Nappendixia Campaign Session Report
Session #- 42 Session Date- 5/3/23
Time Passed- 4 days (5/3-5/5 travel/exploration, 5/5- rest/light duty)
Roll Call- Stewart- R1
Tomas- F1
Godhard- C1
Ragenard- C1
Chance- F2
10 Lt Cav
Adventure Log- The session begins with an account of a crisis that occurred at the fort. The trolls Stewart spotted last session laid an ambush on the southbound caravan on the road north of the fort. The adventurers who travel with the caravan were able to single out 4 trolls and slay them, pulling them away from the ambush on the caravan cars. The other 4 were handled by the troops, mainly light cav, med cav and pikemen. 20 troops are killed and several more wounded before the adventurers could join the fray and take out the remaining trolls. Three other trolls attack a caravan car during the combat and make off with several horses and treasure and goods from the caravan. The PCs do what they can as the wounded and routed caravan staggers onto the fort. The healers do their best to assist the wounded, and the fighter types haul clean water from the spring to the fort and assist in making an improvised triage hospital. Lord Modris Ligurd, paladin and second in command at Lancebrass, arrives to assess the damages. He brings some additional clerics, and some of his agents speak to the party, welcoming them to visit Lancebrass and telling them of the resources available in town. A still recovering Bart, restless but unable to assist due to his burns, is able to catch the attention of a merchant and makes a deal to procure a book on the god Kord; they make arrangements for the sale the next time the caravan passes through the fort. By Monday of that week things have settled at the fort, and Chance lets Tomas know that another horse training ride will be happening soon, as Tomas asked to be included on the next ride. The party decides the protection of the lt cav is valuable and begin to discuss their options as to where to travel to. They look at the map and consider their options. They could return to Zelligar’s dungeon, there is one unexplored area on the first level, and they did find a way down to the next level. They also hear from Godhard about a location to the east, marked M5 on the map. Naima tells him that over a year ago she and Chance had explored an ancient shrine and after defeating some zombies and a giant spider found a fountain that conferred a boost to one’s Cha or Wis. They also look west on the map and see there are several unexplored hexes in the SW corner of Brassmark and wonder if Chance or someone at the fort would pay them to explore and map those hexes. Chance tells them he is not able to offer them payment for that type of work, but tells them that the Margrave awards initiative, and that a party that presented maps tales of their exploration to him could very well find themselves rewarded for their efforts. They choose that option, plotting a route west then south that would allow them to explore 2 unrevealed hexes. On Wednesday the party heads out with Chance, 10 light cav, and 5 additional horses for the training ride. They make it safely to the edge of the unknown hex by midday, and enter the unknown hex finding it to be plains terrain. They do a half day loop within the plains hex spotting the horizon for civilizations or monster sign. The travel passes uneventfully, and at dusk the group makes camp and sets watch shifts for the night. In the waning light of day, Stewart diligently watches the horizon as the group prepares to make their beds and remove their armor. He spies 2 winged shapes in the distance, and becomes concerned as they approach revealing them to be quite large creatures, and who clearly see the party as they pivot to make a beeline in the sky straight for them. It is then that the terror really sets in, the creatures get larger and larger in size as they approach, beasts with the bodies of lions and the heads of eagles- Griffons! Their infamy precedes them as the party prepares to receive their attack. The cav, Chance, and the party members with missile weapons let off a volley of arrows, and the griffon's deftly fly through the rain of arrows and each attack and seize a horse, one of their favorite foods. Godhard lets loose a Light spell on one griffon, and it is temporarily blinded, but the spell is mostly resisted. The second volley of arrows from the archers hit twice very effectively as 2 mercs strike for max damage. Now perturbed, the griffons turn to charge the party, and they mount up to return the charge. The longer lances strike first, and one griffon is killed, the other wounded. The surrounded griffon strikes out in melee raking a claw at Godhard, and chomping down on Ragenard for a chest crushing bite that rends open his armor and spills his lifeblood, he lies dead on the ground to his companions horror. Jabs from Tomas’ halberd and mace strike from Godhard finally collapse the creature. Godhard says a prayer over Ragenard, and prepares the body for religious burial and fastens it to an unridden horse. Solemnly, they finish making camp and rest for the night. Stewart sets some small snares around the camp to help alert them to intruders in the night. They wake the next day unbothered. Stewart uses his ranger skills to track the griffons back to their lair over the open plains, he was particularly honed on on their path of travel, tracking the lair in under 2 hours and silently approaching the hollow on the high plains they were lairing in. The hollow appears to be the nest of a mated pair; Stewart sees no more griffons, but does spy a large egg nestled among a pile of treasure and bedding materials. Just as Stewart is about to descend into the hole, the cav starts pointing at a small group of 10 primitive looking humans, armed with clubs and spears, they regard the party from 100’ away after cresting a hill that brings them into view. They have a large hump backed beast of burden with them. Godhard hails them and approaches, seeing either an opportunity to distract them while Stewart grabs the treasure from the hole, or more hopefully an opportunity to preach the word of Pelor. They speak a broken form of common, and don't seem to understand everything Godhard says, they reveal themselves to be living off the land in these unexplored plains, they are taken by the fine cloth of Godhards religious habit. They seem rather unhostile, and Godhard and Stewart try to explain to them the location of Fort Turjmir, and if they should be able to bring furs or meat to the fort it could be traded for coins or materials they desire. They seem to understand the concept and seem appreciative. They manage to discover these people are known as the Framen, and they hope to make more inroads to learn of their culture and ways. In the lair, Stewart finds 4000sp, a griffon egg worth 2000gp to the right buyer, and several potions, which they get identified back at the fort by Dougal the Red. They find a potion of healing, treasure finding, and sweetwater, a way to purify water. The thing that really shocks them is a beautiful piece of jewelry that appears more valuable than anything they have yet found. The jewelry is assessed at a value of 12,000gp, a huge windfall for 1st level characters. They will certainly have enough xp and gp to level and train this week. They move into the next hex to check the terrain, map and briefly explore. The new hex reveals itself to be hills, and they explore them for several hours, then move uneventfully back to the fort. They are eager to get back to the fort, not wanting to push their luck, but they do travel deeper into the hex for part of the day before heading safely into Fort Turjmir, arriving Friday after dark, and resting most of Saturday. They get the potions identified by Dougal the Red, cash out the treasure for gp to evenly split and set aside a share for the deceased Ragenard’s family or future companions. He is buried respectfully on a hill that overlooks the fort open to the light of the sun. A mark and sign of Foltus is placed on his grave. The party pays its respects, and heads into the fort looking to secure trainers and begin that process. PCs training will be available again on 5/14.
Session Notes- So it was the first totally emergent play session I have run. The sessions before were heavily module based, the new players helping out the OG players by clearing out the low level stuff from Zelligar’s dungeon. I pretty much knew each session so far that the party would likely/definitely end up there, so I already knew a lot of what to expect from the session. This time it was totally player driven, they could have one back to the dungeon, but they had other options, I thought they may go after the magic fountain, but they settled on exploring the unknown hexes, and it definitely showed how so many of those dmg tables lend themselves to prepless, emergent play. First we used the tables for determining random terrain of a hex. I highly recommend having some unexplored hexes in your game, it really starts the ball rolling on random table derived play. Random terrain caused a random plains encounter to occur, which in turn triggered a lair nearby. We used the ranger rules for tracking, and then had the PCs roll for the griffon’s treasure type, which very luckily caused them to get a valuable piece of jewelry (using the jewelry tables of course). A second random encounter surprisingly turned up a very low number of tribesmen, prompting a reaction roll that spurred a parley that caused the creation of a new faction- the Framen, all from random rolls and a little quick creative thinking. This stuff isn’t easy, you need to practice. Get good at knowing the tables, I make homemade DM screens out of manilla folders and I just photocopy tables out of the DMG and organize them and tape them down onto the folder. I may laminate thema at some point, but they serve me well. Practice rolling out all these things, go through it logically in the order it would happen in game, it’s also OK to have some pre-rolled encounters to speed up play. It was satisfying to see the PCs get a big chunk of xp/gp from the random jewelry roll. I have been offering PCs to roll out treasure at the table to only mediocre success so far, but this shows it's worth the wait. It was a bummer to have a PC death, but that’s the nature of AD&D and old school play in general, I think this group is looking for that experience also. We did resolve how to handle PC death though, the player gets an xp/gp share that can be applied to an existing or new character. I don’t want players to feel penalized for PC death, and I don’t want them to feel behind the eightball on xp so it’s probably too lenient, but I want to reward players who regularly show up and may have only died due to random rolls. Starting this week, I am rolling in the open. I built a dice box that fits in front of my laptop camera and players can see the die rolls on cam. I rolled double 6’s right on cam to hit the 1st level cleric, I kinda knew there was no way he could survive it, but there it was double 6’s right on cam, no way to alter that, not that I would. In the past I have mildly fudged damage dice on PCs that were already hurting, but I have not fudged any DM die rolls in a long while, I go through low rolling spurts, high rolling spurts, I just don’t think about it any more, but it is not enjoyable to have a PC die at the table, but it’s necessary. Any other action on my part would have been very disingenuous to the game and the players. We ended up ending kind of early, sort of slowly winding down as some people had some downtime discussions and the potions and treasure got divided. People also asked about other places they could travel to, and expressed some long term goals for their characters. Again this was a happy accident, it was good to have a more casual setting where we could chat about this game, AD&D rules in general, future session ideas, answer questions etc. and just kind of wind down instead of trying to grind as many rooms as possible in 3 hours. Both are fun, and best when done in combination. Plus the knowledge that all of the PCs already had enough xp to level put a happy cap on the desire to scour more wilderness and lose it all to a tough encounter.
Treasure and XP- Monsters- 2 Griffons 1270xp, Treasure- 4000sp (200xp), 1 jewelry 12000xp, 3 potions 1000xp= 14,470xp. Chance half share= 1808xp. 4 PCs get 3618xp each. Add % bonus if appropriate. Ragenard’s player may apply the xp to any existing or newly made PC. The griffon egg xp is on hold until it can be sold.
DM will divide the treasure on sessions with a PC death. Silver and jewelry converted to gp, Chance gets 1525gp, and the 4 PCs get 3050gp each. Ragenard’s share will be sent to his relatives/companions as a legacy share. Apply the treasure to any existing or newly made PC. And be aware that you each have 305 pounds of treasure to either carry around or hide/secure somewhere.
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
No comments:
Post a Comment