Tag Archives: actual play

Reavers on the Seas of Fate – Season Two, Twenty-Fourth Session

Posted on March 3, 2012 | Leave a comment

Twenty-Fourth Session (17 page pdf) – “From Sea to Shore” – Below the Azlanti island of Nal-Kashel, the crew comes across an ancient evil. Well, three, if you count their girlfriends. They’ve had it with having to fight them time and time again, and they come up with a drastic solution! Nothing will be the same after the season climax of Reavers on the Seas of Fate!

Well kids, the Teeth of Araska is in dire straits. The ship was captured by a Tentacle Monster, the crew enslaved, and the few free members are being mutated into weird fish-monsters by the island’s magic. After tampering with ancient magics, Sindawe, Serpent, Wogan, Jaren the Jinx, Gareb, and Slasher Jim head under the island to confront one of lost Azlant’s masters.

It’s not long before they get attacked by Samaritha and Hatshepsut, apparently under something’s mental control. This really presses the party’s buttons – Sindawe is pretty sure Samaritha is an evil mastermind and Serpent is pretty sure Hatshepsut is just waiting to betray them, so they don’t really treat them with kid gloves.  The feeling is mutual, however, and Hatshepsut totally wipes the floor with them until they slap a Protection from Evil on Samaritha to interrupt her domination!

All this time, Jaren the Jinx’s curse is in effect.  It’s diminished from its earlier more vicious form, but now it just triggers critical fails on a natural 1, using the Paizo critical fumble deck (well, the iPad app equivalent in my case).

They then hustle after Gerlach the fish-man alchemist (well, sorcerer; this is before the alchemist class was created).  That fight actually goes OK – he triggers a critical failure that summon an irate rhinoceros! For some reason the party is not very thankful; Wogan tries to stab a wounded Jaren and then once it’s over Sindawe nearly kills him with a spear. But anyway, the fight moves on to an aboleth’s prison, and it is a terrible shame that everyone makes their save versus its domination. So the boss fight wasn’t really the toughest of the adventure – one or two failed dominations and it could have been super bad.  Ah well, that’s the way the d20 falls.

And then, it’s over except for the looting, the intel gathering, the curing everyone of the taint, the freeing of the villagers and crew, the reclaiming of the ship, the complete looting of the town, and – the wedding!

That’s right!  After hearing about the legend that newlyweds that swim out to Wedding Rock for their wedding night are sure to conceive, Serpent and Samaritha tie the knot. They debate a little bit about whether they really need to swim all the way there from the shore, but in the end decide they’d best not mess with tradition.  Wogan marries them on the beach and they swim across to the island, and mate upon the rock under the stars.

Will the ancient altar allow even a serpentfolk woman and a human man to conceive? When serpentfolk have bore no young since Ydersius fell? Well, you’ll just have to stay tuned.

Meanwhile, voodoo goddess Mama Watanna possesses Hatshepsut; Sindawe jumps her bones before she can even deliver her cryptic goddess-messages.

And after all the festivities and they leave, the ravaging of Blackcove is capped off by the discovery of the murdered body of their temple acolyte.

And that seems like a great place to end our season!  Next season, the crew of the Teeth of Araska will venture out into the Arcadian Ocean to sunken Azlant in search of pirate Morgan Baumann and some pirate booty!

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Reavers on the Seas of Fate – Season Two, Twenty-Third Session

Posted on February 15, 2012 | 2 Comments

Twenty-Third Session (23 page pdf) – “Monster Island, Part 3″ – The pirate command staff messes with an arcane Azlanti orrery. And then they go into what they are pretty sure is the bowels of some vast beast.  And Jaren the Jinx returns!

Another session of From Shore to Sea; we’re getting our money’s worth out of this one!

Our pirates bumble their way through the arcane workings of the Azlanti island. It’s an interesting challenge – the three of them don’t have a lot of book learnin’ between them, but trial and error wins the day, with a little extra slack.

They can’t read any of the Azlanti writings since they used both scrolls of comprehend languages already. I came up with a good “see the lines of magic” special effect for the Necklace of Alvis, making it more cool than “+5 to spellcraft in the orrery.”

They pretty much just investigated and intuited what to do about the orrery, even without going through all the nonsense the module says.  “Spellcraft check DC 40?” What the fuck?  Forget that. They didn’t even need to go raise dead guys in the graveyard or read the plaques.  They found some shattered crystal, saw the tower zooming by, and figured “Well of course we need a new lens and I’m sure they’re in there…” and bing bang boom they went up, got a lens, put it in, and deactivated the domination amplification rune. They didn’t know they did that, or why they needed to do it, or what it did, but by gum they did it.

Then they met Sarah, Jaren’s wife. GM rule #1, never have some unrelated hapless NPC when they can be somehow related to the PCs instead. She was all sad, but they made her come along anyway, and then once they went up the tower they all were happy they’d done something and went scurrying down – Serpent was the one who noticed Sarah wasn’t with them and turned around to see what was up. She did the classic “tell him I loved him…” I like it when I can give players those real oh-shit moments.

[P.S. Van Helsing is just the most shitful movie ever... It's playing while I write this... OMG]

A recurring theme was Gareb and Slasher Jim running to be the first to loot fallen enemies. I enjoyed how when Wogan was faced off trident-to-trident with a fish-man they stood by taking bets.  There was quite an argument when Serpent ran in and killed it; everyone in the whole discussion felt aggrieved.

Then Jaren the Jinx resurfaces.  His jinxiness is much less now – it used to turn any crit into a crit failure.  Now it just makes me draw on the fumble deck (well, I use the iPad app) whenever there’s a natural 1. This makes the party not kill him out of hand.  Surprisingly, Wogan is normally the most amiable member of the party, but he was very much in favor of killing Jaren out of hand. He gets under his skin somehow.

When they went down under the ziggurat, they were totally convinced they were headed down the gullet and into the bowels of some huge creature.  Fun stuff.

I like how my “examine the area don’t just roll” plan is making for more interesting things even during combat – in the final fight, Sindawe really did just happen across and then use that aberration bane spear without knowing what it was, and was really impressed when it wasted a cloaker out of hand!

Next time, the finale!

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Reavers on the Seas of Fate – Season Two, Twenty-Second Session

Posted on February 12, 2012 | Leave a comment

Twenty-Second Session (19 page pdf) – “Monster Island, Part 2″ – It goes from bad to worse on the ruined Azlanti islands; the number of living pirates is going down while the mutations and insanities of the survivors increase. And then a huge spiderlike monstrosity appears standing right next to you.

Yet another session of From Shore To Sea. More fun with just the three PCs and two of their pirate buddies (the outgoing yet fragile Gareb and the suspected serial killer Slasher Jim). They did a good job of cutting up, despite getting increasingly mutated by the Warping effect the Azlanti island has. Though in the end, Gareb was a mess psychologically and Slasher Jim was a mess physically.

They get to fight a giant frilled lizard. After, we’ve seen trailers for “Mysterious Island 2″ where there is indeed a giant frilled lizard! Alas, a month too late for me to use it as a visual aid.

This session had lots of good classic adventuring.  Dungeon delving, cutting open felled monsters to look in their guts, etc.  With this session I tried something different – I told the players that in order to combat 3e-disease we were going to ramp back on the skill checks and do things more old school – you observe and manipulate your environment, not just “make search checks.” I think that worked well!

The octopus fight was epic. I about had some player revolt due to the annoying rules of fighting underwater/through water… By the rules, attacking that octopus in a floating muddy water ball is like -8 to hit, 50% miss chance. I let Wogan’s purify food and water get rid of all of it.

They were grim when they found their ship and the whole crew slaving away digging some kind of canal for the fish-men. Correctly divining that the big orrery in the observatory on the top of the island was a key point, they went and started to mess around with it, starting a really fun fight with a couple of phase spiders!  Gareb got hit by a stray effect from the thing, blurring him, which made him able to see them. The resultant combat really hinged around blink and blur and a variety of effects that interact with ethereal creatures.

Read on, there’s more coming up!

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Alternity Campaign Retrospective

Posted on February 6, 2012 | 1 Comment

Well, we finished out our long term Alternity campaign, The Lighthouse. Set on the eponymous space station in the Star*Drive setting, each player had two characters – one on the Concord command staff and one who was a diplomat, rogue, or wanderer of some sort.  Very Babylon 5.

You can and should go read all our session summaries!

I asked the GM and players about their favorite memories of the 57-session long campaign, and they were many.  Here’s a list!

From Chris (Ten-zil Kem the playboy, Rokk Tressor the undercover spy, Drest Talorgin the Pict warchief):

  • The outrageous swimsuits worn by the players the first time they vacationed on Bluefall.  The funniest was Dr Zelnaga’s “Borat thong one-piece.”
  • Angela Quinn, who went from naked volleyball player to Bluefall intelligence to CIB deep cover agent. I’m just sad she didn’t appear in the finale.
  • The Red Queen, the crazy alien AI who was stalking Ten-zil Kem, in her diminished but crazier “Alice” version.
  • Ten-zil Kem declaring, “Those cute, cuddly bear creatures are going to go mad and rip us to shreds!”  And they did!
  • Ten-zil Kem ordering a whore (dressed as “that hot Mafia security chick”) on Penates and nearly blowing the mission.
  • Lambert Fulson getting ko’ed 3 game sessions in a row.  I was being to think the GM hated him.
  • Captain Takashi’s hatred of the “donut priests” (Hatire mind knights with a donut tattooed on their hands) and their on-board pope.
  • Taveer’s unnaturally close relationship to MINA the AI.
  • The early bruiser duo of Markus and Haggernak.
  • Finding out Lenny the t’sa is also an intergalactic cat burglar.
  • Dr Zelnaga’s ability to set fires with his mind being purchased at the cost of his medical skills, giving him a Dr Zoidberg-like reputation in the medical bay.
  • Finally destroying an enemy fleet.  It was the Klicks above Meribel.
  • The dhros were a plot twist that got a lot of mileage:  loldhros, dropping them off in enemy vessels, dropping them off in the Thuldan research ship, putting cameras on them as way to watch the Lighthouse for weirdness our own security was missing… I’m betting the last one netted us lots of footage of dhros drinking out of toilets and eating garbage and little useful intel.
  • The t’sa grenades activated by licking. Plus Lenny’s wide-eyed belief that that was completely normal… And that the way human grenades activated was completely crazy.
  • ” I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain… Time to die.”

From Bruce (Taveer the freaky mechalus, Banoor the slightly less freaky mechalus, Lambert Fulson the guido):

  • Captain Takashi’s steadfast refusal to sign off Taveer’s purchase requests.
  • Taveer’s whole relationship with MINA, from the beginning right until the big bang at the end.
  • The great juxtaposition of Ten-zil Kem as ambassador of VoidCorp, but also a dissipated hustler on the make.
  • Poor Martin St. John, the “pilot”, who had so few official responsibilities at the start that Captain Takashi had no concerns of sending him into ventilation ducts to hunt dhros.
  • Gerard Peppin in his role as Cancer Jesus with a Space God in his Head.
  • The ongoing notion that Peppin (for all of his weird appearance and weirder behavior) was constantly followed by a film crew for a program incredibly popular back in Old Space.
  • The Kadarens, spastic science roach men aliens (“Be careful with these guys – they Ice 9′d their homeworld due to a mathematical error…”).
  • The great mystery attached to the nature of the I-krl and the entire Externals threat – it took us an awful lot of time to figure out what they really wanted…
  • Haggernak, playing “Show me far…”
  • The slow development of Lambert Fulson into a slimy Jerseyite who ran a rattletrap flotilla of least-common-denominator cargo ships.
  • Ten-zil Kem’s performance at the VoidCorp presentation, early on – he did a remarkably good job of improvising to a sequence of random images.

Tim (Haggernak the weren security chief, Gerard Peppin the dissipated academic):

  • Everyone wearing “I survived the thunder hole!” t-shirts in reference to the place Rokk Tressor died.
  • The psychic dhros.
  • The tribe of seshayans living in conference room B.
  • Takashi opening his fridge and asking “Zuul?” after alien agent Alex Racine appeared and disappeared in his kitchen.
  • Lenny’s reptilian flirting rituals (“licks his eyeball seductively”).
  • The donut monks.
  • Threatening the kadarens with boredom.
  • Finally seeing the ship that had been lost in drivespace.
  • Figuring out what had happened to the populace of Bluefall.
  • Re-purposing the assassin ship as Peppin’s replacement pleasure yacht.

Me (Captain Takashi, Markus Orozlan the warlion bartender):

  • Takashi’s nighttime hobby of making “loldhros” pictures of the station dhros and posting them anonymously on the Grid.
  • Insisting that the gardh’yi are “space vampires” based on their illustration looking like something from Warhammer 40k.
  • Ten-zil Kem’s great Tony Stark impression. And that his name changed spelling all the time.
  • “Taveer isn’t a member of the Concord Military, so he can’t be awarded a medal, but he isn’t forgotten. Captain Takashi sends a recommendation through channels to the Administrator hierarchy about his valiant acts. They award him with a “STAR Award” and a $50 gift certificate to the restaurant of his choice. He discovers this when a Concord HR administrator shows up at his cube and drops off the certificate and a nice plaque made out to “Thomas”.”
  • Markus being Pict king for a week after killing King Steel.
  • Markus shouting out, “Alien collaborator says what?” and flinging a pulse grenade into the midst of a bridge full of bad guys. Bang!
  • Peppin dressing up like the Miner ’49′er and phasing through the wall into a mining exhibit completely by chance, terrifying the intruder there, who “hadn’t eaten solid food in a long time.” Ha!
  • The little nervous Medurr groundhog slave race with exploding collars.
  • Our squad of Concord Recon Marine helpers, Sgt “Animal Mother”, Cpl “Klinger”, LCpl Wierzbowski, Pfc “Ludafisk”, and Pfc “Motorhead”.  Hoo-ah!
  • Takashi writing out a formal promotion for Martin St. John to be Captain of the Lighthouse.
  • Takashi getting to declare VoidCorp “enemies of humanity.”
  • Drest talking to a Concord Marine, saying “I sense the war is winding down. The I’krl are hunkering down in their stolen systems building their strength back up. The ambassadors are talking. Planetary populations feel safe. But we haven’t killed enough of them to fill our Hell and their Tentacle Heaven. God loves us when we send him fresh souls. We need the political will for the next war.” “Amen.”
  • Finding out the Ancients were a bunch of stoner mollusks.
  • Our main boss foes falling to Markus’ chainsword.
  • Takashi getting to yell “Prepare to fire the primary weapon!” and using the Lighthouse’s doomsday device.
  • Admiral Takashi’s memoirs, “Space Vampires and Donut Priests – Or, How Everything In The Verge Tried To Kill Me“

All well done, and thanks to our GM Paul!

Two bonus links:

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Reavers on the Seas of Fate – Season Two, Twenty-First Session

Posted on February 4, 2012 | Leave a comment

Twenty-First Session (18 page pdf) – “Monster Island” – Their ship missing in action, the crew heads to the nearby island of Nal-Kashel, which bears Azlanti ruins of the “demented World of Warcraft” design school. Then the mutation comes.

This was our new year’s day session! Another year, more Reavers. They really didn’t want to go to “Monster Island,” as they have named it, but in the end they decided that their ship and loot and girlfriends and all were worth the danger. (They had to think about it, though!)

Sindawe cuts to the chase and beats, strips, and interrogates a local, finding out that they have the “Innsmouth look” for a reason – that they are all part fish-man. So then it’s off the the island!

And boy it’s demented.  This is still from the From Shore To Sea adventure. The island is surrounded by the Cliffs of Insanity and has an Azlanti city that was all cool but now it’s degenerating and there’s weird magical stuff going on, like ripped-off tops of towers swooshing around in the air and intelligent will-o-the-wisp powered floating streetlights. The PCs even ended up talking to them! Investing in learning Aklo from Samaritha and Hatshepsut has really opened up new worlds for the otherwise non-intellectual group.

I had fun playing the pirates. It’s harder when they are shipboard – there’s a lot of NPCs for me to juggle and there’s usually work to be done. Once pirates get out on trips like this, though, their more chaotic nature comes out. They screw around a lot.  Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s dangerous, but it’s never quiet!

They lost another crewman, though, and they have all started to get mutated by something going on with the island. Alas! Will they figure out the island’s ancient secrets? Tune in next time…

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Jade Regent Chapter 1, The Brinewall Legacy, Session 1

Posted on February 1, 2012 | 1 Comment

Welcome to the first chapter of our Jade Regent campaign, The Brinewall Legacy! Our neophyte adventurers in Sandpoint are drawn into long-hidden secrets by their friends, relatives, and loved ones, all linked to Sandpoint inn-owner Ameiko Kaijitsu.

That’s right, it’s a new adventure path! Paul is GMing, having just finished GMing a couple-year-long Alternity Star*Drive based campaign. We have six players – Tim, Matt, Patrick, Chris, Bruce, and myself. Matt has been in the other games our large loosely affiliated group runs but hasn’t gamed with us on the Sunday games since a Savage Worlds campaign in 2009.

First Session (14 page pdf) – We meet our intrepid crew of adventurers, and are immediately dispatched to the swamp to fight goblins.  Oh, joy. We run right into the Licktoad Goblin village and carnage erupts.

It was a charge starting out in Sandpoint, because that’s where we started our Rise of the Runelords campaign (most of the same players, also run by Paul) so we had a lot of familiarity with the place. And of course they used one of Paizo’s signature monsters, the wildly popular insane goblins.

My idea for my character Hiro’s arc is for him to be a glory-seeking cavalier who over time realizes the true calling of service and becomes a samurai. That was off to a rollicking start as he charged his horse right into the goblin encampment and into a big mud pit that the others had to haul him ingloriously out of. There were plenty of hooks; as Ameiko Kaijitsu’s little brother all the Kaijitsu family historical secrets made motivation a no-brainer.

Also, Hiro was trained as a cavalier in Cheliax.  I liked how the halfling swamp guy got all offended when Hiro called him “peasant” or “farmer”; Hiro thought he was paying the guy a complement – a farmer’s a much higher status job than “dumbass living in a swamp” in Cheliax at least.

And we got two badges, the Halfling Rescuer badge (optional, though we never can pass up a home invasion) and the Goblin Killer badge (fairly required, I think, or else no pointer to the next part…).

Then there was some confusion that we use as an in-joke in many later sessions.  There was a shack in the swamp, with a shed outside it.  We were trying to investigate both as rat-creatures came from each. Paul kept mixing up the two words to the point where we kept thinking we were near the shack but were near the shed, or the squeaking was coming from the shed but we thought it was coming from the shack (which got me enveloped in a rat swarm, so it wasn’t that entertaining initially).  So now whenever a shack or a shed is encountered ever after we say “Wait… Is it a shack, or is it a shed?” Perhaps we should nickname Paul “Two Sheds” as a multi-level homage.

We got a lot done, and a lot of role-playing, it was a very long first session and we were going on all cylinders.

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Reavers on the Seas of Fate – Season Two, Twentieth Session

Posted on January 28, 2012 | 3 Comments

Twentieth Session (18 page pdf) – “From Shore To Sea” – The crew drops into the village of Blackcove to check in on their old buddy Jaren the Jinx. Apparently his jinxiness has gone nuclear as tentacle horror erupts shortly after they arrive.

We had fun with Sindawe’s plan to land an “away team” posing as an adventuring party to scout out good marks. We basically dressed each member like one of the Paizo iconic PCs, which is to say they all look like murder-strippers.

It’s funny that since they are pirates, not adventurers, their opinion of adventurers is mixed contempt and pity.

After a little more random shipboard encounters and weather, they get to Blackcove! Which is basically like Innsmouth. Now we begin the Paizo/Open Design module From Shore To Sea!

After dealing with some locals and a spooky mostly abandoned town, it’s tentacle attack time while holed up in a lighthouse in a storm at night. They were having a hard time of it and Sindawe was getting sick of the locals being in the way, so for a while he started throwing townsfolk to the tentacles hoping that perhaps they had a preset kill limit.

When the storm cleared – the Teeth of Araska was nowhere to be found. What to do? Surely there’s somewhere to go other than the nearby “Monster Island…”

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Alternity “The Lighthouse” Session Summary 57 – Campaign Finale!

Posted on January 23, 2012 | 1 Comment

Fifty-Seventh Session - It’s time to end this. We get some reinforcements from Old Space, and decide to lure the External fleet to Bluefall and wipe their bitch asses out in one fell swoop. Does it work? Who dies? Want to know? Well, then grab hold of your socks and read on, Joel Robinson! I won’t spoil the ending here, but Admiral Takashi finally gets to utter the signature phrase on his character sheet, “Prepare to fire the primary weapon!“

The Lighthouse campaign started May 30, 2009 and is only coming to a close now, October 30, 2011! Just about two and a half years of science fiction goodness. 57 sessions of an entire every-other-Sunday afternoon, all documented for your reading pleasure. Thanks to Paul for his yeoman’s work in running it and to the rest of the crew for making it a fun ride!  And thanks to the Alternity designers, it really is a nice little sci-fi game – could stand a cleaned up version 2 but then again what couldn’t.

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Reavers on the Seas of Fate – Season Two, Nineteenth Session

Posted on January 21, 2012 | 2 Comments

Nineteenth Session (27 page pdf) – “A Pirate’s Life For Me” – More time at sea; the crew gets into the pirate spirit and wavecrawls the hell out of the region. Vikings! Whales! Dead Vikings! Dead whales! Mass hysteria!

We started with role-play.  Sindawe caught a case of the Lawful Goods during the first part of the session, confusing his comrades.  He gives money to the ex-slave family trying to make it in Riddleport, and then has management interventions with the crew over Slasher Jim killing too much and Tommy sexing too much. Eventually the other PCs were like “this is a pirate ship! Come on now!” I thought it was interesting because Sindawe is clearly wrestling with how to perceive himself as a “good guy” while being a pirate and also with the burden of leadership.

Then we got to sea and I started up the random encounters. Man, if anything my “Today at Sea” encounter list was shorter than last time. But it sure expanded out! This session summary is 27 pages long.

First there was an Ulfen longship and a Mordant Spire elf skimmer fighting. This could have been 5 minutes if the PCs bypassed it, but they first threw in with the Ulfen and fought the elves and then fought the Ulfen. And then took Ulfen prisoners, etc. This was a livelier naval combat than usual; it’s the first time they’ve had significant amounts of magic used against them in an engagement.

We find a great deal of hilarity in the fact that Serpent and Wogan always seem to roll 1′s (or at least very low) on Spellcraft and Knowledge: Religion checks.  They are good sports about coming  up with super ignorant incorrect things they believe as a result. In this case, Serpent saw the elven command crew gathering up as their ship was overrun and teleporting out, but with his 1 he interpreted it as some mass disintegration suicide ritual.

I’m not really sure they intended to fight the Ulfen initially, but basically they had their blood up and decided to kill till there was no opposition. Wogan luckily saved all the crew from dying – I need to come up with a better mechanic hooked to my mass combat system to figure out who snuffs it.  I’ve been letting him make a Heal check with his healing burst to see how many downed crewmen he can save and he’s rolled very, very high each time so they haven’t lost anyone in action yet. They end it all up with a new crewman, an Ulfen barbarian named Olgvik.

Then the PCs were confronted with the sad fact that sailors refuse to eat fish! They got some from the fishing ship last time and a bunch of pickled herring from the Ulfen ship, but as in RL Europe, all red blooded sailors eat fish as only a last resort, and feel themselves ill used if they must.

Then over the course of the week, the ship is attacked by an angry whale, then meets the same whale again but it’s undead. (This is from the random encounters; of course as the GM if one day says angry whale and then two days later there’s an undead whale, if they aren’t linked somehow you suck.) Then a homunculus came by. The PCs were horrified and intrigued when it simply gathered information from them about the whale like a modern telephone survey taker. “On a scale of one to five, how terrifying was the whale both before and after it was dead?” This is a good example of how linking some simple random encounters on the fly, you create what seems to be a hideous master plan going on in the world with absolutely no relation to the PCs. Makes the world seem real.

Finally, they take a prize – a small spice merchant. They take his cargo and money but leave him his ship, wife, and life. (The cook’s resultant experiment with “cinnamon eggs” was disgusting.) They enjoyed finding a book of tiefling pornography entitled “Fiend Folio.”

I’ve done a lot of reading up on historical pirates and it’s odd – same captain and crew, sometimes they’ll let someone go, sometimes they’ll sink a perfectly good ship, sometimes they’ll kill everyone with little provocation, sometimes they’ll do some of both! “Took three ships, sank two, killed some of the crew, let the rest get in the third ship and leave.” Not always explainable rhyme or reason to it (the drinking probably helps) but it’s interesting how our PC pirates are kinda turning out the same way.

Lots of great roleplaying fleshed this session out even more – good PC-to-PC interaction and also with various members of the crew.

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Reavers on the Seas of Fate – Season Two, Eighteenth Session

Posted on January 17, 2012 | Leave a comment

Eighteenth Session (12 page pdf) – “The Fishwife’s Lament” – The motley crew of the Teeth of Araska heads to sea, and immediately decides that they are on a search and destroy mission for every random encounter ever! And then, they meet the dreaded fishwife.

I didn’t really expect this leg of the voyage to take a whole (long) session.  Behold the power of the random generator. I was using Zak from D&D With Porn Stars‘ Wavecrawl Kit, specifically as administered by the great “Today at Sea” random generator on Abulafia.

Here’s what turned into six hours of gaming, once roleplay and PC initiative was added in… Randomly generated plus a preening pass from me.

  1. Annoying weather. Make a control roll. Failure results in… Amid the ship’s tossing and confusion on deck, someone slips over the rails. Man overboard! Determine who it is randomly.
  2. Annoying weather. Make a control roll. Failure results in… Some miscellaneous marine leviathan has crashed into the hull in its sleep, starting planks all along one side before plunging down into the depths in its startlement. The ship is leaking badly, gaining on the pumps by 2d6 inches per hour, and will eventually founder unless something is done to alleviate the situation.
  3. Giant seasnake
  4. A small (if appropriate to type of vessel) passing ship is sighted. What is it?
    Fishing boat (probably lots of food on board).
  5. Bad weather–Make 12 control or piloting rolls to avoid damage to the ship. Failure results in…
    Something caught in the rudder–someone needs to climb down there and get it.
  6. Dead calm sea (lose a day of movement)
  7. A medium-sized passing ship is sighted. What is it? A fishwife sailing the seas in a waterlogged cog, seeking a husband. She sends her harpies to go fetch a pretty one.
  8. A quiet day at sea

They tried hard to get their money’s worth from each encounter – like they were determined to take that “small fishing boat” back to its home port and then work it over.  I rolled randomly and the place was just Godawful. I find visiting some places like that make PCs feel validated in their choice of being wandering adventurers, as they pity the poor local bastards in their squalor.

And I got to use pretty much all of our add-on rulesets this session.  First it was sailing in general, and having storms and other problems requiring various ship control rolls to overcome.  Then, when they were becalmed and bored, Captain Sindawe set up a melee between two halves of the crew, which used my quickie mass combat rules. And finally, when the fishwife tried to escape they used my naval combat rules (a mix of my chase rules and cannon rules). But it wasn’t all rules minigames, there were also more developments in the Serpent/Samaritha pregnancy drama.

They got to fight a fishwife – also courtesy Zak. This definitely got their juices going!

Once they got to Sandpoint they wanted to investigate Sandpoint, which was easy enough since I had both the old (Rise of the Runelords) and new (Jade Regent) versions in Paizo AP installments. In fact, it was a little entertaining because our brand new PCs were just leaving Sandpoint in our other Jade Regent campaign, so we put some easter eggs in both ways (the Teeth of Araska sold its old dragon figurehead to the Rusty Dragon, for example).

Easter egg – the orichalcum statue of Shelyn that Wogan buys is directly inspired by the Macguffin in the first season of the anime series Slayers. The fishwife had reminded me of Noonsa, the Flaming Fish-man, from that same series, so I riffed on it.

Also, I roll reactions routinely when meeting NPCs; Lavender Lil and Ameiko Kaijitsu rolled 1′s against each other and everyone enjoyed the not unfamiliar sight of two women deciding to hate each other at first sight for no reason anyone else can fathom.

And then unexpectedly they wanted to go to Magnimar to shop.  Realizing that at this rate such a side trek might take two more weeks, I told them we had to handle it in “montage” fashion. This allowed us to get through it in reasonably short order; they got their must-haves done and I think it went OK.  This group kinda tripped out at a similar narrativist insertion back in my Redeemers campaign but this one went fine.

Next time – more random encounters!!!

 

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Reavers on the Seas of Fate – Season Two, Seventeenth Session

Posted on January 7, 2012 | Leave a comment

Seventeenth Session (15 page pdf) – “Press Gang” – As usual, a little bit of time in port results in the PCs really tearing it up. A whole long session, and no real fights, but it’s not slow, with two beatings, several sexual escapades, organized crime activity, shopping, drinking, jail time…

First of all, sorry for getting behind.  Between the holidays and job hunting, I’ve been strapped.  I’ve got like four sessions of Reavers in the can as well as three of our new Jade Regent campaign.  Here’s getting to it!

Last time, everyone finally leveled to level 6.  I am all about the low level play and slow progression; they got 5th in February I believe. So they all showed up with kewl new powers to use. But as usual, we kicked right back in seconds after the last session ended.

They took the first part of the session recapping and trying to assimilate new knowledge into what the overall deal is with the Cyphergate and orichalcum and serpentmen and portals and phantom creatures. It’s inevitable that PCs get a little confused about what’s up even with reasonably simple plots because of the long time between games and the somewhat distractable nature of any given PC. So if you have orichalcum glyph pieces embedded in people and orichalcum plates taken from a portal seal, people get them confused. So I helped walk them through a solid statement of “what we know so far.”

Next, I had one of their NPCs mess with them. Last time, you will note how Pirro the pirate got the short end of the stick on healing. Well, they came away from the fight with four magical treasures, so he’s due one, right? He wakes up early, takes one of the items (a magical mithral axe), and goes down to the casino to put it on pledge to get some gamblin’ money. Naturally he loses badly (I rolled for it fair and square), and this causes the PCs a little consternation. I liked this scene because it let me reinforce that the PCs’ pirate crew are by no means mindless minions, and in fact the nature of being a pirate means they are unruly and like it that way.

Next, two things happen that deserve blog posts of their own.  The first is the unexpected and sudden “Hey, Serpent needs to get Samaritha pregnant!” plan that emerged to surprisingly unanimous support. See Pregnancy & Pirates for more. The second is the sheer impatience of Serpent wanting to get magic items sold and bought – he literally goes from place to place till 2 AM in the morning desperately trying to swing deals. More on that in Insomniac Monkeys on Crack.

What this demanded of me was a large amount of improv. Urban adventuring is challenging because it’s not like a dungeon or wilderness where there’s a limited amount of stuff that can be going on.  A big lawless city like Riddleport is guaranteed to liven up quick if you go through the wrong door at the wrong time. So they kept wandering around and I kept coming up with stuff that I hoped wouldn’t get me into real trouble.

I generally like to use the dice as a general determinant of “is this going to go real well or real badly.” For some reason the PCs were rolling really poorly this session. So when Sindawe goes to the House of the Silken Veil trying to find a Mwangi (African) hooker that might have fertility drugs or magic (I am not sure it ever occurs to the PCs to look anywhere but in bars or whorehouses for anything in this game), the roll comes up really low, so instead he gets a Garundi woman dressed up like some far northerner’s idea of a Mwangi witch doctor for the fetishist market. Heh. Also they’ve gotten on the bad side of Madame Pamodae; they are remarkably unconcerned about this given that she’s a priestess of a deity of revenge.

Then they recruit new shipmates! First it’s the traditional “set up a table in a bar” method, where they try to figure out what’s wrong with the people applying. As it’s a pirate ship, they find plenty wrong but decide”what the hell” with all of them but the last guy. This was a shout out to a previous player who was always an obstreperous muffinhead, and one day in a SF game came in with a new character that we were interviewing for a position on our tramp freighter.  Since he was a new PC we were just trying to get any kind of excuse to hire him but his response to every single question was vague “I do… things!” crap. We left him on the planet and in fact he got disinvited from the group (last straw syndrome). This explains Sindawe’s overly violent reaction. (Knowing how to push your players’ buttons and not just the characters’ is a good GM technique.) They also invite their girlfriends Samaritha and Hatshepsut and Lavender Lil along! And they shanghai the hated Bojask, a guy who works for Saul and they’ve never gotten along with.

Also, they make a couple runs at trying to extort a local new bar for protection money. They were hilariously shy about it really. I based the friendly but yelling owner/bartender off a male cheerleading coach in a horrible Comedy Central movie that was on while I was prepping that morning.

Part of this game is definitely the crew control.  I rolled for each crewmember’s shore leave. Basically 1 is something SUPER bad and 20 SUPER good; 2 means trouble the PCs can’t fix, 3 means trouble they can fix, and everything in between is general levels of doing well versus doing poorly. There were a lot of 4′s, including Pirro, which basically means “all money gone and got a good beating in the process.” The only bad result was a 3, where Goat got arrested for murder; some guys in a bar hassled him about being a tiefling and they turned up dead later. The PCs went and bailed him out in a remarkably civilized fashion; I liked their sudden realization about “Hey, wasn’t Slasher Jim washing blood off his knife back on the ship?” Turns out Slasher Jim also used to be on Morgan Baumann’s (their new quarry) crew. Big Mike got a 20 so I figured he parlayed into part ownership of the new bar – good for him, and a complication for the PCs’ protection racket!

The one place where the PCs rolled well was around the House of the Silken Veil – Pamodae has it out for them once she found out they killed her pirate ally, and they went back twice; both visits were sexy and hilarious in turn but they didn’t degenerate into murder, and let’s just say that was an unlikely result. It ended with Sindawe bluffing his way past a guard by playing the race card.

And FINALLY they get on their ship and underway!  Whew!  I thought it would never happen.  I think I run pretty fun urban scenes and (properly!) depict cities as full of people and stuff and places and whatnot, so PCs seem to get drawn into doing random things there even when they planned to go do something else.

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Reavers on the Seas of Fate – Season Two, Sixteenth Session

Posted on November 21, 2011 | 2 Comments

Sixteenth Session (14 page pdf) – “The Cypher Lodge” – Looks like the phantoms have taken over the Cypher Lodge, and the PCs have to throw down with Thorgrim and some old friends.

Yep, this was a big finale boss fight. It was built in three parts. (you may want to check out Thorgrim’s character sheet).

First, they (the three PCs and Pirro, an ex-slave and one of their crew) fought a bunch of phantoms and Valgrim down  in the sand-floored fighting ring he has under the Cypher Lodge. He cast a mess of spells that were really sweet – shifting sands, hungry pit, etc. Sindawe surprised me with his ruthless innovation – Salvadora was chained over a rafter, so he leapt up and crushed her hand with a vicious blow – shattering the bones, but also immediately causing her to fall to her semi-freedom! She’s a no-nonsense half-orc so she holds no grudge whatsoever about that.

Second, once Thorgrim figures they’re a legit threat, he goes gaseous form and guards and wards kicks in and also everyone gets teleported around the Cypher Lodge – and phantom impostors get seeded into the mix.This was loosely adapted, believe it or not, from a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode where Discord causes all the ponies to turn on each other. My daughter said “you should put this into your next game!” I was looking for something interesting and interstitial to happen – in Madness in Riddleport, they had part one of a fight, then an excursion to the shadow realm, and then the second part and this session was deliberately mirroring that one (shadowy mirrored reflections being a major trope in the game). And it creates a more interesting dramatic structure than “long ass fight to the death in a single location.” So I figured, “Sure!”

The funniest part was how Serpent told Pirro “I’m out of healing!” and then proceeded to heal himself. He’s just an NPC, what does he know?

He heals Pirro to consciousness, then announces, “Pirro, I have no more healing for you.” He turns and heals himself with the last charges from the wand. Then he guzzles some healing potions. Then notices his Lesser Restoration potions at the bottom of his pack, and exclaims, “Oh hey!” He drinks those too. A large tear rolls down Pirro’s cheek.

That’s exactly how it happened; everyone was in stitches.  Paul (Serpent) was just like, “What?” Although second funniest moment was Wogan running invisibly from an impostor Samaritha just to run into another Hatshepsut and Samaritha.  Everyone enjoyed the portly cleric trying to sneak around to avoid all the potentially killer women.

Third was the big fight with Thorgrim. Thorgrim is bad ass. He is a Fighter 4/ Wizard 5/Eldritch Knight 5. He has a pair of magical axes that he throws along with a Sliding Axe Throw feat that lets him trip with them – like a machine gun. He was getting six thrown axe attacks a round. Despite there being three PCs, three PC-level NPCs, and one goon NPC, they were all unconscious or prone when Serpent had Samaritha case erase to get the rune off his forehead.

I like when the cinematic thing happens! They could have killed Thorgrim just through damage – in fact, he was down to like 21 hp or something; he might have gotten another attack routine in (certainly killing someone!) but he wasn’t unbeatable through sheer fight.  He had, however, seen what was going on when Chmetugo the shadow demon was taking control of him/seducing him via the extraplanar connection of his glyph fragment, and cast hidden knowledge – a spell that conceals information you know even from  yourself, but you can release it later. In this case he had encased more than a simple piece of information, more of a concept – his Ulfen-ness.  He comes to his senses and cries out, “I am Thorgrim, son of Halgrim, the Bloody, the berserker! We do not bend our knees to spirits! Demon, show yourself!” Thorgrim has a complicated backstory, he was an Ulfen (Viking) warrior back in the day and got turned to stone by a gorgon for 200 years and was rescued by the Cypher Lodge – he swore fealty to protect them and also learned magic there. But, in a bit of a Howardian theme, his primal, savage origin is stronger than his subsequent civilization and enchantment. (He’s actually originally from Green Ronin’s Freeport, and I expanded on him.)  Anyway, I allowed for several end states; they just about did the “fight to the end” one but Serpent put it together and went for the cool story ending instead!

And then they all leveled!  I’m doing XP by fiat in this campaign, and it’s been a long time since 5th (there’s just so much fun to do in the low/mid levels) so they were psyched.  Level 6 is where you become independently dangerous in Pathfinder, so it’s a benchmark level.

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