Crew of The Traitor: Sessions 6 & 7

 

Session 6:

The ship arrives in Oozeport and is put into drydock to be properly cleaned. The crew spreads out and looks for a fence to sell the finery that Bluebell stole from the silver talon kobolds as a priestess. Unfortunately this lead them to meet a criminal ooze named “buckle” who attacked when the party decided to back out of the deal. Fortunately, puddle caused chaos with a use of a charm spell and turned the criminals on each other.

Bluebell offered to the only survivor, Beathan Macphade the minotaur, a place in their crew.

Before heading into the jungle Beathan joins the party and after some challenges, hiding from jungle orcs and an attack from a tiger they arrived with no casualties at the hermit’s home.

 

Session 7:

The party finally found the hermit in the jungle, a featherfolk who had taken up residence in the ruins of an old human settlement. It seems he did have a map, a sailing map to a city beyond the edge of the world, it was tattooed on “his skin” a dead kobold. The featherfolk demanded  a trade of magic for the map. The party parted with the floating vest for the map and instructions on how to return to the city of oozeport quickly. 

Upon returning to Oozeport the crew began to make preparations to leave, Ubo sought out additionally supplies. An old friend of the crew, a constructed named “Ringo”, something of a mud sorcerer, met with them as they lowered the ship back into the water. The crew welcomed their old friend into the crew for the last leg of their journey.

Ubo, meanwhile had found supplies and ultimately brokered an alliance with the Pink Talon kobold tribe by marrying into the clan, brokering a deal for supplies and a pretty new wife for himself who joined the crew.

The crew of the traitor headed east, to the edge of the known world. They were met with a terrifying obstacle as their ship suddenly stopped. A massive giant rose from the water and attacked the crew. The crew sprung into action and fended the giant off with magic and steel, striking it down and freeing their ship. Taking trophies and magical components from the giant the crew sailed on, past the edge of the map and towards their destination. Another obstacle presented itself, a storm. They fought against it and saved their cabin boy, Mepo, from being swept overboard and lost.

When the storm cleared, in the distance, they could see a city, rising from the ocean in humanity’s defiance. At its tallest tower like a second sun, a brilliant light could be seen clearly even from miles away at sea. Kasey declared they had found the shard and as a cheer went up, she reminded them that its not theirs until its sold.

They docked at one of the many stone docking structures and began to make preparations to explore the city. As they began to work out their landing party one of the crew’s goblin gunners pointed out a ship on the horizon. As kasey looked in her telescope she recognized the flag, The Lust of Revenge, the ship of Studs Reid, a cruel man who uses gemheart oozes as weapon and kept his crew of beautiful tongueless women under magical compulsion. Kasey told the crew they couldn’t beat him in a battle at sea but might have a enough strength on board to fight him in the city if they were clever and careful. The crew agreed that abandoning the Disgrace of Delight would be the best bet and trying to steal the Lust of Revenge later or try to find another method of leaving.

 

Class: The legend

Art by Lex Cazimi

     You are a story that is just beginning. A tale that will be told around the fires long after your life has been extinguished. Your deeds and adventures will be recounted by people you will never even dream of meeting in places that you will never even know exist. You will be the subject of poems and  songs even when your people have faded into history. You are a Legend and your story has just begun.

     I'll start by saying that this class is a cut above those presented in the DCCRPG rulebook. I know this. I wrote this class based on an old post that has since disappeared into the internet, a game someone ran a long time ago where the players played a classless D&D game with these rules called things like "A legend never dies" or "The Legend, yet to be Written". I run DCC so i tried a sort of classless DCC, mostly out of curiosity for what it would feel like. 

    So I ran a game that took place in the early age of my setting and took the events of that game and did my best to look at them from the perspective of thousands of years of retelling the events of that game over and over. fighting off a pack of stone wolves became battling a horde of lycanthropes. Jumping across a small crevice became leaping the span of a canyon (the one the crevice eventually grew into), finding a stone that fell from the sky became hunting a fallen angry god. The sword that became the legendary "Stone Splitter" eventually appeared in a later game and everyone felt what it meant to hold this magic sword who's creation the players had all witnessed.

    What this game was really good for, was creating myths in the setting that the players felt attached to in future games in the setting. They had a point of reference and investment in those tales and legends. I really liked this, it got the players even more invested in the setting. It worked in part because I have a really consistent pool of players and I recognize that this wouldn't really work if you run for people who aren't going to be at your table in the next game after this one.

How to use this class:

    I make no claim, nor will I pretend, that this class is balanced against the others in the rule book. I'll also openly say that there is zero reason you can't do the same thing with the classes in the core book. There is no reason you can't run a game with the Warrior, Wizard, and Thief as presented and spin their stories into the distant future as legend. The reason for this class is to emulate that heroes of myth often fit into more than one of the classes when you look at their stories, so I made the modular Legend Class. What I don't think you should do with this class is use it as part of a game where you use a funnel. 

    There are two ways I recommend using this class:

 

Jason and the Argonauts:  

    In this story we have a who's who of greek myth showing up here. Jason, Orpheus Admetus, Erytus, Echion, Mopsus, Oileus, Philas, Idmon, Castor, Pollux, & Heracles. Chances are you recognize at least one name on that list. when you look at it closely you see that these people are demi-gods, heroes of their own stories, kings, seers, and princes. These are all people that are a cut above the rest in the world of heroics and adventure. This is how the legend role should be utilized. Everyone is a legend, gathering together and setting out on an impossible task worthy of their titles. This is the most straight forward way to use it, everyone is a legend and the story they tell will shape the myths of the future generations.

 

The Odyssey:  

    The Trojan war was, much like The Argo, an assembly of a who's who of the heroes of the era. The journey home, however, was less so. Odysseus, our sole survivor and main character of the story is the focal point. He has strong supporting characters around him, without a doubt, but he's still the focus of the story. In this version of using The Legend we would see everyone roll up a standard character, personally I would give them more heroic stats to back up the idea that they can at least roll with a legend. Then, each player makes their own legend character. Each session a different player puts their normal character aside and plays their legend. This changes each session. The catch is that each person is playing the "same" legend, but much like how myths are conflicting and often interpreted as having different epithets to explain why they are so different in various myths. If someone's legend dies? no, they didn't, because it was just that epithet that died, the others will live on. I particularly like this version because it leaves one character as the focus of the myths you're weaving into the future of the setting but still gets the touch of all the other players, not just in their Legends, but in how they, as the supporting cast, interact with the different aspects of the Legend.

 

 

    So pick up your sword, your song, and your destiny, and write tales that will be told near the fire long after your dice have crumbled to dust.

 

 

 

 

 The Legend

 

 

Ritual Magic and extra spellcaster options

     Playing a wizard in DCC can be brutal. At first level you're packing darn near a 50% failure rate on your magic. Tack on that you probably aren't wearing armor and you're likely not the strongest or most agile person in your party's lineup and a lot of your early levels are spent ducking for cover or shooting a bow into combat. At these levels you might question why you took this class while the rockstar of a warrior is doling out deeds and the thief is opening a lot of fights with critical hits. Wizards have the mechanic of spellburn to support them at early levels, and this can certainly help, but the trade off is that if you use it too much you become dead weight to the party. meanwhile the warrior, cleric, and thief can slug it out in melee and then have their hp recovered with a few lay on hands. for a lot of people, myself included, it feels like the wizard's thing is that they get one big spell every few sessions. To me, that doesn't feel great. It feels like playing the wizard means you get to do one big spell every now and then and spend the next few sessions being carted around in a wheelbarrow. What I want to offer in this post is a way for wizards to just eek out a little bit more of an edge that stops them from losing spells constantly and turning themselves into a mummy to be allowed to cast in the first place.

Art by: Lex Cazimi

 

Rituals

    The DCCRPG offers one such solution called ritual magic on page 124. This section details a lot of cool things, sacrifice, circles of mages, extended casting times, automatic corruption, and rare ingredients. It feels pretty complete and flavorful. It also feels like a lot of things that aren't relevant to an adventuring wizard. On that list two of those things feel like something that an adventuring wizard could pull off easily: the automatic corruption, a great and flavorful option; the rare components, which an adventuring wizard should be drowning in... in theory. Over the years, at my table, listening to tales of other tables, and listening to live plays I've found that these are often forgotten or overlooked because detailing what you rip off monsters and carry around is kinda a pain.

 

    What if we re-defined how rituals worked? Let us say that you can make the appropriate sacrifices, but the appropriate incense, and spend days fasting while preparing the spell and then not have it immediately go off? What I am suggesting is that wizards should be allowed to do work to gain bonuses to their spells ahead of time and then use that bonus later. A single ritual that cannot be added to or bonus altered until the spell is cast. Performing another ritual doesn't give you a new bonus, it just wastes time and resources.

 

Ley Lines

    Ley lines are energy that supposedly flows through mystically important places or places with dense population. These lines of energy are living, they are made up of the same baseline of magical energy that exists within all living things. By spending 1 turn studying the ley line energy in a place a wizard may roll a d20. on a result other than a 1, they gain +1d3 to all spell checks for the next 24 hours. on the result of a 1, they still roll the d3 but subtract that from checks. These ley lines are alive, maybe not in the way you or I understand life, but they do live and they might not like being used as a source. Each consecutive day a wizard draws on the ley lines as a source their chance of failure increases by +1. If a wizard uses the ley lines for 3 days in a row then they risk angering them on a 1-3 on the d20, instead of 1.

 

Extended Casting Time

    This one just outright disagrees with what the book says but I think that the best thing about DCC is that it's so easily home brewed. Under my rules and at my table, a spellcaster may extend the casting time of a spell by the same increment that it normally follows. for example if a spell has a casting time of one action, a character can use their additional actions, including their movement, to add their level modifier a number of times equal to the number of times they extended the casting. For example, if a level 1wizard casts magic missile, which takes 1 action to cast, and spends the entire round doing nothing but casting that spell, giving up their movement, they would add +2, once for being first level and a second time for spending their other action. Lets say they spend the entire next round building up power, this would be a +4 when they release it at the end of the second round. Once power is built in a spell then the wizard must cast it, they cannot hold onto it forever. 

    I like this because it makes the extended casting time viable to an adventuring wizard and gives low level wizards a way to mitigate some of the failure chance without dumping their (likely already low) stats into nothing. This certainly has a flaw, a wizard could just declare at any point "I start to build power for this spell" and then send it off. It's certainly a flaw and requires good judgement and trust that it won't be abused. A penalty to avoid this could be introduced, such as building up more than a +10 to a spell causes corruption or hp damage.

 

Signature Spells

    This one feels like the bread and butter of my table to make wizards feel good. What this means is wizards, goblins, elves and other non divine spell casters select one of their spells which they are better at casting that the rest of their spells. The caster adds their level + ability mod x 2. at each level they gain one additional signature spell from the list of spells they could cast before leveling up. this signature spell cannot be selected from a new spell the character just gained on level up.

Alternative Signature spell: I've seen someone do something similar to the Signature spell but it would be cast at +1d, gaining +1d at each level, up to a d30. once they have a spell being cast using a  d30, they pick up a second signature spell that starts to increase, granting them a second signature spell.

 

Arcane Feedback

    This one is lifted directly from The Index card RPG but works really well for DCC. It just means that a wizard places a d4 in front of them with the 1 facing up. This is added to their spellcasting checks. Each round that they successfully cast a spell they increase the number on the die. once it reaches 4 and they have cast a spell with this +4 bonus they make a roll under check on their spellcasting ability or lose the ability to cast spells for 1d4 rounds. Alternatively you can make them suffer a corruption on a failure.

    I really like this one because it really doesn't matter that much to a really high level wizard but bolsters a low level wizard and encourages them to cast early and often with a small boost to their spell checks.

 

Sacrifice

    The book already covers this one and it doesn't feel like something an adventurers have ready access to. It grants +1 per 5 HD of the creature sacrificed. I think this is fun and interesting but what if that sacrifice is willing? In the netflix version of The Witcher we get this cool scene where one of the mages has a person step up, get sacrificed, and turned into a massive fireball which makes all the other mages gasp in horror. To me, this sounds like something that a wizard might be able to do (maybe after researching a specific version of their spell?) to bolster their own spells. A willing sacrifice might even be worth a bigger bonus than an unwilling one?      

 

Familiars

    One last thing, every wizard gets a familiar. Familiars are fun, they are interesting, they are sources of potential struggle and danger. I know we have a spell called find familiar and the book isn't 100% clear on if a wizard starts play with one. I've seen people say that they have to take the spell, I've seen people say they just get it. It's one of those things that is interpreted differently by different judges. At my table, every wizard starts with a familiar.

 

 Wizards in DCC are meant to feel like they are brimming with barely contained power they don't fully control. They aren't meant to feel safe and stable. I feel like this is why we have corruption, misfires, and mercurial magic. It makes sense that casting is difficult at low levels, the wizard just started their career, but it doesn't feel good to blow your roll to cast all your spells and then stand around and watch everyone else wreck house. As always, let the dice fall where they may but maybe give the wizard a chance to have fun with everyone else at the table.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crew of The Traitor: Sessions 4 & 5

 

Session 4:

The party investigated some of the mystery surrounding the mudpit before going in. the reason the peace keepers were here was due to some disappearances. A mysterious bronze sword that makes the bearer go mad, a bronze ring that draws in the sanity of anyone who wears it… they took this information and went into the mudpit.

After dealing with some of the local authorities they managed to get into the digsite where the sword was found and locate an ancient book, one that detailed rituals and rites of an unknown and ancient god of humanity. Alistar’s god gave him a healthy warning that the book could be extreme danger but nothing more. They set out to leave the mudpit.

On the return trip from the pit they were attacked by strange kobold’s wearing RED who killed other kobolds, the Red Eye gang. Worrying about overwhelming odds the party fled into Silver Talon territory. Unfortunately the Silver Talons demanded bluebell as payment for safe travel to the surface. Curious about where this was going, Bluebell agreed and told the crew she would see them on the ship soon.

When they returned to the surface Ubo and Alistar returned to the ship and began to discuss locating the captain, rallying more of the crew to search for her. 

Bluebell was taken into what she was able to recognize as the beginnings of a dungeon forming and lead to a collection of human women who lived in the lap of luxury inside a newly forming temple. She learned from them that the kobolds provide for all their needs as long as they pretend to be priestesses of the temple. Bluebell tried to warn them that this place would be a dungeon soon and that they should leave with her. They declined and bluebell pretended to receive visions that lead her and a kobold war party to the surface. Unfortunately this raised tensions between the local goblins and this army of kobolds who came to the surface. The ensuing fight torched a street and ended with the death of 100 kobolds and 2 goblins, a fair trade by kobold standards. 

Bluebell managed to escape the initial explosion by climbing up the side of a building and throwing herself into an open window. She scurried back to the ship and decided to lay low, having sparked a pretty major political incident here in Drebas.

Session 5:

The party searches for the captain in earnest after some prodding from Alistar. They manage to track down a crime boss who claims to have the captain, a goblin known as “astounding”. Ubo doesn't trust her and demands proof of the captain’s imprisonment before they agree to take on her debts. Astounding agrees and shows the party the captain’s foot. Still unconvinced Ubo talks his way into the dungeon below to see the captain herself. 

The party realizes that they can ill afford to pay the captain’s debt and agree to do some work for Astounding until the debt is cleared. They agree to kill a goblin known as Supreme to knock 500 gold off the debt. They head to the tavern where Supreme likes to wet his whistle and locate him. They instantly flip on Astounding and lead Supreme and his milita back to Astounding’s hideout. After a raid on the hideout the party recovered the captain and returned to the ship with only a couple casualties among the milita.

The Captain, missing a hand and a foot now, reveals that she got good intel, there is a man in the jungles near oozeport and he has a map to the shard of radiance tattooed on his back. The crew said this sounded pretty stupid but trust the captain as she had yet to lead them wrong.

Magic Sword: Glade Slayer

Glade Slayer

+1 Planar alloy Chaotic Dagger

5 int (communicates with simple urges)

bane of Unicorns: allied battling against bane gain +2 bonus to all saving throws and morale checks within 100'

punish interlopers and those who interfere

Power: detect sloping passages within 60 ft

attunement
: survive with half ability scores for 3 weeks

designed to function as a tool in addition to being a weapon (carving and general utility knife)

Planar Alloy: highest attribute modifier as an additional bonus to attack and damage rolls (chaotic characters only)

Glade Slayer was created by the mortal man, Vome Magnus the gatebreaker. He earned this title when he took up this dagger to break into the sevenfold glade seeking the well of immortality. He slew it’s guardians, a pack of unicorns, hunting them to near extinction. He created this dagger through dark ritual that involved soaking it in the blood of a unicorn foal.

Sevris was slain by his right hand man, a minion of little note, when he attempted to draw more power from the dagger through a ritual that drained half of his bodily and mental fortitude. It was in this weakened state that his minion slew him in his sleep.

The dagger appears again when the hag, Mother Yisren unearthed it while collecting obsidian for her divination. At first she used it as a normal knife, cutting cord, carving charms, etching bones. In time the dagger would start to urge her to slay people coming into her area of the woods, tax collectors, merchants, visitors seeking her help. Eventually she was burned at the stake and the blade was nowhere to be found.

Herbarium of Hodas vol 1

     This week I wanted to post a few plants that are unique to the setting of Hodas. These are all things that we rolled up and work-shopped together to figure out how they fit into the setting and what they might do. I really like that Graves & Groves included some unique plants in their book, its fun, it's cool, and I figured I could share some from my setting.

 

“Last Lesson”

-Mushroom

-grows on dead adventurers

-Black with orange frills on underside

-only grows in darkness

-1” to 10” tall

-1d5 on corpse

-may have it’s frills removed and pressed, releasing a liquid which, when mixed with pine tea and powdered hard tack creates a potion of healing, 1d8+1 per HD of dead adventurer

These tend to be found by adventurers and turned into potions with supplies that are both common and plentiful. Most novice adventurers with even a passing knowledge of herbalism knows the process of making the potion from these, despite their rarity. It has lead to a superstition among adventurers to keep bundles of fresh pine in their packs which is good practice either way due to the many uses of pine. 

 

Crimson Thistle bloom

Annual

Large Deciduous tree

100' (30.5 m)

main color: green (leaves)

accent: red (fruit)

contains euphoric compounds

Treats: Parasites (ointment made from juice of fruit)

Poison: Topical (raw seeds, 1 hour incubation, Hypoxemia)

This tree flowers in the spring with sparse but beautiful crimson blossoms. The summer brings a thorned fruit that is poisonous if consumed but if juiced it can be used to prevent and remove skin parasites such as ticks, leeches, or lice but not limited to them. The fruit must be handled carefully when being processed as the seeds brushing against skin will cause hypoxemia. Crimson thistle blooms are found dotting the land and are not often cut down due to the benefits they impart

 

Pyro-pine

Biennial

Large Coniferous Tree

80' (24.4 m) growth max

Green

Orange

crushed plant attracts monsters

Treats Ulcers (Infusion made from juice)

poison (ingestion tincture made from juice, 5 hour incubation, Neurotoxin)

The pyro-pine's name is a little misleading. Nothing about this plant has anything to do with fire. It's name instead comes from the dull orange color of it's cones which can only be found once every 2 years. This is much like any other coniferous tree with two distinct differences. first the sap may be made into an infusion to treat ulcers when drank. however the seeds of the cones can be made into an tincture that kills slowly and has a very distinct flavor, making it difficult to hide or use effectively but difficult to detect if the imbiber doesn't know the signs right away. when used in poison it's used in places where the Pyro-pine isn't native and hidden in a beer or a mead.

 

The Granite Glade of the Hybrid Lycanthrope

     I originally wanted to post another chapter of The Crew of the Traitor this week but I did that last week. So I went ahead and dug around for thing's I've written for my games. In the post earlier this week I talked about a love of one page dungeons to have on the ready and today's post is exactly that, a one page dungeon called "The Granite Glade of the Hybrid Lycanthrope". The title is courtesy of a great book, Tomb of Adventure Design. One of my favorite uses for this book is to roll up a title and write a short dungeon based on that title.

 

Granite Glade of the Hybrid Lycanthrope 

Let the Dice Fall Where They May

“Let the dice fall where they may” 

Few lines in the DCCRPG hit this hard to me; it’s simple, but it's a powerful philosophy of play. The section is short - it explains that you should let the dice dictate combat, and that the players will learn to fear and trust the objectivity of combat. It goes hand in hand with another phrase I love: “The dice tell the story.” I think the idea that the dice are ultimately the final arbiter of the tale is so important to games. I would like to talk for a bit about what that means to me and how I let my games live (and sometimes die) on this concept.

Players Roll All the Dice

    For starters, I don't roll dice at my table. I haven't for years now. I pick players and have them roll the dice for me in order around the table, out in the open. This does a lot of things to change how the game feels. When I tell a player, "Bad guy is attacking you. Would you like to roll against yourself, or pass it on to the next player?" it means that the player is now thinking about who's next to them. If they want to risk the roll against themselves when they feel they are on a hot streak that night. If they want the next guy over, who has rolled and killed more PCs at the table than anyone else, to be the one to roll the dice. Sometimes the players all work together to pass until it gets to the guy who hasn't rolled above a 5 all night. It creates a little game within the game. More importantly, it keeps everyone's focus on the table. At any moment you could be asked to roll an attack, damage, save, check, anything for one of the bad guys or NPCs. Similar to Popcorn initiative, this keeps everyone paying attention. I won't pretend to be the only person who has the players roll dice for me or even the creator of it, because I myself got it from a guy I played with back in the early 2000s. What I will say is that I think more Judges should do it.

 

Trust Through Transparency

Another great way this changes the game is that it means players will have so much more trust in you as the Judge. There is no screen hiding your rolls, there are no secret numbers, no guessing if they really succeeded or failed, or if the bad guy really rolled several critical hits in a row. The dice are all out in the open, they can see what's happening. It's not just combat either - this applies to everything else that happens. The rolls the NPC makes to resist the charm spell? They see the result. They know what happened. The roll for the number of rounds until help arrives? They see it, they know how bad or good the situation really is, and they trust the story to unfold appropriately. This brings the table together with lighthearted jabs of "why did you make them resist my spell?" and "good thing you rolled low for his initiative, dude!" The table feels it more if they are rolling the dice instead of me secretly rolling behind a screen and telling them "oh yeah, help is 1 round away."

 

Judges Toolbox 

This might feel like it removes a lot of tools a Judge can use to keep things dynamic or the benefits of keeping things shrouded in mystery, but I offer that there are still ways to keep things close to your chest while doing this. You don't have to tell the players the bonuses to attack or saves or anything when you ask them to roll the dice. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't; it keeps them on their toes to be a little inconsistent here. I don't always tell my players why they are rolling, I'll just say "hey, can you roll me a d20 and add 15?" It has a similar effect to rolling behind a screen but maybe even more. They hear that +15 and everyone starts to sweat about what on earth has that big bonus that they don't know about, even worse if the roll is also high. Some things I pretty much always tell the party are things like AC target numbers, because I think after a few rounds of combat they should be able to pin it down anyway, or I tell them the bonus of the attacks against them just to keep the flow of combat going smoother. Again, it's not every time; sometimes I like to keep the mystery to keep them on their toes.

 

The Power of Less Rolls 

Another great way to keep the dice as the important arbiter of the story is to use them less. That might sound contradictory, but hear me out. If you call for rolls less, the ones that happen will feel more important. The way I run at my table, I generally don't ask for rolls unless there is a significant penalty for failure. Anything I would put below a DC 5 generally doesn't get rolled. Weirdly, Kevin Siembieda of Palladium Games is a big influence on this one for me. His skill system is percent based, but he straight up says that if the players aren't being rushed, in danger, or on some kind of time crunch, don't make them roll. Pathfinder has something similar in the form of taking 10 or taking 20. Taking 10 is about taking the time to do something correctly; it can be done quickly, like in a single action, but you are following the old adage, "Slow is smooth, smooth is fast." Taking 20 is doing something over and over, failing many times until you get a 20, and it cannot be done quickly in a single round (unless you have the proper feat chains or class features, or something along those lines). The combination of these things has really colored how often I'm calling for rolls at my table. This gives a lot more weight to the dice when they are rolled. When they are rolled, the players know that it matters.

Some of my players read this blog, so I can't give away all the secrets I have behind the curtain, but there are a lot of ways to keep the same old Judge's tricks in your back pocket while doing this out in the open rolling and letting the dice tell the story. You just have to get a little creative with how you're applying those proven tools of a Judge. The other flaw in this is that we open ourselves to meta gaming. Players might be tempted to act on the information they know based on the open rolls. Meta gaming is a tough subject and talking about tackling that should be its own article. For now I will say that the trust needs to go both ways at the table for this to really shine. 

 

Prep, Chaos, and Style 

I'll also say that I know this isn't for everyone. I run a very fluid "rule of cool" table. I don't write down a ton of things about monsters and bad guys, I run very off the cuff, and I have a little notepad where I track numbers across combat and another where I take down fast session notes. My prep consists of vaguely recalling what was happening last week and consuming fantasy media for at least an hour before the session, and then diving in and running mostly off the cuff while using pre-written adventures occasionally or pulling things from other sources to have threats or rooms. I love pulling out one-page dungeons to have material. I'm sure a lot of Judges would call this method of prep chaotic, messy, and not at all helpful. I think that is fair. It's not for everyone. Even with this, I think this rule of letting the dice be the final arbiter and rolling in the open can be very good for a lot of tables, just not all of them. Remember, only you and your players really know and decide what works at your table, not some guy on a blog. But if you're interested maybe let your players roll against themselves or each other next session.

 

At the end of the day, the dice don’t just decide combat, they tell the story. When you trust them, and let your players trust them too, the table becomes a place where everyone shares in the suspense and the joy of whatever fate the dice decree.

The Reconciliant

Art by: Lex Cazimi

This week I workshopped an undead using one of my favorite tools,
The Monster Extractor 2. The result is a strange type of undead that will not rest until it reconciles with its enemy. Heavily inspired by the revenant, it acts as a kind of inversion: instead of seeking vengeance, it seeks peace. That twist creates its own challenges for an adventuring party. Encountering one can turn into an unexpected side quest, or a haunting distraction from whatever the party thought they were doing.

 

The Reconciliant  

Crew of the Traitor: Sessions 2 & 3

Bluebell by Lex Cazimi

 

Session 2:

The party arrives at the jade key, a small island country full of “half men”, short humans who live in hillsides and live a mostly simple lives living off the land. They realize the man the crew has been transporting is a slave trader and quickly cut him down. 

The half men turn to Kasey and the crew and after discussion, determine that they are not a threat and are not slave traders. Kasey realizes this is where some of the famous drugs across Hodas come from and sets to work brokering a trade with the half men. 

The crew is invited to the mayor’s home and Kasey senses that the woods nearby, which they have been forbidden to enter, likely contains the storehouses for the tobacco and hallucinogenic moss that is popular in the major cities, she asks the crew to distract the mayor while she checks it out. 

After some hours the crew grows worried that Kasey is in danger, having not returned from the woods. They use Cherub as some sort of scent hound and track down the captain, just as they notice an elf in a nearby tree keeping watch. Bluebell and Ubo springs into action and fill the guard with knives before he can shout out a warning. The party collects the captain’s wounded form and retreats into the town.

After some convincing the party is let into the home of my mayor who calls for a healer. Kasey is stabilized but the healer wants to keep an eye on her overnight. The crew hears horns in the nearby woods and quickly scoops up kasey and retreats to the ship.

Fortunately the party had the foresight to tell the rest of the crew to be ready to go and the ship escapes into the night waters as alarms are raised back in the jade Key

Session 3:

The party has made most of its journey to the citystate of Drebas. Kasey has family there and insists that they can lay low for a month while her overcaptain, Blacksoul Harris, assume’s she’s dead with her crew. 

On their trip the notice a dreadnought, a large warship from the Moyros navy. Moyros is known for its aggression towards pirates and cutthroat attitude. Kasey asks for a vote to determine course of action, flee the ship approaching them, fight, or try to con them.

The party discusses claiming this is a plague ship, trying to bribe the captain of the other ship, or flee. Ultimately they decide to flee and are greeted by the small defense boats of Drebas. These small canoes with fire lances on the front swarm and make quick work of the much larger pursuing vessel. 

The Disgrace of Delight and her crew are escorted into the port. Kasey leaves the ship to speak to the harbor master and her family, telling the crew its more or less a holiday but stay out of trouble. Hopeless and Dishonest are to watch the ship and remain aboard, overseeing maintenance and ensuring nothing happens to their ship.

The party scatters and has some interesting experiences. Bluebell is caught being a cutpurse and narrowly avoids a lynch mob. Ubo pulls his own little heist, stealing the city’s census. Alister sets up shop in the market as a tattoo artist, he gets some insight about peace keepers from last bastion being here and being a nuisance, not doing their job and just drinking instead of investigating the digsite nearby called “the mud pit”

The party eventually meets back up and shares this information. This massive dig site employs nearly a third of the city and likely contains valuables, they debate doing the peace keepers jobs for them and look to gain entrance into the digsite. 

They meet with a local kobold gang known as the blue sash gang, who adorn their sashes in buttons and trinkets. Their leader, Yay-yap, agrees to get the party into the mudpit if they kill the three peace keepers, who killed some of his gang for “no reason”. The party agrees and will bring back the peace keeper’s helmets as proof.

The party learns the Peace keepers are staying at The Jolly Boar and make their way over. Ubo stands in the alleyway and tells a loud story about how he beat some peace keepers. This rouses the easily angered small tyrants who come rushing into the alley, swords drawn. Ubo runs and manages to climb the side of a building. As the Peace Keepers run past Alister and Bluebell the slowest one is tripped by Alister and Bluebell quickly drives her dagger through his body, pinning his lifeless form to the ground. 

One of the peace keepers picks up a rock and grazes Ubo, nearly killing him. The other seems unable to copy the behavior of his companion and instead shouts insults. The timely intervention of Alister and Bluebell saves Ubo from any further rocks as Bluebell drives her dagger through yet another man like a knife through butter. In the distraction, Ubo leaps onto the other man’s back and places a garote wire over his head, pulling hard enough the crush his windpipe and bring him down.

Unfortunately none of the soldiers brought their helmets and someone will have to go into the Inn to get them. 

Ubo tells Allister and Bluebell to deal with the bodies, he’s going to get the helmets. He heads into the inn and the owner, a goblin named Thirsty, sits him down with a drink and looks at his wound, asking him what happened to the Peace keepers. Ubo is not terribly convincing as the innkeeper’s wife, Ghastly, comes out and absolutely does not buy the story that the peace keepers vanished around the corner. She asks if they will find bodies when they go into the alley. Causing Ubo to rush outside and check. 

Out in the alleyway Bluebell and Alister realize that the nearest entrance to the sewer is on the street out in front of the inn, too busy to dump there. They stash the bodies in some barrels nearby and look around for another entrance. They are stopped by a goblin who asks if they are lost. They ask for an entrance to the sewers as they have lost their keys. The goblin doesn’t question what the keys are too but instead points them to the jolly boar and steps into a nearby archway to very clearly watch them. Bluebell heads back to the inn, careful of the watching goblin, Alister continues looking for another entrance to the sewers, eventually finding a culvert that leads into the sewers. He heads back for bluebell.

Inside Ubo eventually convinces the inn keeper and his wife that whatever tragedy befell the Peace keepers wont become their problem. Ghastly tells him that there had better be no evidence and drags her husband into the back room. Ubo misses the hint that he’s supposed to clean up the evidence inside the inn and continues to drink his drink.

Alister and Bluebell start to take the bodies to the culvert and pass the watching goblin. On their second trip he stops them, asking what is in the barrels. Alister, who brought a second barrel gets ready for a fight and Bluebell spills her guts, explaining that the Pease Keepers attacked them. After a tense moment the goblin leaves and tells them he didn’t see anything. They dump the last body and return to the inn where Ubo is comfortably drinking with the 3 helmets nearby. 

After explaining himself, Bluebell the rogue explains that they were supposed to get rid of the evidence. They take the helmets and after some scrambling they take the footlocker from the room of the peace keepers returning to the sewers. 

The blue sash are impressed and Yay-yap agrees to help the party into the mudpit after insulting Ubo’s two kobold and a crocodile Black Back gang. Ubo swiftly knocks out Yay Yap and asks if anyone else wants to fight. Another blue sash named Snarl Yip comes forward and knocks out Ubo. The new leader of the Blue sash gang agrees to honor the agreement, it will take two days to arrange entry into the mudpit.