Session #- 58 Session Date- 8/30/23 Time Passed- 1 Day
Roll Call- Kenny- M/U1
Harry- T5
Maximillion- F3
Godhard- C4
Tomas- F3
Morsov- C2
Bart- C3
Adventure Log- The party is hunkered down with Cabbie and the goblins, planning and gathering intel on the location of the President and formulating a plan of escape. They are met by Kenny, a fledgling magic user, who offers his arcane powers to the party and shares a little knowledge he has about the prison complex. They are happy to have someone with some offensive spells to assist them. They learn about the 2 rival factions of the Orc Indians gang, and decide to challenge the leader in single combat and take over one side of the gang, hoping to grow a force that can attack or at least distract the Duke’s Gypsies so they can effect a rescue. They ask Cabbie to take them there to avoid harassment from the gangs and potential undead on the prison floor. He agrees but tells them the only way to get there is to take Broadway, a very dangerous gauntlet of a street. A showdown occurs on Broadway between the party and the Hobgoblin Liberation Front, the president’s kidnappers. Hobgoblins line both sides of the street, with 2 lieutenants and the hobgoblin chief waiting at the end. They crash through the front group and fire missiles forward and to the sides, godhard is almost pulled off the tractor with a whip strike from the hobgoblin Lt. They blind the chief with a light spell and he grasps about, dropping a wand and a sack of treasure. Bart spies a curious belt wrapped around the chief's waist with the letters WWF, intrigued by the potential treasure several party members leap off the wagon and slay the chief and his lackeys then haul the chief's body on board to loot it. Bart takes the wrestling belt, and they find a wand and give it to Kenny for emergencies, an unknown wand can be very dangerous to use. They also find a magic hand axe, and potion which Godhard sips to test, and it turns out to be poison! Narrowly avoiding death, he resists the small sip of poison. They make it to the orc lair at cave mouth C, and Bart enters and activates the wrestling belt, the risk triggers him to understand how the item works. It gives him 1 turn of pummeling at 200% and is usable 3 times total before it loses its magic. With only 10 minutes to use it, he immediately calls out to all the orcs he demands a challenge from the leader. The party is brought to a room filled with shower heads and a steamy slightly slippery fighting arena is made as the orcs open up a space in the center of the room and the chief walks in. They square off and the chief makes a wicked slice across Bart's chest, but Bart counters with a punch so powerful it snaps the chief’s neck and sends him sliding across the floor to be discarded in a puddle of shower water. The orcs erupt in powerful cheers demanding Bart lead them now, as the party loot the orc Chiefs body, finding a tape in the process, hopefully it is the tape with the diplomacy meetings from the Hartford Summit on it. The victorious party is given new confidence seeing their plan come together, Bart can lead an attack on the gypsies while the rest of the party sneaks in and finds and rescues the president in the chaos. Unfortunately their luck runs out quickly as the steam dissipates in the shower room, 9 Bugbears and the Duke appear, arriving on loud 2 wheeled vehicles with knobby tires good at climbing the steep slopes in the prison. Before the party can properly react the Duke says he recognizes the party as the Bartertown Strangers, however he heard they were dead. At that the bugbears produce billy clubs and strike the party, knocking them out. They awake in another huge complex, they only know their location because Kenny the mage, who only received a glancing blow from the club and is not truly knocked out, plays possum and is gathered up with the party as they are bound to the backs of the bikes and brought to cave mouth I, which has been hollowed out into a massive open complex with a squared gladiator arena in the center, chairs and benches arranged around, and several balconies and alcoves off the the side. The arena is packed with howling prisoners of all types, but the Duke’s Gypsies are clearly in charge. The Duke arrives and points to the party and says “They sent in their best men, now their best men are gonna die from our best man- Slag!” At that a massive minotaur in a chain shirt and magic spear appears and enters the ring. The party is told they will have to fight Slag with 1 person at first, another combatant can enter the ring each round. They nervously organize themselves, putting the stoutest, best armored members first, Kenny opts to go last. Harry manages to sneak away in the chaos to see if he can find anything. The party all have their armor and weapons, but the packs and things like potions have been taken away, they lie in a pile at the base of the arena, along with a long flat chest that is clearly the prize for defeating the minotaur should anyone ever succeed. Harry sneaks among the crowd checking out the alcove areas. He sees 2 alcoves near where he is approaching, one is closed off with a large sliding wooden door. The other is open and leads back to a room around the corner, lurking in the alcove opening, Harry sees Maggie, Brains pet mountain lion, they see each other, and Maggie makes a motion to follow her back into the alcove. He follows her back, sneaking as best as he can, in the hidden alcove, he and Maggie see the president bound to the wall, worse for wear but alive, being guarded by 6 Gypsy thugs. Across the room they see the hidden figure of Brain pull out his dagger and prepare to backstab a guard. Harry does likewise, and each takes out their man, as Maggie leaps and rips out the throats of the other 4. As they are untying the president, Romero, the Duke’s right hand man walks into the room and grinning with his filed down teeth leaps into combat with his battleax. His hubris is unfulfilled, as they slay him and rescue the president, covering him in Gypsy garb as a disguise. Simultaneously, the party has managed a war of attrition on the minotaur. They continue to add more members to the ring each round, and the minotaur is off his game, and cannot drop party members fast enough and is overcome with wounds. He discards his magic spear in lieu of more attacks from his claws, but still perishes. When the minotaur falls, the whole room erupts into Chaos. The Duke tries to get everyone to calm down and focus, but the party drops a Silence 15’ on his and it sticks, he retreats to the rear of the balcony and sends a lackey forward to finish delivering the message. Meanwhile Harry and the president, with Maggie and Brain are looking for a way out, they approach the next alcove, the one with the closed sliding door, and open it. At first it seems to be a mundane storeroom with just a few old barrels and boxes in it, but ⅔ of the corridor seems odd, it is shifting and there are pieces of debris, bones and coins suspended in midair. The mass begins undulating forward and they realize it's a creature, likely a gelatinous cube, Harry has no time to shut the door as it surges forward, so instead they lead the cube forward then cut hard right and the cube launches into the rear of the crowd, melting and consuming several prisoners. With this even more chaos erupts as the crowd panics. The party manages to grab all of their gear, as well as the minotaurs treasure and Harry’s pack. The 2 halves of the party reunite and the president is quickly checked on, he is missing a finger, bruised and battered and filthy. They hand him a melee weapon for last resort defense and he disdainfully refuses, clearly used to his own security force. He is anxious and demanding immediately reverting to a tyrant of a personality. Keny gesticulates and speaks some arcane words off to the side, and suddenly the president’s disposition lightens, he becomes amiable and follows the party’s lead. A group of Gypsies maintains its focus and rushes forward to the exit and leaps on 8 dirtbikes and roar out of the place. The party also makes it to the exit, but at the last second a silent Duke and several Gypsies block the way. Brain and Maggie leap forward to engage him, buying time for the party to escape. The last thing they see is the Duke plunge a wicked curved shortsword into Brain, killing him, and an enraged Maggie fighting the Gypsy crowd to the death. Running blind into the prison forest floor, a waiting Cabbie makes his move and pulls out to help the party escape. They hop in the wagon and prepare to confront the bikers as they make their way back to the platform hopefully in time to get the miniaturized spike removed from their heads. Cabbies' slower tractor has to plug away and resist the charging attacks of the Gypsy bikers. Godhard helps turn the tables with a hold person spell that causes 3 riders to crash. More are taken out in melee that got too close to Tomas and Max’s spear points. Cabbie deposits the group at the base of the tall platform tree, and they begin the arduous climb up and are extracted by Hartforder guards. They are quickly assembled and the curious and clearly very powerful High Mage Lith emerges from Bob Hauk’s group of administrators. She produces a strange U shaped piece of metal, painted red with silver tips. She hands it to a kobold dressed in garb similar to hers, and stands him on a piece of parchment, and casts a spell that reduces him to near nothing. She picks up the parchment and rolls it into a cone, deposits the tiny kobold into each party member's ear. In turn everyone has the spikes removed from their heads, and Lith casts dispel magic and the full size kobold stands there with all of the iron spikes stuck to the metal U. she counts the spikes, says “yeah you got them all, these guys are good.” , and turns to exit the area, tracing a circle in the air that opens a portal to another world. She looks at Hauk, says don’t call me again, and about to step in the portal, Harry tries to chat her up, a man attracted to powerful women, but she responds with one finger answer as the portal closes around her hand. Exhausted but exhilarated that their death sentence is no more, the party blissfully rests. Hauk asks if they were able to recover the tape, and they produce the strange plastic rectangle, it is put in a silver tape player, where the voice of the president is heard discussing policy. Hauk says, you guys did pretty good, if you ever want a job in Hartford doing security, give me a call. They balk and say just get us the hell out of here. The party rests for a good 12 hours in the Statue of Liberty complex, all the spoils of the mission are theirs to keep, as well as the mission gear they were given. Thus ends the 3 part arc- Escape From Bree-Yark. Thanks John Carpenter and Gary Gygax for all the background information and inspiration. Thus ends Ch. 2.
Session Notes- Ok so this was a huge departure from what this campaign normally is, but it was good to go here for a brief time. I learned a lot, it was a great way to compare/contrast story gaming to emergent play. First of all for me this was pure joy, 2 of my most favorite stories of all time Escape from New York, the movie that blew me away as a kid I still remember popping it into the VCR for the first time and watching it with my Dad, we were both blown away, it's such a, atmospheric and claustrophobic and frenetic ride of a movie, every beat is perfect. And pretty much the same with Keep on the Borderlands, the module so many of us read and ran over and over, so many cool options in a sandbox world that just embodied D&D. The merger was seamless for me, I was like seeing the matrix, linking up gangs from the movie with monster factions in the caves, envisioning the keep as the Liberty Island control center, the main characters, everything just linked up. But it still took a lot of mental effort and time to work out every particular part of the plot. How would the players react to it, would they go rogue and try to take the story in places I wasn't prepared to go? Despite it being really fun, it was a lot of work. There was the initial story construction, and then there was additional story construction week to week to address the ways the PCs were interacting with the story. Then there were the sort of railroad devices, the deus ex machina bits, I had to have a few of those to make sure the story didn’t go 180 degrees from where I was taking things. Like the president had to be kidnapped, if the PCs prevent that, the whole rest of the story doesn’t happen. It’s like a trade off, give the PCs the agency to prevent the kidnapping, but then 3 weeks of fun zany sessions goes poof. Same with the capture scene with the bugbears and the Duke. I knew I wanted the big finale to happen in the arena with the minotaur, and time was running down. Not only did I need the device of capture, but I needed it to go quickly, not a drawn out combat. So again the railroad had to happen to get the story told and the fun had in the allotted time. None of this happens in emergent play. Yes, the stories are simpler, because they are usually based on travel and use of random tables, or investigation of sites, random or pre planned on the campaign map. There’s not a whole elaborate story that needs to be maintained, but it's just as interesting because the players can focus on whatever parts they find most fun and interesting and discard the rest. With story gaming session reports are a nightmare, you’re trying to get everything right, remember exactly what happened in game, and also make sure it's readable/sensible to the non-players who also read the session reports. The narrative goes on and on, and even still things must be omitted. The same was mostly true even for running a string of modules as a campaign framework. I’ve already discussed this in previous session reports, but with modules, there’s the initial prep, the weekly specific prep, and then the digging into the module to try to make sense of the parts that are confusing. Of the 3 styles- storygaming, module gaming, and emergent play, emergent play is best for long-term sustainability, maintains DM vitality, and keeps players positively engaged and excited.
I’ll say one more thing this week, and that’s lifting heavy things. Our community often promotes the positive benefits to working out and while I of course agreed, I never really understood the direct connection to gaming and how it can truly make you a better gamer. Through studying Stoicism these last few years, and learning about the value of self-control I started doing daily pushups each morning first thing as soon as I wake up. I never really considered this “working out”, but I certainly started seeing benefits, my core got toned over time, and I was able to do more and more (I’m up to 50 every morning), but still it’s just a few minutes of exercise, not really a workout. My wife and I agreed to start working out together in an effort to get our family in better shape and have fun doing it. She made me up a nice 20-25 minute routine, and I just use 10 pound dumbbells. We bought a simple workbench and set up a small workout area in our basement. I can’t speak highly enough of the benefits and results. I was already primed to get in better shape from the years of pushups, and I started seeing results almost immediately, my core is tighter and I’ve lost an inch off my waist. Mentally it helps too, post workout time is a great time to get some gaming prep done, you’re on a little high, and you can spend time in your head thinking about the game while you're doing your reps. Plus the results you get from slow steady progress of working out is exactly like the slow steady progress and feeling of satisfaction you get from slowly leveling your character from 1st level noob to domain owning conqueror. If you’re not doing some weekly exercise, you are doing yourself a disservice. Get after it!
Treasure and XP- Monsters- 6 Hobgoblin, 2 Lts, 1 Chief, Orc Chief, Minotaur, Romero, 4 Gypsy Clerics, 4 Gypsy Thugs, 8 Gypsy Bikers, Tactical use of Gelatinous Cube= 3149xp Treasure- 25pp, 200gp, 115 ep, 1000gp gem, poison, wand of paralysis x12, hand axe +1, silver/gold belt buckle 160gp, sword w/ 100gp gem, 800gp, 17ep, ivory bracelet 100gp, 50pp, Rope of Climbing, 930gp, 310ep, staff of curing x11, Plate mail +1, potions- gaseous form, healing, growth, jewelry- 1600gp, 900gp, 6000gp, 700gp armband= 21,436xp, Total xp 24,585xp/ 6 PCs = 4097 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
Godhard’s 2 Med Cav- killed by Firenewt’s mounted on Giant Striders #47
Stig- brought to Death’s Door by Orc raiders at the walls of Bartertown #48 (1 week bedrest)
Harry- Brought to Death’s Door by the Tsathoggua Temple slime monster #54 (1 week
bedrest)
Stigr/Tomas’ 3 Med Cav- killed by large spiders SE of Bartertown #55
