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Reavers on the Seas of Fate – Thirteenth Session Summary

Posted on March 23, 2010 | Leave a comment

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>

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Quickie Mass Combat Rules

Posted on March 23, 2010 | 6 comments

I came up with some streamlined mass combat rules to handle a battle in my Reavers campaign with 30+ participants on each side.  It worked pretty well, so I thought I’d share it.  I didn’t want a huge system, but I wanted something that would work smoothly, that would incorporate the PCs organically without turning into some weird “minigame” or requiring them to be commanders.

Quick Mass Combat Rules

Army Builder ™

Break each side up into units of n creatures, where n=5, 10, or whatever makes sense for the scale of the conflict.  Units should be mostly homogeneous.

Unit Initiative = Median initiative of the creatures in the unit.

Unit HD = Total HD of the creatures in the unit.

Unit hp = Total hp of the creatures – break them up into n boxes of equal hp, one box per creature.

Unit AC = AC of each creature.

Unit Move = Slowest move of the individual creatures.  Loosely track units on the battlefield so it’s clear who they’re in contact with.

Unit Attack = Normal attack bonus of the creatures + ½ times the number of creatures in the unit.  (10 creatures = +5 attack bonus.)

Unit Damage= normal damage + the number of creatures in the unit.  (10 creatures = +10 damage.)

Saves = save of each creature.

Targeted spells can only take out the appropriate number of individuals.

Area effect spells, apply as unit damage.  Might not be “fair” to the fireballers, but whatever.

Named NPCs and PCs can engage specific targets in the unit, and get engaged by them separately from the unit attacks.

Combat!

Units roll once to attack other units using their unit attack versus the other unit’s AC.  If they hit, they roll damage, duh.  As a unit takes damage, you cross off boxes for each creature-sized increment of damage they take.  You can “half cross” off a box for leftover damage that’s about half a creature’s  hit points.  As armies take damage and boxes get crossed off, their attack and damage bonuses based on the number of creatures in the unit go down commensurately.

After that, it’s rulings not rules baby!

Playtest Example

A pirate attack on a Chelish manor house!  There are 30 attacking pirates, and they have a wagon-mounted swivel gun.  Each pirate is a War2 with Toughness – they have 20 hp each, but only attack at +3, do 1d6+1 damage each and have an AC of 13.  The PCs are their “men on the inside”.

The keep is defended by 30 human guards (War1) with only 5 hp, but AC 17 and damage of 1d8+1 (longsword +3).  It is also defended by 10 orc soldiers (was 15 before the PCs got their hands on them) that are War1s but have an effective hp of 22 because of their orcish ferocity, AC 15, and attack with a greatsword at +5 for 2d6+4 points of damage.

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This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

Posted on March 22, 2010 | 9 comments

You recall my recent post about the “D&D With Porn Stars” blog?  Even WotC covered it!  Well, apparently there’s some OSR group called “TARGA” out there.  One of their weekly link roundups linked to the blog.  Apparently this twisted the nipples of two guys mainly, this guy (who apparently was also sad his latest brilliant blog posts weren’t included in the links) and this guy.

This had a lot of fallout, including Chgowiz pulling his blog down off the Internet totally in a fit of pique.  And the guy who was doing the link roundups left the organization.  And primary complainy guy left the organization.  And lo did Joesky speak out upon the subject.

My point isn’t that some of those involved are douchey.  It’s that organizations like this are inevitably douchey.

Some of the worst times of my gaming life have been as a result of my involvement with nonprofit gaming organizations.  I was involved with the RPGA as a Living Greyhawk Triad – that sucked.  I started a Memphis gaming group (the FORGE – still going strong!  No, I hadn’t heard of the Ron Edwards thing at the time.).  That was horrific in its early stages, when my roommate and I had endless conflicts with the demented wife of an RPGA staffer; she even raised her hand to hit my roommate once during one of her psychotic rants.  (Once we said “screw you guys” and got it going on our own it worked out fine.)  I was a officer of the Christian Gamers Guild, until the neverending power plays and schizophrenic threats drove me away.

Politics are never so vicious as when the spoils are pathetic.  It’s why bosses at nonprofits are about 25% more sleazy and awful on average (a made up but completely true statistic).   Organizations like that (and to a similar extent, the cabals “in charge” of things like RPG forum sites) inevitably devolve into a self-serving nest of narcissists and empowering cowards.

I refuse to participate in such “organizations” (a strong word for random mailing lists with self-proclaimed “Boards” of 5 or so random people that decide to waste hundreds of man-hours of time working out policies that can only alienate and never help anyone) anymore.  And I’m a lot happier.

Heck, even the RPG Blogger Network went through some of that.  Let me tell you what you need in terms of detailed power structure, unless there’s real money changing hands.

1.  One moderator/owner guy, who will be very tolerant, and generally tell everyone to just calm down and ignore it if someone’s twisting their knickers, but in extreme cases warn or ban people who are being total asshats on the forum, mailing list, or whatever.

2.  One person per real initiative (like an e-zine or whatever) who organizes/runs the initiative and includes submissions based on their sole prerogative.  Other people can step up to do another “whatever” if they disagree with that person’s vision.

That’s it.  You don’t need a “constitution.”  You don’t need a “board.”  Every single one of those you’re doing is a bunch of jacking off that will look pretty stupid to you in ten years when you’re wondering where your youth went.

On a similar note, if someone says something on a blog or mailing list or forum you don’t like – do feel free to ignore it.  Some people act like every post is a missive solely directed at them.  Unless it begins with “Dear X, you are a loser” it is not, and you can safely ignore it, let it go by, and life will go on.

This has been a public service message.  Wise up.

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Steve Jackson Games State Of The Union

Posted on March 18, 2010 | 7 comments

Steve Jackson,the company that publishes GURPS and Muchkin (if that’s news to you the rest of this is going to be helleboring), has just released their “Report to the Stakeholders: 2010” that gives an overall look at how they’re doing.

The good news: They’re doing well.  28 staff, profitable, $3M gross revenue.

The bad news: All their goals revolve around “sell more Munchkin.”  They only released one print GURPS release in 2009, mostly they’re going PDF.  Kinda sucks – 80% of their revenue is from Munchkin and 20% is from GURPS but there’s no GURPS goal…

The RPG company list on my blogroll keeps getting smaller as these companies eschew RPGs for board games.  Ah well.  I hear White Wolf might be giving it up as well and sunsetting RPGs for other stuff.

Props for the transparency though – did you know SJG openly lists how many units they sell on their e23 PDF sales site?

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D&D With Porn Stars Goes Video (ok, not that surprising considering)

Posted on March 18, 2010 | Leave a comment

The newest hotness in the blogosphere is the “D&D With Porn Stars” blog – it’s not a gimmick, it’s really a group of D&D players who are also (mostly) porn stars.  The blog is actually quite good and full of thoughtful articles written by DM Zak Sabbath!

Anyway, he does some session summaries, but they’re going one step further and filming their play sessions and airing them as a series called “I Hit It With My Axe” on The Escapist.  No, there’s no hardcore action (yet, at least), but you get to see…   Well, an only slightly more chaotic than normal gaming group, really.

Insights so far from the first episode:

  • Hot girls like to play elves and tieflings.  That should not be news.
  • Porn stars have geek hobbies.  Also should not be news; I remember fondly the long discussion I had with that stripper about her WoW priest.

Zak says it should liven up more in future episodes!  It’s getting loads of press: io9 interviewed Satine Phoenix about it, even my favorite geek site Topless Robot reported on it.

I totally want a big version of their logo to use as my background…

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Shadowrun Problems; Great PR Though

Posted on March 18, 2010 | 3 comments

News broke on Tuesday that Catalyst Game Labs, publisher of Shadowrun, Eclipse Phase, Cthulhutech, and Battletech, is in severe trouble to the tune of $850,000 being embezzled from their corporate coffers.  You can read the initial detailed report of the issue here.

On the one hand, eek.  On the other hand, embezzlement has practically become a tradition in the RPG industry, so it’s not all that surprising.

What I want to point out, though, is the press release Catalyst put out on Wednesday, the very next day after the news broke.

For Immediate Release

Catalyst Game Labs recently completed a detailed financial review of the company. We learned that over the past several years the company has achieved dramatic growth in terms of demand, increased total revenues and strong sales with an increasing market share in the gaming industry, despite a lackluster economy. We are thrilled by that news and are eager to move forward with our upcoming original game Leviathans, along with our other new casual games. We also remain committed to plans for our beloved licensed games: Shadowrun, BattleTech, Eclipse Phase, and CthuluTech.

While we wish the review had only uncovered positive news, we also discovered our accounting procedures had not been updated as the company continued to grow. The result was that business funds had been co-mingled with the personal funds of one of the owners. We believe the missing funds were the result of bad habits that began alongside the creation of the company, which was initially a small hobby group. Upon further investigation, in which the owner has willingly participated, the owner in question now owes the company a significant balance and is working to help rectify the situation.

The current group of owners was presented with this information on Monday. Administrative organization for the company is under review, and accounting procedures have been restructured, to correct the situation and provide more stringent oversight. We feel the management team at Catalyst did the responsible thing by seeking this financial review and we will continue to restructure as needed. We are in discussions with our partners and freelancers to remedy any back payments that may also be due as a result of this review.

We are embarrassed that this situation did occur but we hope our eagerness to make these changes, along with our reputation for making great games, will encourage you to stand by us. We understand that for a few employees the news was too stressful and we wish them all the best in their new endeavors. However, the majority of the team remains and will continue to bring great entertainment to you all. We appreciate the support our friends, freelancers, and fans have provided us in the past and look forward to a successful future.

Now, I’m not saying any of that is true or it isn’t, but I do want to say this is the best example of game company PR I’ve seen in a long time.  If you need to do damage control, this is how you do it.

  • It’s prompt – put out less than 24 hours after the news hit.
  • It’s upbeat – explains sales are great, the game will be fine, the guy just made a mistake, and it’s all on the path to resolution.
  • It’s detailed – not too much detail, but enough that you can kinda trust you’re being told a decent part of the story.
  • None of it is obvious lies – it’s sad that that’s worthy of note but look at the competition.

When confronted with similar issues, other game companies instead tend to:

  • Disappear, and not address the issue for months (WEG)
  • Spin a tale of woe about personal finances, health, psychological problems, betrayal, and dark magic (Palladium, WEG)
  • Make a declaration that is either a transparent lie or gives no detail and tells you it’s none of your business (WotC)

I like this press release so much that I find myself hoping it’s true and that they can recover from this in a meaningful way!  I hear that the Eclipse Phase guys have already said they won’t work with Catalyst any more, they’ve shed a couple employees, and some other freelancers are turning their backs on them – those are bad signs.  But, who knows.

Aside: The public somehow thinks that it’s mostly the big companies like AIG or Lehman Brothers that are full of illegal shenanigans – but having worked for small companies, I am willing to bet the percentage is just about equal.  Human nature’s the same in small and large scale.

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Alternity “The Lighthouse” Session Summaries 16 and 17 Posted

Posted on March 14, 2010 | 1 comment

We’ve completed a couple more sessions of our Alternity campaign, The Lighthouse!  Sorry, I’m falling behind since I’m running one campaign, doing session summaries for this one, and doing other RPG work on the side.  But this should catch us up.

Sixteenth Session – As we’re heading to a system overrun by kroath, the “Take An Orphan To Work Day” program backfires terribly as it turns out the guy who runs the orphanage is a spy.  He is lucky to only lose one of his four limbs in the bargain.

The kroath are kinda like a mix between Predators (who they resemble) and Aliens (in that they can transform people into more kroath).  We were looking forward to mixing it up with them, but turns out that’ll be unlikely.  The planet where the kroath has a gravity of like 4 g’s and only mutants and cyborgs can exist outside the cities.  And, we didn’t get much done on that because we spent most of the time chasing the head of the local orphanage.

A lot of the campaign’s plot has been driven by these plotline writeups Paul has us do.  He has some index cards with stuff like “Old Enemy” or “Star-Crossed Lovers” written on them that we pick and then write up a related subplot for our characters (or another’s!).  He is pretty much constructing entire sessions from those.  A previous subplot had Martin St. John masterminding “Take an Orphan to Work Day” as part of his community service efforts with the Lighthouse’s orphanage.  Turns out the kids have been stealing intel from secured areas and the guy running the orphanage takes off.  At first we think maybe he’s a garden variety pedophile; then we think maybe the kids are infested with alien mind control worms;  but in the end it turns out the guy’s a VoidCorp secret agent. We quickly come up with a very elaborate and amusing plan to catch him.

Seventeenth Session – We’re in the kroath infested system, but most of the session is spent dealing with an irate auditor and an alien threat that can best be described as the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Again, we actually get to the kroath planet but most of the initial action is from Klaus Otterschmidt, some Concord auditor that has been making a nuisance of himself; he jails Martin St. John and tries to depose Captain Takashi.  The Captain gets sick of him and has Haggernak throw him in the brig; the guy reveals that he is getting payback for his family dying in a botched mission Captain Takashi led like ten years ago (a subplot helpfully written up by Chris for me, apparently).

Then, the dhros (space bunny-cats) that live in the station air ducts (the fodder from many a subplot writeup) figure in again; three of them get psychic powers somehow and try to force-choke their frequent tormentor, Martin St. John.

And finally some huge 10 km across tentacle-and-maw-intensive Lovecraftian space monster shows up.  We promptly dub it the Flying Spaghetti Monster, much to Paul’s consternation.  There’s a long confusing sequence mostly happening in Pepin’s mind where he makes contact with other aliens and gets superpowers and talks to the FSM and sacrifices himself to save the station…  He lives, and some sci-fi author somewhere is very proud.

Kroath?  Maybe next time!

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Reavers on the Seas of Fate – Twelfth Session Summary

Posted on March 10, 2010 | 1 comment

Twelfth Session (12 page pdf), “Mansion of Shadows, Part II” – The PCs hang out with a Chelish noble family for a while, and witness depths of degeneration that make even hardened criminals from Riddleport uncomfortable.  After a long night of sneaking around the mansion and fleeing from horrid things, they lure the eldest son out to the forest and whack him.

[Note: spoilers for Mansion of Shadows, a Green Ronin d20 adventure]

Our Pathfinder campaign, Reavers on the Seas of Fate, continues in good spirits as our fledgling pirates continue their infiltration of the Staufen family manor.  I haven’t had to change the adventure a whole lot from the Green Ronin original; “demented devil worshipping noble family” drops right into Golarion’s Cheliax without a second thought.  In fact, the players are already speculating on both the Asmodeus worship and “seven sins” ancient Thassilonian elements, both of which came along in the original!

The players definitely found the mansion super creepy.  The best parts were:

  • The hugely fat naked freak eating nonstop in the kitchen.  My impression of it picking up its battleaxe and giving them the hairy eyeball even as it continued to munch on a leg of mutton, and that later when it was sleeping it was sleep-gnawing on the same mutton, made quite an impression. But they were most disturbed when they found out it was female (Leanor Staufen).
  • Serpent being too nosy and ending up running around Three Stooges style fleeing from one devil after another in the mansion at night, even tossing himself down a staircase to escape more quickly.  “Woowoowoowoowoo!”
  • Sindawe seducing Amalinda Staufen in the catacombs under the temple to Asmodeus, and after she put out the candle, he started to realize that her cadaverous body was horribly similar to a lot of the preserved corpses in the room.  He got so nervous that he lit a sunrod and passed it off as “Oh, I just wanted to be able to look at you.”

Rules note, Serpent had to spend an Infamy Point to stop Jack from getting away.  The PCs didn’t really coordinate ahead of time and so when Serpent decided to attack Erich it caused enough confusion that Jack rode off on his horse, which would have been pretty much a scenario-derailer – if they couldn’t find a way back into the mansion then the pirate attack would pretty much be a non-starter.  But Serpent coughed up an Infamy Point so I rolled a random encounter and said “His horse got disabled by a… dire badger… so you’re able to catch up to him.”  So in the end it worked out fine.

Next time in Mansion of Shadows, Part III – both a mass combat and a naval battle!  I’m working on rules for both to make them fun and not onerous.

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New d20 Modern Patronage Project

Posted on March 5, 2010 | 2 comments

Last month I wrote about the state of modern d20 gaming and mentioned there might be a project in the works to update it for Pathfinder.  Well, the project is up and taking donations!  It’s being done as a patronage project by Super Genius Games, which consists of Owen K.C. Stephens, Stan!, and R. Hyrum Savage.  They’re calling it “P20 Modern.”

Follow along and see how it goes!  I liked d20 Modern OK and think it could be done a lot better, and it’s a great time to take it on.

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Pathfinder iPhone Apps?

Posted on February 27, 2010 | 11 comments

I was just listening to a big ol long video of Erik Mona speaking on “Pen & Paper Gaming in the 21st Century” that Louis Porter Jr, had posted on his blog, and he mentions that Paizo has three iPhone apps in the works.  Watch starting around 26 minutes in.

Specifically he describes the “Live Character Sheet” for Pathfinder – add all your stats and stuff there.  One person casts Bless – you can see the other iPhones on the local network and select what characters get Blessed – and then it takes care of counting down rounds for you.”  Nice! Suck it, Digital Initiative.

He talks about other technology stuff like Surface and ARGs, PDF publishing, POD, etc.  Check it out!

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Space Marines? About Damn Time!

Posted on February 27, 2010 | 10 comments

Fantasy Flight Games has announced that they are finally putting out a Space Marine Warhammer 40k RPG called Deathwatch.

I never played the Warhammer 40k minis game, but it’s hard to be a gamer and not be aware of the general mythos.    Space Marines, Chaos Marines, Orks, Eldar…  But after everyone waited for 20 years for there to be any Warhammer 40k RPG, what did they come out with?  First Dark Heresy for Inquisitors, then Rogue Trader for… traders.  They’ve been successful enough, but they just seem kinda fringe to the core 40k experience.  I had at least head of Inquisitors, but I hadn’t even heard of Rogue Traders.  But the one thing everyone who has even wandered by a table of people playing 40k have heard of is the Space Marines!

It’s a pretty… daring plan to leave your big bang for the third game. I’m not a minis player, but liked the 2e Warhammer Fantasy RPG, and thought “Hey, a 40k RPG would be nice” – for some reason the “space marine” concept, though a super popular part of the genre, hasn’t been treated well in RPGs.  There’s a couple super old ones (Aliens, Bughunters), a new indie-high concept one (3:16), and you can do it “on the side” in Traveller…  But oddly, there’s not a lot of crunchy space marine games out there given the proportion of popular SF that features them.

I bought Dark Heresy, and thought it was OK…  I had done a lot of stuff along that Inquisitor line in Fading Suns…  Basically it boiled down to “this is nice, but I don’t think I’m going to run it.”  Rogue Trader, I didn’t even buy.  Other games like Traveller have traders as the core gameplay, I didn’t see the need.  A Space Marine game, though – that I’d buy and really want to run!

P.S.  In researching this article I discovered Rogue Traders do date back to the first edition of 40k (1989) so I guess they have nostalgia value to grognards, so that’s something.  I still think most vaguely informed bystanders have never heard of them.

P.P.S. Going and looking at the FFG forums, there’s a bunch of people hand-wringing about “Oh but how could this be a viable RPG, it’ll just be all combat!  What opportunity for roleplay will there be?”  Oh, come on.  Never watched Space: Above and Beyond, Battlestar Galactica, or Starship Troopers have we?  Never seen games like 3:16 or Bughunters?  Never read Hammer’s Slammers, Honor Harrington, or The Forever War?  Oh never mind, anyone who thinks a military genre is necessarily limited to “kill kill kill” clearly doesn’t want to think more than 2 seconds about it.  Heck, I’m watching an episode of “The Unit” on TV right now and that thing’s half military show half soap opera.

P.P.S.  I really hope they don’t go the component-heavy route that Warhammer Fantasy 3e has gone…  That’s not my thing.

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Reavers on the Seas of Fate – Eleventh Session Summary

Posted on February 24, 2010 | Leave a comment

Eleventh Session (10 page pdf), “Mansion of Shadows, Part I” – After the PCs kill Jasker Gant, one of crime lord Boss Croat’s lieutenants, they decide to go on the lam for a while.  They get “loaned out” by Saul to Captain Clap of the pirate ship Wandering Dagger, who has a little job for them.  Also, the triumphal return of Thalios Dondrel, son of Mordekai!  [Reavers on the Seas of Fate Home]

Thanks to Paul (Serpent Johansson) who has taken on session scribe duties.  You’ll notice I included some pics in this session summary – for the sessions, I Google for random images and pull images from the adventure PDFs as props.  The players said that for their use at least, it would be a lot more helpful to have the NPC pics in the session summaries for their reference.  I hope no one objects to me using them in this way; if you have a beef just let me know.

Mansion of Shadows is a Green Ronin “Bleeding Edge” adventure from back in the day.  I liked the line, they were all pretty good.

Using this adventure illustrates two important principles useful for everyone running a pirate campaign (the best kind of campaign).

1.  It’s easy to take any adventure location and make it an island.  When 3e was new, my gaming group and I (rotating DMs) ran a pirate campaign.  I bought all the initial wave of third party d20 adventures and handed them out.  Since most of them try to be “generic” by placing themselves in some semi isolated location that doesn’t have too much relation to the surrounding world,  you can usually wave your magic wand and call it an island with zero additional work.   One of them I remember had a map that was a huge field of mountains, with one road leading in, and the town/adventure location right there in the middle of it!  Might as well have been an island in the first place.  This one is no exception – the town of Staufendorf is largely encircled by rivers.  A wave of my lasso tool in GIMP and oh look it’s an island.

2.  It’s easy to take any adventure and make it suitable for evil (or neutral-piratey) characters.  A lot of adventures – and Paizo and Green Ronin’s are frequently examples – have several factions of bad guys for you to play off each other.  Paladin-heavy parties have angst about that but piratey parties sure don’t.  Frankly most adventures have a fairly simplistic view of good – “go kill the bad guys and take their stuff!”  Well, that’s as rousing a battle cry for bad PCs – good sticks together, but evil is happy to cannibalize itself.

Behind the Scenes

The party totally did not want to go help the slaves, but Ox (now in NPC form since Bruce moved) wasn’t to be persuaded to leave them behind.  So it was the worst of all worlds, in that only Ox and Sindawe were there for the fight!  No worries, however – Jasker Gant rolled totally crappy and Ox got a megacrit on him and then on one of the goons in short order.  The party’s general conclusion was “Oh sure, now he becomes effective!”

I knew they wouldn’t be able to resist killing another crime lord’s capp (“made man”/lieutenant) for long.  They barely refrained from killing Braddikar Faje earlier, and this time they didn’t even worry about it.  (Tommy’s player Kevin was playing Ox for the encounter).

Anyway, they went and wangled themselves a gig with a pirate ship to go raid a Chelaxian manor house.  After the pirates put them on board a pleasure yacht, I rolled two random encounters.  The first, a wyvern, was pretty tough.  The second was a dire shark!!!  I’m not a big believer in “level appropriate” when it comes to wilderness encounters.  But I had mercy – they killed the wyvern and had it on a tow rope, so when the shark showed up it just ate the wyvern.  Seeing a 60 foot shark go by caused a real brown pants moment.

Then they wandered around Staufendorf a while.  Everyone they talked to, they tried to get at “why are there crucified commoners about?” but everyone would just say in a loud voice, pretty much verbatim, “Staufendorf is a lovely place to live, full of honest and hard-working folk.  It’s a great place to raise a family!”  It got the point across, heh heh heh.

So now they’re infiltrating the nobles’ mansion, trying to figure out how to weaken it enough that 30 pirates can take the place.  They’re kinda worried about it since it’s very well defended.  I’m not sure how they’re going to do it, but I’m sure they’ll figure it out.

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