Nappendixia Campaign Session Report
Session #- 45 Session Date- 5/24/23 Time Passed- 4 days (5/24-5/27) Tomas trains from 5/24-5/30, Stewart trains from 5/28-6/3
Roll Call- Stigr- F1
6 Lt. Foot
Markus- C1
Stewart- R2
Waiofar- M2
Lt. Foot Sgt, 2 Lt. Foot
Adventure Log- We pick up on our party just one day after returning from the journey to the magic shrine. Although unsuccessful, they now know where it is, and can return with better trained adventurers. Tomas begins his next round of training while Stigr the fighter introduces himself to the party the following day in Lancebrass. He has just hired some light foot, and spends the day procuring their armor and equipment while Waiofar and the party go to find out more about the druids who head the druidic religion in the town. They find the grove where the head druid stays and meet Jaroo Ashstaff, a kindly druid, he asks for a humble donation to aid the local needy. Stewart offers a donation of 200gp, and Jaroo is brought to tears by the generous and kind offer. He takes a smaller portion and returns the rest to Stewart telling him to put it towards his training and to protect nature. Waiofar asks about the giant spiders they encountered at the magic shrine, asking if they are magic or in any way connected to the shrine. Jaroo states that it is unlikely, there is much natural fauna in Nappendixia of the insect variety, they likely just use it as a lair. He tells them more about the local monster and animal threats, and says he himself has drank from the magic shrine many years ago. He tells them to get right with their gods prior to drinking from the fountain. Later in the day they receive a message, more a flier or open call from Sir Ligurd Modris. It states that any adventurer group that scouts and defeats any monster threats inside the uninhabited lands within the circular road that surrounds Lancebrass will be awarded 100gp per successful encounter. They take him up on the offer, and begin plotting a route out in the surrounding wilderness. Caolite gives orders to his Sgt and the troop of 3 go with the party acting as bodyguard to the mage and backup to the other troops. The party of 4 PCs and 9 mercs head out the following morning making a counterclockwise sweep through the wilderness near the farms on the outskirts of Lancebrass. They travel most of the day over plains until at one point they spy a panther like creature skulking over a ridge, it has a curious gait to it, seeming to shift in place slightly ahead of its own shadow, with 2 wicked barbed tentacles protruding from its back. The party almost considers attacking, waiting to see its reaction, neutral at first, then circling back to what appears to be a hole in the ground. It sticks its head in, and moments later a second identical creature emerges. Stewart and others think the creature could be the legendary displacer beast, all descriptions match the legends and tales told in taverns. They pull back and the beasts do not follow. The next day they travel further in their circular route early in the morning they come across a slain body. Stewart carefully scouts ahead, and calls the party forward. It is the body of a fighter or mercenary, its shield decorated in a non-heraldic symbol, a shield that could be procured anywhere. Based on the tracks it's possible it was killed by displacer beasts. They pile a burial cairn over the body, speak some words of respect and move on. Later, they encounter a party shambling out of the mist of a newly ended rain. They can tell from afar it is zombies based on their slow, irregular gait, and Stewart sets up with his bow at a good angle to avoid crossfire into his allies. They await their approach, and Markus calls the power of Selune to turn them, but she doesn’t hear his call, and the zombies advance unafraid. Stigr and his fighters bravely charge in and cut down a zombie and engage the rest. 2 lt foot quickly fall, and Stigr is gravely wounded by zombie claws, while Waiofar calls for his troops to make a flanking action, and Markus charges with his staff. The party takes several more serious wounds from the zombies and 2 more lt foot fall, but the zombies are eventually bashed into the ground. After what healing Markus can offer, they search around and regard the zombies. They appear to be an adventuring party, what remains of one, somehow they were turned to zombies. They still clutch some of the broken gear and weapons of an adventuring party, one corpse holds the broken remains of a similar shield to the one found on the morning’s found body. Two appear to be former fighters, and 2 appear roguish, the last 2 possibly lt foot mercs or torchbearers/porters. Each has a little treasure, and one has a strange belt pouch and a fine looking javelin, the only unbroken among them. The belt pouch seems to shift about in place and it is difficult to open. Stewart carefully regards it, hearing tales of the death of Rollo and the bag of devouring. He opens it away from his face, and is peripherally sprayed with a horrible smelling mist. He spends the rest of the day downwind of the party, who groans in nausea every time the wind shifts. Inside the pouch they find 2 gems and 4 potions. The Javelin is kept to see if it is magic. Stewart tries to use his tracking to see if they can find whatever turned this party into zombies, but the recent rains make it very difficult. Wounded and out of healing spells, they travel closer to the village, and camp for the night. The next day they arrive back in the village, and tell the tales and show evidence of their defeat of the stout zombies, and are awarded 100gp by the Margrave's man. The next day Stewart located Otis the jovial ranger and begins training.
Session Notes- This was another good session generated completely from emergent play based on random tables. The party had 2 good hooks they could have explored (the wild warhorses and the magic shrine) but both PCs involved in those hooks were training and unavailable, so I thought it would be good to give them just a little option for adventure/exploration but still staying near a settlement. So I figured that there would be some wilderness at the edges of the village’s expanding farms that might have acquired some nasty creatures, smaller groups that may have snuck by the regular patrols that stick to the roads. Adventure groups that can be a little more stealthy would be good for weeding out these enemies, so I came up with the simple idea of the missive from Sir Modris to give them an option for lower stakes encounters. I of course really like using the AD&D encounter tables RAW and unaltered, but I feel there should be some representation on the tables for smaller encounters and for non-combat encounters. I therefore used my own homebrewed hex crawling random encounter table, which has lots of non-combat and varied types of combat encounters, for this area. My tables have options for traps and environmental hazards, special encounters, weather events, and signs of destruction/ clues left behind from combats. Also when a monster encounter does come up on my tables, there are options for lair, wandering or just monster footprints/evidence. I make the rolls in pairs, sometimes combining the 2 results into 1 encounter, sometimes discarding one result, and sometimes running the encounters concurrently depending on how I feel they best fit together. It’s still RAW because it definitely states in the DMG the DM should prepare their own encounter tables appropriate to their own milieu. I also have curated the monster lists on my own encounter tables to represent smaller groups of monsters, and to represent the fauna most common to Nappendixia. Combo this with the AD&D tables straight and I think I’m getting a nicer, more varied, if less lethal mix of encounters, but there are still a few big surprises on my home tables. The displacer beast encounter was off my own tables and is one of the tougher monsters on the list, the party was wise to avoid it, and the following encounter randomly determined to be signs of a prior combat played nicely into it, linking the dead body encounter to the displacer beasts, and then linking the body to the following encounter- the zombies, obviously they are the dead guy’s buddies, who somehow got turned to undead. After the zombie encounter, they party was motivated to go off to find out what turned the party into zombies, but a) the dice didn’t agree, and no tracks were found, and b) there has to be some degree of non-sequitur/ non-connection, not every encounter can be perfectly linked to the previous encounter, that would feel hokey. So that’s a little peek into how I do emergent play and balance the creative side of my brain and how it plays with the random things that come up due to die rolls off tables. I for the first time employed some random magic trap/item tables I have (the d30 brand of tables if you know them, I have some d30s they are fun to roll.) anyway I got the most random results when rolling for a trapped treasure container. I got “Displaced”, and “Unbearable Smell” on the zombies trapped belt pouch. I put 2 and 2 together as best as I could, but I’ll allow any reasonable interpretation of the 2 effects to whomever ends up with the item. The d30 tables are fun, there are tons of them, and I have selected 6-8 of my favorites and include them in my campaign binder. To wrap up these session notes, I’ll speak a little to what happens when your smooth sailing campaign hits real life problems. I recently decided to test out the job market, sharpening up my resume, writing cover letters, going to interviews, etc. and that obviously is time consuming and very much the opposite of fantasy land. For so many months, my job has been on autopilot, I don’t bring home a lot of stress or work from my job, I mostly focus on family at home, and my free time is very much open for gaming and game prep/ adjudicating downtime stuff. With this last week being really intense on the job front, I was pretty wiped when it came to game night, but went ahead and ran anyway. I know the players are solid, and will have a bunch of ideas of stuff they want to/ can do, and will work cooperatively to decide the night’s session. I’ll in turn have my well prepped campaign binder and the holy trinity of core books, rules and tables to run without prep and without stress of sitting down to a session “unprepped”. It’s just a new interpretation of is the DM “prepared”? The first few times I did this I did not feel prepared, you not only need your resources centrally located and easily accessible on the fly, you need the confidence and the practice to know you can do this with some degree of speed and efficiency. I did pretty well keeping things moving. It bogged down a bit when we got to the zombie NPC bodies. I knew there were rules for rolling out random NPC adventuring parties and their treasure, but it took me a minute to find, read, and roll them out. The party mostly planned and prepped, did some healing etc, but also just BSed about stuff, games, life, etc. which is nice to see from random strangers off the internet. It’s cool how that happens, random people who find you online become online friends who share a common interest that’s pretty obscure. I have a lot of gamer friends locally and in my past, but I have very few gamer friends specifically interested in AD&D RAW 1:1 time, which is a pretty specific type of game. It’s cool how the nature of such a niche interest attracting like minded strangers from all over the world creates these cool little intimate social groups. Ok enough sociology, for more on that read Gary Allen Fine’s amazing- “Shared Fantasy”, hard to find, I got a copy off the early days of ebay.
Treasure and XP- Monsters- 6 Zombies 264xp, Treasure- 2 gems 10gp and 100gp, 18pp, 30gp, 100gp bounty, 230xp, 4 potions and magic javelin 1850xp= 2444xp/ 4 PCs = 611xp each add % bonus if appropriate.
Graveyard- Rollo Tomassi- consumed by a Bag of Devouring in Zelligar’s dungeon #38
Ragenard- brought to Death’s Door by a stirge attack in Zelligar’s dungeon #39 (1 week bed rest)
Caolite- brought to Death’s Door by kobolds in Zelligar’s dungeon #40 (1 week bedrest)
Bart- brought to Death’s Door by Firetoad breath in Zelligar’s dungeon #40 (1 week
bedrest)
Ragenard- killed by Griffons exploring the plains west of Fort Turjmir #42
Vlana- killed by Troglodytes in the 2nd level of Zelligar’s dungeon #43
Stigr’s 4 Lt. Foot- killed by Zombies on the plains of Lancebrass #45
