The Valley of Yurd Session 003-004: Firing up the CONFLICT ENGINE

     The session last Wednesday was a casual affair, with 4 players in attendance. We did a little in-town interaction, a bit of dungeoncrawling and then carousing. Boilerplate OSR experience circa 2015. But the web of connections and inter-woven motivations present in the Shucked Oyster could not abide this, and we ended the session with abject anarchy literal minutes away from bursting forth throughout the Aberlin region. This was doubly impactful as we were just days away from Oktoberstein, a Braunstein event scheduled around a Harvest Festival. This post will cover both the Adventuring session from October 2 AND the Braunstein from October 5. 

    We had basically the exact same crew as the previous week with the exception of Taff being missing, and of course last week Alden was decapitated by a Leatherface Berserker Cultist. This week that player was playing the surviving porter Belvedere, who hired his own porter. He took the name Alden for himself and bestowed the title of Belvedere upon the new porter. It is not clear how many times this cycle has occurred, Dread Pirate Roberts style. 

THE SESSION

    The players sniffed around town looking for work, and learned that an anonymous benefactor was offering a reward for anyone who could provide the identity of The Dark Shadow (A Batman-style vigilante that has been causing problems for the local criminal underworld). The players discussed this possibility and came to the conclusion that causing problems for the criminal underworld is actually very cool, and so they elected to "Let him cook" and headed back to the forgotten shrine-dungeon they were exploring the previous week. 

    Pushing deeper into the dungeon, they encountered a room with pews and a grand mural. The mural depicted a scene of a giant purple ape-demon triumphing in combat against a man that bears a SHOCKING resemblance to local eccentric foreign aristocrat Mungo Borlov (Who is certainly NOT a vampire). Perhaps this bald, nocturnal noble has more to him than meets the eye? The likeness deviated slightly, the Borlov in the mural was sillier, and more pathetic looking than the dour man of reality. Clearly this cult does not like him in the slightest!

"It's over Borlov! I have depicted you as a soyjak!"

    They searched a store-room and saw little gleaming eyes peering from a crack in the wall, just big enough for a medium-sized dog to squeeze through. Gard, the fighter with 1 hit-point (Now followed by some new men-at-arms) was not taking any chances (Having only 1 hit-point) and elected to pursue Violence of Action, charging the crack to stab and the eyes with spears. Two of the sets of eyes went dark, and the third fled into the little tunnel. Pulling the corpses out of the crack, the players discovered that Moss Dwarves (an idea I crudely pilfered from Dolmenwood) were not a superstition at all, but in fact very real! Gard vowed to leave a bit of mouldy cheese and sour beer out on his window-sill every night that week, lest he incur their mischievous vengeance! 

    Pressing onwards the players came upon a room with a huge brazier in the center, and obsidian mirrors all over the walls. The door locked itself behind them, and they started poking around. There was a big bucket of dried slugs, and after Jonathan's experience with slug venom the previous week the party deduced that the slugs probably got burned on the brazier to induce hallucinations. Alden 2 said "what the hell" and threw a slug on the coals of the brazier. The smoke filled the room, and the party had a sweat-lodge trip. Everyone had a reasonably stable experience (Like being in a Tool video) but Gard failed his poison save and had a horrible, unspeakable vision which left him rattled for the rest of the session. 

    Poking around further they discovered a hidden door, and based on the dust on the floor this secret room was not known to the cult. Who knows how long this place had been untouched? The walls were a blood-red marble, and in the center of the room a sarcophagus of similar make. Inside, a silver-haired vampire lay, with a beautiful war-horn, shield, and scarlet chainmail. One problem: The chainmail cannot be removed without removing the stake that protrudes from the vampire's chest. The players attempt to remove the stake, take the chainmail, and re-stake him. They then get an idea: A terrible idea. A stupid, terrible, no-good nonsense idea.

    "What if we put one of the slugs in a bowl of oil, and put the bowl in the sarcophagus, and lit the oil just before closing the lid? Then, the slug would burn and the sarcophagus would fill with hallucinatory smoke, as a trap for whoever else might end up poking around here!" 

    They all agreed that this was an excellent idea and had Belvedere 2 retrieve a slug from the Slug-Sack (Having removed all the dried slugs from the bucket and put them into a sack). And the trap was laid. I have written down a chance of success for this scheme, and we'll see if it ever comes up. Probably the first-ever instance of my players trying to set a trap in a dungeon for other, later dungeoncrawlers. Anyhow. 

    Pushing back the way they came through the chapel with the mural, they entered into a well-stocked alchemist's laboratory. Here they fought a giant spider, found a potion, and a door into what would be the last room of the night: Svetlana's Boudoir. 

    Svetlana, one of the women of the Oyster, was maintaining a "home away from home" in the temple of Malchimpus, complete with a decadent poster bed, an armoire of perfumes, and a secondary closet. The players knew it to be hers on account of Cromworth Barleystein, owner of the local tavern, sobbing uncontrollably in her bed. He squealed on everything, how Svetlana and Pleasant Peter (The gravedigger) are in on some horrible cult, how she had lured him down to "Show him the Truth of things", how she manipulated him for his money, etc etc etc. The party led him out and decided to quit while they were ahead, take their treasure and go home. On to the carousing tables!!!

    The carousing results from the previous session had resulted in the Oyster being burned down, and though it was rebuilding, the party elected to carouse at Cromworth's pub instead of the ramshackle construction site that was the Oyster. They were doubly motivated to do this on account of the incredible lifetime discount that Cromworth offered them for "Saving his life". We got a number of great results from this round of partying.

    

    1. Jonathan the Once-Herder broke the strings on Ethel's harp, earning him the title of "Harp-Breaker" (Dream-maker, love-taker)

    2. Francois managed to steal a precious amulet from Garfunkle the Wise (This result was hilarious because Francois' player is also playing Garfunkle at the faction level)

    3. Alden 2 got irritable and drunk, started a barfight that escalated out of control and in the scuffle one of the ladies of the Oyster was killed. Calliope, who had always had her face veiled, lay dead in the street, and it was revealed that she had all this time been a Medusa. More on this as we set the stage for the Braunstein.

GAME-STATE at the START of OKTOBERSTEIN

    The wednesday session ended in-game on friday night, meaning the revelation of Calliope as a monster would hit the town the very day that the Braunstein starts. Mungo Borlov was visibly grief-stricken, it was known in town that he fiercely loved Calliope. Gaston the Righteous, upon learning that Calliope was a monster, acted according to his conditional triggers from the Shucked Oyster module:

    The Oyster may already have burned down, but for the horrible crime of harbouring this wretched being of Chaos, Gaston slew every single woman of the Oyster in a fit of rage and left to brood over this betrayal in the forest, Lancelot-style. Naturally, this prevented him from appearing in the tournament for Oktoberstein, the conceit and excuse for our Braunstein event. So what is going on here?

    We had 5 Patron characters present at this festival, a feast dedicated to Frobar, a local deity of the earth and of farmers. 

    1. King Elgar of Aberlin, a Yurdish king and the host of the festival. He has been concerned mostly of late with establishing a proper road and trade route between his city and the Yurjan city of Galurgan on the north side of the river. Many speculate this move is motivated by the influence of his wife Kenilda, who herself hails from Galurgan and is ill-liked by the people for her foreign origins and customs. 

    2. Prince Edric of Ulport, the only legitimate son of King Elgar who tends to a castle and a few villages in the south end of his father's domain. He is very well-liked, known for his virtue and courage, as well as his great skill as a tactician and warrior. He seemed very concerned with impressing Princess Alma of Getwinn, dedicating much of his efforts in the Tournament to her and generally trying to maintain her attention. 

    2.5 Wuldric the Bastard, one of King Elgar's illegitimate sons, who runs the largest merchant guild in the region. His player was unable to attend, but he did leave me some conditional orders to execute in his absence, and is also very concerned with improving trade relations with the Yurjan kingdoms north of the river. 

    3. King Arn of Getwinn, a Yurdish king whose domain lies southwest of Aberlin. He has come to the festival as an opportunity for diplomatic hob-knobbing, but has many concerns. The trade relations with Galurgan seem lopsided, as the Yurdish southern kingdoms are much more prosperous than the north. Furthermore, in recent memory King Arn fought a defensive war against invading Yurjans, a war which saw Wuldric the Bastard serve as an officer and distinguish himself for his great tactical cunning. As such, King Arn is greatly wary of these northerners and their strange gods. Additionally, there is the matter of his daughter, Princess Alma, who seems to be on the receiving end of attempted courtship by both Prince Edric and...

    4. King Odilon of Certh, a Yurjan king whose city lies west of Galurgan. His attendance at this festival has raised many eyebrows, as his father was responsible for the invasion of Getwinn some years ago. That old king has died, and King Odilon seems to be a more subtle ruler. What he hopes to gain in relation to the southern kingdoms is unknown, but he has made moves towards courtship with Princess Alma, to the great chagrin of Prince Edric.

    5. Garfunkle the Wise, a Yurdish scholar whose tower outside Aberlin stands as a pillar of learning and secrets. He is known to pay great sums to adventurers who bring him artefacts and knowledge of occult or esoteric significance. He admittedly did very little overtly in this Braunstein, but he never wasted a single opportunity to schmooze and grovel and generally play yes-man to King Elgar. 

    The night before the festival began, King Odilon financed a grand party on the shores of the river, with a huge bonfire and endlessly flowing wine and frivolity. During the party, a wealthy merchant was found robbed and murdered, with the calling card of the Dark Shadow left on the corpse. Has the masked vigilante taken up a taste for slaying the rich? Is he giving it to the poor, or is something else going on here? All who were present at the party (Everyone except Garfunkle, who was canonically at Cromworth's tavern having his jewellery stolen by Francois) had to make a roll to determine if they were hungover, and asked on an honour system to factor this handicap in to their turn 1 orders. I don't recall if anyone failed this roll or not, but it was a nice bit of intrigue by King Odilon's player to try and handicap the opposition. 

THE EVENTS OF OKTOBERSTEIN

    This was intended to be an event where we covered about 5 days of "Stuff Happening", with each day turn taking about 1 hour. In the end, we spent the entire day on "Stuff Happening" on the Saturday, but this was fine because it still had the intended outcome: Generate motives for conflict at the Patron-level and kickstart the new campaign's static initial gamestate into motion. 

All this work laying out the fairgrounds to scale, and I didn't even need it

    After a dreary religious ceremony that kicked off the festival, we got right into the tournament. The first day's event was to be jousting. I allowed player characters from the "Adventurer Level" to join provided they were at least level 2 and paid a fee of 20 gold per event. We then broke into the jousting rules. It took us a few tries and restarts, as we first missed the detail of available defensive positions based on target, and then missed the detail that an unhorsing ended to match, regardless of what round you were on. But we eventually got it right and the players took great glee in working out the best "Meta" for the jousting minigame. As soon as one strategy was identified as obviously superior, it would naturally be planned against and a new meta would appear, very satisfying. 

    Prince Edric devoted his rides to Princess Alma and presented her with a enormous flower, to determine her response we consulted the WOMEN TABLE from the Judges Guild Ready Ref Sheets. She was aloof, though sympathetic to him. She had a marginally more positive impression of King Odilon of Certh, who pulled her aside to the merchant pavillion when Edric went in for his last ride in the semi-finals. This attempt to draw attention away from the prince ended up being likely in his favour as Prince Edric was summarily humiliated in the semi-finals and defeated. This back-and-forth competition between the two was about to be cut short, however. 

    We had some fun with the NPC knights generated to fill out the tournament. A crowd favourite was Sir Shanahan the Disabled, who was missing his left leg. Whoever was controlling Sir Shanahan was not allowed to choose "Lean Right" as his defensive position, and this little flair made for a less stagnant game whenever he rode. He got pretty far, too, but in the end the winner of the tournament and the recipient of a new noble title, Lord of Castle Gordon, went to Ser Gatson the Swift (Not to be confuseed with Gaston the Righteous, who never showed up). This was a huge scandal, as the king had promised to bestow the land and title to whoever won the tournament, but to give control of the border-checkpoint between Aberlin and Getwinn to a YURJAN? A foreign knight from the heathen north? People had very little time to react to this upset, because at this moment, a rider barreled into the fairgrounds, screaming "BANDITS BANDITS ARE ATTACKING"

    During the tournament, I was periodically pulling King Elgar's player aside to handle some combats off-screen, using the dice-pool mass combat system from Chainmail. You see, his patrols that were keeping an eye on the countryside were being attacked by bandits. Though the patrols of 5 horsemen each were massively outnumbered by 25-50 bandits each, the ratios of Medium Horse to Heavy Footmen meant that the patrols dealt heavy casualties to the bandits, and in one skirmish a horseman escaped, riding to warn the people at the fairgrounds. 

    King Elgar declared a state of emergency, the peasants were ordered to evacuate to the city, escorted by the infantry guards present at the festival. The knights who had been competing in the tournament were conscripted and rode out with Prince Edric to find and dispatch the bandits. Unbeknownst to them, they were headed in the wrong direction. The bulk of the bandit force was not west, where the rider had come from, but east, between the fairgrounds and the city. The evacuating peasants with their guards were ambushed from both sides by bandits emerging from the cornfields to slay and plunder!

    Despite having the tactical advantage in terms of initial positioning, the dice were not on my side and my bandits were slain after killing only 36 of the 900 fleeing peasantry. This battle was the straw that broke the camel's back. Either we are doing something egregiously incorrect, or we just do not like Chainmail mass combat that much. Bill and I are going to dig into this subject with some test battles that are not campaign-pertinent and get to the bottom of Rank-and-Flank medieval combat that works for our table. Following the battle I made some morale checks and it became clear the remaining bandits lurking in the area were NOT interested in tangling with 20 Heavy Cavalrymen. The session was brought to a close and I took "Next week or so" orders orally from each of the faction players. 

    Before everyone left, I revealed a twist from the Shucked Oyster that got the players scratching their heads. Gaston the Righteous slew 20 prostitutes on Saturday, but on Sunday morning 10 of them were back alive, working on rebuilding the Oyster as though nothing had happened. None of the townsfolk remember Gaston killing these women (They remember him killing the ones who did not come back), and overall it's as if nothing had ever happened to them. I explain that the Patron characters are in on this amnesia, they have no memory or awareness of this temporal slip, but the adventurers definitely notice that something strange is going on. The end of the day left us with all sorts of questions as the central conflicts of the campaign begin to take shape:

    

    1. What is the cause of this time-slip, and why has nobody noticed?

    2. What are the objectives of the cult of Malchimpus, and just how many people are involved?

    3. What is the motive for King Elgar to be trying to push forward good relations with the Yurjans? Is it just his wife pulling the strings or is something bigger going on?

    4. Why did the Dark Shadow kill that merchant? Unarmed targets have not been his style until now

    5. Where did those bandits come from? There hasn't been a raid this ambitious in years, and they were well-equipped. 

    6. What exactly does Garfunkle the Wise want? Why is he always hanging around important people? 

    All these questions and MORE will be surely be (Somewhat) answered in sessions to come!

The Valley of Yurd Session 002: DECAPITATION

 The adventures of my medieval-fantastic Ottawa Valley continued this past Wednesday as our squad of adventurers awoke from a night of raucous carousing at the Shucked Oyster and sought to replenish their reserves of gold. We had 5 players compared to last week's 3, introducing 3 new characters, making the party this week:

1. Francois Jean-Marc Marseilles, with his 4 surviving men-at-arms

2. Jonathan the Once-Herder, looking for a good time

3. Alden, a sell-sword who styles himself as a disgraced knight, along with his squire (porter) Belvedere

4. Taff, a fighter. 

5. Gard, a fighter with only 1 hit-point. 

THE ADVENTURE

    The players did a little hob-nobbing around town to resupply and in doing so had a few town encounters. They saw Gaston the Righteous, the greatest paragon of goodness and strength in the land, arguing loudly with his sword. They overheard one of the women from the Oyster enthusiastically prattling about a "Adventurer School" being set up on the outskirts of town. Finally, they are approached by Janice, who lures them into an alleyway in an attempt to peddle her "Mystically Enlightening" vials of Mystiflux Slug venom. Francois becomes convinced she is a witch, but Jonathan takes her up on the offer and hallucinates prodigiously. During his trip he encounters the spectral likeness of Mondopolis Gangler, the towns reclusive and eccentric tailor. He asks if there is any bandit hideouts nearby, but a middling reaction roll leads to Gangler instead relaying the location of a smugglers cache in a corn field outside town. The players decide to investigate!

    The cache has a burried box containing some sort of dark indigo liquor, a bag of coins, and a note that instructs the reader to "Avoid moving the product until after the festival, he has eyes everywhere and I think he suspects us", signed "Jasper". The crew recognize the name as belonging to Jasper Cunningham, a local moneylender and shifty individual. They elect to take the money (As it is harder to trace) and relocate the liquor to a different spot so that after the festival they can try to move it themselves. Happy to have gotten some easy loot straight out the gate, they conspired to try and find some kind of dungeon or lair to expand their profits further. 

    The townsfolk speak in hushed tones about a shrine to Andal, the god of death, in the local cemetery. I'll spare my dear readers a prodigious lore-dump about the pantheon of the setting, but in short-hand Andal is the third of three principal gods known by the Yurdish, and represents death, chaos, evil, darkness, etc etc etc. He is never directly worshipped or prayed to, and while there is always a statue of him looming over any given cemetery, it is taboo to ever look directly at it. This shrine is the only known "place of worship" dedicated to Andal anywhere in the Yurdish kingdoms, and has not seen regular use in 180 years, since the great-grandfather of the current king of Aberlin constructed it in a fit of delirious fury. Either way, it seems that the place has been mostly sealed for a long time. 

    When the party arrived to check it out, they noticed that Pleasant Peter, the gravedigger and groundskeeper of the cemetery, was uncharacteristically absent. Approaching the shrine it towered over the headstones of the graves, a featureless stone edifice standing some 30 feet tall, with a 20x20 footprint in the dead center of the cemetery. The only adornment of the shrine was the smiling face of Andal carved above the brass double-doors leading in (Which the players piously avoided looking at). Pressing in, they found a corridor that slopes down into the earth, with damp flagstones covered in over a century of dust and grime. They ventured forth, wary of what they might find in this seemingly forgotten fane of darkness. 

    The sloped passage opened into a much drier chamber, with footprints in the dust indicating recent traffic. The flagstones of this room were made of chopped-square tombstones, the players felt deeply uneasy. Doubly so because laid out on the floor was a toppled statue of Andal, his head cracked off and his nose chipped off. On a pedestal where he stood before was a horrible statue of a wretched Ape-Demon. The players groaned "Of course, the Spongs are back. 210 feral spong women occupy this dungeon". They had three potential doors they could go through, and true to form they took the door to their left. 

    This next room had a copper-lined cistern in the center, and Alden decided to lower a stone on a rope down into the water to feel around for what might be down there. He felt the clank and jingle of small metal pieces, and it was determined that there was loot down about 15 feet into the cistern. He requested that his porter go for a swim, and it was here that we needed to determine his loyalty. Dragons Beyond uses the "Ego" ability score to determine the loyalty and courage of hirelings, and we rolled. 6, SIX, was the score determined, and thus is was established that Belvedere was a bit of a coward. He staunchly refused to swim, and so Jonathan stepped up to see what he could do. Fastened at the waist, he descended into the waters, only to find himself stuck in the carcass of a slime! We rolled to see if he was hands-first or feet-first, as this had not been specified, and he got lucky, with his free hand he tugged the rope and the party pulled him back up. 

    Being of much sturdier stuff (Strength 18!), Francois went down to retrieve the goods. He had an easier time, and returned with some coinage and some very nice-looking weapons and armour. A shield and mace, and a coat of chainmail, all shining as though just polished yesterday. Given the "low-fantasy" milieu we are operating in, I kept it extremely vague as to whether it was "Magical" or if the bonuses to hit and protection were instead the product of advanced alloys or craftsmanship. However, as we shall see later, the party decided that it was cursed anyways. Alden put on the complete set, and I hinted at a minor enchantment "You feel at peace, nothing in this dungeon can frighten you". At this moment a random encounter came up. Eight Berserkers were barreling into the room, wielding two-handed swords and garbed in patchwork leather armour. I described them as having skinned faces sewn over their own faces, and this generated the desired response of disgust and virulent desire to smite. 

Berserkers deserve a spooky, autumnal theme

    How we've been handling written/declared orders is that I jot down what the bad guys are going to be doing on an index card as the players are deciding what they are going to do, so that my declared actions aren't revealed to them while they are in the tactics phase but also keeps me from having an idea of what the players are going to do when I decide my actions. Actions were declared and the Berserkers won the initiative. They elected to move first, 3 charging Taff, 2 charging Jonathan, and 3 just charging in the general direction of the players, hoping to make contact. The charge movement was enough for them to close the distance, and melees broke out. Much like Dab's duel with the Bandit Leader last week, weapon class became a really important variable, as the Berserkers got first strike in every melee they entered. We resolved the attack made on Alden first, clad as he was in his shiny armour and shield. Despite the bonuses to protection present from the new gear, the berserker landed a blow and dealt the maximum of 6 damage, Alden was beheaded without ceremony. His porter-squire, Belvedere, loosed a crossbow bolt in a fit of uncharacteristic courage, "MY LORD!!!!!" and felled the berserker. 

    Everyone else fared much better, I landed very few hits in comparison to the players, and when I did hit I rolled a 1 on damage 3 consecutive times. The berserkers were quickly slain, and looting commenced. There was some paltry coinage, and nobody wanted the leather faces or rusty zweihanders. The party decided to quit while they were ahead and head back to town. Alden's player took over Belvedere as his new PC, and we gave him a 1-6 chance that he could raise his Ego stat after this blistering act of courage which ascended him to the ranks of "Levelled PC". A success! What was once 6 is now 12. As they approached town, Gaston the Righteous was waiting for them. 

    Gaston (A Shucked Oyster NPC) has a mechanic wherein if he sees a PC with 18 Strength, he immediately challenges this PC to a contest of might. He had not had the chance to challenge Francois in a match previously, as he was preoccupied arguing with his sword. But he was ready now, and in a booming voice that exists somewhere between Brian Blessed and Kermit the Frog demanded this contest occur immediately. Francois, equipped with the shiny chainmail and shield, decided to accept the challenge. Throughout the duel, the poor guy could not roll a single hit, the dice felt loaded against him, a truly wretched string of bad luck. Gaston thrashed him thoroughly. After the match, Francois lamented that between this and the decapitation of Alden, the armour was almost certainly cursed. Gaston was appalled, and demanded a rematch during the tournament that is happening next week "When you are feeling more like yourself". Francois has earned the respect and admiration of Gaston, who may prove to be a powerful ally going forward. 

    We ended the night here but people did message me afterwards indicating if they wished to carouse for downtime. Various minor things happened but there were two that matter most. First is that Taff had a Mystiflux Slug Venom trip where he asked Mondopolis Gangler "Where are Mystiflux Slugs found?" and learned of their location in a nearby marsh. Second is that the OYSTER BURNED DOWN!!!!! The true culprit is unknown at the moment but as it stands everyone in town is blaming Mungo Borlov, a suspicious-looking aristocrat from the horrible wild-lands north-east of the river. 

The Valley of Yurd Session 001: The Road Crew Job

    We're back, after a lengthy hiatus from writing as I concluded my undergraduate studies I have returned to begin documenting my games in the written word once more. The Dschungelberg Campaign came to a close, and now it is time to explore new avenues. We will be dialing back from the encroachments of the Supplements that arrived at us just defaulting to AD&D and returning to OD&D in the form of Dragons Beyond, though this time we are not permitting the arrival of the d20 and the Alternate Combat System. We will be using Chainmail as rigorously as possible (Though many say this is not possible!) and exploring the "Lowest Fantasy" setting ever put to our table. Effectively just medieval, with magic and fantastic elements intended to be as infrequent, uncommon, and deeply evil as one might see in the Howard Conan stories or Arthurian myth. The players will all be playing fighters for the foreseeable future, though magic will be accessible to some of them on account of the ELDRITCH and VILE nature of their assigned factions. While the factions (and campaign map) were primarily generated using the AD&D DMG, I have "massaged" the results to integrate well with the Shucked Oyster by Black Lodge Games as well as a Lamentations of the Flame Princess module that I will be revealing at a later date (We love surprises!).   

    I've written this introductory paragraph in advance, so I will now step away from my computer and get ready to run the session. Things should be interesting, I have sent out the last relevant faction sheet and I look forward to seeing how things will all shake out. 

THE RESULTS ARE IN

    This was super cool. I had three players, all of whom have already received their faction/patron-level dossier for this campaign. We did a brief rundown of the key details about the part of the map their characters would be calling "Home Base"

        1. The city-state of Aberlin was their home, with 2000 urban residents and some 3-4000 rural peasants in the surrounding area

        2. The king, Elgar, is seeking to establish permanent trade with the city of Galurgan on the uncivilized side of the river. This has been slow going, as the road crews have to deal with constant raids by local clan chiefs and bandits who do not want their territory to be civilized.

    This was all the detail that they really needed, and after rolling up characters, purchasing equipment, and hiring men-at-arms, "The Herdsman" were ready to take on some muscle work for the crown. There was talk that a group of bandits had taken to raiding the road crews building a road from the north bank of the river to the city of Galurgan, and the merchant's guild was offering a 200gp reward to anyone who could deal with this for them. They rowed across the river in search of trouble!

First session in "Fantasy Ontario" and the adventure is about a stalled-out road crew. Some jokes write themselves. 

THE CREW

Jonathan the Once-Herder: A hapless farm-boy roped into seeking adventure by his friend Jean-Marc. He rolled three 1's on his starting gold (for 30 total) and could barely afford weapons, let alone armour. His player is playing King Elgar of Aberlin (Riddled with Senility) at the Patron Level.

Dab the Charmer: An ambitious and handsome fellow, character details are sparse for now but he did hire 10 Light Foot to accompany him on the mission. His player is playing Prince Edric of Aberlin (Valliant knight of virtue and the only legitimate son of King Elgar) at the Patron Level. 

Francois Jean-Marc Marseilles: A Yurjan man who spent his adolescence working the farms and militias of the Yurdish kingdoms. He hired 5 Light Foot to come along with him, and this player is playing Garfunkle the Wise (A Shucked Oyster character, enthusiastic occultist and probably the smartest man in town) at the Patron Level.

THE JOB

    The Herdsman arrived on the north bank of the river Yurd at around noon, and after asking for some details from the road crews, learned that the bandit attacks had been occurring generally at the "End of the Line", the furthest developed piece of road. The players decided that rather than tromp about the woods looking for bandits, they would set up an ambush and watches at the end of the road, near the road workers, and wait to be attacked. Two more days went by with no sign of the villains, and Dab had run out of rations to feed his men-at-arms (There was no money left after equipment to get a full week of rations for his 10 men). A fortunate reaction roll with the road workers saw the crew on the receiving end of some shared stew and beer, and on the third day north of the river some bandits appeared. Five men in chainmail carrying axes stood at the end of the road. 

    "If you do not surrender now, Pierre here will run and call for reinforcements!" Cried one of the bandits. In a straight fight this would have been a risky situation, they were much better equipped than the spears and lack of shields among the men-at-arms of the herdsman, and the three PCs, while more dangerous, had as few as 2 hitpoints before death loomed over them. Fortunately for the PCs, they had the advantageous position and won initiative, allowing them to close the distance and hit the bandits from both sides in a brutal flanking manouevre. This was the first combat of the evening and despite the players still being very shaky on the rules of Chainmail it went very quickly, with only one man-at-arms lost on the side of the players. 

    They spent some time trying to track back to where these bandits had come from, and after a few hours they found themselves on the receiving end of an ambush, just 30 yards from where the bandits make camp. 5 more heavy footmen along with a leader in plate with a mean-looking morningstar appeared in front of the party, and 5 archers appeared in behind, ready to pepper the unprotected rears of Francois' men. The bandit leader demanded their surrender, but this was not to be, and combat once more broke out. 

    We got a tie on initiative, so everything happened simultaneously. Dab took his men in a charge directly against the heavy foot and the bandit leader. Francois directed his men to veer 45 degrees into the trees, out of the firing zone of the archers, and about-faced himself, hoping his plate armour would save him from the archers. Jonathan also about-faced to stand alongside Francois. The archers fired, but didn't land any hits. Then the melee with Dab and the bandit leader (And their attendant men) was resolved. It was messy, Dab had the advantage of first strike against the bandit leader, as his spear was more than 2 weapon classes higher than the bandit leader's axe. Despite this, he missed (His spear was not well-suited against plate). The bandit leader failed to land a blow, and in the second round of combat also failed to take advantage of first strike now that the distance had been closed. In the second round of combat, Dab slew the bandit leader with a single spear-thrust. As this duel was playing out, their soldiers were exchanging blows. All said and done, Dab lost all but 4 of his 9 remaining soldiers, but the morale of the heavy foot broke with the death of the leader and Dab's men were able to take pursuit, killing all but one of the remaining bandits (Who promptly surrendered and was taken prisoner). 

    Over on the other side of the combat, Francois, Jonathan and Francois' men-at-arms made short work of the archers, who were too close to risk changing face and running, so they drew daggers and closed in to melee. Francois lost a soldier to these long knives, but none of the archers lived. The players interrogated the prisoner to get the rest of the way to the camp, which they found had no more enemies in it, and commenced to looting from the stores of loot taken by the bandits. A total of 3000gp worth of jewelery, baubles, gems and coinage was taken. This would have been enough to level all three of the fighters (Dragons Beyond, the OD&D clone I am using, has fighters hitting level 1 at 1000 xp) HOWEVER both Jonathan and Dab have negative modifiers to their XP gain. Poor Jonathan has 6 strength, resulting in a -25% modifier to all incoming experience. 

    Carousing at the Shucked Oyster was the only means of getting that last bit of XP needed to push Jonathan and Dab over to level 2. The party made their rolls, and we got our first results on the carousing table. Both Dab and Francois rolled "Said something nice about Ulric the Despoiler, killing the vibe" and had to roll a random patron of the oyster they had made an enemy of, both getting Ulric the Despoiler. 

    "The two of you go on and on about how pleasant Ulric the Despoiler is, and the people get so irritated with you that they leave, locate Ulric, and start harassing him, throwing stones at him, etc. The poor man begins to resent you for drawing this unwanted attention to him"

OVERVIEW

    This was great. The fatigue and morale rules of Chainmail are taking some getting used to. One player remarked that it was proving tricky to get his head around because it is simultaneously different from his expectations as a D&D player and different from his expectations as a wargamer who learned on modern rulesets like Black Powder, Bolt Action and Warhammer. The structure and mindset of 70s American wargamers was truly a unique and precious thing, may it never pass from the earth. Looking forward with great eagerness to the next session (October 2nd) when hopefully more of the regular group will be in attendance. The first round of patron orders for this campaign are due on September 28th, one week before the first Braunstein (October 5th). I spent a good deal of (enjoyable) time laying the groundwork for this game, and I look forward to seeing how this first month of player activity jostles, disrupts and modulates this initial static "snapshot" of the gameworld. 

OD&D Session 015: Feral Ape-Women Near YOU

     After creating a power vacuum by assassinating the colonial governor, pinning it on the church, removing the Snake-Cult that was keeping other magic-using variables out of the city, and generally stirring the pot in remarkable and terrible ways, the party has created a game-state that demanded a Battle Braunstein. We convened at 10am today to resolve all the madness that has been percolating. We resolved 5 turns of action, ending on Wednesday, July 17. With a 2.5 hour lunch break between 11:30 and 2pm to grill and just hang out for a bit we still finished at around 5:30. Overall, about 5 hours of active game time, but oh man did a lot of things happen. We had 6 factions turn up to take action:

The Swamp People, a Neutral Faction run by druids that has been conducting friendly relations with their fellow humans in Dschungelberg. Their primary concern is securing their border against the Orcs and the Spongs

The Orcs, who were chased out of the city by the colonial expedition back in May, who want nothing less than to retake their city from the conniving humans.

The Church, shattered by scandal and the burning of their cathedral, plagued with accusations of torturing Lord Barotha to death, trying to restore Law and Goodness to this tumultuous time and place. 

The Mercenaries, who were primarily loyal to Barotha's coffers but in his absence have started considering direct governance. In the last few weeks they have begun a city watch/police effort for the town and are holding the church at arm's length. 

Siegfried von Vemmelmordt, a devious wizard who came to the new world with naught but his two loyal apprentices and in just a few months amassed an army consisting of a charmed goblin clan and a few hundred animated skeletons. Truly on the Gigatrillionaire Rags-To-Riches sigma grindset. What it is exactly that he wants is not clear to be honest. His ways are inscrutable, his motives a rotating cypher of numbers and letters and other alphanumerics that changes hourly forever. 

The Spongs (Short for "Spawn of Kong") are ape-men headed by an Orangutan Wizard named Augustus Proximus, the Top Banana and High Brunkle. They were built using an approximation of the Troglodyte entry from the Monster Manual, they are run by a friend who DMs a different campaign using pause-time for us (AND I HOPE HE WILL RUN AGAIN SOON I NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO IVAR), and they are frankly extremely silly. Troglodyte females, unlike most other humanoids, have 1+1 HD and are assumed to be reasonably combat-capable, and this increases the size of his fighting forces noticeably. The Spongs will almost certainly come up later, but suffice to say their goal today was anarchy and suffering and personal profit. 

"210 Feral Spong Women Have Joined the Battle"

Orders were written for a dawn-to-dawn 24 hour cycle, so the log here shows the orders written on Saturday and resolved/reacted to on Sunday, and so forth. 

TURN 1: Sunday, July 14

Prior to the Braunstein kicking off, Siegfried had included in his orders that Friday Night he would sneak into town and use "Transmute Rock-Mud" to knock a mortar off the keep walls, and generally cause large-scale damage to the keep. He produced a gaping hole in the courtyard wall, stripped the walls off the tower, trashed a mortar and injured a half-dozen soldiers, before disappearing into the night. Not a great thing for the clerics and mercenaries to wake up to, but that's life. 

First turn was mostly troop movements and negotiations. Frankly, very little happened. The Orcs started moving all their troops to the war-camp nearest to town. The Spongs maneuvered for future action. The druids Fire Trap Spells on Siegfried's war canoes using trained birds. The Clerics were placing Glyphs of Warding all over weak points in the walls. Things were quiet. Too quiet.

TURN 2: Monday, July 15

Captain Osman Rausch of the mercenary company was found dead, completely drained of blood from two puncture wounds on his neck. The army of Siegfried began marching south to prepare to take potential action against the city. The Swamp People moved their forces in a similar direction. The Orcs used a tactic straight out of the bible and lit fires and made lots of noise in the jungle to make the humans think they were surrounded by a much larger force, as a precedent to opening negotiations with the clerics and the mercenaries. The Spongs sent one army up the river, telling Siegfried they intended to back him and the orcs up against the humans and telling the humans via bird messenger than they intended to help the town defend against the orcs. They sent a second army, with all the leaders and the Top Banana himself to overrun the Library of Shuga-Koth, where Ramsugra the Vampire and Siegfried had been basing their operations out of. With the vampire out assassinating the Mercenary captain and Siegfrieds entire army marching south, it was a cakewalk, the Ape-Wizard headed straight for the deeper levels full of ancient texts and the rest of the spongs set about barricading and securing the library against attackers. 

TURN 3: Tuesday, July 16

The Orcs negotiated a deal with the humans. They offered humans safe passage north to the plains where a new settlement could be founded, free of bloodshed if the humans simply handed over the city. This caused a rift in the mercenary company, with two sub-factions emerging. Lieutenant Marius, by all rights the successor to the void left by Osman's death, was a staunch loyalist to the Empire and, with 50 of his men and 300 of the civilians, demanded that the town must not be surrendered. Captain Thursby, a pragmatic, more experienced officer who recently arrived from the old country to reinforce the troops, saw things differently. Not only was this an opportunity to save the lives of the some 2500-3000 people living in Dschungelberg, it was an opportunity to get out from under the pernicious thumb of taxation that the Empire represented. A fresh, independent start, with him and his men in charge. After the Gideon-esque display of might from the orcs the previous night, the people were willing to leave with him. 

The Clerics saw the hopelessness of the situation and prayed that the Spongs were still coming south to their aid, and set out to join up with the Swamp People in an attempt to flank the enemy. This is where things came to a head. Siegfried, the Spongs, the Swamp People and the Clerics all had an army in the same hex, and it simply made sense to have them duke it out. We laid out the table for a 4-way Chainmail battle, where Siegfried's army was being approached from the west and the east by clerics and swamp-people respectively, and from the north by Spongs. Nobody at that fight knew who the Spongs were there to side with, and everyone hoped it was them. 

The battle ended up being very short, the clerics turn undead wasn't as game-changing as they had hoped, as line of sight in the jungle and the positioning of the skeletons minimized effectiveness. However, 150 archers shooting a volley against 60 Heavy Foot (we used 1:10 scaling) was a bloodbath. The goblin archers and wolf-riders made mince-meat of the clerics, fewer than 50 clerics and paladins survived the battle. The Swamp-people had deployed too far to close to melee distance in reasonable time, but this ended up not mattering, because they had brought all their high-priests. 

Earlier in the game, the Swamp player asked for regular weather reports, as thunderstorms allow the casting of "Call Lightning". I pulled the 7-day forecast for Yucatan, Mexico (1:1 weather achieved!) as this region feels close to the sort of environment that the campaign is taking place in, Gulf of Mexico jungle, and would you look at that:

Whole lotta thunder this week

Call Lightning is a devastating spell. 4 different casts at 6th level and all of Siegfried's soldiers, skeletons and goblins alike, were obliterated. The Spongs didn't raise a finger the whole fight, and afterwards turned around and went home to their newly-claimed Library-Fortress. Siegfrieds apprentices were fried, but Siegfried himself was nowhere to be seen. It is not known where he is, whether he is alive or dead, or what his next moves might be. 

TURN 4: Wednesday, July 17

This was very much an "Aftermath" turn. The loyalists under Lieutenant Marius woke up to the keep surrounded by a very real and not faked army of nearly 1000 orcs, not primed for battle but rather for prolonged siege. The orcs allowed women and children to leave safely and join up with the other humans fleeing north, but the 150 militia and 50 mercenary soldiers were not permitted to leave. The surviving clerics also left to join the caravan north, and the swamp people returned to their home. No reinforcements are coming, and it looks like for the next little while the keep is going to be under Siege. Enterprising gentleman and up-and-coming Dark Lord Blony Tair cut a deal with the orcs, saying that he would personally oversee the docks and manage shipping and trade relations with the old world on their behalf. Some sort of... Union for... Labour? Whatever. 

The mercenaries under Captain Thursby massively outnumber the surviving clerics, the balance of church and state power in this new settlement is decidedly less even than it was when the colonists first arrived in April. There's a decidedly "Frontier" feeling now as the people will have to build a home from scratch in a hostile scrubland instead of simply renovating an abandoned city. 

Just as the game was getting stale for me, this Braunstein completely shakes things up. Siegfried has lost his army, who knows what he'll do next, if he can do anything at all! Now without the mountains threatening time-jail to adventurers wanting to go into the wilderness, a whole new biome of plains and badlands and nomads and horses has opened up for fresh adventures and new discoveries. The Orcs seem interested in running a proper town, which could mean begrudging trade now that the humans are led by a less religious, more pragmatic gentleman. The Spongs are out of the jungle and much closer to everyone else, what will they do? How will new boats from the old world respond to this? The stasis of the gameworld has been completely shaken up and re-organised, and all it cost me was spending a beautiful sunny afternoon hanging out outside with my friends (What a bargain!)

Faction orders have been moved to a bi-weekly instead of weekly schedule to preserve my sanity. We've got some new factions cooking and previously mid-card/sideline factions like the nomads now have the "Big Happenings" much closer to home. Very excited to see how this all plays out in the coming weeks, just when things start to get steady the players can overturn everything for fun and profit. I don't think I can ever go back to conventional adventure design, this is a dynamic structure unlike anything else I've run in my career as a gamemaster. #ThankYouJeffro

OD&D Session 013-014: Playing Catchup

    Ran the Battle Braunstein today but I've been out of the loop on blogging my receipts so I wanted to do a little catchup, do a broad-brush account of what has happened since my last session report so that the next post (an after-action report of the Braunstein) has the necessary context. Since I last updated you all, the following things happened over the course of 2.5 sessions:

1. The party had a random encounter with a Very Young Green Dragon, and killed it. Having been flown over in a previous session by a larger Green Dragon, they deduced this was a progeny of the larger dragon and made a mental note to go looking for Lair Treasure at a later date. 

2. The Church arrested Lord Barotha, the Elf who was governing the colony, on suspicions of consorting with the Evil Wizard Siegfried, and detained him in the church. This made it incredibly easy (Compared to the Keep) for Han the Thief to don a ring of invisibility and slip in, smothering Barotha with a pillow while he languished in an interrogation room. The mercenaries, who answer to Barotha's coffers, showed up to demand his release, and it seemed to be the case that he died under "advanced interrogation". All of this occured while Figel Narage, a Neutral Cleric, held a political rally against the governance of the Old World Empire, "Why should we send our goods and bounty back to those elvish fops across the ocean?"

3. The Dark Lord Blony Tair joined the Snake-Cult, which was being headed by a mummy whose grave was disturbed by Han the Thief in a previous session. Blony decided to see about recovering the stolen Death Mask of the mummy, in hopes of rising the ranks of the cult. He brought along Olaf the unsuspecting fighter to seek it, hearing it had been taken North. They came to Pabal the Wizard, who impressed upon them that if the mummy should get his mask back, plagues, earthquakes, famine and fissures in the earth would proliferate as the mummy had a centuries-long feud with Ramsugra the Vampire. Blony had a change of heart and decided to instead seek to eliminate the Snake-Cult

4. Using intel from their undercover inside man, the Dark Lord Blony Tair, the party staged a raid on a New-Moon sacrificial ceremony being held beneath the city. Using stone-to-mud and liberal distribution of flaming oil, it was a massacre, over 70 snake-cultists butchered and the Mummy killed and defeated. His body disappeared shortly thereafter, nobody is sure where it went, but the cult lost all its momentum after this vicious strike. 

5. The party set out to find the dragon lair. They came across a camp of Berserkers who warned them to turn around and go home, but pressed on and found the cave nonetheless. They staked it out until the dragon left to go hunting, which is when they heard it cackle and jeer as it chased some deer. A talking dragon had them deeply afraid of potential spellcasting, so they decided to try and slip into the lair and steal some treasure and maybe run away back home after. However, I like it when the players roll for monster treasure. And Dobias (who came in clutch against a Medusa early in the campaign) rolled for a magic item. Against all odds: A wand of Polymorph, 2 charges. The plan changed rapidly. Lay low, wait for the dragon to return, and turn it into a kitten. 

6. In addition, the dragon's hoard had a Cursed Sword of Berserker. Seamus the Ambitious Fighter picked it up, extremely eager to wield what appeared to be a +2 magic sword. However, on their way home, random encounters brought up Berserkers yet again! Clearly they had trailed the party and intended to relieve them of their loot, and when Seamus drew his sword to fight the curse kicked in, immediately he started making his 4 attacks per round against the nearest living things, namely his own hirelings. Here I did a little Abduction, we have a group of berserkers living near a dragons cave with a Berserker sword in it? That thing is definitely a sacred relic to them. They start calling out "He has the Red Sword! The Blood King is returning!" and fall back to let his rage deal with the adventurers. Dobias makes an executive decision to polymorph Seamus into a hamster, the party fights off the berserkers, escapes with their loot and their lives. They are in Time Jail until the 24th, and when they return to town nothing is going to be the same...

OD&D Session 12: Yet Another Snake Cult

     This should catch us up before the game this evening. An eventful session, but one of primarily intrigue and scheming as opposed to danger and adventure. Sets the stage for a lot to happen tonight, but we'll see if they can stick the landing. 

This session we had:

    - Bard the Cleric 3

    - Blony Tair the M-U 2

    - Han the Thief 4

    - Akaviri the MU-2 (Elf)

    - Seamus the Fighter 3

    - Brockhaus the Dwarf Fighter 1

Concerning the New Snake Cult

I swear these guys keep cropping up

    The party was offered substantial reward for finding the location of Siegfried the Wizard a few sessions ago by the Vampire Ramsugra. The pursuit of magic items was high on the priority list for Han the Thief, who in a bold move as a player elected to act directly against the interests of his faction (He plays Siegfried at the Patron Level), and set about a plan to find the wizard and cash that reward with the vampire. 

    I find it somewhat ironic that around the same time I began once again obsessing over investigative games and mystery design, the players organically initiated an investigation. Spending some time and money around looking for clues about the location of Siegfried, they came up with 3 leads:

    1. There have been sightings of Undead in the jungle north of the city

    2. A man claiming to represent Siegfried tried to hire an assassin from the thieves guild last week

    3. There have been snake symbols cropping up, carved into doorposts, under tavern tables, etc. 

    After a great deal of dead ends and cold trails, they gave up on lead two. Whoever this representative was, he has not been seen by anyone since then. Then they turned their eye to lead 3. Lead 3 led to the discovery that a new snake cult had cropped up among chaotics in the town, a secret society that met in houses late at night. Blony Tair, being a chaotic man himself, decided to go undercover and attend a meeting. What he saw there cannot be posted yet, for many secrets unfolded, but while he was there he did encounter some woodsmen who indicated where in the jungle the undead generally are seen. The party set out in the morning to find the wizards hideout. 

    They crawled through the jungle before seeing a scouting party of goblins ahead. They hit the dirt and watched, the goblins vanished from sight as though walking through an invisible wall. Han the thief snuck up to check it out, and sure enough, the goblins had passed into a patch of Hallucinatory Terrain. When Han passed through, what he saw staggered the players. There was a goblin village, with soldiers and patrols, and several cave/tunnel entrances. There, just at the base of the mountain in the centre of the village: the foundation and nearly finished first floor of a tower, being tirelessly worked on by skeleton labourers taking direction from a handful of Dwarvish supervisors. Siegfried was nowhere to be seen, but they felt confident that this was his hideout. 

    More importantly, they had to run. Han poking his head through the terrain meant that a "hostile" had hit the illusion and it was dispelled. Not immediately noticed, but soon the alarm was sounded and the party booked it back to town, got aboard a boat and paddled upriver to inform their undead employer. 

    Ramsugra was quite happy to receive the intel, and informed the party that their rewards would arrive to them in a few days, pending confirmation of the intel. Han attempted to negotiate immediate payment, the Vampire was unflappable. Several members leveled up with the experience they received from the magic items, and as the session wound down they started talking about how they were going to go about assassinating Lord Barotha. That is going to attempted tonight, and I have to prepare some things before the session, so I will let this be the end of the post and I look forward to writing up what happens this evening! Stay tuned!

OD&D Session 011: Force Multiplication

     I've been behind on my logging here, had some REAL WORLD obligations in the last 2 weeks that needed my attention. I'll keep these next 2 posts fairly brief, just to catch everything up to the report that I'll have to write tomorrow, as if everything goes according to plan the players will have succeeded in their attempt to beat the Bdubs Elite Player Challenge tonight. But faction orders are spicy this week, and a lot is going to start happening really soon. So without further ado:

Thursday Night Procedural Dungeon Crawl June 13

    This was a quick little online session with two guys, Thargaret Matcher the Fighter and Claus the Fighter. Thargaret had shelled out for some good advertising and went in with a fairly healthy contingency of men-at-arms (precise details elude my memory). Soon this won't be viable, as the third level of the dungeon is as far as these mercenaries are willing to go, but for now the moral of this story is "Having more dudes is a force multiplier, which is why armies are made up of lots of dudes instead of not a lot of dudes".

    The crawl had two major moments:

    1. An illusory wall hid a giant spider which went down in a single combat round after I rolled 8hp on 6 hit dice. Pain. 

    2. The party found a wyvern locked in a chamber on the second dungeon level. Why is it there? How did it get there? These are questions I'm cooking answers for as we speak. The point is that the party emerged in full force and through overwhelming numbers and careful attacker rotation took down the wyvern with minimal casualties. Thargaret and Claus collected it's poison gland, and checked for treasure. When determining treasure, I let the players roll the % chance for the various categories, and today this procedure had Thargaret's player swearing off virtual dice forever, as despite reasonable chances of gold, gems, and jewelry, all they got was a few thousand copper pieces. Shame!

    This was basically the bulk of the adventure, as a good amount of time was committed to debating whether or not they could fight the wyvern. I'm glad they did, though flying creatures have much less in the way of advantage in an underground environs. 

    Next post will cover the regular IRL from Wednesday, June 19, where INTRIGUE and SCHEMES began to boil over.