Castle Amber Recap - Part2

Day 1 Encounters:

In the first 3 hours of real time the players were able to make it through the West Wing and 1/2 way through the center Indoor Forest area.

One particular interesting encounter in the West wing was the Aranea room.

The PC's were still preoccupied by a encounter with a huge green slime that was guarding a treasure. They had not figured out a way to destroy this massive slime (and never would) so they decided to try out the doors nearby.

They opened the door to the next room down from the slimes and found it completely filled with spider webs. In the back of the room they could see a glittering array of spider eyes looking at them longingly. They slammed the door shut and moved on.

Or so they thought - the aranea used a phansmal force to make them think they had shut the door when instead they had just shut an illusionary door. Two of the aranea then proceeded to follow them and charm Higgins (I rolled him as the victim randomly). Once Higgins was charmed he tried to set the mage of the party on fire with his torch. The party started to try to dealing with Higgins and then a big spider falls down top of the party cleric. The other two spiders are hiding in the original room bidding their time.

The party begins to fight the 1st spider when the second spider casts magic missile on the party. Two PC's are hit and then they see the spider pop its head back inside the door (looking like it is "phasing" through the door. They decide that these spiders must be partially ethereal so they run over to the illusionary door (still believing that it is real) and try to open it. Meanwhile the spider just pops its head out of the illusion and bites the dwarf who is trying to open the door. Luckily the dwarf has amazing poison saves or they would have had a dead dwarf.

The third spider turns invisible and slinks away from the fight, not liking where it is going. The PC's kill the first spider that dropped down on them and then begin to fire lots of arrows upon the second spider. They figure out that the door is illusionary and they jump through it. Finally, they beat down Higgins with subdual damage and then finish off the second spider. They collect their treasure and then head back to safer territory to rest and recoup spells (the mage used lots of his spells up finishing off the spiders).

Unfortunately, the third spider follows them. It comes upon Higgins and the dwarf while they are on watch and bites Higgins. He fails his saving throw and dies a few rounds later. Meanwhile, the spider casts ventriloquism and begins to taunt the party and attack them from their flanks. Eventually, they get everybody awake and finish off the spider. Higgins was the first victim that the Castle Amber adventure claimed. I think if I had been rolling random encounters this adventure would take at least double the time and would have claimed many more lives in the process.

Other encounters that stick out in my mind were the ghostly dinner (where none of the PC's ate anything except for the dwarf who ate and drank EVERYTHING!). He lucked out on saving throws and ended up gaining 2 extra permanent HP, lost a point of INT, gained a point of WIS, and gained the power of ESP 1/week for life.

Another encounter that was quite a bit of fun was the amoeba in the center of the fountain in the Indoor Forest. The PC's see this treasure and know that there will be something stopping them from getting it, but they decide to send the thief in to get the chest. He takes his shoes off, cuffs his pants up, and starts to walk across the surface of the amoeba after pushing around with a 10 foot pole.

The amoeba engulfs the thief inside of itself and begins digesting him (causing 2d6 damage each round). One of the clerics decides to grab the 10 foot pole and try "fishing" the thief out of the slimy amoeba. I decide that it could work and we use a couple of random rolls to determine success. It ends up taking 2 rounds but the cleric fishes out the thief. Meanwhile the amoeba eats the dwarf - so the cleric wipes some sweat off his brow and begins fishing for dwarf. Using random rolls kept the action fast and furious.

This is one of the strengths of B/X DnD, you can get combat over fast, so you can get to more combat (and that is a line from the Risus roleplaying system but it totally applies here). We had nine PC's 5 of them spell casters, and several that had magic, and I was able to run combats of 12 turns with 10+ opponents in less than 20-30 minutes.

Anyway, getting back on topic, the amoeba had 15HD and took a lightning bolt, 2 magic missiles and the combined hacking of ~3 other characters before finally they hacked off enough slime that the creature died a wriggling death.

After fighting the amoeba they explored the chapel and then proceeded down into the dungeon where they unlocked the silver gate and moved into Averoigne!!! But that is another story, for another day, in Part 3!

Castle Amber Recap - Part 1

On our first day of this adventure we had three players and roughly 5 hours to play. In 1.5 hours the characters each made two characters whose levels had to add up to 8 ( 2x4th level or 1-3rd and 1-5th etc...). We also rolled to see if they had any magical items entering into the adventure. The party ended up with two scrolls and a few potions.

Here are the gallant PC's:

Gyric Greymane (5th Level, Neutral Mage, wears grey robes, likes to cast lightning bolt and levitation)

Lokidus (3rd Level, Neutral Elf, fights with daggers, was invisible for most of the adventure)

Dakon Darkblade (3rd Level Lawful Cleric of the Church of Karamiekos "in good standing", had a crappy constitution score and only 12 hit points, made up for it by wearing plate mail :)

Neil Mankenzie (4th level Neutral Thief, had a sweet constitution score of 17 and 19 HP!!! we rolled up that he once fought Dwelifane to a draw in the city of Specularum, they became friends after that)

Dwelifane Nonendyl (4th level Lawful elf, this character rolled really good stats having a 13 strength, 14 Con, and 18! dex. In battle he favored the two handed sword and the long bow)

Harkidurm Battlerock (4th level Neutral Dwarf, typical Dwarf 5 int, 7 wis, 4 chr, but... 16 str and con!, he rolled really good HP having 37 HP at 4th level he had some stats change up by the adventure and also gained the innate ability to use ESP, although with his low INT and WIS he is not sure how to use this, also he gained a permanent +4 bonues to poison saves giving him a save of 2...)

NPC:

"Higgin's" 1st Level Lawful Caravan Guard (Fighter)

I added Higgin's because I thought it would be nice for the PC's to have a torch-bearer - I named him Higgin's as an homage to Roll For Initiative. He met his fate at the hands of spell casting spiders.

The Adventure!

The PC's found themselves on horseback riding as hard as they could to escape a dragon that befell their party at the foothills of the Cruth Mountains as they braved a passage through the mountains leaving the Grand Dutchy of Karameikos and heading toward Glantri.

They ran from this dragon for hours until they were sure it was no longer chasing them. After some greetings and roleplaying the group made camp on a hill in the night. They awoke to find themselves in Castle Amber.

On our first day they explored the West Wing engaging in a boxing match with a magen and having tea with an insane Ogre that thought it was an elderly woman. They killed two wraiths with a lightning bolt and found over 10,000 gp of treasure in around 3.5 4 hours of play. There were a couple of really cool encounters I'm going to elaborate on in future posts. For the next adventure I told them that they could reach make one more character since I was worried about having a TPK in a single encounter.

Overall - everybody playing was happy with the B/X system. None of these guys have ever played anything before 2nd edition AD&D, and have played a bulk of their gaming in 3rd edition. They really liked the loose and quick method of play and one of them wanted to borrow the books and read up about basic DnD. He remarked, "wow, this version of the game is great for getting together, making characters, and starting the action all in the same day! I had walked into this figuring most of the day would be character creation and we ended up with over three hours of game play!.

Castle Amber

Well, we postponed the Castle Amber adventure until Dec 26th - the day after Christmas! I do have a couple of days off the week after Christmas so maybe I can pull together an adventure log of at least the highlights if it goes well. One of my buddies who is playing in this game has only played once in the last year (which is also the last time I played the game at the table...)

My preparations are complete - I have character sheets, ready-to-go backpacks filled with adventuring gear to save time, a list of immortals worshiped in Mystara, a print out of the character and monster t0-hit tables, a print out of the death and dismemberment table...

GAME ON!

X2 - Alternate Tomb of Stephen

After reading several Clark Ashton Smith stories I've come up with my alternate idea for the Tomb of Stephen. After the PC's acquire the 4 items and perform the ritual to transport them to the tomb, I'm going to have them transported to Yondo. They will end up on a strange endless plain with a sickly smelling lake before them. On the other side of the lake will be a strange hemispherical mountain that was created by an asteroid or moon crashing down upon the plain. At the base of this spherical mountain is a large marble building with columns all around it.

They will have to work their way around the lake, encountering various "abominations" among them a group of sickly white ape men who are performing horrible sacrificial rituals to elder uncaring deities. This world that the PC's have found themselves is a pocket dimensional dumping ground. It was created by Stephen for his tomb and over the many years that passed by it has become populated by creatures from many dimensions and worlds, sucking them in as the pocket dimension moved through the inter-dimensional vortex and overlapped temporarily with other realms and planes.

If the PC's can get past these strange white ape men and into the tomb I will have antechamber attended by skeletal knights in rusty chain. In the inner sanctum are mummy guardian kings, bound by magic to the tomb of Stephen. The PC's must battle their way through the mummy guardians to the coffin and following the instructions on the inside of the coffin, burn the tapestry. This will revive Stephen and the rest of the adventure will conclude as written in X2.

I think I will be running this adventure on the weekend of the 18-19th and since X2 is a pretty large adventure I'm not sure we will make it to the Tomb of Stephen or to Averoigne. I'll probably keep this much detail for now and then just wing it based on this premise if the PC's make it that far.

X2 Castle Amber

I picked this module up probably 6 months ago. I'd like to try running for a group before starting a campaign using B/X rules to see how my players like it (all these guys have been playing 2nd, 3rd edition, and even a little 3.5 and 4th edition in the mix). So B/X DnD with its race as class, no feats, etc... might be a little bit of a surprise for them. However, I think Castle Amber will be a great adventure to show off the attributes of the B/X system.

There is one thing that bugs me about the adventure that I am thinking about changing. It is part 8 - Steven's tomb. This part of the adventure becomes a linear set of rooms with guardian creatures in them. It is repetitious open door, oh look, monster! The rest of the adventure is really well crafted and this final tomb section just seems lazy or constrained by page count. I'll have to figure something out to spice this section out and make it just as interesting as the rest of the adventure. I'll post up what I come up with if I can figure out a way to link files - I'm not very trained in HTML-fu.

Also, I'm really interested in fleshing out Averoigne - I'm a big fan of C.A.S. stories and I think I will probably re-read them in order to get more of the tone and feel that I'm looking to convey. Anyway, hopefully this works out - I'm pumped!

Aloof Gods and Vancian Clerics

My first high level character that survived past level 10 was a cleric. I realized early on that clerics were a very powerful class. They have the ability to manage their HP better than any other class. They can wear any armor, fight with decent weapons, turn undead, and cast spells! In fact, it is my personal belief that in most editions of the game the cleric is way overpowered relative to the other classes.

One thing that a lot of other GM's have done over the years is give their PC clerics the ability to cast spells without praying for them ahead of time. One excuse for this is that clerics should not have to pray for their spells - instead the diety will grant the magic as the player needs the spells. Another excuse is that if clerics are forces to prepare their spell list ahead of the game they will be forced to choose all healing spells and therefore robbing them of using "the fun spells" during the game. I say bull crap.

I think this viewpoint is tainted by the influence of Christianity on the game. I am a Christian gamer and believe in God. However, I think the typical views of Christianity - that we have a personal god who interacts and listens to us - has begun to seep into the DnD game. In the DnD world I like to think of the gods as being more aloof than our Christian god. This poly-theistic world forces the gods to look down at men as pawns in a battle as they vie with the other deities for the souls and prayers of humanity. They play by certain rules.

In order to perform miracles, clerics must recite ancient prayers and rituals instilled with power over the ages of mankind merely by belief and repitition. These prayers and rituals bind the magics of the fantastical realm and allow clerics to cast this "spell" or "miracle" at any later time by finishing the prayer. The gods are bound by these rules that have been created by the beliefs of humankind. It is this same belief that supports their very existence.

A god can choose not to answer a ritual or prayer, but if his cleric fails to perform the ritual the god cannot just "give the magic" to his cleric. If you want to have "channeling clerics" than why don't you just adapt the rules of Rolemaster or some other channeling based clerical magic system to the DnD game or perhaps a spell point system? In addition, the DnD gods are not personal, they aren't right by your side as you are adventuring. Instead, I see the DnD gods as aloof, proud, and terrible! They watch your cleric and make sure his deeds, actions, and maybe sacrifices please him/her - if they do, then that cleric's prayers will be answered. As a cleric advances in levels he unlocks the secrets of more powerful prayers and rituals - calling on more fearsome miracles.

Anyway, even if you don't buy my fantasy world metaphysical argument about why clerics should use vancian type magic - I think vancian clerical magic in DnD just works better than spell point, channelling, or just letting clerics use their spell slots according to the chart on any spell of that level. I also think it improves player creativity and skill to have to choose out their spells ahead of time and also brings a measure of balance to what I think is already an overpowered class.

Related to this post, I've been thinking quite a bit about greatly altering the cosmology/planar system of Forgotten Realms (which used the standard multiverse system of AD&D). My next post will likely cover that.

BX-FR Alignment Dilemma

I think I have finally decided what to do for the alignment system in my new game. Initially I had been leaning toward using the AD&D alignment system since all my books have the dieties and NPC's and magic item alignments in terms of the 9 pt alignment system from 1st ed AD&D.

However, I have never been a fan of the interaction of know alignment, and detect evil type spells and abilities with alignment systems that contain "good" and "evil". I really like the concept of Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic as three buckets for grouping the world generally into "teams". You have the forces of order (generally thought of as the good guys) the neutral rogues who are mostly unaligned and are looking out for themselves, and finally the forces of chaos. However, even a character with a chaotic alignment isn't necessarily "evil".

I read a really good post from Robertson games blog here which describes their use of the three point alignment system. I don't really agree 100% with the concept of making chaotic characters be evil and then turned over to the DM as NPC's - instead I'm planning on playing it more like the Moldvay core rule (essentially with a lot of room for interpretation). However, I think I will be borrowing the Robertson games post's idea of having a Lawful tongue, a neutral alignment language, and finally - the Black Tongue which I really like both in name and in spirit.

I've also been tossing around the idea of a "taint" system but not played out the same way as the Unearthed Arcana version. If I can pull something together around that I think it could be a good roleplay aid.