On Sunday 11th August, the Rift City Campaign, and my D&D group 'The Wandering Monster Table', had their second birthday. Technically, the second birthday of the Rift City campaign would not be until Tuesday 13th August, but 11th August was the 'the session on the second Sunday in August', and that's close enough as that was the day we inaugurated the group and began the campaign in August 2017. Calendar drift is not my fault! The campaign has been going for two years (and anyway, the 13th was yesterday so it's two years anyway)!
It feels like a decent time to reflect on what we've accomplished. We've had 25 sessions, which have included 30 days of playing-time (if my calculations are correct); we've had 18 players (and me) turn up to games in that time and 6 PC deaths; one of the PCs has reached 4th Level and several 3rd Level; they've explored around 100 rooms on Levels 1 & 2 of a dungeon that I've been building (slowly) that currently contains more than 1,200 rooms (I haven't checked lately, it may be more than 1,500). I suppose an average session has around 6 PCs, though the smallest number so far is 2, the largest I think 11. 22 of the 25 sessions have been in public places where anyone can join in, and that's the point (the other three sessions were held at Berg & Galan's house when we were temporarily homeless). Except one session when I was away, we've played on the second Sunday of the month in that time (I suggested that in order to keep the regular format, someone else could run a one-shot, but the players decided they'd rather I DMed so the session was moved by 1 week). That is a remarkable degree of consistency, I think
I have to mention the great staff at the Black Horse in Aylestone (Facebook page linked here). We've been going down there for the last few months, since our previous venue closed, and they've been very nice to us - making us little reserved signs with messages on saying things like 'Reserved for Elves, Goblins and Minotaurs' and 'Reserved for Questors for the Wand of Wonder' and similar messages. They really are very nice, and it turns out that one of the management used to play fantasy quest computer games back in the 1990s... which ones I don't actually know, but maybe Baldur's Gate? I have told her, she should book a Sunday night off and come and join us. We'll see.
A very different constellation of party-members this session. Of the people who were there last time...
Cnut's player is on holiday, so wasn't available.
Shazam's player was at a family wedding and also was not available.
Nelson's player however was there, the only one from last session.
Of the habitual attendees (obviously, there are a lot more people who've only attended one or two sessions)...
Galan is still suffering from a curse, and I think his player wants him fit before adventuring again.
Berg's player is also on holiday.
Marl's player was at a festival I think.
Karensa's player made!
Gibbet''s player made it!
Brigham's player made it!
Gwynthor's player... well, no-one really knows. He told us he was coming, but we didn't see him!
There was some discussion between Nelson, Gibbet, Brigham and Karensa as to whether they should venture down into the scary Level 2 or stick to the relative safety of Level 1; and as to whether they should hire some meatshields to help, but in the end they decided that it would be Level 2 with no hirelings - the most dangerous (but hopefully most lucrative) option.
The cave entrance they went for was the same as Session 23, the Level 2 entrance on the downhill side of the road. Entering they found it looked undisturbed from last time, but Karensa, remembering that last time they'd encountered a Gelatinous Cube, decided that a reasonable course of action was to shoot an arrow down the corridor and find out if it made a clattering noise or a kind of floopy plop. Happily, it was a clatter, so they crept on. As they ventured down the corridor however they realised that they'd been followed - a mountain lion had strayed inside, seemingly hunting them. They attacked it, and as it (insanely) charged them, arrows already sticking out of it, Nelson the Magic User used his Magic Missile to kill it - just before Karensa and Gibbet both shot it. Gibbet and Karensa retrieved their arrows. Nelson didn't retrieve his spell.
Not perhaps the most efficient use of a Magic Missile but Nelson really didn't want the first encounter of the evening to be up close with a rampaging mountain lion, and who can blame him? Never mind, he still had Web, as well as Read Languages... hoping that some scrolls might appear at some point. Poking around in the entrails, Gibbet found a coin-bag with some copper that the lion must have swallowed at some point.
Venturing on, the party came to wooden portcullis - 'slightly burnt' it said in my notes, as the last time they were here the PCs tried to set fire to it. It had been impossible to open, two days ago - now it opened with ease. On the far side, the PCs found a room, lit by torches stuck in sconces on the walls, that contained a semi-circular pool of water. Of course, what they did was throw the Mountain Lion carcass into the pool to see if there was any magical effect. Isn't that what you would do?
There were two other exits to the room, one opposite the door they'd entered and one to the right. They tried the door to the right and when they got it open, realised that there was a large hall-like room beyond the door. The far end was too far to make out, even with Infravision. Also, near the far end (I randomly determined how far away) there was a collection of gigantic ants. The PCs shot some arrows at them, then retreated to the door so they could control the frontage the ants could attack on. A couple more hits on the lead ant without it going down was starting to worry the players I could see. Gibbet was remembering the last time they'd encountered some, and how much carnage had ensued. This was in Session 21, and then Gibbet had had to beg a Healing Potion from Karensa because he'd sustained some heavy damage. Well, probably, this time he did too. Certainly there was some damage about. But, Nelson cast Web and the giant ants were stuck trying to get through the door.
This was the party's cue to run away (stopping only to definitely kill the one ant that had got through the doorway and grab one of the torches from the wall - Nelson was damn sure he wasn't wasting his own torches if people were giving them away for free), then start shooting arrows down corridors again, in case the Gelatinous Cube was lurking. Eventually, as they traversed a very long corridor, the Cube moved to attack; but they don't move very fast, so the party retreated up the corridor peppering it with arrows until it exploded.
Moving forward again (taking care to once more loot the gooey mess and this time pick up some gold) the PCs turned north, hoping I think to get into the rear of the ants' room. However, as they'd made a mistake with their map (they'd only drawn the corridor as 120', though I told them it was around 150') the corridor they went north up led them to a different room. This one had a sliding door on the east wall, which led to a room that contained some Shriekers, who of course freaked out at the light and noise. Shriekers don't harm adventurers, just summon things that do harm them, so butchering the giant mushrooms quickly became a priority. However, it wasn't fast enough to shut up the Shriekers' alarms, as shortly afterwards some shambling figures appeared in the room behind the party.
Zap! Karensa cast Sleep at them. Oof! the party said, as I told them it didn't seem to have any effect. Another spell wasted, as these were Ghouls. A short and vicious fight ensued, with no-one succumbing to Ghoul-touch, and the Ghouls were defeated, and quickly looted, whereup a nice haul of funerary jewellery was discovered. Also part of the treasure in the room was more coinage, and an axe leaning against a wall. In Basic D&D, Magic Users are only permitted to use daggers, and Clerics are not allowed to use edged weapons, so only Gibbet the Thief and Karensa the Elf could have taken the axe to use anyway; but Karensa already has a magic sword, so Gibbet took it.
Heading out again, the PCs realised that some more monsters were investigating the Shriekers' noise - this time some large flying insects coming down the corridor at them. The party disposed of them but several people were bitten. Again it was giant insects that ended up doing the damage, with the less-armoured Nelson and Gibbet getting the worst of it I think. I'm sure that, by the end of the session, everyone had taken damage but Brigham, and both Brigham and Karensa had used their healing magic (Cure Light Wounds and a Potion of Healing respectively, Brigham I think on Nelson and Karensa on herself).
So, somewhat depleted in resources, the party decided to head for home. As they passed the room where they'd fought the ants, they realised that the web, the ants and the lion had all gone, back they surmised into the room where the ants had been originally. Sneaking past they made a break for the exit - but between them and safety was a bunch of angry giant centipedes. However, they don't have many missile weapons, so the party again peppered them arrows from down the corridor. Five died; the other two, deciding they didn't like the hail of death much, retreated. The PCs ran the last bit I think and made it back into the clean air once more, to fight another day.
Heading for home, they would no doubt have noticed the beginning of the Lunar Eclipse that was a feature of the calendar I'd noticed recently (I generated the calendar some time ago from Donjon's Fantasy Calendar Generator). I'd told Galan's player that this was when the Elves at the Sanctuary would perform a Remove Curse spell for him, as eclipses were especially auspicious times for such magic.
Dividing up the loot the PCs found they'd come away with a decent haul - a couple of thousand in jewellery and platinum pieces and a couple of hundred in loose change, as well as a potentially magic hand-axe, which was OK between four. And nobody died!
Wednesday, 14 August 2019
Thursday, 1 August 2019
Seven NPCs, and the lifespans of Demi-humans
Here are seven NPCs, one of each of the character classes from Moldvay. Details are random generations from Seventh Sanctum and Seventh Order of the Random Generator, where they aren't directly generated by rolling electronic dice from the WotC electric dice app. I rolled d10 Level; apparent/equivalent age is 20+d20, except if Level is less than 5, in which case it's 15+d10, because if they're less than 5th Level, they're effectively a youngster (and I rolled Level first, instead of making Level a function of age, which would have been more sensible).
These people are essentially magical prisoners, and the magical effect is a kind of stasis. My PCs may at some point stumble on them, but of course, they may not. Apparent age is subjective age - I don't know how long they've been imprisoned, so 'apparent age' is basically 'number of years from birth until magical trapping'; equivalent age for the Demi-humans is pretty much what I reckon the developmental stage of the individual is compared to a human lifespan - which is what leads on to the second half of the post.
Female Cleric - Braeth Carellen - 7th Level: apparent age 23
Str 11 Int 14 Wis 16 Dex 7 Con 10 Cha 13
Content and systematic; she is concerned about the heretic toadmen in the salt-marshes
Female Dwarf - Eida Grimsilver - 10th Level: equivalent age 32 (age in years 128)
Str 15 Int 5 Wis 11 Dex 6 Con 15 Cha 8
Stereotypical, but insincere; she only has one eye
Male Elf - Taraneer Moonsword - 4th Level: equivalent age 19 (age in years - don't know: 19... 100... 1000?)
Str 13 Int 15 Wis 16 Dex 11 Con 10 Cha 12
Shrewd and selfish; has tattooed eyelids (a lion surrounded by petals on left lid chases a winged fish on the right)
Male Fighter - Ryon Crawn - 9th Level: apparent age 25
Str 14 Int 5 Wis 11 Dex 9 Con 11 Cha 17
Alternately savage and fussy; he wants to trap a giant lizard
Male Halfling - Bonifer Warren - 4th Level: equivalent age 23 (age in years 36)
Str 13 Int 12 Wis 9 Dex 15 Con 8 Cha 12
Upbeat and enigmatic; he used to be a gladiator
Male Magic User - Howland Banroth - 6th Level: apparent age 36
Str 7 Int 15 Wis 8 Dex 12 Con 11 Cha 8
Both softly-spoken and fabulous; wears high shiny boots
Female Thief - Thealil Ember - 8th Level: apparent age 35
Str 7 Int 5 Wis 14 Dex 14 Con 5 Cha 13
Comes across as engaging and receptive; is a recovering addict
All of this raises questions. Taraneer Moonsword for example. Why 'Moonsword'? Is this a family name, a gang-type nickname or because he owned a special blade called the Moonsword? If the Moonsword is a thing, does Taraneer still have it, what are its powers and its value? And what (if anything) do his tattoos mean?
Will Ryon Crawn get to trap his giant lizard? Where? How?
What was Thealil Ember addicted to? Is she going to go off the rails now she's been freed?
Why is Braeth Carellen concerned about the toad-men? What is the nature of their heresy? Are they really so bad? And what have they been doing since she was imprisoned?
And that's another set of questions, regarding how long these people have been here. Days? Years? Millennia? Do they know, or will it be a shock? Is everyone they know dead? Has the Moonsword rusted, have the toad-men gone to hell with their heresy, are the giant lizards extinct? Or have they only been gone a matter of months or years, and can pick up the threads of their lives?
As for the ages of the Demihumans... I've never really had a settled way of working them out, instead just picking numbers that 'feel right'. I tend to assume something like Tolkienish lifespans for Halflings and Dwarves. I've been a Tolkien fan for longer than I've played D&D - in fact, I got into D&D as a way to 'play' Middle Earth (or something like it), so it's always been a huge influence on my thinking. Playing B/X, my Halflings in effect 'are' Hobbits - a sort of rural race of short Humans who like pie, beer and practical jokes, if they don't take too much effort. Some of them may call themselves 'Nelwyn' and refer to a hero called 'Willow'; some others might call themselves 'Hin' or 'Kender'. Players may have their own ideas about their PCs. All that doesn't matter. Halflings mostly still live in agricultural villages, elect their own magistrates (who are often called Sheriffs) and have big feasts. They are definitely like Hobbits even if not necessarily identical to them.
For Hobbits in the Shire, 'coming of age' is 33 - at least it is for males, and that's all I have to go on. Past 50 is regarded as a settled and respectable age. 111 is a grand old age, 120 is extremely noteworthy. So, more or less humans + 50% I reckon. 33 is close to 21+10.5. 50 is approximately equivalent to 34 for humans, 105 is 70+35, so 120, at 80+40, probably would be noteworthy. As a rule of thumb it seems to work OK. So for Bonifer Warren (above) his 'human' age of 23 - early manhood in other words - equates to about 36 as an actual Halfling age. If I wanted to get really granular, I'd say he's 35, and close to his 36th birthday.
Taking a similar tack with Tolkien's ages for the Dwarves: 100 is still young - Fili and Kili hadn't reached their first century (being 82 and 77 years respectively), and were the youngsters in the Quest for Erebor and regarded as 'rookies'. But more than 200 is pretty venerable; up til now I've somewhat flown by the seat of my pants and multiplied by between 3 and 4 to reach a Dwarf-age. But perhaps it should be 4-5 that is the proper range. If Fili and Kili were conceptually at least in their late teens or early twenties, and inexperienced compared to the likes of Thorin, Balin and Gloin, who were seasoned warriors, but Dain Ironfoot was very old (at 252) at the time of the War of the Ring, that implies the flourit of a Dwarf male (again, pretty much all of the information we have is about males) is approximately from the first to the second century of life. I guess this corresponds more or less to 25-50 for humans. Dain's 252 years on 4x reckoning is therefore the equivalent of 63 for a human male - when perhaps being a war-leader is not generally high on the list of men's priorities, and an old warrior could maybe have expected some sort of retirement, leaving the actual fighting to younger men. Fili on the other hand would be the equivalent of 20, and Kili 19. They might be very well regarded as young and inexperienced. If we take 5x as the base, then Fili would be the equivalent of 16, Kili 15, and Dain 50. These seem low estimates. Of course, Fili and Kili would be young and inexperienced at 15 and 16, but they're young untried warriors, not children, in the Hobbit, and if Dain is 50, that doesn't seem so old that he'd be venerable; so perhaps 4x is about right for Dwarves.
Elves are a problem for many reasons in D&D; one of the problems is age. How old are Elves, exactly? I'm not sure there is a definitive answer. Tolkien's Elves are functionally immortal, and some at least in the stories are thousands of years old. Elrond has lived for more than 6,000 years, Galadriel perhaps between 8 and 9,000 years. We don't really know how old Legolas is; he is the most active Elven character in the stories (at least, Tolkien's stories - I'm not concerned with Jackson's retellings here), the closest to a 'young warrior' and therefore - maybe! - an analogue for the PCs at the beginnings of their adventuring careers. The best and brightest minds among Tolkien scholars seem to think that Thranduil lived in Menegroth in the First Age, making him more than 6,000 years old; he made the move from Southern to Northern Mirkwood, around TA1000, and Legolas seems to have been after this, because it was after the separation of the Elves of Mirkwood and Lorien. However, Legolas was vastly older than the other members of the Fellowship, whom he called 'children' (presumably, excepting Gandalf, but not Aragorn). Aragorn is at this point 87 (approximately equivalent to 29 for the Dunedain) and Gimli is 139 (140 would be equivalent to 35 by my reckoning of 4x). So, if this is accepted, 2,000 years seems to be the maximum age for Legolas, but surely not less than many hundred years for his minimum age. He also says that he has 'watched many an oak grow from an acorn to ruinous age', which may imply he's more than 1,000. In Rohan he declares that the 500 years or so of the history of Rohan are 'but little time' to the Elves. It seems reasonable then that Legolas is around 1,500-2,000 years old.
But D&D Elves aren't necessarily Tolkien Elves. It seems that in different editions of D&D, Elves live for between 500 and perhaps 1200 years, and 'young' Elves beginning their adventuring careers may be between 25 and 125 years (not that I remember that info from any B/X-related material). B/X doesn't really deal with this as far as I've ever found. I've never come across anything to do with it in the modules or stuff from Dragon either. I do have some things from the old Pelinore setting from Imagine, which is a) official D&D and b) B/X compatible - I shall check there and see if there is anything that has bearing on this issue (I don't remember if people's ages are given in the text - if they are, the ages of any Elf NPCs might provide some useful information).
Anyway, 'young' Elves who are mortal and die after about 1200 years (I think this is how it worked in AD&D 2e, if I recall correctly) might not be how it works in my campaign. I don't have a problem with vastly old Elves, as long as it's understood that that doesn't mean that they have extra knowledge - not about anything useful at any rate. Sure they were alive on 12th Grune, 406 years ago, but that doesn't mean they attended the burial of Jarl Ragnald or know anything about what happened to his magic sword. They can however tell you exactly how the light looked through the trees (and what sort of the trees they were, in what season) as Marulan played the harp and Aldriana sang the Lay of Lost Tarathiel (and how her cloak wove patterns in the air, and who wove the cloak, and what the names were of the grandparents of the person who wove the cloak, and what was the smell of the air in the twilight as Aldriana sang, and every single word and how it referred to all the Tales before of the Age-long yearning heartbreak of the Elves...) because at the time, that was much more important.
Now some buzzing Humans want to find a stick or a bauble or something. How does that compare to 10,000 years of tragedy? Why would Elves notice what Humans, Dwarves, Orcs or whoever else was up to, most of the time? Going adventuring might be diverting, especially if involves new things, places, people, but in that case, they're deliberately trying to go beyond what they know, and probably therefore don't have special knowledge about it. Some big-picture stuff maybe ("before the Time of the Warlords, the Ebon Empire flourished - but now that people are like the leaves of a forgotten Autumn..."), but maybe not even that. As Legolas's quote about Rohan shows, even Human kingdoms are fleeting to Elves. Maybe some legends about dragons, but any detailed stuff? Maybe not. Details about a specific time or place might be details about something utterly inconsequential, from a quest point of view. How would they have known, 406 years ago, exactly what they were going to need to know in the future? Elves are pretty clever, but unless they have precognition and already have found out what they will need to know, they may not have better access than anyone else to relevant historical data. Seems like that could be how it could work to avoid the logical problem of the Elven characters being expected to know details that would help the party.
So, I'm rather minded to say that any Elves in my campaign can be as old as their players like, from about 20 (assuming growth of infant Elves at more-or-less the same rate as humans) to perhaps 2,000 (which I'm assuming is about 30, probably at the top end of Legolas's apparent age). This implies that Elves would age on something like the following basis: 1-20 - as humans; 21-2,000 - 1/66 the rate of humans; then maybe 2,000-4,000 - 1/200 the rate of humans (4,000 is about 40?); 4,000-9,000 - 1/500 the rate for humans (9,000 is approximately equivalent to 50). If players want their PCs to be older than 'early 20s or equivalent' they can use this rough guide. One of my players wanted to play a middle-aged human Fighter, so perhaps someone will decide they want a middle-aged Elf too. I probably don't need any Elves in my campaign world who are more than about 10,000 years old, so I'll regard 9,000 years (as I say, Galadriel's approximate age at the time of the War of the Ring) as the top end of Elven ages for practical purposes. But in terms of 'quest-knowledge', the point is that all that time, the Elves weren't paying attention to anything that might be important, unless it directly involved Elves, and even then, maybe they just don't know what Queen Faliria was up to. Would some random Wood-Elf from Lorien know what was going on in the White Council? Probably not; so probably some random Wood-Elf from Canolbarth Forest or some such probably wouldn't know what the Elven aristocracy in Mystara had been up to either, except in general terms.
Whether the PCs should be just 'some random Wood-Elf from Canolbarth Forest' is another matter however...
These people are essentially magical prisoners, and the magical effect is a kind of stasis. My PCs may at some point stumble on them, but of course, they may not. Apparent age is subjective age - I don't know how long they've been imprisoned, so 'apparent age' is basically 'number of years from birth until magical trapping'; equivalent age for the Demi-humans is pretty much what I reckon the developmental stage of the individual is compared to a human lifespan - which is what leads on to the second half of the post.
Female Cleric - Braeth Carellen - 7th Level: apparent age 23
Str 11 Int 14 Wis 16 Dex 7 Con 10 Cha 13
Content and systematic; she is concerned about the heretic toadmen in the salt-marshes
Female Dwarf - Eida Grimsilver - 10th Level: equivalent age 32 (age in years 128)
Str 15 Int 5 Wis 11 Dex 6 Con 15 Cha 8
Stereotypical, but insincere; she only has one eye
Male Elf - Taraneer Moonsword - 4th Level: equivalent age 19 (age in years - don't know: 19... 100... 1000?)
Str 13 Int 15 Wis 16 Dex 11 Con 10 Cha 12
Shrewd and selfish; has tattooed eyelids (a lion surrounded by petals on left lid chases a winged fish on the right)
Str 14 Int 5 Wis 11 Dex 9 Con 11 Cha 17
Alternately savage and fussy; he wants to trap a giant lizard
Str 13 Int 12 Wis 9 Dex 15 Con 8 Cha 12
Upbeat and enigmatic; he used to be a gladiator
Male Magic User - Howland Banroth - 6th Level: apparent age 36
Str 7 Int 15 Wis 8 Dex 12 Con 11 Cha 8
Both softly-spoken and fabulous; wears high shiny boots
Female Thief - Thealil Ember - 8th Level: apparent age 35
Str 7 Int 5 Wis 14 Dex 14 Con 5 Cha 13
Comes across as engaging and receptive; is a recovering addict
All of this raises questions. Taraneer Moonsword for example. Why 'Moonsword'? Is this a family name, a gang-type nickname or because he owned a special blade called the Moonsword? If the Moonsword is a thing, does Taraneer still have it, what are its powers and its value? And what (if anything) do his tattoos mean?
Will Ryon Crawn get to trap his giant lizard? Where? How?
What was Thealil Ember addicted to? Is she going to go off the rails now she's been freed?
Why is Braeth Carellen concerned about the toad-men? What is the nature of their heresy? Are they really so bad? And what have they been doing since she was imprisoned?
And that's another set of questions, regarding how long these people have been here. Days? Years? Millennia? Do they know, or will it be a shock? Is everyone they know dead? Has the Moonsword rusted, have the toad-men gone to hell with their heresy, are the giant lizards extinct? Or have they only been gone a matter of months or years, and can pick up the threads of their lives?
As for the ages of the Demihumans... I've never really had a settled way of working them out, instead just picking numbers that 'feel right'. I tend to assume something like Tolkienish lifespans for Halflings and Dwarves. I've been a Tolkien fan for longer than I've played D&D - in fact, I got into D&D as a way to 'play' Middle Earth (or something like it), so it's always been a huge influence on my thinking. Playing B/X, my Halflings in effect 'are' Hobbits - a sort of rural race of short Humans who like pie, beer and practical jokes, if they don't take too much effort. Some of them may call themselves 'Nelwyn' and refer to a hero called 'Willow'; some others might call themselves 'Hin' or 'Kender'. Players may have their own ideas about their PCs. All that doesn't matter. Halflings mostly still live in agricultural villages, elect their own magistrates (who are often called Sheriffs) and have big feasts. They are definitely like Hobbits even if not necessarily identical to them.
For Hobbits in the Shire, 'coming of age' is 33 - at least it is for males, and that's all I have to go on. Past 50 is regarded as a settled and respectable age. 111 is a grand old age, 120 is extremely noteworthy. So, more or less humans + 50% I reckon. 33 is close to 21+10.5. 50 is approximately equivalent to 34 for humans, 105 is 70+35, so 120, at 80+40, probably would be noteworthy. As a rule of thumb it seems to work OK. So for Bonifer Warren (above) his 'human' age of 23 - early manhood in other words - equates to about 36 as an actual Halfling age. If I wanted to get really granular, I'd say he's 35, and close to his 36th birthday.
Taking a similar tack with Tolkien's ages for the Dwarves: 100 is still young - Fili and Kili hadn't reached their first century (being 82 and 77 years respectively), and were the youngsters in the Quest for Erebor and regarded as 'rookies'. But more than 200 is pretty venerable; up til now I've somewhat flown by the seat of my pants and multiplied by between 3 and 4 to reach a Dwarf-age. But perhaps it should be 4-5 that is the proper range. If Fili and Kili were conceptually at least in their late teens or early twenties, and inexperienced compared to the likes of Thorin, Balin and Gloin, who were seasoned warriors, but Dain Ironfoot was very old (at 252) at the time of the War of the Ring, that implies the flourit of a Dwarf male (again, pretty much all of the information we have is about males) is approximately from the first to the second century of life. I guess this corresponds more or less to 25-50 for humans. Dain's 252 years on 4x reckoning is therefore the equivalent of 63 for a human male - when perhaps being a war-leader is not generally high on the list of men's priorities, and an old warrior could maybe have expected some sort of retirement, leaving the actual fighting to younger men. Fili on the other hand would be the equivalent of 20, and Kili 19. They might be very well regarded as young and inexperienced. If we take 5x as the base, then Fili would be the equivalent of 16, Kili 15, and Dain 50. These seem low estimates. Of course, Fili and Kili would be young and inexperienced at 15 and 16, but they're young untried warriors, not children, in the Hobbit, and if Dain is 50, that doesn't seem so old that he'd be venerable; so perhaps 4x is about right for Dwarves.
Elves are a problem for many reasons in D&D; one of the problems is age. How old are Elves, exactly? I'm not sure there is a definitive answer. Tolkien's Elves are functionally immortal, and some at least in the stories are thousands of years old. Elrond has lived for more than 6,000 years, Galadriel perhaps between 8 and 9,000 years. We don't really know how old Legolas is; he is the most active Elven character in the stories (at least, Tolkien's stories - I'm not concerned with Jackson's retellings here), the closest to a 'young warrior' and therefore - maybe! - an analogue for the PCs at the beginnings of their adventuring careers. The best and brightest minds among Tolkien scholars seem to think that Thranduil lived in Menegroth in the First Age, making him more than 6,000 years old; he made the move from Southern to Northern Mirkwood, around TA1000, and Legolas seems to have been after this, because it was after the separation of the Elves of Mirkwood and Lorien. However, Legolas was vastly older than the other members of the Fellowship, whom he called 'children' (presumably, excepting Gandalf, but not Aragorn). Aragorn is at this point 87 (approximately equivalent to 29 for the Dunedain) and Gimli is 139 (140 would be equivalent to 35 by my reckoning of 4x). So, if this is accepted, 2,000 years seems to be the maximum age for Legolas, but surely not less than many hundred years for his minimum age. He also says that he has 'watched many an oak grow from an acorn to ruinous age', which may imply he's more than 1,000. In Rohan he declares that the 500 years or so of the history of Rohan are 'but little time' to the Elves. It seems reasonable then that Legolas is around 1,500-2,000 years old.
But D&D Elves aren't necessarily Tolkien Elves. It seems that in different editions of D&D, Elves live for between 500 and perhaps 1200 years, and 'young' Elves beginning their adventuring careers may be between 25 and 125 years (not that I remember that info from any B/X-related material). B/X doesn't really deal with this as far as I've ever found. I've never come across anything to do with it in the modules or stuff from Dragon either. I do have some things from the old Pelinore setting from Imagine, which is a) official D&D and b) B/X compatible - I shall check there and see if there is anything that has bearing on this issue (I don't remember if people's ages are given in the text - if they are, the ages of any Elf NPCs might provide some useful information).
Anyway, 'young' Elves who are mortal and die after about 1200 years (I think this is how it worked in AD&D 2e, if I recall correctly) might not be how it works in my campaign. I don't have a problem with vastly old Elves, as long as it's understood that that doesn't mean that they have extra knowledge - not about anything useful at any rate. Sure they were alive on 12th Grune, 406 years ago, but that doesn't mean they attended the burial of Jarl Ragnald or know anything about what happened to his magic sword. They can however tell you exactly how the light looked through the trees (and what sort of the trees they were, in what season) as Marulan played the harp and Aldriana sang the Lay of Lost Tarathiel (and how her cloak wove patterns in the air, and who wove the cloak, and what the names were of the grandparents of the person who wove the cloak, and what was the smell of the air in the twilight as Aldriana sang, and every single word and how it referred to all the Tales before of the Age-long yearning heartbreak of the Elves...) because at the time, that was much more important.
Now some buzzing Humans want to find a stick or a bauble or something. How does that compare to 10,000 years of tragedy? Why would Elves notice what Humans, Dwarves, Orcs or whoever else was up to, most of the time? Going adventuring might be diverting, especially if involves new things, places, people, but in that case, they're deliberately trying to go beyond what they know, and probably therefore don't have special knowledge about it. Some big-picture stuff maybe ("before the Time of the Warlords, the Ebon Empire flourished - but now that people are like the leaves of a forgotten Autumn..."), but maybe not even that. As Legolas's quote about Rohan shows, even Human kingdoms are fleeting to Elves. Maybe some legends about dragons, but any detailed stuff? Maybe not. Details about a specific time or place might be details about something utterly inconsequential, from a quest point of view. How would they have known, 406 years ago, exactly what they were going to need to know in the future? Elves are pretty clever, but unless they have precognition and already have found out what they will need to know, they may not have better access than anyone else to relevant historical data. Seems like that could be how it could work to avoid the logical problem of the Elven characters being expected to know details that would help the party.
So, I'm rather minded to say that any Elves in my campaign can be as old as their players like, from about 20 (assuming growth of infant Elves at more-or-less the same rate as humans) to perhaps 2,000 (which I'm assuming is about 30, probably at the top end of Legolas's apparent age). This implies that Elves would age on something like the following basis: 1-20 - as humans; 21-2,000 - 1/66 the rate of humans; then maybe 2,000-4,000 - 1/200 the rate of humans (4,000 is about 40?); 4,000-9,000 - 1/500 the rate for humans (9,000 is approximately equivalent to 50). If players want their PCs to be older than 'early 20s or equivalent' they can use this rough guide. One of my players wanted to play a middle-aged human Fighter, so perhaps someone will decide they want a middle-aged Elf too. I probably don't need any Elves in my campaign world who are more than about 10,000 years old, so I'll regard 9,000 years (as I say, Galadriel's approximate age at the time of the War of the Ring) as the top end of Elven ages for practical purposes. But in terms of 'quest-knowledge', the point is that all that time, the Elves weren't paying attention to anything that might be important, unless it directly involved Elves, and even then, maybe they just don't know what Queen Faliria was up to. Would some random Wood-Elf from Lorien know what was going on in the White Council? Probably not; so probably some random Wood-Elf from Canolbarth Forest or some such probably wouldn't know what the Elven aristocracy in Mystara had been up to either, except in general terms.
Whether the PCs should be just 'some random Wood-Elf from Canolbarth Forest' is another matter however...
Monday, 22 July 2019
Rift City - Session 24
For some reason a connection problem meant this post disappeared earlier. So, version 2 of the write-up for Session 24...
A few last-minute cancellations meant that it was a very small party venturing into the caves. However, the intrepid PCs decided to dispense with hirelings or any such nonsense (OK, they didn't want to share the loot or the XPs). So in the end the party that ventured into the caves this time was:
Cnut - 3rd Level Fighter
Nelson - 2nd Level Magic User
Shazzam - 1st Level Elf
They decided that the heady depths of Level 2 were probably a bit dangerous this time around, given their small numbers. The part of the caves they picked was the area around the collapsed ceiling near Ningal (the Mad Witch)'s cave. They've previously been to these caves several times, encountering spiders, Fire Beetles, Gnolls, Skeletons and Kobolds among others, as elaborated variously in Session 12, Session 13, Session 15 and Session 21; there's also a map of some of the area they have explored here: (a map for my players). However, because Galen wasn't there (because Galen's player wasn't there) the PCs didn't have an accurate map.
This time, they came down from above and explored a small amount to the east (where they discovered some kind of evil altar) before turning and heading south-west. I think around this time Shazam spotted some wandering bugs (actually a Spider Swarm) but the party just moved out of the way (they went north-west a little way, the spiders moved off to the south-east). It's been about a year real-time, and maybe 20 days game time, since they came this way last (and anyway, Nelson has never been there as last time he was Gene) so they didn't remember much about what they'd seen before, but when the monument of standing stones came into sight (the 'octolith' from Session 13), they realised where they were and turned round.
After that they headed back to the evil altar and then tended north-east for a bit, back in the general direction where Ulfang the Black had been hiding out. Negotiating the trap with the pressure plate where Cnut at least had previously thrown a dead Harpy, they went on to try to find out what 'f' meant on the map Cnut had. Turned out it meant 'fountain', carved to look like tortured, screaming faces. As Shazam was poking about in it to see where the water went, they became aware that something nearby had started to shriek loudly. Shazam (using Infravision) told them it was definitely largish and alive, so the party attacked it as it continued to shriek. None of them remembered ever having seen a Shrieker (both Cnut and Shazam have in fact run into one before, in Session 13) but they dealt with it relatively swiftly. The problem with Shriekers is that the monsters they summon (to check out the noise) don't arrive immediately...
Having dealt with the Shrieker, the party moved off, but then became aware that someone was behind them - a group of Halflings, who, like the PCs, were adventuring in the caves. After a bit of chatting, the parties overcame their mutual distrust, and the PCs went to the room where the Halflings were temporarily camped out. Meanwhile the Halflings chopped up the Shrieker and made mushroom fritters. In the room was an unusual statue, that was enchanted to talk, but could only tell lies. The party could have made more of this, but I don't think they believed it only told lies. The application of a bit of logic might have lead them to greater treasure for instance.
But perhaps it was the Hobgoblins that interrupted them (actual Wandering Monsters as opposed to scouts from a nearby room). A short fight ensued, sealing the alliance between Halflings and Big Uns, which left the Hobgoblins dead and quickly looted. However, they didn't have much treasure - a couple of small pieces of jewellery, so the party took one and the Halflings the other. One of the Halflings had been badly injured, so they went back to Rift City while the party pushed on, towards the place where they had killed Ulfang the Black in Session 21 a few months ago. Cnut in effect was leading the party here as neither Shazam nor Nelson had been to this part before (last time the party was here I think it was Cnut, Gibbet, Karensa and the late and lamented Bonjella).
Beyond the fountain, the tunnels became more regular, and started running due east. Continuing on down that tunnel brought the party to a door, which they barged open to find themselves in a large octagonal room with three more doors arranged in an off-centred cross...
They entered by the west door, then went to the south door; they examined the large hole in the centre and realised it went down a couple of levels... and realised that this was the room where, many months or days ago, they'd found the remains of a fight between Orcs and Ogres, and where later, Bruni the Dwarf had nailed some dead Orcs to planks as a warning, and made a friend of a strange wooden homunculus creature.
Knowing this, and therefore where they were, they decided to explore just a little further, down to the south-west, where they came across a room with a silver circle and a pentangle made of some glittering material etched into the floor. There was also a chest in the corner, which contained a bag of silver pieces, and a scroll. The scroll turned out to be a spell that would summon the caster back to this room - handy either for a quick getaway, or a shortcut into the complex.
Having made this discovery, the party high-tailed it out of there, having had the luckiest time imaginable with wandering monsters, and provoking no other encounters until they were very near the exit - whereupon Shazam informed the other two that two indistinct figures in the distance had seen them. The figures slowly retreated; the PCs slowly advanced towards the hole in the ceiling. As the party scrambled out, one of the figures called out 'Good luck!' to Shazam in Elvish... and that was that, the PCs scooted of back to town to count their loot (not so very much to be fair) and to ponder their useful information - not least this map, that Cnut's player had stitched together from the pieces of map from the last few sessions in this area:
A big shout out to the amazing generators, without which The Rift would have very few caves at all!
In particular...
The generator I used for the sections with the straight corridors (here) - it's the Wizards of the Coast generator that I have used for many parties over the last 5 or 6 years...
The generator I used for the caverns (here) - Donjon's AD&D random dungeon generator that has provided much of the Rift (there are loads of really good generators on the Donjon site, they've helped me loads).
A few last-minute cancellations meant that it was a very small party venturing into the caves. However, the intrepid PCs decided to dispense with hirelings or any such nonsense (OK, they didn't want to share the loot or the XPs). So in the end the party that ventured into the caves this time was:
Cnut - 3rd Level Fighter
Nelson - 2nd Level Magic User
Shazzam - 1st Level Elf
They decided that the heady depths of Level 2 were probably a bit dangerous this time around, given their small numbers. The part of the caves they picked was the area around the collapsed ceiling near Ningal (the Mad Witch)'s cave. They've previously been to these caves several times, encountering spiders, Fire Beetles, Gnolls, Skeletons and Kobolds among others, as elaborated variously in Session 12, Session 13, Session 15 and Session 21; there's also a map of some of the area they have explored here: (a map for my players). However, because Galen wasn't there (because Galen's player wasn't there) the PCs didn't have an accurate map.
This time, they came down from above and explored a small amount to the east (where they discovered some kind of evil altar) before turning and heading south-west. I think around this time Shazam spotted some wandering bugs (actually a Spider Swarm) but the party just moved out of the way (they went north-west a little way, the spiders moved off to the south-east). It's been about a year real-time, and maybe 20 days game time, since they came this way last (and anyway, Nelson has never been there as last time he was Gene) so they didn't remember much about what they'd seen before, but when the monument of standing stones came into sight (the 'octolith' from Session 13), they realised where they were and turned round.
After that they headed back to the evil altar and then tended north-east for a bit, back in the general direction where Ulfang the Black had been hiding out. Negotiating the trap with the pressure plate where Cnut at least had previously thrown a dead Harpy, they went on to try to find out what 'f' meant on the map Cnut had. Turned out it meant 'fountain', carved to look like tortured, screaming faces. As Shazam was poking about in it to see where the water went, they became aware that something nearby had started to shriek loudly. Shazam (using Infravision) told them it was definitely largish and alive, so the party attacked it as it continued to shriek. None of them remembered ever having seen a Shrieker (both Cnut and Shazam have in fact run into one before, in Session 13) but they dealt with it relatively swiftly. The problem with Shriekers is that the monsters they summon (to check out the noise) don't arrive immediately...
Having dealt with the Shrieker, the party moved off, but then became aware that someone was behind them - a group of Halflings, who, like the PCs, were adventuring in the caves. After a bit of chatting, the parties overcame their mutual distrust, and the PCs went to the room where the Halflings were temporarily camped out. Meanwhile the Halflings chopped up the Shrieker and made mushroom fritters. In the room was an unusual statue, that was enchanted to talk, but could only tell lies. The party could have made more of this, but I don't think they believed it only told lies. The application of a bit of logic might have lead them to greater treasure for instance.
But perhaps it was the Hobgoblins that interrupted them (actual Wandering Monsters as opposed to scouts from a nearby room). A short fight ensued, sealing the alliance between Halflings and Big Uns, which left the Hobgoblins dead and quickly looted. However, they didn't have much treasure - a couple of small pieces of jewellery, so the party took one and the Halflings the other. One of the Halflings had been badly injured, so they went back to Rift City while the party pushed on, towards the place where they had killed Ulfang the Black in Session 21 a few months ago. Cnut in effect was leading the party here as neither Shazam nor Nelson had been to this part before (last time the party was here I think it was Cnut, Gibbet, Karensa and the late and lamented Bonjella).
Beyond the fountain, the tunnels became more regular, and started running due east. Continuing on down that tunnel brought the party to a door, which they barged open to find themselves in a large octagonal room with three more doors arranged in an off-centred cross...
 |
| A room from one of the many generators I've used for different bits of the cave system in the Rift... the small squares are 5' across |
They entered by the west door, then went to the south door; they examined the large hole in the centre and realised it went down a couple of levels... and realised that this was the room where, many months or days ago, they'd found the remains of a fight between Orcs and Ogres, and where later, Bruni the Dwarf had nailed some dead Orcs to planks as a warning, and made a friend of a strange wooden homunculus creature.
Knowing this, and therefore where they were, they decided to explore just a little further, down to the south-west, where they came across a room with a silver circle and a pentangle made of some glittering material etched into the floor. There was also a chest in the corner, which contained a bag of silver pieces, and a scroll. The scroll turned out to be a spell that would summon the caster back to this room - handy either for a quick getaway, or a shortcut into the complex.
Having made this discovery, the party high-tailed it out of there, having had the luckiest time imaginable with wandering monsters, and provoking no other encounters until they were very near the exit - whereupon Shazam informed the other two that two indistinct figures in the distance had seen them. The figures slowly retreated; the PCs slowly advanced towards the hole in the ceiling. As the party scrambled out, one of the figures called out 'Good luck!' to Shazam in Elvish... and that was that, the PCs scooted of back to town to count their loot (not so very much to be fair) and to ponder their useful information - not least this map, that Cnut's player had stitched together from the pieces of map from the last few sessions in this area:
 |
| Cnut's map showing some things from this session and from Session 21 |
In particular...
The generator I used for the sections with the straight corridors (here) - it's the Wizards of the Coast generator that I have used for many parties over the last 5 or 6 years...
The generator I used for the caverns (here) - Donjon's AD&D random dungeon generator that has provided much of the Rift (there are loads of really good generators on the Donjon site, they've helped me loads).
Saturday, 15 June 2019
Rift City Session 23
Coming up on 2 years for the Rift City campaign and we seem to be settling in to our new home at the Black Horse in Aylestone. The 23 session saw a slightly larger party brave the caves - we were joined by a new player for this session and a couple of people who've missed the last few also made it to this one.
In the end the party this session was:
Berg – 3rd Level Dwarf
Brigham – 2nd Level Cleric*
Cnut – 3rd Level Fighter
Elenya – 2nd Level Elf **
Galen – 3rd Level Elf
Gibbet – 4th Level Thief
Karensa – 3rd Level Elf
Nelson – 2nd Level MU***
*as Bonjella the Elf died at the last session, this was Bonjella's player's new character. Rather than have a problem integrating low-level characters into the game, new characters start with the lowest level in the party. Currently they're all 2nd or above.
**new player and new character - for the level, see previous note.
***the MU that was the new character of Gene's player when he dies a couple of sessions ago - for level, see note before the previous one...
In a break with the recent run of things the party chose to go to caves on the right (downhill) side of the road, rather than fight their way to the only staircase they've yet found. They found a rough path down and when it split they chose the less-used fork as that would probably have more undisturbed treasure.
Finding a cave, the party entered and discovered a stairway cut into the rock at the rear of the cave. Following it down it they came to a long straight corridor running back into the hillside. Following this down a little way they came to a door in the right-hand (western) wall. As they reached it, an Orc patrol spied them from further down the corridor, and gave chase. The party piled into the room behind the door and waited for the Orcs to attack.
Barging through the door, the Orcs were met by a hail of arrows, daggers and thrown axes. The PCs made pretty short work of the Orcs (who kept making stupidly over-confidant Morale checks) and soon all were dead, at which point the PCs looted them and found some nice jewellery, possibly looted from an old corpse - which netted the party 890gp back in town (I don't think I'll be spoiling anything to say that at least some of the PCs made it back to town).
They explored the room and noted several exits. There was also a mosaic floor with ghoulish scenes of slaughter and cannibalism. Lovely. This series of rooms seems to have been built by people who are fond of portcullises instead of proper doors as several in this area had them - the party seemed quite fond of spiking them open. They moved north and checked out another rooms, finding curiosities but no monsters or treasure, before heading south and encountering some giant weasels.
These were a little tougher than the Orcs but there were only three. The party killed them and searched the room, where they found a small amount of treasure, in the strange coinage of the Ancients. Then Galan, with his superior Elf-senses (which he no doubt calls 'senses', thank you Aragorn), spotted that a patch of mould in one corner was actually an illusion hiding a secret door.
Going through the door delivered the PCs into a larger room, and here there were giant lizards. They did take a bit more effort to defeat than the weasels, but the PCs overcame them too - with one injury, though I now can't remember whose [Galan's player has said that it was Gibbet, in the report here].
The lizards had also amassed some treasure - some copper and gold coins (these are newer and must have been brought to the caves since their rediscovery in the last 200 years or so). There was also a scroll among the treasure.
Pushing on the PCs were attacked by Stirges, but Sleep and swords dealt with them; then on to another room with a kind of pool in it, where the portcullises seemed to be held by some enchantment because they really wouldn't move. The party decided to set them on fire, but they didn't burn very quickly and the party retreated back they way they'd come, away from the smoke.
Threading their way back the party encountered a group of men who they might perhaps have negotiated with, but violence quickly broke out and again the tossing around of Sleep spells caused the encounter to go in the party's favour. Looting the bodies produced some more goodies.
Somewhere around here, Galan decided to see what was on the scroll. No sooner had he started to read than he felt himself overcome by some form of evil magic - not fatally, but he did feel weakened somehow.
As the PCs made their way back to the room with the exit, an Ogre came towards them. She wore a strange turban-like affair on her head and was surprisingly difficult to hit. Having disposed of her (I think someone else was injured in this encounter... I'm certain at least two of the party was injured at the end of the session, besides Galan's curse) the party looted the body gaining more gold and taking the turban (which, when they got it into the light, was more like a cloak for a human).
And that was that - the party high-tailed it back to town to divvy up the loot. I'm not sure anyone went up a level this time. Ah well, there's always tomorrow...
In the end the party this session was:
Berg – 3rd Level Dwarf
Brigham – 2nd Level Cleric*
Cnut – 3rd Level Fighter
Elenya – 2nd Level Elf **
Galen – 3rd Level Elf
Gibbet – 4th Level Thief
Karensa – 3rd Level Elf
Nelson – 2nd Level MU***
*as Bonjella the Elf died at the last session, this was Bonjella's player's new character. Rather than have a problem integrating low-level characters into the game, new characters start with the lowest level in the party. Currently they're all 2nd or above.
**new player and new character - for the level, see previous note.
***the MU that was the new character of Gene's player when he dies a couple of sessions ago - for level, see note before the previous one...
In a break with the recent run of things the party chose to go to caves on the right (downhill) side of the road, rather than fight their way to the only staircase they've yet found. They found a rough path down and when it split they chose the less-used fork as that would probably have more undisturbed treasure.
Finding a cave, the party entered and discovered a stairway cut into the rock at the rear of the cave. Following it down it they came to a long straight corridor running back into the hillside. Following this down a little way they came to a door in the right-hand (western) wall. As they reached it, an Orc patrol spied them from further down the corridor, and gave chase. The party piled into the room behind the door and waited for the Orcs to attack.
Barging through the door, the Orcs were met by a hail of arrows, daggers and thrown axes. The PCs made pretty short work of the Orcs (who kept making stupidly over-confidant Morale checks) and soon all were dead, at which point the PCs looted them and found some nice jewellery, possibly looted from an old corpse - which netted the party 890gp back in town (I don't think I'll be spoiling anything to say that at least some of the PCs made it back to town).
They explored the room and noted several exits. There was also a mosaic floor with ghoulish scenes of slaughter and cannibalism. Lovely. This series of rooms seems to have been built by people who are fond of portcullises instead of proper doors as several in this area had them - the party seemed quite fond of spiking them open. They moved north and checked out another rooms, finding curiosities but no monsters or treasure, before heading south and encountering some giant weasels.
These were a little tougher than the Orcs but there were only three. The party killed them and searched the room, where they found a small amount of treasure, in the strange coinage of the Ancients. Then Galan, with his superior Elf-senses (which he no doubt calls 'senses', thank you Aragorn), spotted that a patch of mould in one corner was actually an illusion hiding a secret door.
Going through the door delivered the PCs into a larger room, and here there were giant lizards. They did take a bit more effort to defeat than the weasels, but the PCs overcame them too - with one injury, though I now can't remember whose [Galan's player has said that it was Gibbet, in the report here].
The lizards had also amassed some treasure - some copper and gold coins (these are newer and must have been brought to the caves since their rediscovery in the last 200 years or so). There was also a scroll among the treasure.
Pushing on the PCs were attacked by Stirges, but Sleep and swords dealt with them; then on to another room with a kind of pool in it, where the portcullises seemed to be held by some enchantment because they really wouldn't move. The party decided to set them on fire, but they didn't burn very quickly and the party retreated back they way they'd come, away from the smoke.
Threading their way back the party encountered a group of men who they might perhaps have negotiated with, but violence quickly broke out and again the tossing around of Sleep spells caused the encounter to go in the party's favour. Looting the bodies produced some more goodies.
Somewhere around here, Galan decided to see what was on the scroll. No sooner had he started to read than he felt himself overcome by some form of evil magic - not fatally, but he did feel weakened somehow.
As the PCs made their way back to the room with the exit, an Ogre came towards them. She wore a strange turban-like affair on her head and was surprisingly difficult to hit. Having disposed of her (I think someone else was injured in this encounter... I'm certain at least two of the party was injured at the end of the session, besides Galan's curse) the party looted the body gaining more gold and taking the turban (which, when they got it into the light, was more like a cloak for a human).
And that was that - the party high-tailed it back to town to divvy up the loot. I'm not sure anyone went up a level this time. Ah well, there's always tomorrow...
Sunday, 26 May 2019
Rift City Session 22
Our 22nd session in all and the second session at our new and hopefully long-term venue - the Black Horse in Aylestone - and a slightly larger party this time. The party was made up of:
Bonjella - 2nd Level Elf
Cnut - 3rd Level Fighter
Galan Foxflower - 2nd Level Elf
Gibbet - 3rd Level Thief
Karensa - 2nd Level Elf
Lyracian - Galan's player - has done a write-up of the session on his blog, "Playing Dice with the Universe" - link here. Thanks for the write-up Lyracian!
I can't think of anything in particular that needs to be added at this stage. Bonjella's death was obviously something of a blow, but we have a funny feeling that a Cleric will be joining the party at the next session...
Bonjella - 2nd Level Elf
Cnut - 3rd Level Fighter
Galan Foxflower - 2nd Level Elf
Gibbet - 3rd Level Thief
Karensa - 2nd Level Elf
Lyracian - Galan's player - has done a write-up of the session on his blog, "Playing Dice with the Universe" - link here. Thanks for the write-up Lyracian!
I can't think of anything in particular that needs to be added at this stage. Bonjella's death was obviously something of a blow, but we have a funny feeling that a Cleric will be joining the party at the next session...
Tuesday, 7 May 2019
Rift City Session 21 - A New Hope...
We may have found a new permanent venue. On Sunday, we went to a pub called the Black Horse in Aylestone, Leicester; this is because our previous venue, The Criterion, now seems to have closed.
Along with the usual 'noise' that we get with attendance (people having to work Sunday shifts, or their partners having to do so leading to childcare issues), it was the Easter Holidays, and also the National Student Gaming Championships being held this year in Glasgow. As a result, we were quite a few of or usual participants down this session. In the end, the PCs that made their way down to the caves this time around were:
Bonjella the 1st Level Elf
Cnut the 2nd Level Fighter
Gibbet the 3rd Level Thief
Karensa the 2nd Level Elf
The first thing that it was necessary for me to do was to explain to Bonjella, Cnut and Gibbet that the last 'day' of gaming, because the party at the last session had done a lot of visiting and resting, had taken much longer than a day, and there was now a 'calendar drift' - far from session 21 being also day 21, as session 20 had taken days 20 (exploring), 21 (resting), 22 (exploring), 23 (resting), 24 (resting) and 25 (exploring), session 21 was actually taking place on day 26. So everyone staying at the Inn owed another week's board and lodging.
Adopting a marching order of Karensa-Cnut-Gibbet-Bonjella, the party decided to throw current policy to the wind and go back to one of the partly-explored caves that they'd visited earlier - the cave entrance where they suspected that Ulfang the Black, bandit-king of the Kobolds, might be hiding (as they'd obtained a map with 'kobs' marked on it which they thought probably meant 'Kobolds').
Realising that without Galan, they didn't have a reliable map was something of a problem, though Gibbet, Cnut and Karensa had all been to these caves before, and Bonjella too I think (but it may have been Polly). Still they worked out a route that they thought would take them there. Basically by keeping the cave-wall on the left they figured that they'd get there. But, they didn't really reckon with the map not being a literal representation. The corridor immediately north-west of the 'vile crawlers' in the centre in particular was a bit of a problem as it is a bit more complex than shown.
Anyway, they did find their way through in something like this fashion, where the blue dashed line is the outward (inward?) journey and the green line the way back.
First they explored the cave to the east, just inside the entrance, to see that it didn't actually join up, but they confirmed that it was indeed a dead end. And it contained a slime, which the PCs attacked with arrows and, finding that that didn't work, with torches.
Beyond that point they ran into some Giant Bees. The PCs attacked them with missile weapons so convincingly that there were no bits left for Bonjella to harvest.
Shortly after that the party came to a cave where a stone statue stood (marked with an asterisk on the map); graffiti on the wall claimed that it was an adventurer slain by a basilisk; there was also a small imp-like creature that was hiding from them. Quashing the urge to kill it, Bonjella gave it some food but it still wouldn't come out of hiding, so the party moved on, as it seemed it wasn't planning on doing them any harm.
Coming to the large cave at the bottom of the map the PCs noticed a large hole in the ceiling. They'd spotted this before, and some debate was had as to whether or not they'd actually exited from it before. If so, it was ages ago, they haven't been this way for about 6 months, and I don't actually remember.
Pushing on, they tended round to the left in a north-easterly direction, and found themselves in a cave where they were attacked by a Harpy. Originally this was just a randomly-occurring monster, but as the party had dealings with a gaggle of Harpies a few months ago (probably, in game terms, about 11 days previously), there was no reason not to make this the one Harpy that actually escaped, and was therefore out for revenge. But the PCs managed to deal with it before anything too untoward happened.
The Harpy's cave, on Ningal's map, had a passageway off to the east marked 't'. There were many suggestions as to what 't' might mean, but Gibbet did check for traps - and realised that the exit was indeed trapped. This lead to one of those sentences that you have to suspect no-one else has ever said: "we throw the dead Harpy on the pressure-plate".
With the trap disabled, the party scooted through and found themselves in the next cave, where the was an 'f' marked on the map. This, it turned out, was a fountain, carved with tormented faces, with the water pouring out of their mouths, noses and eyes. Also, there was a bunch of skeletons.
Tooled up as they are with Sleep spells, and also adventuring without a Cleric, this left them with few options other than combat, but even 6 skeletons are going to find it tough going against opponents mostly wearing plate. Having smashed them up good, a quick scout around produced a treasure chest with some loot in it, which wasn't trapped; so the party pocketed the treasure and left the chest behind.
Moving past the Skeletons, they came to the area marked 'kobs' on the map - and lo and behold, 19 Kobolds were there to great them, and one of them, larger than the others, was indeed black! Ulfang had at last been located, and here the Sleep spells came into their own. 16 of the 19 were immediately downed as the other three, including Ulfang, charged the party. Even a super-tough Kobold chieftain with two of his tougher-than-average guards is no match for a tooled-up dungeon-party however, and in very short order, Ulfang and his entourage were all dead and the head of the miscreant had been stuffed into Bonjella's sack, to claim a reward back in town.
If they could get back to town...
The first bump on the way back was a small pack of giant Driver Ants. Only four of them but that proved a more dangerous proposition than a gang of Kobolds. Gibbet in particular took a chewing, as he had the worst armour, and it was touch-and-go for a moment; but the Ants were defeated, and Gibbet begged a Healing potion from Karensa, restoring at least some health. Good thing too, because more encounters were to come.
Next up was another group of skeletons; there were seven of these, but in fact were not really any more difficult than the first lot. The party is pretty difficult to hit (except Gibbet and he was definitely keeping out of the way).
Eventually they made it back to the place where the roof had collapsed, planning to climb out - but they discovered that an angry boar had fallen in, and stood between them and safety. Now boars are dangerous beasts and this one certainly proved to be so, taking a lot of effort to kill, but fall it eventually did allowing the PCs to scramble out and make their battered way back to town to divide the loot and claim the reward for doing away with Ulfang the Black.
Along with the usual 'noise' that we get with attendance (people having to work Sunday shifts, or their partners having to do so leading to childcare issues), it was the Easter Holidays, and also the National Student Gaming Championships being held this year in Glasgow. As a result, we were quite a few of or usual participants down this session. In the end, the PCs that made their way down to the caves this time around were:
Bonjella the 1st Level Elf
Cnut the 2nd Level Fighter
Gibbet the 3rd Level Thief
Karensa the 2nd Level Elf
The first thing that it was necessary for me to do was to explain to Bonjella, Cnut and Gibbet that the last 'day' of gaming, because the party at the last session had done a lot of visiting and resting, had taken much longer than a day, and there was now a 'calendar drift' - far from session 21 being also day 21, as session 20 had taken days 20 (exploring), 21 (resting), 22 (exploring), 23 (resting), 24 (resting) and 25 (exploring), session 21 was actually taking place on day 26. So everyone staying at the Inn owed another week's board and lodging.
Adopting a marching order of Karensa-Cnut-Gibbet-Bonjella, the party decided to throw current policy to the wind and go back to one of the partly-explored caves that they'd visited earlier - the cave entrance where they suspected that Ulfang the Black, bandit-king of the Kobolds, might be hiding (as they'd obtained a map with 'kobs' marked on it which they thought probably meant 'Kobolds').
 |
| Copy of the map from Ningal the Magic User |
Anyway, they did find their way through in something like this fashion, where the blue dashed line is the outward (inward?) journey and the green line the way back.
First they explored the cave to the east, just inside the entrance, to see that it didn't actually join up, but they confirmed that it was indeed a dead end. And it contained a slime, which the PCs attacked with arrows and, finding that that didn't work, with torches.
Beyond that point they ran into some Giant Bees. The PCs attacked them with missile weapons so convincingly that there were no bits left for Bonjella to harvest.
Shortly after that the party came to a cave where a stone statue stood (marked with an asterisk on the map); graffiti on the wall claimed that it was an adventurer slain by a basilisk; there was also a small imp-like creature that was hiding from them. Quashing the urge to kill it, Bonjella gave it some food but it still wouldn't come out of hiding, so the party moved on, as it seemed it wasn't planning on doing them any harm.
Coming to the large cave at the bottom of the map the PCs noticed a large hole in the ceiling. They'd spotted this before, and some debate was had as to whether or not they'd actually exited from it before. If so, it was ages ago, they haven't been this way for about 6 months, and I don't actually remember.
Pushing on, they tended round to the left in a north-easterly direction, and found themselves in a cave where they were attacked by a Harpy. Originally this was just a randomly-occurring monster, but as the party had dealings with a gaggle of Harpies a few months ago (probably, in game terms, about 11 days previously), there was no reason not to make this the one Harpy that actually escaped, and was therefore out for revenge. But the PCs managed to deal with it before anything too untoward happened.
The Harpy's cave, on Ningal's map, had a passageway off to the east marked 't'. There were many suggestions as to what 't' might mean, but Gibbet did check for traps - and realised that the exit was indeed trapped. This lead to one of those sentences that you have to suspect no-one else has ever said: "we throw the dead Harpy on the pressure-plate".
With the trap disabled, the party scooted through and found themselves in the next cave, where the was an 'f' marked on the map. This, it turned out, was a fountain, carved with tormented faces, with the water pouring out of their mouths, noses and eyes. Also, there was a bunch of skeletons.
Tooled up as they are with Sleep spells, and also adventuring without a Cleric, this left them with few options other than combat, but even 6 skeletons are going to find it tough going against opponents mostly wearing plate. Having smashed them up good, a quick scout around produced a treasure chest with some loot in it, which wasn't trapped; so the party pocketed the treasure and left the chest behind.
Moving past the Skeletons, they came to the area marked 'kobs' on the map - and lo and behold, 19 Kobolds were there to great them, and one of them, larger than the others, was indeed black! Ulfang had at last been located, and here the Sleep spells came into their own. 16 of the 19 were immediately downed as the other three, including Ulfang, charged the party. Even a super-tough Kobold chieftain with two of his tougher-than-average guards is no match for a tooled-up dungeon-party however, and in very short order, Ulfang and his entourage were all dead and the head of the miscreant had been stuffed into Bonjella's sack, to claim a reward back in town.
If they could get back to town...
The first bump on the way back was a small pack of giant Driver Ants. Only four of them but that proved a more dangerous proposition than a gang of Kobolds. Gibbet in particular took a chewing, as he had the worst armour, and it was touch-and-go for a moment; but the Ants were defeated, and Gibbet begged a Healing potion from Karensa, restoring at least some health. Good thing too, because more encounters were to come.
Next up was another group of skeletons; there were seven of these, but in fact were not really any more difficult than the first lot. The party is pretty difficult to hit (except Gibbet and he was definitely keeping out of the way).
Eventually they made it back to the place where the roof had collapsed, planning to climb out - but they discovered that an angry boar had fallen in, and stood between them and safety. Now boars are dangerous beasts and this one certainly proved to be so, taking a lot of effort to kill, but fall it eventually did allowing the PCs to scramble out and make their battered way back to town to divide the loot and claim the reward for doing away with Ulfang the Black.
Friday, 12 April 2019
Rift City Session 20 - what a day we've had!
Firstly, our usual venue was not ready so once again we decamped to Berg & Galan's house - many thanks again to them for their hospitality!
Secondly... some PCs were injured after the last session (Berg in particular) so the decision was taken to wait for a day of game-time (day 20) to let people heal.
That meant that the PCs set off to the caves on day 21. The party at this point consisted of:
Berg (2nd Level Dwarf)
Galan (2nd Level Elf)
Gene (2nd Level Fighter)
Karensa (2nd Level Elf)
Marl (2nd Level Halfling)
and they were joined by a new character, Karina, a 1st Level Thief
They made their way to the area they call the 'Bath-house of Blibdoolpoolp' as their idea was to find their way down to Level 2 where they hoped there might be some more loot.
Approaching the entrance, they realised it had been barricaded. Berg and Marl decided to start shifting parts of it, but whoever was inside noticed (the Elves realised the inhabitants must have been Hobgoblins) and a spear sliced out of a gap in the barricade and stabbed Berg. Karina shot though one of the gaps and luckily managed to hit one of the Hobgoblins. However the party decided that it was too dangerous to be close to the barricade so they covered it in lamp-oil and set fire to it.
After a few moments, obviously deciding they needed to do something about the people burning their door down, two Hobgoblins leapt through the flaming gap. Of course, the PCs were ready for this manoeuvre, and peppered them with arrows.
Berg searched the Hobgoblins as the rest made their way inside. The Hobgoblins all had jewellery, and in the room were some sacks containing coins. The party thought that perhaps the guards were demanding danger money for the extremely hazardous job of guarding this doorway.
As they'd scored some loot immediately and Berg (who is something of a tank and often takes point) had been heavily injured, the PCs high-tailed it back to town.
I'm not really sure of the sequence of events here, I have to admit. It was very confusing. Some of the party advanced a level due to the treasure from the first brief foray (Gene certainly went up a level, to 3rd). But they'd only been to the first room, and we'd only been gaming for about half an hour in total, so they then waited for Berg to heal before heading to the Caves for another go.
So now we were on day 22. The PCs again headed to the Bath-house, found that nothing had moved in to the first room, and headed for the top of the stairs. Entering the room where the corridor with the staircase was to be found, they realised there were some giant spiders there. The PCs made short work of them, and headed on to the staircase. They hoped that this would lead them to the rooms on the treasure map they'd found at the previous session.
On reaching the bottom of the staircase, they found a large corridor with various doors off it that didn't seem to fit the map. Exploring a little further they found a large room that might have been used at some time as some kind of audience chamber, but was at present just large and empty.
Moving back towards the area they'd already been they approached a set of double doors at the same time as two more giant spiders (slightly bigger than, and seemingly a different species to, the others) came through form the other side. Backing up and using missile fire the PCs managed to take them out without taking any damage, and the PCs went on. The doors opened into the original corridor - there wasn't actually a room behind - so the party continued exploring. Coming across an opening from the corridor and seeing what appeared to be an empty room, the PCs piled in.
However, they didn't check for traps and Berg set off a poison gas trap. Unfortunately Gene failed to make his save and died; two of the other characters (can't remember which, but I think it was Galan and Marl) were down to 1hp.
The party decided that they needed to wait until everyone was healed again, so they waited another two days back in town (days 23 and 24). Then they went back to the area again (day 25)...
There was a bunch of encounters with wandering things - and from a 'behind the curtain' point of view, it was very hard to keep up with the restocking. Usually I have the time between sessions to work out the percentages for some other monster moving in and then restocking the lists of wanderers and so on. Here I was answering questions about how long people needed to heal while simultaneously trying to generate new stat-blocks for monsters. It was somewhat chaotic to say the least.
However, the party got back to it. They reached the same point that they'd been before, pushed on through another couple of rooms, and then ended up in a fight with some leaping, shrieking Giant Shrews. They were pretty vicious and leapt on the heads of several party members. But they did manage to fight them all of and finally made it both out and back.
I think that was how we left it...
And now another episode is about to ensue - next session, Sunday evening, if I can get my damned machine with the dungeon on it to work. If not, I'll have to make something up...shh! Don't tell them!
Secondly... some PCs were injured after the last session (Berg in particular) so the decision was taken to wait for a day of game-time (day 20) to let people heal.
That meant that the PCs set off to the caves on day 21. The party at this point consisted of:
Berg (2nd Level Dwarf)
Galan (2nd Level Elf)
Gene (2nd Level Fighter)
Karensa (2nd Level Elf)
Marl (2nd Level Halfling)
and they were joined by a new character, Karina, a 1st Level Thief
They made their way to the area they call the 'Bath-house of Blibdoolpoolp' as their idea was to find their way down to Level 2 where they hoped there might be some more loot.
Approaching the entrance, they realised it had been barricaded. Berg and Marl decided to start shifting parts of it, but whoever was inside noticed (the Elves realised the inhabitants must have been Hobgoblins) and a spear sliced out of a gap in the barricade and stabbed Berg. Karina shot though one of the gaps and luckily managed to hit one of the Hobgoblins. However the party decided that it was too dangerous to be close to the barricade so they covered it in lamp-oil and set fire to it.
After a few moments, obviously deciding they needed to do something about the people burning their door down, two Hobgoblins leapt through the flaming gap. Of course, the PCs were ready for this manoeuvre, and peppered them with arrows.
Berg searched the Hobgoblins as the rest made their way inside. The Hobgoblins all had jewellery, and in the room were some sacks containing coins. The party thought that perhaps the guards were demanding danger money for the extremely hazardous job of guarding this doorway.
As they'd scored some loot immediately and Berg (who is something of a tank and often takes point) had been heavily injured, the PCs high-tailed it back to town.
I'm not really sure of the sequence of events here, I have to admit. It was very confusing. Some of the party advanced a level due to the treasure from the first brief foray (Gene certainly went up a level, to 3rd). But they'd only been to the first room, and we'd only been gaming for about half an hour in total, so they then waited for Berg to heal before heading to the Caves for another go.
So now we were on day 22. The PCs again headed to the Bath-house, found that nothing had moved in to the first room, and headed for the top of the stairs. Entering the room where the corridor with the staircase was to be found, they realised there were some giant spiders there. The PCs made short work of them, and headed on to the staircase. They hoped that this would lead them to the rooms on the treasure map they'd found at the previous session.
On reaching the bottom of the staircase, they found a large corridor with various doors off it that didn't seem to fit the map. Exploring a little further they found a large room that might have been used at some time as some kind of audience chamber, but was at present just large and empty.
Moving back towards the area they'd already been they approached a set of double doors at the same time as two more giant spiders (slightly bigger than, and seemingly a different species to, the others) came through form the other side. Backing up and using missile fire the PCs managed to take them out without taking any damage, and the PCs went on. The doors opened into the original corridor - there wasn't actually a room behind - so the party continued exploring. Coming across an opening from the corridor and seeing what appeared to be an empty room, the PCs piled in.
However, they didn't check for traps and Berg set off a poison gas trap. Unfortunately Gene failed to make his save and died; two of the other characters (can't remember which, but I think it was Galan and Marl) were down to 1hp.
The party decided that they needed to wait until everyone was healed again, so they waited another two days back in town (days 23 and 24). Then they went back to the area again (day 25)...
There was a bunch of encounters with wandering things - and from a 'behind the curtain' point of view, it was very hard to keep up with the restocking. Usually I have the time between sessions to work out the percentages for some other monster moving in and then restocking the lists of wanderers and so on. Here I was answering questions about how long people needed to heal while simultaneously trying to generate new stat-blocks for monsters. It was somewhat chaotic to say the least.
However, the party got back to it. They reached the same point that they'd been before, pushed on through another couple of rooms, and then ended up in a fight with some leaping, shrieking Giant Shrews. They were pretty vicious and leapt on the heads of several party members. But they did manage to fight them all of and finally made it both out and back.
I think that was how we left it...
And now another episode is about to ensue - next session, Sunday evening, if I can get my damned machine with the dungeon on it to work. If not, I'll have to make something up...shh! Don't tell them!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)