Tag Archives: D&D

Twentieth Session (10 page pdf) – “The Lower Temple” – As the party continues to wind deeper into the ancient serpentfolk temple beneath Viperwall, there’s investigation, puzzles, and loads of undead threat.  Then the group faces the avatar of the semi-dead god Ydersius.  Death looms near for our favorite Ulfen snake lover…  All in the latest installment of Reavers on the Seas of Fate!

Beware, there are plenty of spoilers for Green Ronin’s Madness in Freeport adventure, from which the serpent temple was taken.  And you may want to brush up on the previous couple summaries; there’s a lot in here that ties in with previous events but it’s not expanded on in the summary all the time.

After many levels of the “Upper Temple,” what was the human area of Viperwall, the Reavers have made it down into the “Lower Temple,” of ancient serpentfolk provenance.  And it’s big.  Last time they hit four of its levels, and each one gets larger as they descend. This time, it’s levels five and six.

I think it was a bit unexpected to the PCs that the shadows (which usually attack them) of the serpent men (which usually attack them) were only sometimes hostile; mostly they were caught in their own mildly crazed, shade-trapped existence and the group talked with some of them, ignored some of them, and fought some of them. It was a lot more interesting than a “kill a billion shadows” dungeon crawl.

Here’s one weakness I have though – I’m terrible at riddles.  I knew the riddle in the scenario sucked, but I couldn’t think a better one up (and had been off the plane from California for only like 8 hours when I had to run the session and hadn’t had prep time to search something out).  And it was made worse by Wogan legitimately guessing “egg!” even before Sseth spouted his riddle (fricking Gollum…).  Ah well, an easy win for Wogan.

The group finally released the high priestess trapped in the mirror.  She’s from thousands of years ago.  In traditional adventurer style they went through fits of just wanting to kill her and take her stuff despite her not being overly hostile (she wasn’t overly friendly either – last time she knew she was high priestess of a huge civilization, and now suddenly she’s among a bunch of scruffy nerf herders in skull makeup looting the place).  They settled for beating her down and taking her stuff.  Things were going OK with only threats of violence until Serpent rolled a 1 on his Diplomacy roll trying to convince her of the situation; that made her decide they were just tomb robbers.  Her high level spells are gone since her god is mostly-dead (they nearly crapped themselves when they realized she tried to cast dictum on them) but her low-level ones and her serpent style kung fu made a decent showing of it.

I am up for suggestions here actually – so far she’s still with them, and I’d like to depict well someone who is from a wildly different, ancient culture.  She only speaks Aklo of course, so communication is only via Samaritha (and Serpent, in this chapter) – I’m trying to come up with less verbal stuff for her to do – I don’t know, weird habits, eating rituals, smacking people for weird stuff – to help depict that she’s very different.

The snake fight is short in the summary but the thing did horrific amounts of damage to people – bite, grab, and constrict and away go the hit points.  Serpent had to spend an Infamy Point to not die (he wanted to get a lot more out of it, but he waited until he had taken enough damage to go past -10, so an emergency save is all it got him). I think Sindawe might have spent one too.  Well, that’s what they’re for.

In the end, they broke the curse, freed the shades of the serpent priests, collapsed the temple, and got the idol!  Wictory!  So now with idol and priestess in tow, and a delay poison wand to get them safely past the poison gas the ruin weeps outside, they’re heading out to return to Riddleport and prevent the arcane nastiness!  But it’s not going to be that simple…

Nineteenth Session (10 page pdf) – “Viperwall” – The ancient human ruins of Viperwall give way to even more ancient serpentfolk ruins beneath.  And a shadow-cursed high priest of that race asks Serpent for help!   Traps, shadows, demons, and ancient artifacts abound, but there is nothing more dangerous than another PC.  Check out the hot PvP action in this installment.

This episode is a good example of how to successfully weave together published scenarios into a campaign.  I combined two adventures as part of the dungeon – Beyond the Towers, a Green Ronin adventure, which served as the layout for the swamp and the human temple of Viperwall, and Madness in Freeport, which gave us the subterranean serpent temple.

Where they have elements that support your themes – like the shadows in the serpent temple – you keep it.  Where they have elements that don’t – like the lizardy guys BtT placed in the swamp – you change it (to boggards, the classic Varisian swamp threat, in my case).  The players were surprised to find out that the upper/human temple and the lower/serpent temple were taken from completely different adventures, and that’s the way you want it.

The PCs faced some decent fights this session, but the biggest one was when Wogan got dominated by a statue magic trap thingy and unloaded on the party.  He wasn’t going to kill anyone, but they had to be careful with hurting their priest, and he was blowing valuable spells and channels on them.

Next time, the dungeon crawl reaches its conclusion!  I am not really a huge dungeon fan, truth be told, but they’re good as one element in a complete mix.

Seventeenth and Eighteenth Sessions (14 page pdf) – “Fleeing Riddleport” and “Beyond the Towers” – In this special double summary, the PCs flee Riddleport with shadows, gendarmes, and half-orc enforcers on their heels.  Samaritha suddenly comes out with a whole bunch of information about how they need to go to an ancient ruin deep inland in Varisia called Viperwall.  They are suspicious, but go anyway.  The trip is pleasant, and an old voodoo mambo living in the swamp gives them some aid.  Then, it’s into the ancient trap-infested ruins of a lost culture!

Seventeen

Sadly, Session Seventeen’s original writeup was lost in an untoward laptop OS reinstall incident.  We put it back together as best as we could, but of course it is a bit more brief.  The PCs fled Riddleport after discovering all the crime lords voted to have them whacked.  The group disagreed as to how guilty Saul was in all this.  Some felt that he had betrayed them and should die; others felt that he was stuck in a situation where he had no choice and did the best he could.

The trip, though reasonably uneventful, was fun.  There are two things that PCs can’t get enough of – shopping and goblins.  I had the new Adventurer’s Armory book and threw in some random weird stuff for them to find – naturally, they bought about everything.  I think their favorite was Sindawe’s purchase of a set of cold iron brass knuckles crudely engraved with “Elf Puncher” – ELFPU on one hand and NCHER on the other.

I don’t let PCs buy just anything they want; common equipment is readily available but if you’re looking for people to have unusual stuff (especially magic) “on hand” then there’s a lot of random chance involved.  You can commission things, if you plan to be around and not be dead or in jail in a week or so, which is a sadly uncommon state for player characters.

They then had a pretty calm trip upriver. So calm that they were getting a little stir crazy, when a batch of goblins appeared.  They were all stuffed into a washtub they were using as a boat to tow a bloated cow corpse somewhere.  There was a fire going in the tub for unspecified reasons.  This captured the PCs’ imagination like no one’s business, and they ended up betting on who could shoot the most goblins.  There was zero danger in this encounter; goblins are incompetent in general and they only had a couple bows between the lot of them.  Good old redneck style fun.

Everyone really enjoyed the session.  I find that to often be the case – shopping and travel and the other “mundane” parts of life bring out the role-playing and world immersion in folks, and they really get into it.  It never fails to surprise me, but in previous campaigns as well I’ve had PCs have a great time going through bazaars and shops finding random stuff to buy.  It’s a popular recreation in real life too, I reckon.

Eighteen

I had a little fun with this one.  After the previous session, I remembered the other thing besides shopping and goblin abuse that groups always love – and that’s hating gnomes.  Nilbog the trapper is the typical crazy gnome, and I borrowed liberally from various movies to spice it up.

Nilbog’s Trapper Song was taken from the awesome Cannibal: The Musical (Trey Parker’s first feature length film).  Watch it to get the full experience!  (I replaced “Eskimo” with “Wendigo” to make it more Golarion friendly but otherwise it was usable as written!)

And his crazed raccoon and trunk full of rabbits in his boat was taken from another great movie, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (Clint Eastwood, Jeff Bridges).  Start watching about 4 minutes in:

And to be honest some of this adventure was inspired by the Disney movie “The Princess and the Frog.”  The voodoo mambo who was living in the boat in the tree was inspired by Mama Odie,

and Glapion is inspired by Doctor Faciler (at least in part).

As you can see, the cinematic inspirations you use can be pretty far flung…

More next time!

Sixteenth Session (13 page pdf) – “The Sitdown” – A meeting of all Riddleport’s crimelords is held and Saul and the PCs are invited.  Saul is given Avery Slyeg’s empty seat at the table and they engage in negotiations with Riddleport’s other “serious people” and their demented minions.  It seems like things go well, except when they get sent on a simple message-delivery mission afterward, it’s a trap!  Business as usual in this sixteenth game session of Reavers on the Seas of Fate!

This was a role-play heavy session, which I enjoy.  The big crime lord sit-down was inspired by like very Mafia movie ever made.  It was an adaptation of the opening scene of Madness in Freeport, the third module in the Freeport Trilogy – but in that one, the Freeport Captain’s Council holds a ball.  A ball?  Jeez, this is Riddleport.  So instead we have a standard “goons around a table” meeting.  It served a couple purposes.  One was to give the PCs a glimpse into the larger power dynamics of Riddleport and also to meet personally all the movers and shakers now that they’re a respectable level (character level and level of Infamy they’ve gained).  Another is to help set up explanations for what’s about to happen.  In the Second Darkness Adventure Path as written, there’s this whole ‘the drow are behind it’ subplot that I’m not using a bit of, instead going for more of a motivation/plot from Freeport using the location and NPCs of Riddleport – although the perceptive will notice some Freeport originals making their way in (Milos, Anton Mescher, Karl the Kraken…) .

Running it all this way has let me use recurring characters a lot more.  If you just run Freeport as written, there’s a lot of “who the heck is this new guy” syndrome.  But here, when Avery Slyeg (Riddleport’s answer to Councilor Verlaine) is assassinated, it’s two people the PCs are familiar with doing it.  When they go to this crime lord sitdown, some of the people are new to them, but they know a lot of them.  In fact the PCs were gratified to see that Clegg Zincher had to fill his third accompanying-minion slot with some low level goon since they took out his capp Braddikar Faje earlier.  I worked in people they knew from earlier and tried to throw in other NPCs they’ll be dealing with in the future like Captain Grudge.

One of my general rules of GMing is “use the same NPC when you can!”  It’s analagous to the theory of Chekov’s Gun.  That’s the one place where I felt like the original Freeport trilogy kinda fell down – it kept putting in new hapless guys to rescue (Lucius, Egil, Thuron) and so I’ve collapsed all three of them into one character (Samaritha).  Well, I had Vincenz standing on for Lucius but he got offed.

So now the PCs realize they’re Marked for Death ™!  They’re not sure what to do.  “Bust in and kill Saul” is one of the leading options under discussion, but I’m worried that’s because two of the players know “that’s what’s supposed to happen next” in Second Darkness.  Like I said, I’m using NPCs and encounters from SD but have pretty much already totally left its plot behind.  But I guess we’ll find out – tomorrow!

Fifteenth Session (10 page pdf), “Terror in Riddleport” – The PCs get led into a deathtrap, the serpent temple is back in business, Avery Slyeg gets assassinated, the PCs get framed for it, the Gold Goblin is attacked, and Sindawe beats up Bojask for kicks!  It’s an action packed session where death lurks around every corner.

My mashing up of the classic Freeport Trilogy and the first chapters of the Second Darkness Adventure Path hits full stride in this session.  I was somewhat surprised, but my old gaming group in Memphis cited the deathtrap in Terror in Freeport (the second Freeport adventure) as one of their most vivid memories.  I had been tempted to ax it, as I’m not a big trap guy, but I ran it pretty much as written instead, and had the assassination they happen upon afterwards be crimelord Avery Slyeg’s.  Jesswin (the assassin who tried to kill Saul, and then got tortured by Tommy) is both the lure to the trap and the hitter, and the Splithog Pauper in there too!

Then, both in Terror and in Shadow in the Sky (the first adventure in Second Darkness), the next part is defending a friendly building against a large scale assault – in this case the Gold Goblin.  A whole load more of previously-encountered NPCs show up for the fight –  Braddikar Faje, Angvar, and Thuvalia.  Probably the most entertaining part of the assault was the hard fight against the raging orc barbarian, who got greased and reduced and otherwise tampered with for a long time before he went down.  Anyway, they give them all a good killing.

Warning – Sensitive Topic!  Don’t proceed if you’re not comfortable with the topic of rape in a RPG.

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Fourteenth Session (11 page pdf), “Booty in Riddleport” – Naval combat!  The PCs’ pirate ship takes on a Chelish navy vessel.  They escape, and take a nice plump merchant ship as a prize, and make their way back to Riddleport.  The next couple weeks are a blur of loot, booze, hookers, drugs, and recreational violence.

It wouldn’t be a pirate outing without some naval combat.  The Chelaxian ship from Session Summary 3, the Raptor (Captain Vix Charlo, commanding), appeared as the PCs’ ship, the Wandering Dagger, was leaving the sacked Staufendorf Island.  Wogan immediately had the brilliant idea of loosing their new eversmoking bottle on the stern, which combined with clever maneuvering kept them almost unharmed by the navy ship’s chase gun.  It was back and forth – the Raptor nearly overtook them before they got up to speed, but then they got a lead, but then the Chelish nearly caught up, but in the end they escaped without a full battle.  And that darn Thalios Dondrel made his Will save.

I won’t post my naval rules here yet because I submitted them for the Fire As She Bears competition from Lou Agresta and Sinister Adventures, but they’ll be OGL so you’ll get your paws on them one way or another soon enough.  Hint, I combined my already field-tested OGL cannon rules, chase rules, and mass combat rules (along with a bunch of new stuff) to put it together.

Then they get to be predator, not prey, when they take a merchant ship.  The PCs were initally concerned about the ten gun-ports on the thing, but Captain Clap just roared, “I said, RUN OUT THE GUNS!!!!”  Turns out the gunports were fake and he knew about it.  Being a pirate isn’t all about kicking ass; living long is about being wily is the lesson to take away.

Then back to Riddleport and a taste of the rock star lifestyle that pirates flush with loot enjoy there!  The PCs entertained themselves for the rest of their session, with such stirring quotes as “Hey let’s go double up on a tiefling hooker,” “I can milk anything with nipples,” and “Now we’ll rip off the local drug suppliers and go into the narcotics business!”  I don’t know, I think I might should change their alignments from Lawful Good, what do you think?

By the way, here’s where an iPhone with Google access is bad ass.  The PCs say, “We want to go kidnap some spiders!  What can we get that’ll keep spiders off us?”  Rather than say “No!” or “Uh, anti-spider herbs?” I did a quick search and BAM!  Hedge apples! (aka horse apples, aka osage-oranges.)  I know some people have given up on the roots of D&D as a vector to research weird information, but not me baby!

Thirteenth Session (16 page pdf), “Mansion of Shadows, Part III” – The inevitable holocaust of violence descends on Staufen Manor.  At the Asmodean funeral for the eldest son, the PCs decide it’s time to wipe out the whole family – but the priest is ready for them with summoned devils.  Simultaneously, the pirates assault the island!  The fledgling pirates carefully decide who to rape and kill and who to protect from the raping and killing.  Who gets it?  Read and find out!

This was a super-sized session, we went for about 8 hours, which was good because the players just had so much fun intriguing with the Staufens that it took us a while to get to the violence.  Every time I’d try to advance the timeline they’d run off and do something else in some dark corner of the keep.  Fair enough!

Then the fight in the chapel went pretty fast.  The priest was 7th level but Sindawe used an Infamy Point to do him in – he pulled the mirror down on him and spent a point and we decided that it happened just as he was channeling to summon more critters and he went through the gate the other way, ending up in Hell!  And there was much chortling.

They were happy to see most of the Staufens meet their brutal ends.  Then, they kept complaining that I wouldn’t let them loot all the bodies with a bunch of Staufen guards standing around.  “Surely they will leave us alone to molest the body of their dead lord soon!”  Sigh.

We used my new Quickie Mass Combat Rules to handle the pirate attack. It went pretty fast and smooth.  It seems like it lends itself well to handing out index cards with units on them to the players to have them pick  up some of the slack too.  The PCs were thinking fast, I was proud.  Wogan laid a fog cloud on the parapet to disrupt the orc crossbowmen, which was good because they were going to get free attacks on the pirates till that gate got open.  Then once the battle was joined, they even remembered about the other door in the inner wall and used it to flank the guards – that’s the kind of things PCs love to just forget about.  And then Wogan used one of his Infamy Points to bullseye Jack from across the battle.  “Yo ho ho, bitch!”  he shouted as Jack crumpled.  The other players really liked that.

I’m going to have to tighten up on the use of Infamy Points to autokill enemy leaders once I start getting some I want to stay around longer.  These guys are just mooks so if they die, great; if they live I’ll level them and bring them back for later torment.

The looting sequence was fun; the PCs got to run rampant over all the color text they had seen before.  They were sad that a) they weren’t supposed to keep whatever they looted, the pirates do fair shares and b) that the halfling alchemist wasn’t retarded, and when pirates attacked right after weirdo visitors paid her about a thousand gold for every weaponizable product she had, she took the money and ran.  They were bemused but entertained by the huge pumpkin that they took as loot.  My personal theory is that pirate (and orc) looting pretty much operates according to the Redneck Principle, which is that things are taken based on how good it feels to hold them up and scream “WOOOOOOOO!!!!!” at the top of your lungs.  Some of that is gold and jewels – and in this case, some of it is 70 pound pumpkins and inn signs.

Next time, back to Riddleport.  But first… <cue Mars, the Bringer of War>