Game Summary: January 26, 2013

So it all began where the last left off.

Tet and Castiel were riding north to Hobbit Hills from Marsheville when they came across a cart by the side of the road, surrounded by a dozen dead wolves.
Three dead dwarves lay inside and one dwarf, drenched in blood and hammer in hand, slept against the side (our guest player Joseph).
They adopted the dwarf into their party and, passing a patrol of Marsheville guards, returned to the hobbit town.
Arriving, they concluded that one of the foremost uses for their new companion was his ability to translate a Dwarven text from the library on the subject of explosives.

And a plan was formed.

During their previous encounter with the Elven Outcasts, they were given a scrying which revealed the location of the items the PCs lost back in the attack on the fort. Now the players shave Locke (the only one left alive still wanted for that attack) to disguise him and head into town.

First the alchemist's shop for explosive supplies. The hunched and drug-crazed old man assembles that materials requested, but finding prices too high and intimidation ineffective, Locke smashes the man's skull against his counter. They set the body half under a heavy dresser to make it appear an accident, then set the shop on fire and leave quickly. Back at the inn the barkeep asks about the bloodstains, explained away with something about a street performance and a bit of a scrape.

The dwarf mixes explosives for four bombs while the rest scout out the barracks where their items are being held as evidence. They set up a street performance, tell some jokes, are moderately liked by the public, and are asked to move by the guards who need to run back and forth to the burning building in the adjacent district. They try and fail to pickpocket keys off the guard captain. The cleric gets hooked on gambling with some tavern drunkards.

A night at the inn.
And the next morning some guards are talking to the barkeep. Tet leaves to survey the prison for an alternate plan. The rest have a brief encounter with some guards which might have been alright had not one guard decided that Locke's +1 morning star was worth trying to take. Cleric casts silence, the two guards are quietly dispatched. After a few minutes the innkeeper/barkeep comes up to investigate and is likewise killed, then the three drunks downstairs who may have otherwise remembered their faces.
The tavern/inn is promptly doused in alcohol and lit. The players escape into an alley.

Recovering Tet, the players abandon a plan to release prisoners and instead find empty streets to start a couple fires with Molotovs, then stealthily set a bomb by the Grand Courthouse, set off, and dressed as guards, make their was through the confusion of real guards scurrying about to douse fires and slip into the alley behind the barracks.
Shape Stone to open a hole to crawl through into the armory with the evidence cell, Silence and then a bomb to blow open the bars to the cell where their items are kept in a chest. The guard captain feels the explosion, enters. Hold Person, and heavy bludgeoning under Silence until death. They take his armor, some guard armor, and what old equipment of theirs has not been damaged by the explosion, and hurry to the gate.
 Some guards try to stop them, but a Darkness spell sends the mob into chaos and they escape in a stampede of humanity, heading back to the Hobbit Hills.

Finally safe, the players heal and rest. Castiel and Tet decide to test the potions they took from the alchemist's shop. Tet drinks, with the cumulative effects (from the Table of 100 Magical Effects that I will post later) that:
 Tet now grows 8 psychedelic mushrooms from his skin (which grow every 4 days)
Has 2" claw fingernails for +1 unarmed
Is perfectly double-jointed
Can talk to dogs
And has red skin

And then he got turned into a table, and it just gets stranger from there.

Because the first conclusion one comes to when one's friend has been turned into a red, square, wooden table with little mushroom stumps is:
(Castiel:) "Locke, you're the only one who can do this, and it may be the only chance we get. Tet is a table and you need to have sex on him."
Obviously, agreement is unanimous.

Locke runs down the road to Nymphadora, the player-named mute-by-curse nymph the players rescued who has been adopted as a household helper by Alvaro and Emily (Only surviving Hobbit from fort attack and the Hobbit Ienzo knocked up at a crazy party the night before he died.). "Nymphadora, Tet has turned into a red mushroom table and this may be the only chance we'll get, do you want to have sex with me?" And he picks up the d20 for a Charisma check. Everyone laughs and I decide to go with it, saying "okay, well, there's no way that could work on anything less than a nat20"
There is much shouting and praying to Gods of Dice, and then everyone falls on the the floor. Laughing. Because Martin has just rolled a perfect, natural 20.

So Nymphadora kisses his and they go back and it turns out she was in love with him all along and so they have sex on their friend Tet the monk who is a table. And then they go out and spend the afternoon together and romantic nonsense. At midnight Tet the red doublejointed dog-talking clawed mushroom-man monk who used to be a table turns back, smelling of lunch fish and sex and is only mildly offended because everyone is still in crit-shock and awe of the absurdity of the thing.

There is talk of Locke's marrying Nymphadora and babies and playing as their children if everyone dies but those are things for another time.

Game Summary (+Audio): January 19, 2013

This was an eventful session. For recordings of a large portion of the game listen below, but I will summarize nevertheless.

Having conquered the ruins of the Gnomish city and being painted in the feral men's ritual warrior ink, the heroes are given directions to the lair o the Elven Outcasts, some elves rumored to practice dark magics, including the reversal of any spell. For the players this means the reversal of enchantments so that they may be learned and duplicated, giving the players each a duplicate of the Cloaks of Water Breathing they are told they will need.

So they travel and the Outcasts are pretty accommodating. "Sure we'll copy your cloak, just bring us some books from this old empty elf library." Which is not entirely unguarded.

So following about a week's travel they head to the library and get very excited. There are lots of books, but also these Miyuzaki-esque skittering baskets.

But luckily the heroes are thorough and, finding an orb in the observatory, Decanus aces his INT check such that he gains command of the spider-baskets, erases the order to kill anyone who tries to leave with books, and commands the baskets to bring to the players lots and lots of books. (The library table from Vornheim was helpful beyond mention)
So they get the magic books for the Outcasts, and also a whole pile of tomes for the Hobbits (in various languages), and Tet finds a book about Glatimor, the first enchanted weapon, and becomes obsessed.
(His search yields knowledge that the sword was forged for Herrik, the hero of this war against an undead horde who rallied together the human peoples and would afterward become the first king of the Triumvirate. Herrik's sword arm was chopped off in battle, and it is said that his castle was build on the very spot where Glatimor fell.)
Also there are some old old maps of old old cities that no one has heard of.

Back to the Outcasts, cloaks duplicated, Locke's mask enchanted as a favor for more magical tomes, and a troll gets Command: Sleep'ed and killed somewhere in there.

They go back to the elves and Edryn confirms their guess that the next Well is at the bottom of an evil lake. They ask to be teleported back to the Hobbit Hills, and so they are.

They take a bunch of books, found a library financed by loads of treasure, survey the militia's operations, and hang out talking to people and doing their best to improve their favorite place.

Tet goes into town to see if he can convince the town guard to sell back the items taken from the party at the attack on Fort Obora. The items will be auctioned at the end of the season if they have not been already. Tet accidentally ends up on a date with a gay arena fighter.

Skeleton 6 (Untested)

I have yet to play test this, but here is the draft of Skeleton 6 in its entirety:

Stats
Roll 1d6 for each. Health=1d6+FIT rolled each level.

• FIT- a measure of strength and bodily health and durability.
• DEX- reflexes, balance, and coordination
• MND- knowledge as well as problem-solving skills

Classes

• Fighter- can use all weapons and armor, and shields
• Thief- can use light weapons and light armor. Skills include Stealth (wherein a DEX check can be made to pick pockets, and a successful attack does 4x damage), Pick Locks (DEX check), and Traps (MND to detect, DEX to disarm)
• Mage- no armor, and only small weapons for 1d2 damage. Can cast a number of spells equal to lvl+MND, chosen daily.

Combat
AC=Armor+lvl+DEX

Light Armor: +2
Heavy Armor +4

Attacks are checks vs AC. Melee is FIT check, ranged is DEX. Result equal to AC hits.

Light Weapons 1d3
Normal Weapons 1d6
Heavy Weapons 2d6

Checks
STAT+lvl+1d6

Difficulty(Number to beat)=6+lvl

Skeleton 6 (Ideas)

I've embarked upon a mission to create for myself (and whomever may wish to use it) a light ruleset absolutely optimal for impromptu and improvised gameplay.

I call the work-in-progress "Skeleton 6", for reasons apparent in its goals:

• The game must be as simple as possible, for easy memorization and play with minimal baggage in books, paper, etc.
• The game will use only d6s, for their availability and to avoid the necessity for dice bags and further reduce supplies needed.
• The mechanics will simply be a skeleton, adaptable to a variety of settings and additions and open to modification by each DM for his own purposes.
• Ideally, the mechanics should in themselves express the tone and style of the world -in this case mine-

My influences include Microlite20 and Carcosa's "Dice Conventions" and simplified class and magic systems.


Here's what I have so far:

Game Summary: January 5, 2013

Happy New Year!

So last game the party finally met the elves.
Sharing what information they had about the Wells of Vessa, they were allowed an audience with the Lady of the Mithril Crown, the mistress of the elven lands.

Sitting council was the mysterious and long-lived Edryn, encountered earlier in the game at his castle of sand, who was able to vouch for the party.

Conclusion of the meeting:

• Edryn knows the location of the next Well
• Party is not yet strong enough
• Lady of the Mithril Crown knows about some old Gnomish cities (gnomes are extinct) where there are some magic items that could help
• Those cities are full of Gauns (from Vance's The Dying Earth, except I made them extraplanar teleporters who leech your life)
• There will only be one of the magical cloaks, but some outcast elves nearby practice dark magic, which means the reversal of any spell including enchantments, by which means they can learn how to make more. They may comply, but for a price as yet unknown.
• Then Edryn will tell them where the Well is

So they went off to do some of that.

The elves had a wild man captured to lead them to the Gnomish city.

The city of the Gnomish stone-shapers has been largely looted and all that is left is just a big stone labyrinth filled with gauns. Fifty wild man warriors were waiting outside to make the place into their own new fortress since lots of zombies have been all over the area.
The gate was sealed, hence the waiting wild men, but with the help of some grappling hooks, battle ensued. What was over one hundred gauns became zero gauns and some weird loot they horded, and what was fifty feral men unfortunately became five.

The party found a ring that camouflages them with their surroundings
and a cloak that sticks to them with fins and gills when wet.

Gauns collect weird things, so they also have a few hundred spoons they hope to sell back in town.

I Cannot Express How Much I Love Tables

An automation of Zak Smith's Soup to Nuts Random Villain Generator, which is lucky because my printer didn't have enough ink to print the whole lengthy thing.

Rival Adventuring Parties

Random Criminals

What are the Wandering Monsters Doing?