Questioning the Rules and Conversion

Monday night was Fantasy Age where I play a mage that is always one inch taller than anyone he meets.  He and the group are working for the Consortium (dimensional travelers who collect species of other dimensions).  We've contracted with them to collect five sentient beings.  We've opted to get some orcs.  The previous session we did the same contract and inadvertently grabbed five goblins.  And learned that the better shape they are in the more units (their money - the Consortium excels in magic item creation and only accepts units in exchange) are earned.

This time we thought we'd go for orcs...and we did.  But we killed too
many of them and were overwhelmed by their numbers.  We tuck tail and ran back to regroup.  I believe I failed the group on this one.  I'm Mr. Healer, I've got mad first aid skills and the only one with healing spells.  I let the fighter folk drop too far down instead of maintaining them through the entire fight.  While it is within the rules, I feel that it is an exploitation of a flawed rule.  I mentioned in a previous post that first aiding someone in the middle of a battle is ridiculous.  And while I understand it is a fantasy world with lots of ridiculous stuff that I don't even blink at, for what ever reason I get stuck on it being unrealistic rule.  The GM tweaked it this time though and added another qualifier to be able to use first aid in battle and the person must also have healing magic ability.  Which I do.  So my one inch taller than everyone else dude is super cool.

On Tuesday night we continued our Pits & Perils sessions.  It was the conclusion to my turn as GM.  Each of use has taken a crack at running adventures.  +Chris C. and +Ken H had adventures that required 3 sessions.  I hogged the microphone for 5 sessions.  They were searching for a death mask located in the Valley of the Dead.  They have been battling a religious cult, Memento Mori, that worships St. Hesta, the Plagued One.

The session ended with the party successfully getting the death mask.  But the more interesting event was when they encountered a cleric of St. Hesta trapped within the tomb.  They battled for a short time before the cleric fled.  The party found the cleric quivering being his work table pleading for mercy (when I have NPC of significance I usually label them with an actor's name and proceed to do a horrible imitation, this guy was Peter Lorre).  What happened Chris's cleric was able to convert the weak willed man and immediately changed his name to Pshaw.  So the party's cleric earned his first acolyte.

Chris's turn next week.

To those of you who are getting fat and watching football tomorrow, enjoy the holiday.  I am enjoying a 5-day weekend and the kitchen is already filled with incredible smells.  So excuse me while I sneak away to tear off a chunk of fresh bread and grab an apple spice cupcake.  It is a burden to live with a baker.  I must eat them for the good of all mankind.

Map: The Lost Temple of St. Hesta

Here's the latest map I've been tinkering with.  Not sure if I am dine tinkering, it is a little heavy on the right side.  I'm going to keep this one clean, no silhouettes.  I like the look of the numbers sitting in the center of the rooms. 

St. Hesta
St. Hesta the Plagued One is a Petty God who believes in the dualism of existence.  Her philosophy reflects that of the Cathars and Bogomils (to name two), they believe there is a good god and a bad god.  Anything that is of this physical world is evil and the spiritual world is good.  I'm simplifying the shit out of it, but that is the general premise.

St. Hesta believes the use of disease is the most efficient and righteous way to to transition from the material world into the spiritual world.  It provides someone time to giveaway all their earthly possessions to enter the spirit form unburdened and unhindered.

Her followers are divided into three castes and I blatantly ripped this part off from the Minbari of Babylon 5 fame.  There are the workers, warriors and clerical castes.  The workers are undead, common people or warriors who have fallen in battle that return as skeletons to assist a cleric in their duties.  The warriors see a black and white world, they are not prone to thinking through things, but reacting and defeating those who would interfere with St. Hesta's will.  And her clerics are potent disease spreaders that have the unusual ability to see the future.  The see a possible future and act upon it.

I created St. Hesta for our current Pits & Perils game.  I'll do a formal write up later.

Enjoy your Monday.  I only have a two-day work week.  Looking forward to some time off and too much food.

Mail Call Catch-Up

The past couple of weeks has been very good for mail.  I never get tired of getting cool packages in my post box.  It breaks-up the monotony of utility bills and advertisements and the latest political candidate flyer hoping you'll pick him or her over the other boneheads.  But this is how pretty my mail box looked like.

Look at them.  Just look at them.  That is a good looking group.

First, I finally got the print version for Pits & Perils.  I provided the thumb shadow, that was not included in my Lulu purchase.  +Olde House Rules created this rule set that the Wednesday night game use.  Wanna know something...shhh...I wrote in it!  I never do that.  But for some reason this book is inviting me to vandalize it with our house rules.  I like that.

This is the first of two +Simon Forster sightings in my mail box.  Simon has this fantastic patreon where he completed this Book of Lairs.  This is a great looking book.  And he and +Jim Magnusson, who illustrated this book, make a great team.  Review coming up for this one.

The newest entry into the zine scene id the +Grand DM's offering, Tales from the Game Tavern.  Absolutely love the cover.  There are 28 pages of gaming goodness that I will review very soon.  In the mean time grab a copy so you can follow along.

Another zine, but Crawl! is the original DCC zine and it turns 11 issues with this copy.  +Dak Ultimak the skipper, +Bob Brinkman as Gilligan, +Daniel Bishop as the Professor and +Sean Ellis as Mary Ann.  This issue focuses on seafaring adventures.  Which is good, because without a doubt, sea/water type of adventures are my weakest. 

And lastly, but not leastly is the second +Simon Forster offering.  A map on one side and The Disappointer on the other side.  This sad little shmoo won't hurt you, but it may have you questioning your life choices.

That concludes this episode of what's in the Manor's Mail.

The First Hut on the Left

Last night was our 4th session playing our round robin GMs using he Pits & Perils system.  The was +Ken H  first session at the helm.  I continued to play my charismatic fighter, Chevor and +Chris C. created a cleric called Odo the Penniless. 

Ken created this great map and included some inspirational pictures in this post.  Ken, someone who is extremely knowledgeable about history did an excellent job with developing the atmosphere of the setting.  I have four note cards of notes from the session so I am going to try to make sense of my own hand writing and the remember the flow of the session.

Odo and Chevor were traveling north from Inwood where, Phandor and Chevor solved the mysterious appearance of wolves and found a the missing Rose.  The first place we encounter is Darkness Bottom where we meet Ding, a guard in a narrow stone tower.  "You must be the king's inspectors coming to investigate poor Boc's murder."  Being an honest man I told him, no, we are mercenaries looking to make a living.  Ding frowned, "I don't think you get what I'm saying, you must be the king's inspectors or I can't let you travel this road with all your weapons and armor."  Ahh, so we were those inspectors they were waiting for.

He informed us that the murder occurred in Crossing Church.  The second gruesome murder within a month's time.  He gave us the details that the bodies were mutilated, torn to bits.  And he had many theories on how this came to be, the orcs from Verdoven-Bos, possibly witches.  He also mentioned a man named Anton, he seems to be a favorite person to blame.  He said if we went to Crossing Church that Leona was in charge of St. Amber's Church.  And Elston was the man in charge of the area as a whole, and he resided in Twiggleton.

We continued to travel north.  Met a few more characters before reaching Crossing Church.  When we first arrived was immediately met up with Leona and a woman named Tilly, Boc, the decease's wife.  They were tending to his pyre.  Tilly "I'm not going anywhere.  I'm staying here all night.  When Den was killed they had a pyre for him and in the morning when they came to collect his bones, they were gone.  No one is taking Boc's bones."

Odo and Leona had a short conversation about the area and her church.  She seemed surprised by the presence of investigators even though, we later discovered, she was to have sent for them weeks ago.  It is the only church in the area, but there are two abbeys in close proximity.  St. Diddlemyer Abbey with a long and rich history that several well known scholars and the new abbey is St. Mervin's.  An abbey that was established by Elson's father and himself. 

We then seek out a the man who found Boc's body, Arden.  A sharp old man who repeated the information that the body had been torn to bits.  Insides out, outsides in.  There were bite marks all over his body.  He believed it was the work of the orcs of some devil dog.  This happened north of Twiggleton six or seven years ago.

Odo asked for a tour of the church and Arden obliged.  A simple two room church.  A curious thing being the deep grooves in the floor.  Arden said they had replaced the altar eight or nine years ago.  The old altar had been in disrepair for years and the new one was a gift. 

We then explored the murder scene.  The ground had been scraped clean.  The local did not want the blood soaking into the ground.  It would taint the food grown in the orchard.  The scene was close enough that anyone should have heard Boc yell or at least seen what had happened.  We could see many homes from where we stood.  The only other significant detail we found was a few broken branches on the nearby tree.

On the other side of the orchard was Anton's home, a bit away from the other homes in the hamlet.  Anton features were very different in that he seemed ageless and that he had gold eyes.  He was a gracious host who seemed to enjoy the sparring of conversation.  He discovered he had heard, nor seen, anything.  However, he did get very interested when asked about the local history.  He mentioned a few times that the history was deep in this area.  The area is ancient, Imperial roads and ruins can be found in many places.  Before that the elves ruled this old forest.  And there were others even before that. 

Our final actions were we explored where Den was murdered a few weeks earlier.  The locals had cleansed the ground there also.  We decided to set up camp near the pyre to help Tilly keep watch on Boc's pyre so she can retrieve his bones in the morning. 

Our strategy after that is to explore north into Twiggleton, St. Mervin's Abbey and on up to St. Diddlemyer Abbey. 

It was a great session.  No combat.  More of a police procedural.  A few times I was thinking, "What would Brisco do?"

Pits & Perils, The Wolves of Inwood Conclusion

+Chris C. concluded his adventure, The Wolves of Inwood, tonight.  I continued playing my fighter, Chevor, accompanied by Juliette and William, two footmen who are much better at hitting than me.  +Ken H played his mage Phrandor with his archer, Elizabeth, and his footman, Hogarth.

We stood in front of the cave's mouth knowing the wolves lie within.  We made our way into the first cavern and heard several dozen wolves growling from every direction.  We concocted a plan to build a fire near the cave's mouth in case we needed to escape then seal the way out. 

As we explored the cave we discovered that the acoustics in the cavern had played on our fears, making a single wolf sound like several.  We edge through the cavern and spotted our first wolf.  It charged us and I took a might swing...and critically failed and fell on my face!  After a few more rounds the wolf was killed by our faithful henchmen.  The head worth 5gp and the skin grabbing 3gp, we  headed deeper into the cavern.

To the north we spotted a dim light, so we slowly made our way into the cavern.  Within we found a man dressed in a hooded robe accompanied by a pair of large wolves.  Upon the ground an evil looking magic symbol was etched into the stone floor.  The man demanded to know who we were.  Phandor responded with a bolt of magic.  This is when I realized how potent magic could be.  The bolt hit the man in the center of the chest throwing him back against the wall.  "Kill them," he gasped and his wolves charged.

Chevor and the three footman formed a wall as Elizabeth the archer and Phandor struck with their arrows and magics.  I did NOT roll a critical failure this time, I just missed normally.  The man in black rose up and cast a fear spell upon Juliette who ran through the cavern in mindless terror.  Phandor and Elizabeth both struck the black robed man and he crumpled to the ground.

It was then we heard shouting from the cavern to the east.  A woman, screaming for help.  We finished off the wolves a couple of rounds later.  We went east and I found what I expected, the red haired Rose from town.  She was sobbing.  This man, Romulus, was deformed and wanted her to submit to a transmorphication (I forgot what the spell is called).  It would only work if she did it willingly.  It was his tactic to send his wolves out to kill the people of Inswood so she would submit.  Phandor burned the scroll with the ceremony to banish that evil.

We returned to Inwood with Rose, who explained what had happened to the others and that Fenric had been innocent after all.  

So concluded Chris's adventure.

The After Game Discussion
This is sometimes my favorite part of the night.  We discussed different GM techniques.  Mainly focusing on the aspect of provoking a sense of urgency in game.  It was an interesting discussion.

The other decision we made was to begin out rotating GM duties.  First we decided to keep with the Pits & Perils system.  It's an easy system that fades into the background.  Which suits or way of playing the best.  The second thing we decided was we would continue playing our same characters.  Next week when Ken starts I'll have Chevor falling into the mud somewhere on Ken's world.  And each of us will take turns GMing what we want for a few sessions.  It gives each of us a chance the play and GM. 

By the end of the night I decided that if we are going to run Pits & Perils I'm going to need more than the PDF, so I ordered a print copy.

Weekend at Fenric's

We just concluded our second session of Pits & Perils.  A quick recap.  I'm playing a fighter with two footmen.  +Ken H a mage accompanied by a footman and an archer.  Our GM is none other than +Chris C..

We continued our exploration of the abandon abbey.  We'd found Fenric dead.  He'd been killed by a pair of wolves.  One he killed, another he wounded.  We followed the trail of blood through a winding corridor until to ended at a door.  Inside the room were barrels and from behind the barrels we could here the labored breathing and growling of the wounded wolf.

I tried to lure it out from behind the barrels, but my ration failed to impress.  He moved into position and cornered the wolf who eventually attacked.

While I may be playing a different system, one thing is consistent, I completely SUCK at rolling die.  Couldn't hit water if I fell out of a boat.  The wolf took a big chunk out of my armor before being killed by one of the footmen. 

In the room we found a cask of something.  At the time we suspected it was some sort of booze, but we have had to tap it here and since we are poverty level adventurers we can't afford to drink our profits.

As we finished searching through the abbey we found where Fenric slept and another dead wolf was in the room.  It's carcass being devoured by a horde of sassy rats.  We took Fenric's body back to Inwood, to break the news to Madaline.

Madeline broke down.  We forfeited our reward for finding the boy and gave the two wolves heads to the elder of the village, Robert, but had him give the money to Madeline since Fenric killed both.  Ken and I are playing sickeningly good guys.  However, because of this we wouldn't have the money to stay at the inn.  I attempted to strike a bargain with Robert and he asked if we had anything to sell and that's when I remembered the cask.  The cask was full of fine brandy.  Robert said he would take it in trade for 5 nights stay.  We made the deal.

During a conversation with Robert we discovered that the workers found a wolf amulet at the bottom of the well.  Some of the people said they say a stranger wearing that same amulet.  He passed through a few weeks ago.  And a few days later said Fenric was seen with the amulet.

Phrandor knew the amulet was a symbol of Lycaen.  He said the people that followed Lycaen could very be the cause of the well water problems and the reason why the wolves are more aggressive and in larger numbers.

Being that we were down to the last few coins we decided that our next choice of action would be going after the main wolves den.  It happened to be down the river across from the abbey we had just explored.  But before we left, I took a day to repair my armor and Phrandor identified a mysterious elixir we found in the abbey.  It was a potion of animal command. 

We concluded the session with us edging toward the cave.  An unnatural quiet spread through this area of the forest. 

After Game Thought

• I still SUCK at throwing dice.  
• This was our first combat and it was interesting.  You have to roll a 9 or better on 2d6.  I had a +1 to my attack, but when you roll 1s as often as I do that's like throwing a packet of sugar into the ocean to sweeten it up.
• Ken and I discussed the power curve in Pits & Perils.  In most games you are vulnerable and fairly pathetic at first level.  In P&P, in combat you can take many more hits in the beginning than you can in most systems, however, the power level flattens out very quickly.  So as you go up in levels your power level stays fairly low.  Which is a good thing, for me it makes those higher level monsters even more frightening to face.

Keeping it Simple With Pits & Perils

Last Wednesday +Chris C. started his Pits & Perils one-shot game.  +Ken H and I have the privilege to be the players.  Chris recently wrote a good post about how he prepared the adventure.  He mentions freely available gaming assets that he used to save time.  I like the post because of the finite pieces he uses to get things started.  One of my biggest problems when I begin something is editing down what I want to use.  There is an overwhelming amount of good gaming content available that can get cluttered quickly.

Ken just posted about our experience from our first session.  I posted my Pits & Perils character here.  It was interesting creating the character.  Simple.  Chris said I could just use a notecard for my character sheet and that's exactly what I did.  Only one side, so I kept my session notes on the back.  And in addition, Chris provided us with two henchmen each to help bulk up our ranks.  I chose two footmen named Juliette and William.  Ken chose a footman and an archer. 

Our first session consisted entirely of role-playing.  Ken's mage, Phandor, and my fighter, Chevor, spent the session getting to know the area, the people and the situation. 

As we entered the outskirts of the small hamlet of Innwood we encountered a woman and her son skinning a wolf.  Both were serious looking and boy looked wary of strangers.  We greeted them politely and after a few exchanges the woman (Diana) said that Innwood was having trouble with wolves and there is a 5sp bounty on each wolf's head.  She added where we could located the inn and warned up not to drink the water, something was wrong with the well.

We traveled a little farther up the road and encountered an older lady, sobbing that her son had gone missing.  Chevor being a man of quality and of good-heart, he promised to look for her son, but it being near nightfall and not knowing the land, the search would need to begin in the morning.  She thanks us and promised a reward if we found her son.  She informed us we should look to the abandon abbey a few miles down stream. 

The backstory of the missing boy (his name being Fenrick) is he fell in love with a girl named Rose, a girl of some beauty from the description of the villagers.  Fenrick was scorned by Rose and he cursed Innwood.  Rose went missing a few days after that scene.  The people of Innwood already disliked Fenrick, banished him.  Thus his reason for running away.  At least that's what we believe at this time.

Once we enter the hamlet we find a group of men attempting to discover the problem with the well.  They were taking turns being lowered within.  One of the men was the owner of the inn (I believe his name was Jack), with barely enough, we managed to get a room for all of us.  Jack told us about how we could earn a little money by hunting wolves.  We told him we had heard that from Diana and her boy.  Jack was the one who filled us in on the back story of Fenrick and Rose.  He made it clear that Fenrick was not welcome back and if he saw that boy again he would flog him out of town.

We requested to see Rose's room.  Jack said she stayed there and was furious that she was gone.  Phandor found a torn up note with Fenrick's writing scrawled on it.  A simple note, but damning.  

In the morning we headed toward the monastery.  Her directions proved to be accurate and two miles in we saw a ruin monastery upon a hill.  We explored only the first few rooms and in that time we found who we believe is Fenrick.  He looked to have been killed by wolves.  And like all good, poor (or rich) adventurers we explored farther hoping to get a few more coins in our otherwise dusty pockets.  We found a few religious tomes we could salvage from the rats, but little else.

That is where we concluded for the night.  Our first session in the books.  While I can't comment on the system as of yet, because we used little to none of the mechanics, I believe it is a system that will disappear into the background and allow us to play with searching for rules. 

A great success I think.  It was a fun, easy going game.  Lots of loose threads to pull on to see if they are connected.  In that short of time we were introduced to three different adventure threads, possibly four. 

That is how you run a game.