Telengard sessions 14 & 15

Oof, getting behind.

Session 14 was a hoot.  The dwarf, paladin, and newly raised assassin were joined by a monk (Willis the cleric remained a statue).  The party was intent on delving deeper into the Scriptorium.  They descended one level deeper, and found a library, filled with shelves of books and scrolls.  The center of library was open and looked down on a scriptorium below, filled with small writing podiums and stools for copyists.  The library shelves were infested with huge book worms, which leapt out when the books were disturbed but did not prove to be too dangerous.  A swarm of moths, attracted by torch light and throwing themselves suicidally onto the flame until it was extinguished, proved to be a greater danger, for when a new torch was lit, the party found themselves surrounded by shadows.  They fought pretty well but the paladin turned them, and then the party descended to the scriptorium level from which the shadows seemed to come.  There they fought more shadows, and again the encounter ended when the paladin turned them successfully.  The assassin was badly weakened but otherwise the party felt confident and went even deeper. The next level was divided into several rooms.  The first door they found had a warning sign: “Danger, lich at work”.

now you might think that this would dissuade a party of 4th level characters.  The dwarf and assassin began to fall back when the paladin and assassin decided their best bet was to kick in the door and attack!

Inside they found only a skull and some dust on a table, and an otherwise mostly intact room.  However the dust began to swirl and the skull floated up, and the demilich assumed a wraith-like form.

My thinking as a DM was: 1) they won’t open this door, might as well put a lich in there; 2) shit they opened the door, give ‘em one more chance, make it a demilich so they can at least retreat safely; 3) fuck, they’re fighting a demilich.

The wraith form drained the paladin of a level and at that point even he began to fall back.  However the monk’s player decided that monks were the suck and he’d throw away his character trying to steal whatever he could from the lich’s lair.   He actually made off with a nice haul of treasure but was quickly drained of all his levels.  The party fled while the monk made his ‘heroic’ effort, and returned with a de-stoned cleric, who managed to turn the monk-wraith.  They party avoided the lich level (taking a different stairwell down to the next level).  They were now on the ‘ground floor’ and fought group of trolls, defeating them and winning the statue of Garmin the magic user they’d been seeking.

Of course they needed to push their luck and went down one more level, to the ‘basement’, where they found three dungeon cells and some torture equipment.  They freed a shedu from one cell, who rewarded them with rich treasures; then they checked the next cell, and the assassin found himself unable to resist the urge to ppen the cell and free… a mind flayer.  The party won initiative and between the dwarf and paladin dealt a huge amount of damage, causeing the mind flayer to flee. For now. The last cell had a purple worm, which the party left alone.  End of session.  The dwarf, who is given to having occasional prophetic dreams, dreamt of the mind flayer, riding a purple worm and driving a group of chained peasant before him…

Session 15 saw the party, now almost complete (rogue, assassin, paladin, dwarf, and wizard all present) deciding to look for another statue — this time Matrim, which they knew was supposed to be in the Jomsburg, the HQ of the town guard (The Hellbrand Fireguard).  Bogron the barbarian retired and a wizard joined the party.

Long story short, I used the excellent OPD “The shifting crypt.” (I’d like to thank Eric Jones for writing that…but he left no contact info, just his RPGnow link.) The party fought ghouls, an undead Valkyrie, and a wight, and although the assassin died again –when the dwarf sprang a trap– they managed to find the statue and some magic armor, as well as the Valkyrie’s magic spear.)

New monster:

 Brunhild the Shieldmaiden

AC 16 (magic weapon to hit); HD 6; damage d6+1 (magic spear +1, which returns after a throw) and special attacks: raise dead (d6 skeletons), scream (all within 30 must save or go berserk, seeing all creatures as enemies; affected PCs will use their most effective tactics rather than attacking blindly; wears off if Brunhild is slain); move 12″.

Brunhild wears gilded armor worth 400 GP and carries a +1 spear which will return to the thrower.  Her scream attack caused the paladin and wizard to turn on their party.  The wizard used his pyrotechnics spell to majorly screw the party over with blinding smoke.  It was total chaos as the party fought each other and the undead, but somehow they pulled through.  The paladin and wizard players were very good sports, and actually the whole party roleplayed the fog of war quite well, not knowing who was hostile.  Lots of fun.

2012 One Page Dungeon Contest

The 2012 One Page Dungeon contest does not seem to be getting as much buzz as last year’s, and it could be the fact that not quite as many companies have stepped forward to offer prizes as did in 2012, but if anything there are more entries now than there were at this time in 2011!  I doubt anyone does this for the prizes, although they are certainly a nice incentive.  The current entries look like an interesting mix of traditional dungeon crawls, campy weirdness, and unique adventure ideas — or at least that’s my impression based on the names of the entries, the blog posts about them, and the handful I’ve actually seen.  The whole point of the contest is to encourage the gaming community to share useful, brief adventure ideas and from that point of view it looks like another good year!  I still think someone should publish the compilations on heavy stock in three-ring binders!   I’d buy that.  Anyway, still time to enter, or donate a prize.  Get on it.

I had an idea for a sort of caper-style OPD, and it is a bit simpler than my 2011 entry, which I needed a lot of help with on the map.  This time around I found a public domain image and just added some letters as a key; it will probably be the worst map in the contest but I think the scenario itself is kind of interesting and the map provides enough detail for a DM to fill in as desired, so I’m actually OK with that and will go ahead and enter it.

The basic idea is that there is a ‘panopticon’ type prison which serves as the location of the adventure. Whether the players are there to rescue a prisoner, destroy the whole thing for the common good, or just steal whatever they can, doesn’t really matter.  It’s main purpose to provide a challenge; parties that scout carefully will probably do a lot better than hack & slay types, if it is run as written.

The ‘boss’ (or warden) of the prison was a beholder as I originally wrote it, but then I began to wonder if that is a trademarked term, and anyway a more unique boss occurred to me while I was explaining to someone else — the “real” panopticon was invented as a concept by Jeremy Bentham, an 18th century philosopher and eccentric who had his body preserved and put on display after his death.  Among the interesting details was that his head was badly preserved and the executors decided to replace his head, on the mummy, with a wax copy; the real head was kept under his seated mummy’s chair.  So, it is not much of a stretch to imagine the warden as a mummy who sits silently watching everything…but with a spare head, perhaps the mummy is basically a decoy, and the boss is just the disembodied head, which might lay there inconspicuously like a demi-lich, or fly about gonzo-style, shooting laser beams from its eyes!

The head of Jeremy Bantham, once kept under the chair of his mummy, but now locked away somewhere in a vault. Those are his feet on either side.

Bentham called his mummy cabinet an ‘Auto-icon’, which has a nice ring to it.

Autoicon

No. Appearing: 1; HD 10; AC: 19 [1]; Move: 12″ (fly); Attacks: special; Save: Cleric10

An auto-icon is a mummified body, usually of a sage, wizard, or high priest, that is made up to look like it did in life.  In some cases the face and or even the whole head may be replaced with a wax replica; in these cases the real head may become animated by necromancy or some other unknown process.  Depending on the particulars of its creation, an autoicon may be undead, or merely a construct like a golem.  Autoicons, if disturbed, will attack.  The whole body may be animated, if it is intact, and in this case the autoicon does not fly, but may wield weapons or magic items.  If the head is detached, is can fly.  In any case the autoicon’s eyes may use any of the potent gaze and beam attacks of an ‘Eye tyrant’.  They sometimes guard vast treasures, but may also simply be exhibited at places important to them in life.

Literary sources for D&D tropes

Here’s a cool list someone made quite some time ago.  I wish there were a way to leave comments or offer additions — there were no howlers but I think there could be some more detail in places.

The above link cited a dead page which, happily, is archived and is basically an encyclopedia of monsters, some well-known and some less so.

Myconids

A while back I picked up a couple of loose myconids made by Wizards of the Coast.  They are nice and just a little creepy:

I decided I really needed a lot more than two myconids if I’m ever going to use them for D&D.  So, I decided to make a few more out of Sculpy, and while I was at it, made some giant mushrooms to go with them.

The mushrooms were easy.  I had recently been reading a kid’s book about mushrooms to my daughter, who was very interested in them last summer and fall, and it had some nice color photos for reference.  They were all glued down to small (3/4 inch or so) glass tiles left over from one of her craft projects.  This gives them a fairly heavy base and makes them stable.

The myconids turned out to be a little trickier, because I learned that Sculpy gets sort of soft in the over before it hardens.  Next time I’ll try ‘Super Sculpy,’ or at least use an armature.  I didn’t mind my myconids being a little simpler and even cartoonish, since I was whipping them out pretty fast (all the ‘shrooms and ‘nids were done in about an hour, plus baking time).

My first one has a very silly look and reminds me of the ‘blob fish’ or maybe a McDonaldland burger dude.

For most of them I went with a face more like the WotC minis.  I think these guys look a bit like the dancing shrooms in Fantasia, now that I think of it:

This guy was the skinniest myconid and completely fell apart in the oven, after slowly drooping, so the best I could do to save him was to make him crawling:

The Myconids are mounted on steel washers or electrical box punch-outs I scavenged, and these are equally good as ballast.

Cyclopskin

A few years ago I bought a few sprues of minis for the “Age of Mythology” board game — at the time I wanted some inexpensive figures for some games I was making as Christmas gifts, and I figured I’d find some uses for the extras.  I had five spare cyclopes.  They’re maybe 7-8 feet tall in 1/72 scale (the minis in that set range from 1/72 to maybe 1/100 scale … there is very little consistency although there are some neat sculpts).  Compared to 25mm or 28mm figures, they are just a bit taller than a human, but their upper bodies are still pretty big because the legs are tiny, goat-like things with cloven hooves.  They will make passable Cyclopskin for D&D, and since they are painted red, they can also stand in for small demons.  In the Panoticon dungeon, they are the muscle/cannon fodder guards.

To individualize them, I added weapons to four of them and a horn to one (channeling the Harryhausen ‘clops that Dennis Mize copied for Ral Partha).

They all have this weird pose with one clenched fist turned sideways and one open hand.  I left this one alone but for most of the others, I turned the fist by cutting it off and reattaching it (pinning is super easy with soft plastic like these guys).

This guy’s club is a spare from the Zvedza Orcs set.

This guy’s mace and chain was trickier.  I used a piece of an old broken necklace for the chain, and the head of another Zvedza orc club as the mace head.

Left to right one guy with a hammer from the old Citadel plastics set (a spare for the dwarves); a swords & board guy — probably the leader –; and the horned one again.

A few group shots.  Still having trouble with focusing the camera.

Eye-bats

Besides the large Flying Eyeballs, I made some smaller Eye-bats.

My daughter looked at these and said "Those aren't creepy, they're goofy."

These are bats from Halloween giveaway rings, with a tiny googly eye replacing the face and a little grey paint adding some definition and fur.  They took a ridiculously short time to make — drilling holes for the wire stands was the most time-consuming part.  I used florist wire, with one end looped around under the base and metal washer glued over it to add weight and level the base.

In the Panopticon, I envision these guys doing nothing but fluttering around watching.  Anyone caught in their critical gaze must save vs. Petrification (or Will) or act at -1 on everything requiring a roll (to-hit, saves, ability checks or skills, etc.)  They are terribly fragile (d3 hp) but hard to hit — as plate & shield.  They fly like bats.

Goofy, yes.  A nuisance by themselves. But they also accompany patrols.

What has eight eyes, six wings, and ten legs?

The eyes have it

These will haunt the Panopticon.  One idea is give them a stunning gaze; another is to make each one have the power of one of a beholder’s eyes.  Not sure how I’ll do this.  I like the idea of flying eyes that can’t actually harm you on their own, but I also like the idea of, say, eleven of these creeps, each with the power of one of a beholder’s eyes, collectively comprising the big bad of a dungeon, adventure, or even a campaign.   It would be a nasty surprise if the party assumes that the power of the first one they encounter is the only thing these things do, and then later they find out they’re all different.  (The ‘traditional’ beholder eye rays: disintegrate objects, transmute flesh to stone, cause sleep, slow the motion of objects or beings, charm animals, charm humans, cause death, induce fear, levitate objects, and inflict serious wounds; plus the central eye does an anti-magic cone).   Maybe 11 need to assemble, like Anime robots, into a giant beholder… or maybe all flying eyes just roll for their special ray…They are made from some old wet-set clay I had laying around; the wings are from rubber monsters I got on clearance at a party supply store.

They’re pretty big — the bases are 40×40 mm, the size I use for “large” creatures like trolls.

Their asses.  I considered adding an “optic nerve” tail but was too lazy.  Maybe the next batch will have tails.

The Panopticon bestiary

A silly theme for eye-monsters for the “Panopticon” dungeon I described earlier has really inspired me lately.  I don’t know if I’ll use it in Telengard, but making or modifying the minis is fun.

<update: all have appeared at various times in the Telengard campaign, and also in my OPD 2012 entry!>

Anyway I already have some beholders and cyclopes; why not add a few lower-level minions?

Here’s a preview of some of the more common monsters in the Panopticon, along with a very photogenic cyclops:

Lookin' kind of rough for the paladin.

Hawkwind’s “The watcher” (sung by Lemmy Kilmister, and later covered by his band Motörhead too) helps set the mood.

We are looking in on you now
What do you think you can do now
You’re very small from way out here
The last thing you will feel is fear
I gave you the chance to do the right thing
I gave you the chance to do the bright thing
Now our sense is all disgusted
Re-affirm you can’t be trusted
A world imprisoned screams with pain
There are no leaders you can blame
Your avarice has destroyed your sphere
And there’s no room for you out here
This is the end now. This is the end now. This is the end now.…

Cyclopskin

No. appearing: 2d6 (10-40); HD: 3; AC: 15 [6]; Attack: weapon (d10), horn (d8) or grapple; Move: 9″; Save: as F3

These brutes serve as guards and thugs.  They attack with large weapons, although some have a single rhino-like horn they can use in melee ( and charge for double damage).  They sometimes attempt to mob and grapple victims in order to capture and carry them off.

Eyebats

No. appearing: 2d4; HD 1/4; AC 18 [2]; attack: gaze; Move: 24″ (fly); Save: as MU1

These look like large bats with a single eye dominating the entire head. Anyone caught in their critical gaze must save vs. Petrification (or Will) or act at -1 on everything requiring a roll (to-hit, saves, ability checks or skills, etc.).  The effect is broken if eyebat is slain, line of sight is broken, or the eyebat shifts its gaze to another target.

Flying Eyes (Watchers)

No. Appearing: d4; HD 3+; AC: 16 [5]; Attack: special; Move: 24″ (fly); Save: As MU

Flying eyes, or “Watchers,” are large disembodied eyes with feathery grey or bat-like black wings, often trailing a long, red, slimy tail. They attack with one gaze attack per round, and each Watcher’s gaze attack is randomly determined (roll a d10: 1. petrify; 2. sleep; 3. slow; 4. charm; 5. silence; 6. fear; 7. telekinesis; 8. heat metal; 9. cause serious wounds; 10. feeblemind).

Saturday craft time!

We did nothing today — nothing ‘productive’ anyway.  My wife did some sewing; my daughter did some painting, math workbooks, knitting, and watched an episode of Scooby Doo; I painted some minis.  We try to have ‘family craft time’ once a week, especially in the winter when we’re stuck inside anyway. Since my wife was a little under the weather we scrapped some major housecleaning plans and took it easy.  Craft time sprawled on and on, with breaks for lunch, laundry, and making pizza for dinner. Nothing recharges the batteries like spending time together making stuff.  Here’s what I painted:

Two Heritage “Knights & Magick” knights.

These two were painted fairly simply back about 1983.  The one with the sword my brother & I thought of as ‘Lancelot’ for reasons I can no longer place.  I was terribly frustrated with how I painted him, and tossed this mini in the brush water (I was about 11 then!) and when I remembered him later and took him out, somehow the ambient paint left him ‘stained’ with a very heavy black/green wash, that actually looked pretty good.  But not good enough that I didn’t strip him, like most of the K&M knights. The mace-man would make a good cleric if you overlook the sword hanging from his belt.

I also took some cheapo plastics and made some monsters.  One is a knight from a ‘Dollar Store’ set (the same one that provided the statues in a prior post).  This guy had a shield on a deformed, short arm, and I cut that off and transplanted a second mace.  As his helm has no eye slits, I thought he might make a good automaton or Iron Golem.  A knight is next to him for scale.  He’s mounted on a big washer for stability.

Lastly, I picked up a bag of skeleton warriors on Amazon to round out a purchase.  They are not great but are a step up from the Dollar Store crap.  There were six poses, and I did not use the ‘archer’.  I just painted one of each of four poses; I made do more some time, or save them to fight those dollar store knights.  A wash of burnt umber is practically all they need, but I went a few steps further and painted them completely.  Here are three of the poses:

The axeman and spearman both look very Egyptian, in terms of their weapons and shield, although all of the figures have a lot of extraneous skulls decorating them.  Here’s the spearman from the back:

The other two poses I used are more medieval:

The only conversion I did was to bend the flailman’s hand so that his flail is in a more natural position.  I did this by heating the arm with a lighter and bending when the plastic looked a little shiny (before it actually melts or bursts into flame!).  You can also submerge plastics in boiling water and then reposition them, but this was easier for just one figure.  For scale, here’s the flailman about to smash a knight:

Lastly here’s a skeleon, before and after:

These skeletons would be undead giants, obviously.  I like that some look kind of Egyptian…they will fit in as guardians of ancient tombs or ruins, and provide an option other than mummies as the big bads in a pyramid.

I also began work on repainting 30 or so Citadel snotlings.  They’ll see action in Telengard soon, I think.

Telengard 2.0 session 2

(I know a lot of people hate reading session reports.  Feel free to skip this, although I did include a couple of newish monsters and some general DMing musings so it’s not all a waste of time…)

The second session had a bit of a slow start, with the party checking out the new ‘Adventurer’s Guild’ that was setting up shop.  There was kind of a long and frustrating negotiation, as the players wanted to know what the AG would do for them in terms of rewards.

 I had decided ahead of time that AG would charge a 5% tax of all loot, but offer training, discounts on Identify and magical healing, and other support.  One mechanical benefit would also be that the party could earn XP bonuses for successfully completing ‘missions’ (I decided to drop the old gold = XP, and instead give arbitrary XP for successfully completing the player’s stated goals, whatever they might be; accepting a mission is one way to state a goal.)  The party was only really interested in how they would profit financially from the arrangement, and when the AG suggested they begin reclaiming houses in the city from the monsters, the party balked.

 The big problem was communication.  As DM, I thought I should not mention game mechanics in the negotiations, and only dropped hints about ‘we’ll help you become heroes’ and ‘training’.  I suppose it would have been better to say: If you take missions from us, you’ll earn more XP, because in hindsight, the game is all about exploring and heroism because those are the rewarded behaviors*.  I was all caught up in not ‘breaking the fourth wall’ and not talking meta-gamey mechanics and in hindsight that was the wrong time to do so.  But the party was also focused, laser-like, on cash rewards for helping the city and guild, so I had few opportunities for the guild steward to actually explain the “benefits.”

 In the end they found that the mayor’s office was offering cash rewards, and decided to try their luck reclaiming buildings, but along the the way they began plotting to take the buildings for themselves and set up their own fiefdom, when they realized the reward was “only” 50-100 GP per house or shop.

 Eventually things got rolling, and the party began home invasions, er, exploring and fighting monsters.  They tended to sweep through the buildings, heavy fighters kicking the doors while the rogue and assassin did a little recon.  The first foray was a little disorganized, and the assassin found himself facing four goblins who responded to the alarm raised by goblins in another part of the house.  The party had some wounds but no deaths by the time they defeated the nine goblins and one hobgoblin.  Delving further they encountered bat-like creatures with a single eye in place of  a head.  The eye-bats did not attack directly but use a ‘critical gaze’ which unnerves and distracts their victims (Will save or -1 to all rolls while under the gaze).  These proved to be fairly fragile, and the elf took two out with his bow, although one got away.   The party also encountered a band of green gremlins, tiny fey goblins who steal whatever they can grab. (If they hit an AC 7, the victim makes a Reflex save or loses one random item.  Because we use the LotFP list-based encumbrance, the PCs all have convenient lists of their inventory!)  The elf put most of  them down with a Sleep spell, and under questioning the survivors agreed to hand over their loot in exchange for their lives.  Said loot was stashed in a ruined chapel, which had been making ominous ‘rustling’ noises, and the gremlins confirmed that it housed undead hounds, which do not attack the gremlins.  The gremlin handed over his loot (several rolls on the “Mundane items table” plus one valuable bracelet) and the gremlins were off.

 The elf retired to one of the houses that had been secured, accompanied by the barbarian, who looted the house while the elf tried to re-memorize spells.  however the barbarian kept interrupting the elf and no spells were relearned. Meanwhile the rest of the party, despite their wounds, tried one more building, discovering a small library or sage’s tower that held five goatmen.  The party worked pretty well again as a team, using brute force and stealth make the most of the assassin’s and rogue’s abilities, and the paladin’s brawn.  The bard was nearly killed, but again they all pulled through and the party was ready to consolidate their gains.

The party hired some mooks to clean up the emptied houses, and then began to move some of the barricades so the cleared houses would be within ‘city limits’.  At this time the mayor showed up, having heard about the cleaning crews.  After some harsh words, the party realized the mayor was leaving, not just in a huff, but to get the Fireguard, and they relented, agreeing to hand over the houses for the reward rather than trying to hold them themselves.  (They discussed the pros & cons of deposing the mayor, using reward cash for equipment upgrades, and so on, which was fun to listen to).

Then the party returned to town, and learned from the priest in town that AG members get free healing, which prodded them to finally join, although the party claimed a moral victory, negotiating their tax down to just 4%.  As an aside, the paladin felt terribly aggrieved that the temple did not just give out free healing to his party, and unconvinced by the argument that from the priests’ point of view, he was asking for a MIRACLE, and these things are not free.  In fact the temple would heal paladins and clerics for free, guild members or not, but I’ve always felt that one of the pitfalls of having a ‘good’ church in a setting is that rogues and scoundrels will expect to take advantage of them for free healing etc.  The ‘miracle’ argument does not seem to convince my players…

Anyway I didn’t anticipate the party wanting to clear the ruins for their own use, especially at first level.  The campaign could have taken a very different, and possibly dark, turn if they decided to oppose the city so early on.  Whether they decide to depose the mayor, or topple the AG, or whatever is of course entirely up to them and I think the best part of a ‘sandbox’ approach to a campaign, as a DM, is that you get surprised so much.

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*Ironically, during table talk a few session back, three players loudly trashed economics as a legitimate field of study because they claimed it fails to explain or predict and assumes humans are rational.  However the view that RPGs reward desired behavior seems like textbook economics to me, and they all implicitly accept this without question