End of an Era

 Well, it looks like the Rift City campaign is no more, and 'The Wandering Monster Table', the experiment to bring open-table D&D to Leicester is over, after a little over 5 years.

Brigham's Mule Sanctuary, his retirement plan, interpreted by 'Dream by Wombo' (look it up, I've had fun playing with it) AI art generator

I've mentioned in previous postings on the blog that it has morphed into something quite different from the original conception, becoming something more like a regular gaming group, and also (primarily because of covid, but also due to to work commitments and people moving away) migrating from meatspace (and not just face-to-face but in a publicly-accessible space) to online. However, the Rift City campaign was conceived as a drop-in game and in theory at least remained so until the end. And that was the point really, to give people a regular game that didn't involve committing to be at every session.

This was why I adopted the structure I did for the campaign - adventuring in the Rift took place during the day, and at the end of the day the PCs high-tailed it back to town to lick their wounds an count their loot. Then, 'the next day', a potentially new constellation of adventurers would brave the caves and return in glory or defeat.

It's been fun (mostly), and some hard work to keep it going. But over the last couple of sessions, only two players have turned up - Brigham and Ugli, who were the players of Polly the Magic User and Gibbet the Thief in the very first session. We decided if no-one else wanted to come to the next session, we'd knock it on the head. I put out a call on Facebook (most of the players, something like 25 of them, who'd been to previous sessions are on there) but no-one committed to coming. So, I've pulled the plug.

Thanks players for turning up and running through the games I put on, I hope everyone had fun... but it's time to find other things to do every first Sunday of the month. Ciao!

Rift City Campaign Session 60 - out of the Rift!

I'd like to start with an apology to anyone still reading this. It seems I've put two posts on the blog in the last year. I've been very bad at keeping it up to date. I originally started the blog to discuss fantasy gaming, mostly Warhammer and related topics, but after I did, I started playing D&D again and that became the main focus. But lately I've been posting neither D&D nor miniature-gaming content. So, I'm sorry to anyone who feels disappointed. Perhaps no-one is, in which case, that's OK, but in case anyone is, you have my apologies, and at least the expressed intention to do better.

I'm not really sure why it's tailed off. I have been continuing to run the Rift City Campaign, and messing about with a bunch of other things; I just haven't been good at talking about them. But, with the Rift City Campaign, and the 'Wandering Monster Table' project, now 5 years old (we had our first session in August 2017), it seemed like a good reason to sit down and say something about it. So I will.

First, the 'Wandering Monster Table' itself. This was originally conceived as a monthly drop-in game in a (relatively) public space. Our first six sessions were in a pub, on the second Sunday of the month; we had to move for a month when there was an event on for one month (there's a comedy festival that takes place every February in Leicester, and the pub was a regular venue); we met at the house of a couple of people from the group for one session; but after the festival, we went back to the pub for about another year.

Then, the pub we met at closed down and we had to find another venue. So, for a couple of months, we went back to the house of the players we'd been to previously; then we found a different pub, for about another six months.

After this however, I got a new job that involved travelling on Sunday evenings. This meant that we had to move the session, to Sunday afternoon, when most pubs are serving food and much less keen to let some weirdos use a couple of tables. But shortly after this, Covid happened and all the pubs were closed anyway. Also, people couldn't meet face-to-face. So, we started using Discord.

So for half of its life, the 'public drop-in game' has existed as an online game instead. It's still a drop-in game, in theory, but I don't think we've added any players online that hadn't come to face-to-face sessions. I'm not saying the project is a failure - it certainly isn't, it's the longest-running campaign I've been involved in bar none; three people came to the first session (apart from me) and two of them are still regular players; and hopefully people who've played in it have enjoyed it (I certainly have) and will continue to enjoy it; but it must be admitted that it doesn't really fulfil the original brief any more. But, that's OK; who in the balmy days of the Summer of 2017 could have predicted Covid? Not me at any rate. Maybe, at some point, we'll get back to face-to-face meetings in a public place; maybe we won't.

Anyway, that's the 'Wandering Monster Table'... what about the campaign itself?

At the previous session (in June) the PCs had decided that they need more magic items - specifically Bags of Holding, as they'd found what turned out over two sessions to be several dragons, and were trying to find ways of carrying back the piles of coinage that tend to be found in dragony hoards.

There are no 'magic shops' per se in Rift City. Not quite true; there are no general magic emporia, but there is an Alchemist who has opened a potion shop, and potions are sometimes available from some of the temples too, but the supply overall is erratic. Perhaps I've done this 'wrong'; maybe it would have been more sensible to have a magic shop in Rift City, but my thinking has been that magic should be somewhat more difficult to access than say torches or iron rations. It *should* make it more mysterious and 'special', but perhaps it's just more annoying.

However, the party knows that there is a more substantial city about four days' journey away. 'Rift City' is a somewhat rough frontier town, built on the momentary profits of exploiting the adventurers coming back from the monster-infested tunnels in the Rift - it's sort of like a gold-rush town. It hardly has much infrastructure. The 'big city' is actually a real city - much bigger than Rift City and, the PCs hope, with better amenities. 

So, I worked out how far away it was and estimated how long it would take to get there. In effect, it's four days' journey through mountainous terrain, unless something goes very wrong. I wondered about this, rolled up some encounters for different times of the days involved, and knocked together a rough-and-ready plan of action. My estimate was that we could do the journey in one session, then the PCs could have as many sessions as they liked in the city, and then come back to the Rift if they wanted to, or use the city as a basis to go off elsewhere.

Illustration I found googling 'fantasy mountains', to post on the group's Facebook page: © Wizards of the Coast by Alayna Danner

I've discussed at various times on this blog what a 'quest' campaign would look like and how it could be made to work with an open table like The Wandering Monster Table - most thoroughly in this post from March 2018. The short version is, as long as the PCs finish the session somewhere relatively 'safe', where people can chose to stay and new people can join the party, an open table should be able to accommodate a campaign involving PC travel. The trick is ending the action at a point where there can be a reasonable 'changeover'.

As I mentioned, I'd estimated that the journey from Rift City to the city called 'Selen' by the inhabitants of the Rift could be accomplished in one session. I really should remember Helmuth von Moltke's dictum 'no plan survives first contact with the enemy', and not just remember it, but also rigorously apply it to D&D as soon as I get any barmy notions like 'the PCs will probably do this, it should take that long'. No. Doesn't happen.

First, though the players were all agreed to go to Selen, there was no consensus on how they were going to go. I had assumed (me and my assumptions) that they would just set off and go along the road. But, instead, they decided to attach themselves to a caravan. That's OK, I know caravans come and go, some of the early plots and hooks around the Rift concerned the raiding of caravans by Kobolds and the theft of supplies destined for Rift City. Caravans are definitely a thing in the vicinity of Rift City.

So I rolled up a random caravan. I don't have any specific rules for creating caravans - maybe I should write some - but there are Merchants in the D&D Expert book. There caravans can be of different sizes, so I randomised creation and rolled one up. I got the largest size of caravan I could, about 20 merchants and 80 guards; but I don't see wagons making it through the mountains very easily (even with the relatively-OK roads that I assume exist... it doesn't matter why but 'OK roads' seem reasonable in context), so I decided this caravan would mostly be mules - a giant mule-train, basically. I randomly determined when this caravan would be setting off, and as luck would have it, the PCs only had to wait one more day.

Some of the PCs spent this day buying up all the gems and jewellery and platinum pieces they could get their hands on in Rift City, the idea being to take portable wealth to Selen. Other PCs, not so much. They mostly just stuffed money into sacks.

Some of the PCs decided to sign up as guards for the caravan. They negotiated a price with one of the merchants to provide two armoured humans, two armoured Dwarves and an armoured Elf. The party at this point consisted of Brigham and Halvor (Clerics around 8th Level), Heedor and Ugli (Dwarves around 8th Level) and Jade, a new PC (Elf of 7th Level). The price was lower than the player doing the negotiating had hoped for, but reflected market conditions; pay (3gp each for the humans, 5gp for the Dwarves and 6gp for the Elf) represent their cost as 'Heavy Foot' mercenaries. Only not for a month, for four days. PCs have to provide their own food rather than it being provided, and there is some danger on the way for sure; it isn't garrison duty in a sleepy backwater. So the pay is much higher than the minimum to get soldiers. But crucially, there are lots of people who could do the job in Rift City (the place is awash with 1st-Level Fighters, Elves and Dwarves) and the organisers of the caravan weren't going to pay loads for 'special' guards. So the five PCs were offered 22gp to be caravan guards.

However, others of the PCs decided it would be fun to get mules of their own; so, some of the other members of the party bought seven mules, mostly to carry large sacks of gold.

This led to some problems with the caravan. The organisers had agreed to pay for five guards; but on the morning that the caravan was due to depart, two guards and three merchants with seven mules turned up.

A quick re-negotiation with the merchants led to a revised offer; 8gp for the Elf and one of the Human (Cleric) heavy infantry; the remaining PCs paid 15gp for up to two mules to join the caravan (the PC with three mules had to pay 30gp). Also, these PCs hired a mule-handler-cum-extra guard, a Dwarf called Gami.

At last the PCs and the caravan were ready and the whole travelling roadshow set off through the mountains.

According to my rolled encounters, there was nothing in the morning. So, the morning passed uneventfully. I had rolled both an evening encounter, and a situation of some consternation at the end of the day. I'm trialling some rough wilderness creation rules for precisely this sort of situation, and my results were that there would be an encounter with snakes (Giant Rattlers, in this case) and the 'safe' area at the end of the day would be a village of ... Troglodytes. Hmm. Think my procedure needs tweaking a bit.

The snake encounter was fine; as originally I'd done the rolling up when I thought just the PCs were travelling (Helmuth von Moltke is spinning in his grave I presume) there was always the chance that the encounter I planned for them would have been triggered by some other part of the caravan. I just asked the PCs where they were in the caravan ('front, middle or back') and assigned a 2-in-6 chance that that was where the snake attack was. And, it was. Had it not been, I'd have said 'there's a kerfuffle up ahead/somewhere behind you...' but it was nearby. The party toasted the snakes - literally, as far as I remember, I think Jade used Fireball - and that was that. I think someone ate some barbecued snake but can't remember who - probably one of the Dwarves.

My assumption had been for the village at the end of that, that there was a (friendly) village, but the Trogs had overrun it. So, in the evening, as they approached the village, the caravan came across some bodies in the road. As so often happens in situations when I need 'people' quickly, I turned to Donjon's random generators - this case, the NPC generator. I must have also rolled for how many bodies there were, because there were definitely three of them. I read the first three entries, and from the descriptions gave the PCs an idea of the people they'd found - two middle-aged women and one younger woman. I also told them the dead women seemed to be fleeing the village and there was a horrible stench around. Several of the PCs have fought troglodytes before (everyone except Jade I think) so I thought it reasonable that they would recognise the lingering smell.

The PCs decided to Raise Dead on the young woman. It turned out that her name was Astal, she lived in the village with her parents who were farmers, and she had fled when the stinking lizards had attacked and had started running to the north hoping she and her companions could have made it to Rift City, but were caught and brutally attacked... Raise Dead leaves the raised one with 1hp so the PCs decided that Astal should sit on one of the mules and come back to the village.

As the caravan got there, the PCs seemed reluctant to go in (I described it as having an earth bank around it: in my imagination, it's a village inside an old disused fortification, and the road passed between the banks on either side). Some of the PCs turned themselves invisible, but they delayed going in for a while. In the meantime, some of the other caravan guards went inside. By the time the PCs had decided to follow suit, I ruled that the other guards had already dealt with the Trogs in the village so the PCs didn't get any experience for that (or the gems that made up the Trogs' treasure).

The PCs asked Astal if she wanted to go to her house, but she didn't - the potential sight of her murdered parents being too upsetting. So, instead five PCs, an NPC Dwarf caravan guard, a newly-resurrected peasant girl and seven mules all bedded down in a stable. They worked out a watch rota and settled down.

I knew there was going to be an attack of a particular kind during the night. There's a kind of monster from Deities and Demigods called an 'Astral Wolf'. It's in the 'Nehwon Mythos' section, and appears in the Wilderness Wandering Monster Tables for the campaign because, well, everything from the Nehwon Mythos section exists in my campaign. The PCs just don't know it yet because they've only seen the Rift so far. Astral Wolves attack by ambushing people in their dreams and forcing them into the Astral Plane where the wolves then attack them bodily.

To be forced into the Astral Plane, you have to fail a save versus Spells. Of course, all of the PCs made their saves, so they just had some bad dreams about zombie wolves pursuing them through a silvery realm. Gami the NPC Dwarf however, who was on watch, woke the party members to show them Astal, - a Normal Human with rubbish saves, who had therefore been transported to the Astral Realm, where she was attacked by the Astral Wolves, and, having only 1hp from her Raise Dead experience, had quickly succumbed to their attacks. So that was that (for the moment) - the Astral Wolf attack served only to give the PCs bad dreams but insta-killed the person they'd only just brought back.

The PCs went back to sleep as best they could but there were no further attacks that night. In the morning, the party rose and began prep for the next day.

And that's where we ended the session, it having taken massively longer to play that day than I expected. I thought Day 1 of the journey could be 'done' in about 45 minutes - it took nearly three hours. Proof positive that I shouldn't bother trying estimate this stuff, because the PCs will always do stuff I don't expect.

What will the next session bring? who knows? Not me. But I have an idea how the rest of the journey could proceed, if the PCs don't take things in strange and unexpected directions, which they might well; and, if and when they get there, I hope they'll find the City of Selen an interesting place to visit and to adventure in.

Rift City catchup...

Well, I'm not doing well posting updates to the Rift City Campaign. Session 49 (August, the campaign's 4th birthday!) has been and gone - as have Sessions 50 (September), 51 (October) and 52 (November). Session 53 is almost upon us...

What can I say? I write fewer notes with the discord sessions, and then it's harder to reconstruct what happened after the event. This makes it far less likely that I'll actually start writing a blog post, and then the next session comes round and I have more to do with less information (and I've already forgotten half of what happened at the session before...).

What has definitely happened is that the PCs have abandoned the tunnels under the ruins that they were previously exploring, and therefore the search for the tomb of Riha the Bejewelled, and instead started exploring down the hill where they discovered an entrance to a different part of Level 6. They fought Salamanders (the PCs got very hot, and turned one of them into a rabbit); they found some Spectres, Berg charged in and the rest of the PCs stood by watching - as Berg was zapped by six Spectres, making her very dead indeed. RIP Berg, there was many a Dwarf that night crying himself to sleep over his beer I'm sure. There were also some 'evil Dwarves' as the PCs called them (they definitely were evil, I'm not going to lie - some were Chaotic Evil, some were Neutral Evil, a few weren't technically Dwarves, but it doesn't really matter - they were for sure hostile to the party and paid the price) in one of the rooms but they were wiped out and all their stuff was liberated for the forces of Light.

Further exploration in the same area over subsequent sessions has yielded some snake-chickens (Cockatrices that is) and some strange big-cats-with-six-legs-and-shoulder-tentacles, which are of course Displacer Beasts, but because I'm using a Labyrinth Lord monster generator (link here) they come up as 'Phase Tigers', which is a very cool name I think. Certainly, if I were a Phase Tiger, I reckon I'd be very disapproving of people calling me a 'Displacer Beast'. Then of course there were a couple of packs of Hellhounds, which Halvor in particular is theologically very against (his god is a kind of version of the Viking god Tyr, and his mythology has his hand being bitten off by a giant Hellhound. The Hellhound is in turn worshipped by Goblins as a great flaming wolf-spirit of the Underworld).

Image of Tyr from Age of Kings, which I don't think is the same of Age of Empires II, but might be. Anyway, this is 'Yrt', one-handed god of Lawful Fighting.

Halvor's divine interventions have proved particularly useful. 'Sticks to Snakes' (one of the spells Halvor uses most often) has allowed the party to considerably increase their muscle-power, as well as giving them poisoned attacks. It's a powerful spell - though, I ruled (because I can't specifically find a rule for it) that they couldn't successfully attack the Spectres that killed Berg.

Web, from Inarra the MU, has also proved useful. In the last session, when the party was attacked by Hellhounds, Inarra webbed them. This led to a discussion on whether Hellhounds are immune to fire damage, and it doesn't seem they are. The reasoning is that, if the Hellhounds' breath destroys the web, it also harms the Hellhounds. Effectively, they spent two rounds fighting themselves by burning themselves out of the web before confronting the party.

What else...? I'm not sure, I can't remember at the moment. If you want some better detail, Lyracian (whose PC is Halvor) has written up some of the sessions on his blog (link).

Changing the ending of the Lord of the Rings

I may have mentioned (just the odd time) that LotR is a big thing for me. I first read it more than 40 years ago and it has exerted quite a pull ever since. But actually, there are problems gaming it (see the 'Questing in Elfgames' label for some ruminations on that - I've mused about this pretty often).

One idea I've been kicking around recently is a 'what if?' pretty much directly inspired by two facebook memes and more generally by some ideas I've had for a while. I don't like the term 'synergies' but I think it is somewhat fitting in this instance. The coming-together of a bunch of fairly disparate stuff has almost tied itself into something coherent (coherent...ish).

The first meme was a pic of Cate Blanchett as Hela next to Carl Urban as Skurge, from Thor: Ragnarok, with some text along the lines of 'Did Galadriel take the Ring?'.

Didn't find the FB meme but this image illustrates the point - Karl Urban (Skurge, Eomer) and Cate Blanchett (Hela, Galadriel) - Marvel's evil versions of good LotR characters in Thor: Ragnarok?  - (c) Marvel 2017

The second meme was called 'When Elves Go Bad' and had a similar theme. There were pictures of Galadriel twinned with Hela, Thranduil paired with Ronan the Accuser from Guardians of the Galaxy, and Elrond paired with Red Skull from The Avengers.

Some random stuff from the net - originals (c) New Line Cinema 2001-2014 and (c) Marvel 2011-2019

These images (and the ideas they provoked) slotted into two bits of LotR 'alternative history' that I've been considering for a couple of years. For a little while, when Game of Thrones was becoming popular, people were using the LotR Boromir miniatures for Ned Stark, as they were famously both played by Sean Bean, cementing his reputation as the actor whose character died half-way through (sorry for the spoilers if you've not seen LotR or GoT), and prompting such famous memes as Boromir standing in the snows of Caradhras saying 'Winter is Coming', and another of Boromir at the Council of Elrond saying 'One does not simply walk into King's Landing'. I remember several GoT threads on Lead Adventures where Games Workshop's Gondor and Rohan soldiers were pressed into service in Westeros. In my own (rather small) LotR collection, there are several Gondor and Numenor soldiers who have had their distinctive winged helmets filed off and their 'White Tree' shields scraped so the design has been obliterated. These had come in an ebay job-lot I got a couple of years ago. I have a pretty strong hunch that they were originally intended for an abandoned GoT project. Not having great modelling skills myself, I put them aside, unsure as to what to do with them. Maybe I'm coming up with a plan... Anyway, the idea of 'what if Boromir survived and got married and had kids?' was something floating around in my brain for a while.

If Boromir survived... Ned and Catlyn Stark (Sean Bean and Michelle Fairly) in Game of Thrones Season 1 (c) HBO 2011

A couple of years ago, I watched a movie featuring Aaron Eckhardt (who I like) and Miranda Otto (who I really only know from the LotR films so it's difficult to have too much of an opinion on her, though I think she pulls off Eowyn perfectly well). It was called I, Frankenstein (Lionsgate, 2014) and though I don't want to give the game away too much (you never know, someone may stumble across this and decide they want to watch the movie... though I don't think it's very good, ask Rotten Tomatoes if you want a review), Miranda Otto plays Leonore, the Queen of the (Were-)Gargoyles in their war with (Were-)Demons. When I saw it originally, I thought 'hey, so this is what Eowyn gets up to when she goes to live in Emyn Arnen with Faramir'.

What Eowyn did next - Queen Leonore (Miranda Otto) in I, Frankenstein (c) Lionsgate 2014

So, already armed with mental pictures of what Eowyn did after LotR, and what Boromir might have done had he survived, and then the idea of Galadriel and Eomer as an evil double act, then corrupted versions of Elrond and Thranduil, I started to wonder how this could all be made to work.

The idea of Galadriel taking the Ring is key here. Her speech (the version in the film is slightly condensed but not, I think, significantly):

“And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!” (Fellowship of the Ring: The Mirror of Galadriel (c) Allen & Unwin 1954)

She then pledges to resist the Ring, to diminish, go into the West, and "remain Galadriel".

But what if she didn't?

If Galadriel took the Ring from Frodo in Lorien (freely offered, not forced) then perhaps the 'Queen' she sees herself becoming would become something like Hela. Ultimately of course - it wouldn't happen immediately. The Ring would have to corrupt her more than just giving in to a momentary weakness to take power when offered it, she'd have to start to actually do bad stuff... out of a desire to good, of course, as Gandalf says.

But what would this 'beautiful and terrible' Queen do?

It seems to me that the first thing she would try to do would be to neutralise potential rivals. Of these, the most important are probably Saruman and Elrond. Gandalf is 'dead' - no-one at this point knows he's coming back; Saruman and Elrond are the main loremasters who could in theory challenge Galadriel. Thranduil, Glorfindel, Cirdan, Radagast... are any of these likely to be able to mount a serious challenge to the new Dark Queen? I'd suspect not, and I'm sure Celeborn would not go against her either. Beyond their basic raw power, Saruman and Elrond also have more Ring-lore than any outside of the immediate ambit of Mordor - Saruman because he has studied it over centuries (to the point of obsession, madness and treachery) and Elrond because he is actually the wielder of one of the Three. So, a war with Saruman looks to me like Galadriel's best bet - especially if she can convince Elrond to stay on her side. Saruman has already shown himself to be a traitor to the White Council, and Galadriel, I think can make the argument that with Gandalf's death, swift action against Saruman is vital to stop Mordor and its allies triumphing absolutely.

As the Mistress of the Ring, who also has a close connection with the last bearer of one of the Three (Elrond is of course her son-in-law) I think it might be possible to persuade Elrond of this course of action. So a direct alliance of Lorien and Rivendell against Isengard seems a possibility. Should Elrond be reluctant, perhaps Galadriel could count on the power of the One Ring to sway him, but that's not certain. The power of the One over the Three is sketchy. Certainly there is no suggestion that Sauron was ever able to influence Galadriel, Cirdan, Gil-Galad, Elrond or Gandalf. But, he was their sworn enemy; Galadriel is Elrond's friend, kinswoman and ally. It might be possible to use the Ring's influence to persuade him... for the greater good, of course.

Sauron meanwhile would be in the dark. The Ring-wraiths have been banished for the time being and the trail of the Ring-bearer was lost at the Ford of Bruinen. Sauron must suspect the Ring was taken to Rivendell but probably not more than that. Saruman is perhaps no better-informed - his agents lost the Hobbits when they left Bree, and though he may have suspected they would go to Rivendell but what else might have happened he can't know. He may wonder if perhaps the Ring would be taken to Lorien, but he cannot be at all certain of this.

Anyway - a surprise Elvish attack on Isengard is my assumption as to 'what happens next'. Lorien would provide the main component of this force, but perhaps Rivendell would provide some support. Tolkien has Elrond send Elrohir and Elladan with the Rangers of Arnor to help Aragorn and perhaps some similar (maybe even larger) force could be a component of any putative Elven attack. Whatever Rivendell's contribution I expect Lorien to be the main gainer in this adventure. Jackson has Haldir lead a collection of Elves to Helm's Deep and something like this can be envisioned as forming a significant part of the Lorien army.

The attitude of Rohan, and I think perhaps perhaps particularly Eomer, can explain the Eomer-Skurge connection. Without Gandalf, Theoden is still in Saruman's power, but if the attack from Lorien were rapid enough, Theodred might not be dead yet, and Theoden may not be utterly in despair (which was of course one of the reasons Grima and through him Saruman were able to gain power over Theoden). But whatever Theoden's attitude, Eomer is already implacably opposed to Saruman. He may think allying with the Sorceress of the Golden Wood against the White Wizard is a good bargain (all for 'the greater good' of Rohan of course), even if it means rebellion against his King... and may even make his 'becoming' Skurge more likely, as he is potentially now even more cut off from his kin - his King is of course also his uncle. Perhaps this even opens the door to a rift with his sister. All in all, it looks like the alliance between at least a faction of the Rohirrim led by Eomer and Galadriel's anti-Saruman Elf forces is a distinct possibility.

Assuming some relative success of Galadriel's assault on Isengard, she is likely to have come away with a greatly-increased armoury both in terms of materiel and knowledge, as well as magical items such as the Palantir. With a Palantir and her own Mirror (that she insists isn't 'magic' but that's a semantic quibble I think) she would be in a much more powerful position to challenge Sauron directly than any of the main actors in LotR. This of course would be her ultimate goal, though I'm sure she would rather Sauron exhaust himself on other enemies (like Gondor) rather than attacking Lorien directly.

But, Galadriel would need further allies. And then, what to do with Nenya? My supposition is that she would make a gift of it to Thranduil, one of the few of the leaders of the Elves who could make immediate trouble for her. With Elrond a potential ally, and also positioned to protect Lorien from any attack from the West (by Cirdan, Gildor or other unknown lords of Lindon who may not share her new ambitions - though, of course, she may persuade them too), Galadriel I think would want to make her north-eastern approaches secure, so a gift of one of the Great Rings to Thranduil makes perfect sense, especially if the idea of potential influence through the power of the One is accepted.

Over time, the corruption of Galadriel's purpose would be mirrored I think in those who would by now have become not just allies but accomplices - Elrond and Thranduil, completing their transformations into Red Skull and Ronan the Accuser. A lot hinges on her being able to persuade them, but hey-ho, I need some process that corrupts three Elf-lords!

Of the other characters in and around the Fellowship - well, if the party didn't sail to its breaking at Amon Hen, then Boromir doesn't need to die there and there's no reason he can't survive, marry and start a family, living something of the Ned Stark trajectory.

Eowyn can certainly survive; she could even become Queen of the Rohirrim. It's not necessary in this timeline for her to meet Faramir, but she may, in which case, perhaps depending on what happens to Aragorn, she might have some role in Gondor too.

Legolas's alternative life is a bit tricky. His transformation into a pirate I'm not so sure about. However, in LotR his journey in Gondor unlocked a 'sea-longing' in him so something similar may have happened in this alternative timeline. Orlando Bloom has been in many other things, but the recent (you know, last 10 years or so) version of The Three Musketeers he was in is even less LotR than Pirates of the Caribbean is.

Mystery female companion and Legolas Greenleaf on the shore of Elvenhome? - Elizabeth Swan and Will Turner (Keira Knightly and Orlando Bloom) in a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End - (c) Disney 2007

Not been able yet to track a post-LotR career for Gimli, but this pic may show him in a pre-LotR flashback, when it looks like he was involved in a digging project in Harad:

Gimli's early career? - John Rhys-Davies as Sallah in Raiders of the Lost Ark (c) Lucasfilm 1981

Haldir also might have a dark career in this new timeline, as Craig Parker played the villainous character Darken Rahl in Legend of the Seeker. I don't know much about this but it would perhaps be possible to fit something along the lines of Haldir becoming Galadriel's governor of some possibly southern province conquered by Lorien.

Haldir gone bad? - Darken Rahl and Kahlan Amnell (Craig Parker and Brigit Regan) from Legend of the Seeker - (c) ABC-Disney 2008

Then, there's Gandalf. Of course Sir Ian McKellern is probably as famous for playing Magneto in the X-Men films as he is for his portrayal of Gandalf. Again, he's a Ring-bearer, and if the idea of Galadriel being able to corrupt the bearers of the Three is accepted, it may be that she could do the same to Gandalf, weakened as he is after his near-death experience at the hands of the Balrog. 

Evil Gandalf? - Sir Ian McKellern as Magneto (c) Marvel 2000

I'm now trying to find other fantasy, sci-fi and superhero flicks and TV series that LotR actors were involved in to fill in some of the other possibilities. It'll be difficult for the Hobbits particularly I suppose. Even if I find some they're unlikely to be 3 feet tall. I'm not sure what Aragorn is bringing to this party as I don't know enough about Viggo Mortenson's career to find a suitable image to shoe-horn into the new timeline; equally, the further exploits of Arwen (Liv Tyler), Theoden (Bernard Hill) and Celeborn (Marton Csokas) remain to be discovered. Perhaps if I can discover suitable films I can put in some further speculations on the alternative timeline.

One other character perhaps does have at least a sketch of a further career. Talking to a work colleague recently about some of this stuff, he pointed out that Faramir also appears in Van Helsing - if you've not seen it, Wolverine and Selene from Underworld team up to fight vampires and werewolves in Transylvania, accompanied by Faramir who is a kind of Vatican monk-cum-quatermaster of bizarre equipment (a bit like Q in the Bond films). It is, I think, an enjoyable romp, but doesn't owe much to Bram Stoker's Van Helsing. It can perhaps be regarded as a prequel - Van Helsing in the film is  younger than in Dracula (the film is supposedly set around 1888, a few years earlier than the novel), so maybe it's his earlier experiences with vampires that lead to his appearance in Dracula as a seasoned vampire-hunter. Anyway, the monk character, Brother Carl, in that movie is played by David Wenham, that's the point.

David Wenham (Farimir) as Brother Carl, from Van Helsing, (c) Unviersal 2004 

Perhaps then, if Boromir doesn't die, and the Ring never comes south, and Aragorn doesn't go to Rohan, then Eowyn and Faramir never meet, and Faramir becomes something like Brother Carl, a member of a secret order of monster-hunters - presumably in Gondor - while Eowyn becomes something like Leonore? Events in Gondor presumably take a very different turn if the result of Galadriel taking the One Ring is that Boromir settles down to raise a family and Faramir becomes a monk, but maybe I need to think a lot more about how that happens!

Rift City campaign - session 47

 Well, once again I have failed to do the write-up of the session before the next one has arrived. However, Lyracian has done a qrite-up here. It contains the bare bones of the story - captured Orc seemingly tries to lead the party into a trap, fight with insects and then a confrontation with some death-cult clerics.

I have to agree, I thought it was a fun session too! What tomorrow will bring... well, I'd say 'watch this space' but if you want your info hot off the press, maybe you shoud watch Lyracian's space, he's much quicker off the mark than I am.

Tomorrow's session will be the 48th programmed session of the Wandering Monster Table, which I'm chosing to regard as quite an acheivement.  We've only cancelled two session in the last 4 years, re-arranged two for the third Sunday of the month,and had to move venue for a few (generally to Berg and Galen/Halvor's players' house, so thanks for  that) - not bad to be honest given that the idea was to bring an open table campaign to Leicester. I think we can be somewhat proud of how we've managed to do that.

Who knows, maybe for our actual 4th birthday (8th August is the second Sunday in August and is therefore our 4th birthday, even if the opening session was 13th August, the second Sunday in August 2017) we may even be able to meet physically for the first time since March 2020...

Rift City Campaign - Session 46 and beyond

Well, what is there to say? Lyracian at Playing Dice with the Universe posted up a write-up of this session the day it happened, and I have little to add to that report in terms of events of the session. 

I did indeed completely fluff the whole 'summoning the elemental' thing. Not in control of my sources, that's the problem.  I rarely have much idea what the players are going to attempt (I thought they were heading back to Level 5/6 where they've been adventuring, but they decided to go back to Level 1 and attempt a Summoning instead) and I was flipping between different pdfs and files for rules and location information and maps and what-have-you, realising that I hadn't updated these locations for months (effectively there were still corpses lying about from the party's last visit) and also that I couldn't find some important notes that I know I wrote but couldn't access; meanwhile, trying to re-stock the dead monsters on the fly, I discovered that the Mithril and Mages Monster Stocker (my favoured place for grabbing a quick stat-block) was down... anyway, I was unable to keep everything running smoothly and fluffed some vital processes. Sorry guys, but there's nothing to be done now. Oh well.

I've been pondering XP in the wake of Session 46. The PCs (who are mostly, I guess, 6th Level now, though as I haven't seen their character sheets for more than a year they may be more) have been mollocking around for the last few sessions in a Level 5-Level 6 area. This I feel is more-or-less 'level appropriate'. That's where they should be. Last session they went back to Level 1 and fought a Goblin patrol and some Orcs. Otherwise, they avoided two Insect Swarms. This is not, to my mind, 'appropriate'. The PCs are big heroes now, they should I think be doing more than grinding on low-level monsters.

I've changed how XP acquisition works twice already while the campaign has been going on (close to 4 years now). After about 6 months of playing 'by the book' awarding XP only for monsters and treasure, with a very occasional small bonus for some good piece of play, with very low XP acquisition and everyone still on First Level, I instituted an 'exploration bonus'. This was a bonus based on rooms explored - I can't remember what I gave out but maybe it was 10XP or 50XP for each new room the PCs explored. However, that started to get a bit creaky when different people would come to different sessions - is the room 'new' if half the party members have already been there in a previous session? Do they get the bonus? Do the people to whom it really is a new room not get the bonus? I gave up trying to remember who had explored which room and instead adopted an idea from BECMI (in the Rules Compendium I think), where an exploration bonus of 10% of the average needed to reach the next level is given out to everyone.

This leads to several anomalous situations I think. In the last session, the PCs killed, captured or evaded approximately 120XP-worth of monsters, between I think 6 of them. They took about 300GP of treasure - even if that isn't right, I don't think it was much more than that - some SP, some GP and some gems I think, certainly not thousands of GPs' worth. For the sake of argument, the PCs got something like 80XP each from 'monsters and treasure', which given how B/X is set up are the two main ways to gain XP. At the same time, they each gained an 'exploration bonus' of something like 8,000XP (100 times their 'actual', earned XP!) for rooms that some of the PCs (not to mention all of the players) had already visited. That doesn't seem right to me. I don't think the players should be able to use the 'easy' caverns as a way to lever XP out of the fact that they're already high level. At the moment, all they have to do is take their 6th or 7th Level characters into a Level 1 dungeon and kill a few Goblins, then harvest thousands of XP by dint of the fact that they're already six levels 'higher' than the dungeons they're exploring. They get high XP just for existing.

Another anomalous result of this way of distributing XP is that low-level characters are seen as a drain. This is because the 'open table' format imposes some problems in terms of assimilating new party members, necessitating some minimum level for new players to join at. Up until now, new PCs started at the lowest Level of PCs currently in the game. When Shazam was left to die (no attempt at Elementary Staunching by the other party members, apparently because the bonus is better if you let low-level characters die) I began to wonder if this would break the campaign, with players killing off low-level PCs to get an upgrade for the next session. It hasn't quite worked like that but I think I need to trim how things work. Now seems as good a time as any to put some changes in place to prevent what I would see as 'meta-gaming' the system.

First, I think that any time a party member dies (and this will include being turned to stone and not turned back), there will be no bonus at all. Ascribe it to PTSD or something but I think that when a party member is killed the rest of the party should not be rewarded. It should be a traumatic event. They can still get the XP from monsters and treasure, but not the bonus. It's a kind of 'trauma tax'. This might have the result of making PCs more risk-averse in the future, but I'm prepared to chance it.

Second, when a new PC comes along (because of PC death or because a new player joins) I am no longer going to start them at the lowest Level in the party, I'm going to start them at the lowest XP. If the lowest Level PC is, for example, a 5th Level Cleric with 12,500XP and a new player joins, they could under the current system start with a 5th Level Elf. If the XP total is taken as the basis for the new PC, however, 12.500XP is enough to have a Cleric at 5th Level but only 3rd Level for an Elf. That seems like a better way to do it - though to be honest, I'm not sure why, it just does.

Third, the exploration bonus should be level-dependent. I'm going to try dividing the Dungeon Level the PCs were on by the Character Level they have, and applying that to the bonus. So, if PCs are (like the party now) around 6th-7th Level, but go adventuring on Level 1, their bonus will by 1/6 or 1/7 of the potential bonus. This (working with the second change, mentioned above) would mean that low-level characters would level up faster than higher-level characters - in the example above, if the 3rd Level Elf was adventuring with the party on Level 1, they would get 1/3 of the bonus, whereas the 5th Level Cleric would only get 1/5: so the 8,000 (potential) XP each PC would have got from exploring on their own Level would be trimmed to 2,667XP for the 3rd Level Elf and 1,600XP for the 5th Level Cleric. Conversely, if they go exploring on Level 7, they would gain 18,667XP (3rd Level Elf) and 11,200XP (5th Level Cleric). This (somewhat counteracting the first change, above) might make the party bolder in pushing on to lower levels, or at least, less keen to hang around at the 'shallow end', because it would be less worth their while for the purposes of XP harvesting. So between the 'no bonus for dead comrades' and 'reduced bonus for the shallows, increased bonus for the deeps' I think I'm hopefully balancing the making the party more risk-averse with an incentive towards riskier behaviour.

I hope, anyway. Of course, if I find through the Law of Unintended Consequences that things are still not right I can still tinker with the system.

Rift City Campaign - session 45

Once more unto the Rift, dear friends...

On Sunday 11th April the Wandering Monster Table had its 45th session, with Halvor, Berg, Inarra and Kate deciding they needed to stock up on silver and magic weapons to fight were-creatures in the ruins in the Rift.

At last everyone was equipped with something that could do damage to lycanthropes and other similarly-enchanted creatures, and they set off for the ruins, under which they encountered the were-creatures in previous visits. Ostensibly, they were there to rescue some adventurers that had been captured by Ogres and enslaved (or worse) by the lycanthropes.

Ironic, given what happened.

Lyracian at the 'Playing Dice with Universe' blog has already written up the session (link here). All I have to add is that the adventure was proceeding in distinctly un-lucrative fashion until killing an NPC party gave the PCs a bonanza of magic items; and, as I just hinted, slaughtering the NPC party was a pretty bizarre end to a session in which our 'heroes' (I use the term very loosely) were supposed to be rescuing some NPCs...