I've made a few notes about the general idea of trying to game it and some of the trickier aspects of how to translate something like the film to something like D&D, or possibly my newly-acquired game, Blue Rose (earlier post linked here). Photos have all been taken from the blog 'The Labyrinth' which seemed like a handy source. I tried to use the pics at IMDB, but they were all tiny so I gave up. It seemed really tedious to find more pics from different sources so I just went there and used what I could find. All photos are (c) TriStar Pictures.

Some of the inhabitants of the Labyrinth, Goblin City and Castle are pretty straightforward to translate into D&D terms. For Blue Rose, maybe not so much, but I'm sure I'll be able to find some ways to do at least some of it when I'm more familiar with the system. I've checked up what some of the characters are called, so will use the IMDB nomenclature.

Jareth

Jareth "is an Elf" in my notes. Seems obvious, and specifically, a Dark Elf. Also, sometimes disguises himself as a little old lady, or turns into an owl. He seems to sometimes use this latter ability to travel long distances (so it's a real transformation, not an illusion): at other times his mode of long-distance travel is not clear, but I'm going to assume it's always owl-form. He has crystal balls (steady at the back) which can become a peach with a forgetting spell (which wastes time, a vital resource in Sarah's quest) or a kind of floating bubble. He also has some illusion skills - he seems to transform a bubble into a crystal into a snake into a scarf, possibly then a Goblin... which (if any) are real is difficult to grasp (and the scarf may just fall on a Goblin already there). So they could be actual transformations or illusions. He possibly uses the bubbles to transport others to and from the Castle, but perhaps this is illusion too. If he's an Elf, he has a pretty direct Blue Rose equivalent - he could be some kind of corrupt(ed) Vata (a race similar to Elves; there are two sub-races called Vata'an and Vata'sha. Jareth is probably a Vata'an as they have pale skin and silver hair, which is more like Jareth than the Vata'sha, who look similar to D&D Drow, with dark skin and light hair). Alternatively, he could be a Human with arcane powers, in either Blue Rose or D&D. But he looks like an Elf to me.

Hoggle

Hoggle is a Dwarf who works for Jareth; one of his jobs is as a pest-controller in the garden. He's a coward. He has a spray that kills fairies, likes plastic, and has a (worthless) bag of charms that he values highly. He also has a kind of 'Portable Door' (which he only uses once, maybe only usable once, or perhaps once per day) and knows where to find rope. There may or may not be other Dwarves called Hogwart, Hedgewart, Heggle, Hoghead and Hogbrain. There are no Blue Rose Dwarves.

There are Fairies that bite (no pic of them on the blog where I found the rest of the photos). Hoggle has killed 60, he claims, but we don't know over what time period. He kills about 5 while Sarah is talking to him. A swarm of 10-60 is a possibility, I suppose. We do not know if they're truly intelligent. In D&D they could be something like AC9, Mv 90' (30') flying, hp1, save E1, Att 1 (bite), Dam d4, Ml 9 Al N, I would think. 

'Dennis', the Worm

There's a talking worm, that I decided is called Dennis (he isn't named it seems) who has a wife, drinks tea and knows the way to the Castle. He helps Sarah to identify what we might think of as 'secret doors'. On IMDB he is called "Worm".

Tilekeepers

There are tiny people (about 3" high?) that change the flagstones after Sarah has made marks on them. I have since discovered that these are called "Tilekeepers", but no-one has a credit as a 'Tilekeeper' on IMDB. They are perhaps related to Fairies (they seem to be about the same size) but do not have wings. They do seemingly have language and purpose however.

Goblins

There are Goblins - many and of different sorts, but they boil down to small and tall (mechanically these are probably many Goblins or even Kobolds, and a few Orcs or Hobgoblins, D&D terms. Blue Rose has no real equivalents to Goblins, just large Orcs, who are called Night People). Some Goblins have sticks with small bitey things attached to them. Two small Goblins are 'the Cleaners', who ride a kind of bicycle-powered boring machine. Others are the Goblin Guard, and come in Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery varieties. The Cavalry carry spears and ride two-legged lizards; the Artillery have cannons and machine-guns, and the cannons seem to fire tiny Goblins. Most Goblins are armoured - at least, the ones in the Labyrinth and City. There's also a giant-sized mechanical construct piloted by a Goblin. However, it's probably best to consider this in relation to its location.

Ludo with Sarah

There's Ludo, a kind of Horned Troll with the ability to call d100 rocks (in 13 hours he does it twice, perhaps he can do it 3 times a day).

Fireys

There are Fire Spirits or "Fireys" - there are five of these (No Appearing d6+2?). They may be some kind of weak fire-elemental. Pretty sure I can find some sort of analogue in both D&D and Blue Rose.

Sir Didymus

There is Sir Didymus, an anthropomorphic Fox-knight (other people think he's a dog, but I think he's a fox), who rides Ambrosius, an Old English Sheepdog. Sir Didymus is brave, but somewhat blinkered. Ambrosius is a bit of a coward. Though Blue Rose has rules for animals with psychic communication, it doesn't have rules for foxes that dress like 14th Century Landesknechts, talk as if they're human and hold weapons. In D&D, I might use the rules for Haflings (not as crazy as it sounds... honestly).

Wiseman and The Hat

There is a sage-type ("Wiseman"), with a talking bird hat ("The Hat"); the sage utters gnomic wisdom (or not), the bird-hat is sarcastic.

Trash-Lady

There is a kind of bag-lady ("Trash-Lady") who pushes memories as a distraction (which again waste time).

Then there are lots of guests at a ball. These appear to be human, but there's an outside chance they're Elves (or Vata) like Jareth. Again though, no pics at The Labyrinth blog.

There are also other sentient beings - the 'Helping Hands', the 'False Alarms', the door-knockers and the 'logic guards' who don't know how their answers work - but these seem to be tied to particular locales. Of course, those above may be too - perhaps the Fireys cannot be found outside the jungle, or the Wiseman outside the garden, but we don't really know. I've pretty much assumed that those with some obvious means of perambulation might move around, those who don't (or whose job keeps them in place like the four guards who either lie or tell the truth) do not and are more like features of the location.

Locations will be what I get onto in the next post, I should think.

Questing in Elfgames X - Are the PCs special?

Another post I've neglected then re-discovered as I've been thinking about some of this stuff again. This one is on the question of what the PCs represent in the world they inhabit.

Are the PCs supposed to represent normal people in extraordinary circumstances, or are they in and of themselves extraordinary? I think there's a general feeling among what could vaguely be referred to as 'old-school' gamers (though some people I know are beginning to reject that label... I just don't have a better one) that PCs are not special. The assumption is PCs will die fairly often and as a result there's a certain disposability about them. This is the flip-side of the criticism that we (ie 'old-school' gamers) have about millennial snowflakes and their over-precious 3E+ characters who aren't allowed to die. "If character death isn't a possibility, how do the PC's actions have meaning?" we howl. "If you can just re-spawn in 5 minutes, how does PC death have meaning anyway?" the millennial snowflakes reply somewhat baffled, and they really do have a point. If we just pick up another character sheet and say 'and there's another adventurer coming at you round the corner' then... so what? How is that any better? I used to do that when I was playing 'Japs and Commandos' (this is what we used to call it, I believe it's now called 'LARPing') as a 7-year old. We'd 'get shot', fall over going "aiee!" and then we'd get up and say "and now I'm another one". That's basically how we treat a potentially endless succession of replaceable PCs. In one of my recent campaigns, when one of the PCs (a Dwarf called Harald) died, his player wrote 'son of Harald' under his name and he turned up the next day saying 'has anyone seen my dad?'. I thought this was perfectly reasonable.

But, I think this idea that PCs are not special is a mistake. Firstly, because even blacksmiths, among 'Normal Men' in the Moldvay rulebook, only get 4hp and NM saves (and you have to assume that blacksmiths are about as hard as 'Normal Men' get). 'Normal Men' are approximately as tough as a single Kobold and it's a weak PC that can't take a Kobold in a stand-up fight. They are pretty much the weakest thing that PCs will go up against (OK, normal bats, normal rats and insect swarms are pretty weak too... as befits actual things from the real world). So, the PCs can do things 'Normal Men' cannot and if this is true of Humans, I think it's safe to assume that PC Dwarves, Elves and Halflings stand in the same general relationship to their respective races as PC Humans do (though perhaps not quite as starkly, 'monster' Demihumans are a bit tougher than undifferentiated 'monster' Humans). Anyway, mechanically, PCs go beyond the 'ordinary', so by definition, they are extra-ordinary.

Secondly, and this is kinda more to the point in terms of the design-philosophy or ethos of D&D, it is arguable that it is in some way supposed to mimic the episodic adventures of Conan, Bran Mak Morn, Kull and other picaresque pulp-heroes. I read (years ago, and I went looking for it but can't find it now) an exposition of the idea that D&D is rubbish at epic fantasy (à la LotR) because it is set up for dirty episodic picaresque fantasy (à la Conan). This may not be true - there's certainly a decent argument (that I don't actually agree with but I do think the argument should be taken seriously) that D&D is a wargame and nothing to do with fantasy literature at all. Whatever - some people believe that D&D is set up to simulate picaresque fantasy, and that's good enough for me, for the purposes of this argument. The point being that Conan and other pulp heroes were 'special', in so far as they had, at least, extra-ordinary skills, drive etc. And PCs, to my mind, are already special too (due to point 1 above).

If this adventuring lark is supposed to simulate fantasy literature then PCs need to be special. This is an important aspect of my wondering why we aren't telling the stories that we are reading (if that's what we're trying to do, which it may not be). Also, ten years ago now, Beyond The Black Gate had a post outlining a seven-step approach to building an epic-quest-style escalation into (something like) a sandbox - The High Fantasy Campaign. I think it's neat. It left me with the distinct impression that it is possible to use 'old school tools' to make something a bit more epic than what I have previously described as 'shopping at the local cave-mall'.

Hence looking at how to do 'quests' and how to create 'Mentors' a while back. Both mentors and quests are part of epic fantasy literature in particular (not so much the picaresque Conan-style adventures) and somewhat missing from D&D. But there's something else missing from the equation I think, and that's the notion that the PCs are somehow important in the world.

Frodo is important because he has inherited the Ring from Bilbo. Without the Ring, there's no reason for Hobbits to be involved in the grand events that bring the Third Age to a close at all. It could be possible that Aragorn still went to challenge Sauron and re-unite the kingdoms (maybe, because in a dungeon-bashing expedition from Rivendell with Elladan and Elrohir, he stumbled on Gollum and the Ring himself). Aragorn is important of course, but he might have died in the struggle with Sauron. Then another 'Heir of Isildur' would have to be found... But the point is, Frodo was important because he was the Ringbearer. Aragorn was important because he was the Heir of Isildur. It's not just the things they did that were important, not just the actions they took and the choices they made (though of course these were important, and in game terms, this is what the PCs are doing), it was something about who they were (and this means 'how they fitted into the history and relationships of Middle Earth').

If (I said if) D&D is supposed to simulate the literature, the PC then is by definition important in the scheme of things. However, the protagonists of D&D games frequently die (unlike the protagonists of fantasy novels, who only die occasionally), so declaring one of them 'the Last Scion of the Kings of Old' or 'the Last Heir of the Mystic Masters' or whatever makes little sense. The world must continue even if the PCs die. Circle of life, and all that. More PCs must come along and continue to believe there's a point to what they do, so like open-ended quests, binary pass/fail conditions are not appropriate. Determining that the PC is a Scion of the Kings of Old or an Heir of the Mystic Masters is good enough. If the PC reaches 9th Level and has been on some grand adventures, the potential existence of other Heirs and Scions is not relevant. If the PC dies in a cavern surrounded by Goblins while still 1st Level, other Scions and Heirs can continue the good fight and the world has not fallen into unending evil as a result of their death. Perhaps there is a prophecy - but as many of us assumed JK Rowling would make more of the prophecy that could relate to Harry or Neville, prophecies should be ambivalent enough to allow for the death of the one that the prophecy relates to. They may not be the only baby born under the Wandering Star, or with a grail-shaped birthmark, or the only child of the Last Hope Gone Bad - they may have a sister. That heirloom may not be the only mark of kingship or magical power, the favour of the gods or the bloodline of the master-thieves of old, or whatever it is a sign of.

This is something I've apparently been puzzling about for a long time now without really getting anywhere, if this post from March 2018 and a follow-up from October 2018 are anything to go by.

What I haven't managed to work out is a procedure for doing this. There are a few possibilities I think.

The first is just making a massive list of possible heroic secrets. This is fine, but is hard work and a bit 'flat' somehow. Also, there's the problem of 'using up' entries... should the same option be open to more than one character? If I have (say) 100 entries I think they're probably going to be quite specific (1, orphaned heir of House Nyleth brought up in secret; 2, flame-haired child prophesied to bring about end of reign of Ice-lords, etc).

The second is just to get the players to do it, as I tried to do some time ago in the Rift City campaign (see the post I linked to from October 2018, above). This can be complicated, or maybe I was just unclear. Either way, it was much messier than I thought it would be, but there is still some mileage in the way I have done it in the Rift City campaign - the PCs who have given me something to go on have had some hooks to do with their family secrets. Perhaps more will come out.

The third option is to try to come up with a table using something like the idea expressed in the post from March 2018 that I linked to above, about using story elements and recombining them. This seems to me to be the way that will produce the most flexibility, but it's also probably the most complex in the end. Whether it's possible to do this in relation to the numbers that make up the stats and gold that a character rolls on creation is I suppose the Holy Grail here. It would link right back to the conversations I was having with Jens years ago, along the lines of 'roll a 1 and you're an orphan brought up by Dwarves...' which ties you to the world by giving you a backstory and you a potential mentor in the lord of the Dwarf-hold you come from... but it will be a complicated business coming up with a 7x6x6 grid of possible combinations.