Into the Barrowmaze - Session 7 - Trouble in Bogtown
Last week, Guiseppe (Jack) was murdered in cold blood by Elina (Lu) because "we do not negociate with terrorists". Although the party ended up keeping the elf that took Guiseppe hostage alive to find out where the other party's big loot stash was hidden. We have this thing where in-game time always fit real-life time, so during the week, the Night Weasels followed the road to Bogtown.
The Night Weasels
• Elina, wearing a mask after a ghoul bit off her face, and current party leader. (Lu')
• Gunthark, Elina's bodyguard and handyman, looks exactly like Ryan Gosling.
• Barnave, vicious pie-smith turned treasure-hunter (A.)
• Merle, his fellow companion and sweet-maker extraordinaire.
• Tom Lee (or was it Thomli?), ex-Bastard of Bogtown and recruited after last session's massacre.
• Farwyn, the Elf, although a prisoner of the Weasels.
They were joined in the opening of the game by Papi (Jack), notary of Bogtown and honorary member of a crew tied with the Bastards - he recognized Farwyn but decided that her being a prisoner must have been a misunderstanding or something, and still sided with the Weasels.
An account of the events that took place in and around Bogtown, on the nights before the Day of the Dead:
• Meeting with Papi at his camp near the swamp, the party decide they could use extra hands and convince him to join them as "they are friends of his friends". Farwyn, worried that her captors might be touched in the head, decides to go along their ridiculous claim while being held in ropes.
• Froglings approached the camp and asked who they were, then tried peaceful negociation and offered a gift for Bogtown's "friends". Papi answered by trying to beat the emissary with a stick, a grave misunderstanding which led the froglings to try and attack. They got blasted by Elina's magicks (well, really Fenwig's magick that she stole from his dead body last session) and quickly fled.
Farwyn suffers terrible burns from Elina's exploding matches attack and needs medical attention.
• In a hurry, the party finds a small hut on a small beaten path that strays from the main road. They enter after receiving an invitation from a talking crow and realize the hut is bigger on the inside.
A strange, bark-skinned old crone welcomes them and offers her help as a healer for their friend, although she asks one of two services in exchange for it: either the party goes to find her lost cat somewhere "on the War side" or one of their men spends the night with her, for she is terribly lonely here in the woods. After much deliberation, Barnave gets the short straw and grants the second request. Not only does the crone heal Farwyn, but she also fixes Elina's face, although the ear drops that regenerated her also give her a weird accent. Magic works in mysterious ways.
• The next morning, Barnave wakes up with his skin covered in bark, but is pretty happy about his new appearance. With him changed and Elina's new face, they realize the Night Weasels now have entirely unknown faces for those they might have wronged in the past. Also the Elf escaped during the early morning as soon as she recovered. She'd be lost if not for Barnave's telepathic mutt, who tracks her scent all the way to Bogtown's Toasty Troll Inn.
• At the Inn, the players meet Gontran the Barman and notice his patrons seem a bit off - everyone looks way more dangerous than normal country bumpkins covered in mud. The dog lets his master know that the elf is hiding under the Inn and finds the trap door. Gontran and the others, while polite, are firm about what's off-limits to outsiders. In the meantime, Elina sells her 3000£ mask to a dwarf for 400£, after which Gunthark asks for his 350£ fee for the last week of service. She feels like shooting the dwarf in the back in the middle of the day, but refrains from it after some thinking.
• Out of nowhere and in the middle of a good conversation, Barnave tries to knock Gontran out, fails, and draws his weapon. At the same time, his associate Merle bars the door. Gontran ducks under the bar to get his hands on a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun, Gunthark jumps out the window and Papi does nothing, extremely confused by the sudden turn of events. And then Barnave shoots his musket at one of the patron, making a noise that echoes throughout the village.
• In the following minutes, a mob forms up outside to rush to help the innkeeper against the outsiders. Elina, still outside, decides to set things on fire to cause a distraction - and so she sets the inn and the neighboring house ablaze with her last bottle of lamp oil and a few matches. Gunthark comes to her help, Merle is ran down by the angry mob, Tom Lee, Barnave and Papi jump down the trapdoor into a small cave where they fight thieves guarding Farwyn, and overall get extremely lucky with their dice rolls.
• After a drawn out fight that let Elina and Gunthark join the fray at the last minute, a round or so before everyone else is down from Critical Damage (everyone stabbing everyone each round tends to lead to that), the party somehow wins the day: Elina and Gunthark are the last fighters still up, Farwyn is brutally put down again by Elina in a hand-to-hand-and-rock struggle, and whoever matters (ie. the PCs and their friends) are dragged away from the trapdoor and patched up, with the inn still burning above them.
• Under the inn, the party finds a few bags of unrefined silver ores and a backpack with a few grimoires and a lot of cash -the Wizard's stash that they were looking for in the first place- but failing to recognize it as such, they keep the elf as prisoner and escape deeper into the caves until they find an access to the outside.
• Once in the safety of the forest, they realize Merle is still at the Inn, and figure out an exchange: the Elf, which is known to be a local, for Barnave's companion. They loosed a crossbow bolt into the village with a message attached, and waited in ambush at a close landmark.
• The villagers, led by a woodsman that had already met the party in the Inn fight, come out as a mob (detachment) to try and get their skins. The party, hiding in the trees, using tactics such as throwing bombs at the mob without care for the hostage they're trying to rescue and shooting at the leader, manage to rout the mob, beat the hell out of the woodsman and miraculousy recover a more-or-less intact Merle alive. At this point, Farwyn is scared shitless by the party, whom she now knows are completely insane (plus she got a mental trauma as a scar from the fight with Elina, which I rule means she's absolutely terrified by that lady now), doesn't even try to escape.
• Yet the party decides to let her, and the woodsman, go freely after everything, so that they may spread the words that the Night Weasels aren't just cruel - they can be merciful. Merciful thugs, but still. Following that decision, a conversation is held about the name of the party, and it is decided that to avoid repercussions from the law, and in regard for their actions during this game, the party will henceforth be known as "The Nice Guys".
Some Thoughts
My prep for this game was the module "Sleeping Place of the Feathered Swine", a horror-themed LotFP short dungeon. I put some of the wizard's grimoires there in the hands of one of his mercenary friends, and gave Papi that knowledge so that if the party wanted to get their hands on the bigger part of the loot, they could simply go there and do that.
Of course, being PCs, they went their own way, and I started thinking in the Elf's place, trying desperately to save her skin after one week a captive of these brutal and insane people. That mostly worked.
Also, as you can see from the report, a lot of the decisions the players made this game were quite...unsound, to say the least, but luck was on their side and even though we all thought the Inn fire would be their end, it wasn't. The dice are a strange and whimsical mistress.
What was really cool about this game was that by the end, they found a justification for all they had done: in need of a larger scheme to give them some sense of direction, they considered the possibility of becoming a well-known band of bandits, pulling off great schemes (their next target being the Lord Kell Ironguard himself and his castle) to attract the attention of Renata, the Robber Queen, whose head is worth 10 000£, which would be enough to pay back their debt to the mysterious and so far unseen Traxian & Shift Corporation. So yeah, that's totally why they went on a rampage and assaulted most of the people they met.
How Electric Bastionland Fights Work (I think)
If I remember correctly, I was asked how the multiple attackers rule worked out in practice at the table, and to maybe post some exemple of play about it. Here's a more detailed account of the Toasty Troll fight that should hopefully be helpful.
Ref (Gontran) : Yeah, you should probably check out the other Inn in town-
A. (Barnave) : -I grab his head and smash it on the counter.
Ref : what? Right now? Heh, ok, he'll have to pass a DEX save to avoid your sudden attack. [roll] - Success! He takes a step back when you try and dodge under the counter, reaching for what appears to be a shotgun. Ok, Papi, what do you do?
Jack (Papi) : I-uh-why are you attacking this guy? I'm confused. My guy is confused.
Ref : right. Barnave, what is Merle going to do while this happens? You gave him a sign earlier to be ready.
A. (Barnave) : yeah he'll go hold the door in case others come. I ask Gunthark to come and help us!
Ref : yeah, he's Elina's man though and she's not here. He smiles at you and jumps out the window.
A. (Barnave) : [expletive] this guy. Is this a new round? Can we attack?
Ref : yes. One of the patron draws a knife, he's going to jump you, and Gontran is back up with a shotgun and will shoot you in the face, what do you guys do?
Jack (Papi) : I'll try to wrestle the shotgun out of his hands!
Ref : ok he'll have to pass a STR save, what are you doing, Barnave?
A. (Barnave) : I'll shoot the guy with a knife!
Ref : ok [roll] Gontran passes his save, also Barnave you can roll damage...and you all hear (Elina, you too) the bang from the rifle. The villagers probably heard it too. Elina, what do you do? You guys got maybe 3-5 rounds before the villagers break down the door, if Merle keeps hold of it.
A. (Barnave) : Oops.
Jack (Papi) : I'll keep trying to wrestle the shotgun!
Ref : yeah Gontran shoots in the air but nobody's hurt. Yet. Barnave, the guy with the knife is down and bleeding out. Y'all hear the villagers outside, banging on the door, screaming bloody murder.
Lu (Elina) : I go where Gunthark is, and he'll help me set some building on fire to create a distraction.
Ref : he's in an alley between the Inn and some house.
Lu (Elina) : Ok we set the buildings on fire. Are the villagers taking care of the fire?
Ref : nah it takes a while to light a fire, right now it's not noticeable. In a few rounds.
(To the others) Alright, Gontran's still got his gun, but he's mainly trying to protect himself.
Also the dog keeps biting his ankles.
A. (Barnave) : I'm going to go and break open the trapdoor, shoot the elf.
Ref : there's no elf down there, but three guys looking at you with an angry air.
A. (Barnave) : I shoot them.
Ref : well...you got time to shoot one while the others jump away from view. Papi what do you do?
Jack (Papi) : I'll keep bothering Gontran.
Ref : yeah ok. A. you can roll damage [rolls] ok he's down, also the door breaks open and there's this massive woodcutter dude with an axe. Remember the villagers in Resident Evil 4? Well this guy and his friends are like that. Except, not zombies.
Jack/A. : we jump down the trapdoor!
Lu' (Elina) : I'll pretend to help with the fire (the fire's spreading now right?) to get inside the inn. Grab a bucket of water.
Ref : (to Elina) yeah you can do that, people don't know you were with them. The other two, down there there's like, still two guys with knives, they'll try to stab you [roll, announcing damage, etc.]
Jack/A. : we stab them!
Ref : ok well, you roll your damage, and I'll tell you if it does something special...yeah they're still standing. You see Farwyn a bit further away, down there is like a cave carved out of the rock by the way, some kind of hideout; she's got a crossbow and is trying to load it properly.
Jack/A. : eeeh we keep stabbing.
[A few rounds of stabbing later, everyone is taking STR damage and/or in Critical Damage]
Lu (Elina) : I jump down to help them, with Gunthark. [...]
Yeah that's way more chaotic than the clear, procedural biz I'm picturing when I think about how the game runs. More accurate this way.
The Night Weasels
• Elina, wearing a mask after a ghoul bit off her face, and current party leader. (Lu')
• Gunthark, Elina's bodyguard and handyman, looks exactly like Ryan Gosling.
• Barnave, vicious pie-smith turned treasure-hunter (A.)
• Merle, his fellow companion and sweet-maker extraordinaire.
• Tom Lee (or was it Thomli?), ex-Bastard of Bogtown and recruited after last session's massacre.
• Farwyn, the Elf, although a prisoner of the Weasels.
They were joined in the opening of the game by Papi (Jack), notary of Bogtown and honorary member of a crew tied with the Bastards - he recognized Farwyn but decided that her being a prisoner must have been a misunderstanding or something, and still sided with the Weasels.
An account of the events that took place in and around Bogtown, on the nights before the Day of the Dead:
• Meeting with Papi at his camp near the swamp, the party decide they could use extra hands and convince him to join them as "they are friends of his friends". Farwyn, worried that her captors might be touched in the head, decides to go along their ridiculous claim while being held in ropes.
• Froglings approached the camp and asked who they were, then tried peaceful negociation and offered a gift for Bogtown's "friends". Papi answered by trying to beat the emissary with a stick, a grave misunderstanding which led the froglings to try and attack. They got blasted by Elina's magicks (well, really Fenwig's magick that she stole from his dead body last session) and quickly fled.
Farwyn suffers terrible burns from Elina's exploding matches attack and needs medical attention.
• In a hurry, the party finds a small hut on a small beaten path that strays from the main road. They enter after receiving an invitation from a talking crow and realize the hut is bigger on the inside.
A strange, bark-skinned old crone welcomes them and offers her help as a healer for their friend, although she asks one of two services in exchange for it: either the party goes to find her lost cat somewhere "on the War side" or one of their men spends the night with her, for she is terribly lonely here in the woods. After much deliberation, Barnave gets the short straw and grants the second request. Not only does the crone heal Farwyn, but she also fixes Elina's face, although the ear drops that regenerated her also give her a weird accent. Magic works in mysterious ways.
• The next morning, Barnave wakes up with his skin covered in bark, but is pretty happy about his new appearance. With him changed and Elina's new face, they realize the Night Weasels now have entirely unknown faces for those they might have wronged in the past. Also the Elf escaped during the early morning as soon as she recovered. She'd be lost if not for Barnave's telepathic mutt, who tracks her scent all the way to Bogtown's Toasty Troll Inn.
• At the Inn, the players meet Gontran the Barman and notice his patrons seem a bit off - everyone looks way more dangerous than normal country bumpkins covered in mud. The dog lets his master know that the elf is hiding under the Inn and finds the trap door. Gontran and the others, while polite, are firm about what's off-limits to outsiders. In the meantime, Elina sells her 3000£ mask to a dwarf for 400£, after which Gunthark asks for his 350£ fee for the last week of service. She feels like shooting the dwarf in the back in the middle of the day, but refrains from it after some thinking.
• Out of nowhere and in the middle of a good conversation, Barnave tries to knock Gontran out, fails, and draws his weapon. At the same time, his associate Merle bars the door. Gontran ducks under the bar to get his hands on a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun, Gunthark jumps out the window and Papi does nothing, extremely confused by the sudden turn of events. And then Barnave shoots his musket at one of the patron, making a noise that echoes throughout the village.
• In the following minutes, a mob forms up outside to rush to help the innkeeper against the outsiders. Elina, still outside, decides to set things on fire to cause a distraction - and so she sets the inn and the neighboring house ablaze with her last bottle of lamp oil and a few matches. Gunthark comes to her help, Merle is ran down by the angry mob, Tom Lee, Barnave and Papi jump down the trapdoor into a small cave where they fight thieves guarding Farwyn, and overall get extremely lucky with their dice rolls.
• After a drawn out fight that let Elina and Gunthark join the fray at the last minute, a round or so before everyone else is down from Critical Damage (everyone stabbing everyone each round tends to lead to that), the party somehow wins the day: Elina and Gunthark are the last fighters still up, Farwyn is brutally put down again by Elina in a hand-to-hand-and-rock struggle, and whoever matters (ie. the PCs and their friends) are dragged away from the trapdoor and patched up, with the inn still burning above them.
• Under the inn, the party finds a few bags of unrefined silver ores and a backpack with a few grimoires and a lot of cash -the Wizard's stash that they were looking for in the first place- but failing to recognize it as such, they keep the elf as prisoner and escape deeper into the caves until they find an access to the outside.
• Once in the safety of the forest, they realize Merle is still at the Inn, and figure out an exchange: the Elf, which is known to be a local, for Barnave's companion. They loosed a crossbow bolt into the village with a message attached, and waited in ambush at a close landmark.
• The villagers, led by a woodsman that had already met the party in the Inn fight, come out as a mob (detachment) to try and get their skins. The party, hiding in the trees, using tactics such as throwing bombs at the mob without care for the hostage they're trying to rescue and shooting at the leader, manage to rout the mob, beat the hell out of the woodsman and miraculousy recover a more-or-less intact Merle alive. At this point, Farwyn is scared shitless by the party, whom she now knows are completely insane (plus she got a mental trauma as a scar from the fight with Elina, which I rule means she's absolutely terrified by that lady now), doesn't even try to escape.
• Yet the party decides to let her, and the woodsman, go freely after everything, so that they may spread the words that the Night Weasels aren't just cruel - they can be merciful. Merciful thugs, but still. Following that decision, a conversation is held about the name of the party, and it is decided that to avoid repercussions from the law, and in regard for their actions during this game, the party will henceforth be known as "The Nice Guys".
Some Thoughts
My prep for this game was the module "Sleeping Place of the Feathered Swine", a horror-themed LotFP short dungeon. I put some of the wizard's grimoires there in the hands of one of his mercenary friends, and gave Papi that knowledge so that if the party wanted to get their hands on the bigger part of the loot, they could simply go there and do that.
Of course, being PCs, they went their own way, and I started thinking in the Elf's place, trying desperately to save her skin after one week a captive of these brutal and insane people. That mostly worked.
Also, as you can see from the report, a lot of the decisions the players made this game were quite...unsound, to say the least, but luck was on their side and even though we all thought the Inn fire would be their end, it wasn't. The dice are a strange and whimsical mistress.
What was really cool about this game was that by the end, they found a justification for all they had done: in need of a larger scheme to give them some sense of direction, they considered the possibility of becoming a well-known band of bandits, pulling off great schemes (their next target being the Lord Kell Ironguard himself and his castle) to attract the attention of Renata, the Robber Queen, whose head is worth 10 000£, which would be enough to pay back their debt to the mysterious and so far unseen Traxian & Shift Corporation. So yeah, that's totally why they went on a rampage and assaulted most of the people they met.
How Electric Bastionland Fights Work (I think)
If I remember correctly, I was asked how the multiple attackers rule worked out in practice at the table, and to maybe post some exemple of play about it. Here's a more detailed account of the Toasty Troll fight that should hopefully be helpful.
Ref (Gontran) : Yeah, you should probably check out the other Inn in town-
A. (Barnave) : -I grab his head and smash it on the counter.
Ref : what? Right now? Heh, ok, he'll have to pass a DEX save to avoid your sudden attack. [roll] - Success! He takes a step back when you try and dodge under the counter, reaching for what appears to be a shotgun. Ok, Papi, what do you do?
Jack (Papi) : I-uh-why are you attacking this guy? I'm confused. My guy is confused.
Ref : right. Barnave, what is Merle going to do while this happens? You gave him a sign earlier to be ready.
A. (Barnave) : yeah he'll go hold the door in case others come. I ask Gunthark to come and help us!
Ref : yeah, he's Elina's man though and she's not here. He smiles at you and jumps out the window.
A. (Barnave) : [expletive] this guy. Is this a new round? Can we attack?
Ref : yes. One of the patron draws a knife, he's going to jump you, and Gontran is back up with a shotgun and will shoot you in the face, what do you guys do?
Jack (Papi) : I'll try to wrestle the shotgun out of his hands!
Ref : ok he'll have to pass a STR save, what are you doing, Barnave?
A. (Barnave) : I'll shoot the guy with a knife!
Ref : ok [roll] Gontran passes his save, also Barnave you can roll damage...and you all hear (Elina, you too) the bang from the rifle. The villagers probably heard it too. Elina, what do you do? You guys got maybe 3-5 rounds before the villagers break down the door, if Merle keeps hold of it.
A. (Barnave) : Oops.
Jack (Papi) : I'll keep trying to wrestle the shotgun!
Ref : yeah Gontran shoots in the air but nobody's hurt. Yet. Barnave, the guy with the knife is down and bleeding out. Y'all hear the villagers outside, banging on the door, screaming bloody murder.
Lu (Elina) : I go where Gunthark is, and he'll help me set some building on fire to create a distraction.
Ref : he's in an alley between the Inn and some house.
Lu (Elina) : Ok we set the buildings on fire. Are the villagers taking care of the fire?
Ref : nah it takes a while to light a fire, right now it's not noticeable. In a few rounds.
(To the others) Alright, Gontran's still got his gun, but he's mainly trying to protect himself.
Also the dog keeps biting his ankles.
A. (Barnave) : I'm going to go and break open the trapdoor, shoot the elf.
Ref : there's no elf down there, but three guys looking at you with an angry air.
A. (Barnave) : I shoot them.
Ref : well...you got time to shoot one while the others jump away from view. Papi what do you do?
Jack (Papi) : I'll keep bothering Gontran.
Ref : yeah ok. A. you can roll damage [rolls] ok he's down, also the door breaks open and there's this massive woodcutter dude with an axe. Remember the villagers in Resident Evil 4? Well this guy and his friends are like that. Except, not zombies.
Jack/A. : we jump down the trapdoor!
Lu' (Elina) : I'll pretend to help with the fire (the fire's spreading now right?) to get inside the inn. Grab a bucket of water.
Ref : (to Elina) yeah you can do that, people don't know you were with them. The other two, down there there's like, still two guys with knives, they'll try to stab you [roll, announcing damage, etc.]
Jack/A. : we stab them!
Ref : ok well, you roll your damage, and I'll tell you if it does something special...yeah they're still standing. You see Farwyn a bit further away, down there is like a cave carved out of the rock by the way, some kind of hideout; she's got a crossbow and is trying to load it properly.
Jack/A. : eeeh we keep stabbing.
[A few rounds of stabbing later, everyone is taking STR damage and/or in Critical Damage]
Lu (Elina) : I jump down to help them, with Gunthark. [...]
Yeah that's way more chaotic than the clear, procedural biz I'm picturing when I think about how the game runs. More accurate this way.
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