Castle Redvald - Session 2
Pretty violent session with some divine intervention, faction play, and medium-scale skirmishes.
People Involved
Pizza as Wigric the Barbarian
Jack as Thom the Woody Allen look-alike
GODOG as Matthias the Botanist
And Lu as Melusine the Haberdasher
Fictional People
Garfus, the Priest of the Broken God, died in mysterious circumstances
The Beastmaster and his War Hound Rex, slaughtered by the Horned Ones
The Grey Hand Thieves and their leader, Wells Wellington
What Happened?
• Wigric and Thom recruited Matthias and a bunch of shady-looking thief-types called the Grey Hand, led by one-eyed, grizzled Wells Wellington, and went straight to the dungeon, still in the company of Garfus, the priest from last time, and the unnamed beast master +dog.
• The party headed east and then north, taking some time to re-map and get their bearings before exploring further into the Castle. They found a barnacles-infested chute that leads somewhere down and a secret passage leading back to the entrance area.
• Wigric saw a Masked One contemplating some murals in a corridor, charged at it screaming to Crom and cleaved it in half.
• Further north, they came upon a blue statue of a six-armed god that the Priest zealously smashed with his mace. Thom tried to stop the priest and for that, he was granted a Mole head and claws, a sacred boon on the God's part, who possessed the priest and broke his skull after being all godly about the whole thing.
• Backtracking a bit, the party discovered a room with five horned, pale humanoids with long limbs and razor-sharp teeth and cautiously let them be for now, closing the door to their room after a tense first impression. They tried coming back a bit later and found the room empty, but after finding a bear trap laid for them in an "abandoned" back pack, they decided to find some safer place to explore.
• To the west, they found a room full of horse-headed statues, another room with a large spiked pit, and a shrine to a fat horse-headed laughing god with a monkey playing around the statue. Thom caught the monkey in a bag and fed it rations to keep it calm.
• A large group of Priests of the Broken God arrived in the room of statues, and started smashing everything. When presented with the medallion found on the dead Garfus, they agreed to stay on at least neutral if not friendly terms with the company, so things did not escalate into violence.
• Going back to the Horned Ones room, the party stumbled upon a battle between these and the Masked Insect-Men, and decided to help the former kill the latter "to stay consistent in whom they piss off". The battle went very well, with no losses on the PC's side.
• Realizing after some discussion with the now friendly-ish Horned Ones that these were evil monstrosities from the Deep parts of Castle Redvald, and that they were planning on finding the "Outside" to go and "Show their newfound power to the people under the Sun", they decided to back off and go seek the help of the Priests: these heretics should be destroyed.
• The priests didn't need much convincing (80/20 for any loot found after the battle) and the ensuing battle took place deeper into the Masked Ones lair, who anticipated the PC's betrayal. The next room was a trap, and half the priests (who were in front) were burned by alchemical fire, while the remaining five had to charge to avoid the napalm and fought in another room while the adventurers waited back for the fire to die down.
• A few minutes later, the party joined the fray, only to realize only three of the monstrous men were left alive, and finding a pile of corpses from both sides. The battle was won, but cost the life of the Beastmaster, his Dog, and one of the Thieves. Two of the remaining priests offered to join Wigric and his barbarian god, Crom, having abandoned their faith after realizing their god didn't help them survive this - the party did.
• A Masked One, boiled alive by the Horned Ones, was found dead. Also a lot of treasure, and Burnt-Face, the leader of the horned ones group was also there, smiling in a trance like state. The party ganged up on him and butchered him without facing any resistance, as the strange creature seemingly embraced death with a smile. But hey, there's treasure!
• In addition to a lot of gold, a strange rubbery giraffe in a gass jar, a lot of very valuable gems, and the horned ones long serrated knives made for quite the bountiful booty, enough for everyone to get to level 2 by the end of the session.
What Worked Well
• Michael Mornard over at OD&D Discussions told me how to actually describe dungeons, which is an art that I'm still struggling with (it's particularly complicated when you're making old-school gygaxian maps with little to no empty space), but I felt like this time went better than the first session. In addition, I started doodling the more complex rooms to clarify things for the players - I feel like it's not cheating since it counter-balances the language barrier.
• For medium-scale combat with enough fighters that individual rolls wouldn't be very efficients, I came up on the fly with a method where I just rolled each HD (in d6s) and treated any 5 or 6 as KILLS, two kills took care of 2HD monsters, etc. (doing regular damage to player-characters seemed fair) - I'll probably write the stuff down and add slightly more details (something like 4+ against light armor, 5+ against heavy armor) for later use.
• I'm growing comfortable with just going full ham when roleplaying NPCs and monsters - It's fun for me, and I think it's fun for the players too. I'm not an actor and this is a game first and foremost, so I don't think there's any point in trying hard to do super serious stuff. The serious stuff emerges from longer play, in my experience.
What Could Have Gone Better
• Honestly, I'm pretty happy about this session. Nobody died, there was treasure, monsters, danger, a God, traps... Yeah, great game.
• Maybe my Dungeon is too easy? I'm not sure, I feel like it's fair and maybe a lot of the pre-made adventures I read had things that I wouldn't really be comfortable with writing down myself, even though I gleefuly ran them as-is.
Here's a question for Dungeon Masters out here: do you feel like your home-made stuff is easier than published modules? Why or why not?
People Involved
Pizza as Wigric the Barbarian
Jack as Thom the Woody Allen look-alike
GODOG as Matthias the Botanist
And Lu as Melusine the Haberdasher
Fictional People
Garfus, the Priest of the Broken God, died in mysterious circumstances
The Beastmaster and his War Hound Rex, slaughtered by the Horned Ones
The Grey Hand Thieves and their leader, Wells Wellington
What Happened?
• Wigric and Thom recruited Matthias and a bunch of shady-looking thief-types called the Grey Hand, led by one-eyed, grizzled Wells Wellington, and went straight to the dungeon, still in the company of Garfus, the priest from last time, and the unnamed beast master +dog.
• The party headed east and then north, taking some time to re-map and get their bearings before exploring further into the Castle. They found a barnacles-infested chute that leads somewhere down and a secret passage leading back to the entrance area.
• Wigric saw a Masked One contemplating some murals in a corridor, charged at it screaming to Crom and cleaved it in half.
• Further north, they came upon a blue statue of a six-armed god that the Priest zealously smashed with his mace. Thom tried to stop the priest and for that, he was granted a Mole head and claws, a sacred boon on the God's part, who possessed the priest and broke his skull after being all godly about the whole thing.
• Backtracking a bit, the party discovered a room with five horned, pale humanoids with long limbs and razor-sharp teeth and cautiously let them be for now, closing the door to their room after a tense first impression. They tried coming back a bit later and found the room empty, but after finding a bear trap laid for them in an "abandoned" back pack, they decided to find some safer place to explore.
• To the west, they found a room full of horse-headed statues, another room with a large spiked pit, and a shrine to a fat horse-headed laughing god with a monkey playing around the statue. Thom caught the monkey in a bag and fed it rations to keep it calm.
• A large group of Priests of the Broken God arrived in the room of statues, and started smashing everything. When presented with the medallion found on the dead Garfus, they agreed to stay on at least neutral if not friendly terms with the company, so things did not escalate into violence.
• Going back to the Horned Ones room, the party stumbled upon a battle between these and the Masked Insect-Men, and decided to help the former kill the latter "to stay consistent in whom they piss off". The battle went very well, with no losses on the PC's side.
• Realizing after some discussion with the now friendly-ish Horned Ones that these were evil monstrosities from the Deep parts of Castle Redvald, and that they were planning on finding the "Outside" to go and "Show their newfound power to the people under the Sun", they decided to back off and go seek the help of the Priests: these heretics should be destroyed.
• The priests didn't need much convincing (80/20 for any loot found after the battle) and the ensuing battle took place deeper into the Masked Ones lair, who anticipated the PC's betrayal. The next room was a trap, and half the priests (who were in front) were burned by alchemical fire, while the remaining five had to charge to avoid the napalm and fought in another room while the adventurers waited back for the fire to die down.
• A few minutes later, the party joined the fray, only to realize only three of the monstrous men were left alive, and finding a pile of corpses from both sides. The battle was won, but cost the life of the Beastmaster, his Dog, and one of the Thieves. Two of the remaining priests offered to join Wigric and his barbarian god, Crom, having abandoned their faith after realizing their god didn't help them survive this - the party did.
• A Masked One, boiled alive by the Horned Ones, was found dead. Also a lot of treasure, and Burnt-Face, the leader of the horned ones group was also there, smiling in a trance like state. The party ganged up on him and butchered him without facing any resistance, as the strange creature seemingly embraced death with a smile. But hey, there's treasure!
• In addition to a lot of gold, a strange rubbery giraffe in a gass jar, a lot of very valuable gems, and the horned ones long serrated knives made for quite the bountiful booty, enough for everyone to get to level 2 by the end of the session.
What Worked Well
• Michael Mornard over at OD&D Discussions told me how to actually describe dungeons, which is an art that I'm still struggling with (it's particularly complicated when you're making old-school gygaxian maps with little to no empty space), but I felt like this time went better than the first session. In addition, I started doodling the more complex rooms to clarify things for the players - I feel like it's not cheating since it counter-balances the language barrier.
• For medium-scale combat with enough fighters that individual rolls wouldn't be very efficients, I came up on the fly with a method where I just rolled each HD (in d6s) and treated any 5 or 6 as KILLS, two kills took care of 2HD monsters, etc. (doing regular damage to player-characters seemed fair) - I'll probably write the stuff down and add slightly more details (something like 4+ against light armor, 5+ against heavy armor) for later use.
• I'm growing comfortable with just going full ham when roleplaying NPCs and monsters - It's fun for me, and I think it's fun for the players too. I'm not an actor and this is a game first and foremost, so I don't think there's any point in trying hard to do super serious stuff. The serious stuff emerges from longer play, in my experience.
What Could Have Gone Better
• Honestly, I'm pretty happy about this session. Nobody died, there was treasure, monsters, danger, a God, traps... Yeah, great game.
• Maybe my Dungeon is too easy? I'm not sure, I feel like it's fair and maybe a lot of the pre-made adventures I read had things that I wouldn't really be comfortable with writing down myself, even though I gleefuly ran them as-is.
Here's a question for Dungeon Masters out here: do you feel like your home-made stuff is easier than published modules? Why or why not?
The players' map, curtesy of Pizza
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