werik
2011-12-09, 04:31 PM
So I’ve recently had the fortune of playing a really fun campaign that has inspired me to write all of this down and hopefully share a bit of the enjoyment that I get out of it with the rest of you. I was inspired to do this by dralnu’s Swordsage journal (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=169149)which if you haven’t read it, you definitely should.
The setup:
So here’s the setup for our little campaign world. At the beginning of playing the eventual party consisted of only three players. I’d tell you the races, classes, and backgrounds of my two friends’ characters, but the first mission gave us some NPCs that went along with us and I think it would be fun to present each character in my recounting (aside from my own of course) as a possible NPC to add a bit of mystery. In any event the world we play in is an interesting mix of campaign settings. Essentially each of the four continents of the world is run as a different campaign setting. So Forgotten Realms, Darksun, and Rokugan are out there in places that I have never been to before. Our main story has thus started in the Greyhawk continent.
As I mentioned we are playing an evil campaign and this definitely shapes my character’s worldview. My character is named Selumil and he is an elven cleric of Vecna. As a child his parents were murdered by a cult of Vecna that he came to serve because they, as archeologists, had found a powerful magic tome and were translating it. Selumil was lucky to keep his life because he knew very little of the book and was also lucky to receive his cleric training. He was even luckier to eventually smuggle away the book of translations that his parents were working on, though without the original copy. He has vowed to kill and subvert the order of his cult for forcing him into this life and to obtain his power and the power of the companion book he’s carrying. That being a rather long term goal, however, Selumil is currently under loose orders to find some sort of powerful staff in the North. So off he goes looking for it. He also wants to find some cronies that he can order around to help him kill the head of his order when he comes back, staff in hand. This seems like a good opportunity to get out and do just that.
The Character Sheet:
So here’s just a quick look at my character sheet. We started at level 5
Selumil Halathunal, Elf Cleric of Vecna 5
STR: 12
DEX: 15
CON: 11
INT: 15
WIS: 20 (Periapt of Wisdom +2)
CHA: 13
Feats: Still Spell, Spell Focus (Necromancy), Spell Focus (Enchantment). Third feat from my Arrogance flaw (will explain in text later).
Domains: Knowledge and Magic. I took the alternate class feature from PHBII which allows me to spontaneously cast domain spells of the chosen domain (Magic) in lieu of spontaneously casting inflict spells.
25 HP, 20 AC
The Hook:
While surreptitiously gathering rumors about powerful magical items in the north, I am approached by a man dressed in black. Since I’m wearing long black robes myself, I’m not really thrown by this at all. The man pulls out a black scroll case from his robes and tells me that he has heard mention of my power and that there is a possible job for me to do if I agree to do whatever is asked of me by the scroll. He also mentions that others like me have been asked to do this job. Mysterious job delivered to me? Sounds great, right? Of course, the catch is that once I open the scroll case there is no turning back and I will be magically bound to complete the mission. I find it very troubling that the fine print to this contract is completely hidden from my sight, but finding no leads on this whole staff mission I feel that this could be a great opportunity to find some henchmen to help me in my eventual plans. Of course I agree. I crack open the case to find a simple note saying to meet at the Prancing Pony (this is what happens when names are given on the fly) in the next town and to ask for Johnny when I get there. Once I’m done reading, the man in black is gone. Typical second rate courier service. No tip for you, mysterious stranger.
Faithful to the anonymous note’s instructions I show up to the Prancing Pony and go to the bar and ask to speak to Johnny. The barkeep bangs his fist on the bar, points to a door at the end of the bar and tells me to go downstairs. At the bottom of the stairs I find a large room at the end of a hallway that is lit. Inside is the man in black who I saw the other day. He tells me that I’m the first to arrive and that everyone should be there shortly. As I wait four more people come downstairs one by one shortly after I hear four loud thumps from above. The first two to arrive are Asian looking (see Rokuganian) humans. The first guy appears to have some standard ninja gear on him and he is stone silent. The second guy seems to be loosely dressed, bare chested with tattoos, and carries no weapons with him at all. See: Monk. Whatever mission we’re going to set out on, kung fu is going to be involved. The third person to come downstairs is also a human but Greyhawkian, heftily chested and an imposing figure. I eye him up as a fighter. Sometime after that a cloaked Halfling finally makes his way downstairs. He’s carrying a rapier, which is an ambiguous clue towards his class, but he appears to be wearing lighter armor. I’m thinking rogue. Or burglar. All halflings are burglars, right?
With the gang all assembled the man in black explains to us that there is a town two days away that is causing him and his boss problems. The mayor has recently decided that the pirates smuggling drugs through town have gone too far and he is putting a stop to it. To end this, he has hired some adventurers to stop the smuggling. Our job is to go to that town and send a message to the mayor to stop this effort to clean up the town however we see fit. Well, not exactly HOWEVER we see fit. We should try to do it subtly and preferably without killing the mayor if this is possible. Also, we have three days to do this…and since the town is two days away, we really have one evening to do this. One evening to kill some good guys and threaten the mayor? We’re all in. The man in black leaves after explaining everything and right when he does, the bearded fighter stands up and says that in his there opinion we should meet outside of the gates of town just before sundown of the third day. With everyone agreeing, we file out of the room without speaking or sharing spice cake recipes. The joys of paranoia and mistrust in an evil campaign.
Meet and Greet Outside of Town:
When I arrive outside of town two and a half days later I am not the first one there. I see the ninja fellow standing in a field with some cows and he appears to be meditating. The unarmed guy is sort of awkwardly standing there, looking like he wants to talk to the ninja but wouldn’t get anywhere if he did. I start talking to the monk about how it looks like we’re missing the other two when beardy finally shows up being loud and forceful. When I remark that we’re only waiting for the Halfling, he appears out of nowhere. Whoa! I’d say he’s some sort of ninja, but we already have one of those.
Now that we’re all together I propose that we come up with some sort of plan. The fighter seems taken aback by this. I guess he thought we needed to be organized enough to get here, but not organized enough to coordinate once we got here. Idiot. Since we have no reconnaissance on the town and we know that adventurers are waiting for shady characters to show up, I suggest that we enter in groups (two groups of two and one person by themselves) and see if we can figure out who these adventurers are. After we figure that out, we should meet back up, and decide how to take them out. Sound good, team? Break!
Night on the Town:
The Rokuganians walk in to town first and after about 15 minutes the Halfling and I follow them. The fighter has instructions to follow us 15 minutes after that. As we walk in to this small, walled in town we notice four main clusters of buildings. Imagine the town as a walled in rectangle and then four quadrants of buildings. We walk into the upper right quadrant because all of the other entrances are sealed off for the night and find some rather poorer houses. More importantly, my keen elf ears hear something shuffling around on the top of the first house. Adventurer #1, check. But then I see something from the corner of my left eye amongst some large piles of bags of grain: the ninja uneasily sunk into one of the bags. Oh good, this is starting off well. We walk down the right side of the wall and see a large farmhouse before us on our right, making up the lower right quadrant of the town and further to the left of the farmhouse a Dwarf leaning against a well in some full plate male and leaning on some massive shields. Adventurer #2, check. Knowing how rare creatures like elves, halflings, and dwarves are in Greyhawk, I start to approach him to ply some information from him about where his other buddies might be hidden, but as soon as I start to walk towards him he interrupts me. “If you’re lookin’ for the inn, it’s that way!” Nuts.
Thanking him the Halfling and I walk to the center of town. In the lower left corner we find a wide assortment of shops and other buildings. In the upper left quadrant we find the largest building in town with many glass windows (the mayor’s residence) and a couple of other buildings further up. Since we still don’t know where the other adventurers are in town we head in to upper center portion of the town and find the monk looking around. He tells us that when he and the ninja walked in, the ninja saw the dwarf and attempted to stealthily jump across the bags of grain, and clearly failed. I share with him the information about the adventurer on the first building and we start to talk about the dwarf when we notice the bearded wonder stumble in to town much earlier than he was supposed to. His idiocy has been reaffirmed but at least he has now been joined in the ranks of the idiots by the ninja.
Ignoring those two, I tell the monk and Halfling that we need to know exactly if there are others guarding the town and if so who they are. Revealing himself to be quite the crafty rogue, the Halfling picked the lock on a house and snuck up the stairs to peer onto the roof where I thought I heard someone. When he comes back down, he verified my instincts. Score! The monk then decides that he can crawl up onto another roof and see if he can spot anyone else. Up he goes. And then I hear voices. Oh yes, the monk appears to have picked a rooftop with another adventurer on top. Adventurer #3, check. More concerning is the fact that this adventurer could have been easily watching us the whole time we had this conversation. I decide to move down to the lower central part of the town to see if I can spot anyone else. The monk continues to talk to what sounds like a woman on the roof. The Halfling sort of disappears from my sight.
Looking over at the well I see the fighter guffawing with the dwarf who is less enthusiastic about this unwanted conversation. From my angle I can’t see on to any other rooftops and I have no one else to strategize with. But seeing that the monk had not been attacked by anyone, I reason that he was able to talk himself out of danger. I sneak around a building and cast Clairaudience on their rooftop, hoping that I can glean information about who else is protecting the city. Unfortunately, by the time that I decided to listen in, they mostly decided to sit in stony silence up there together. The monk did say something about how we (him and I) were also defending this city and the woman sort of seemed to accept it. I want to get more information about other defenders, but I come to terms with the fact that I can’t find it on my own. I decide that the only way to find them is to flush them out.
Light the Match:
Playing off of the “defenders of the city” angle, I pretended to see something over the wall at the bottom center portion of the town. The monk and the woman he was with rushed over to investigate.
Woman: What did you see?
Selumil: Strange bat people! They swooped in over the town. Do you see them?
Woman: *magic spell casting and large splashes of light emerge from her wand on to the other side of the wall*
Selumil: Well, do you see anything?!
Woman: No…
Monk (signaling to me behind her back): Should I snap her neck?
Selumil: *shrug*
At this moment we heard loud stumbling from the other end of town and some bags of grain spilling out: the idiot ninja tried to jump across the grain and biffed it again. This time, with all of the commotion of the spell casting the dwarf starts to charge in the direction of the grain with his shields and whoever was on the first building jumps down. Seeing her two friends spring in to action, Cat Woman runs along the outside wall towards that quadrant as well. The monk runs after her. Well, that’s one way to get this party started.
I run to the center portion of the town and then head back towards the road that the Halfling and I veered off from when the dwarf told us where the inn was. I don’t see the Halfling anywhere, but I do see the human fighter who had apparently decided to walk towards the inn before. Alerted by the noise we approach the end of the road and look both ways. Towards our left and the entrance/exit we see our ninja friend getting his ass kicked by the dwarf and his rooftop buddy: a human with some nasty throwing knives and ninja stars. To our right, where the farmhouse and the well are we see the monk doing remarkably better. He has stunned the woman with his mighty fists and taken her weapons and magic items. My quick tactical mind springs into action and I tell the fighter to hide behind the corner until I tell him otherwise. I turn towards the farmhouse and cast a spell of cause fear at the 12 or so cows boarded up there sending them into a panic and bursting out of their paddocks. I then yell to the dwarf and his buddy who are clobbering the ninja. “Leave that one! We need your help over here! Bat people are swooping in!” That’s right, when I find a ridiculous cover story, I stick with it.
The objective of my plan was to get them to abandon the ninja, run towards me, have the fighter attack them solo until the monk finished the woman and could help him, while I sneak past them all to heal the ninja. But so goes the best laid plans of mice and men. I guess the dwarf and knifey boy weren’t buying the “I’m on the good guy side” after all. The human pulls out a sling shot, magically animates a bullet so that darkness surrounds it, and then he shoots it at me. And wouldn’t you know it, the thing sticks to me. Not that I can see what’s going on, but I can sort of sense things working in my favor and spiraling out of control at the same time. The cows bust out of their cage and sort of trample the woman. That’s good. But then they start heading towards me. That’s bad. The farmer and his wife come out and the monk convinces them to help him kill the woman. That’s good. The ninja gets crunched hard by the dwarf. That’s bad. I’m able to sort of navigate my way to the animal gate and am hopefully standing out of the way of the cows. That’s good. The dwarf and the human seem to be running towards me and the cows. … That’s bad.
The bulls do stop the human and dwarf momentarily. Long enough for me to shake like mad hoping that the bullet will fall off of my robes. Alas, it was in vain. The cows also hit me in the process and start to rouse the rest of the town. At least they fell in to my clever fighter trap though, right? Right? Fighter guy? Yeah, he must have split sometime after the darkness enveloped me. And now the dwarf charges into the darkness and slams me against the gate. Guess he figured out that 20’ foot radius, huh? Well, I’ve only cast one spell in this fight today and now seems like a good time to cast another one. I reach my hand to his shoulder. “Hold person!” One successful will save later, he hits me again. Ow! Okay, new plan. I drop to the floor and crawl under the gate leaving Grumpy behind. The monk seems to be fighting the knife thrower from what I can hear, but then the farmer and his wife decide to start stomping whatever they hear writhing on the ground in the mysterious ball of darkness. Things aren’t going well.
I try to dispel magic on the darkness, but I roll a crappy check and fail. The dwarf gets over the fence and this now becomes a tiring game of hide-and-go-seek in the dark with repeated climbing up and over fences. The monk fights well against the knife thrower, but he’s eventually joined by the dwarf who determines that I’m not going anywhere. The monk flees, easily scaling the wall and leaving those two behind…but leaving me behind as well. Once I hear the knife thrower enter the paddock and swinging blindly for me I’m quite dispirited.
Me: I guess I’m going to have to cast dispel magic again and hope that works.
DM: You know there is a much simpler way to do this, right?
Me: … I take off my robe.
Success! The bullet was stuck to the robe. With it gone I am free to sneak out of the darkness and run like hell. I know a fight that I’m not meant to solo when I see one.
The Turnaround:
Apparently the monk wasn’t leaving for good. He drank a potion climbed back up the wall and called the dwarf and human out. The human is still looking for me and the dwarf was trying to calm and reassure a group of townsfolk who had assembled. The monk starts to fight the dwarf and the human is interrupted by the farmer who is sick of all these outsiders scaring his cattle away. The farmer takes some bad swings at the human while the monk tries to convince the crowd that their secret heroes are actually their enemies. When the knife thrower cuts the head off of the farmer in order to help the dwarf tackle the monk, the crowd goes crazy. They attack both the dwarf and the human, stomping the dwarf into an unrecognizable mess. The human starts to get beaten up but then decides that he needs to get out of town with 2 of his 3 friends toast. The monk pursues and I see the monk chasing after him, so I follow as well. I do some limited spell casting that invariably helps very little but encourages the monk to finish this fight. Eventually they take their hot pursuit out of town and I pick up my robe considering the job done.
Dénouement:
Walking towards the center of town I find the Halfling who had disappeared earlier. Apparently he had looked at the lock to the mayor’s mansion and determined it was easy enough to pick. Once inside he drugged and poisoned the mayor, eventually killing him and his three kids all with no whacky ramifications. Lucky bastard. We can’t find the fighter who abandoned me, and the ninja was smashed up really good. We eventually meet up with the monk who had captured the knife thrower. After some unhelpful torture, we killed him. Back to the other town for our just reward!
When we get back to the inn that we had first met in we find the man in black and the human fighter there. The human complains that we botched the plan by creating a ruckus and killing the mayor and that he should get the reward and we should be killed. We all object and say that while it wasn’t ideally executed, the three of us actually accomplished the task while he did nothing. Just as I was readying an action to cast hold person on this idiot, the man in black slashes his throat. He congratulates us for completing the task and gives us a big bag of gold then leaves. We greedily take our gold, only to discover that it was poisoned! Translation: We completed the mission, but we kind of messed it up. If you can survive the poison you can keep the gold.
We were able to cure the poison and live before ominously hearing a king’s messenger state that the adventurers that he had sent to protect the town had been killed and that vengeance would be sought. Keep in mind, the mayor is the one who hired the adventurers. Whatever is going on with the king, we don’t want his ire to rest on us. We stop here.
Reflection:
This was a really awesome first adventure. It gave us a good chance to meet our new dungeon master who ran the whole thing really well and we had a good time playing it. To end the suspense (if I successfully built up any to begin with) the Halfling and the monk actually were the other two PCs and the ninja and fighter were the NPCs. It was really cool that it sort of naturally worked out that we were the most successful. I had walked in to the mission thinking that I would play the evil character thing correctly and try to recruit the people that I thought were the most competent on this mission, regardless of if I knew they were a “PC” or not. It was also cool because the DM wasn’t forcing us to be best buddies. The ninja just happened to roll two really poor checks when jumping on the grain sacks and the fighter was more or less prepared to throw himself in to the fray when I held him back for my plan. It just turned out that he thought my plan was stupid and decided to leave me to it. But because of that the monk and the rogue really had a chance to shine. They were both definitely the MVPs of this mission. I only managed to cause distractions until the other two could do their jobs.
So that is session one. I actually have three other sessions of the nine that we've played already written up, but I thought that I would put this out as a sample to see what you all think of it. So, thoughts?
The setup:
So here’s the setup for our little campaign world. At the beginning of playing the eventual party consisted of only three players. I’d tell you the races, classes, and backgrounds of my two friends’ characters, but the first mission gave us some NPCs that went along with us and I think it would be fun to present each character in my recounting (aside from my own of course) as a possible NPC to add a bit of mystery. In any event the world we play in is an interesting mix of campaign settings. Essentially each of the four continents of the world is run as a different campaign setting. So Forgotten Realms, Darksun, and Rokugan are out there in places that I have never been to before. Our main story has thus started in the Greyhawk continent.
As I mentioned we are playing an evil campaign and this definitely shapes my character’s worldview. My character is named Selumil and he is an elven cleric of Vecna. As a child his parents were murdered by a cult of Vecna that he came to serve because they, as archeologists, had found a powerful magic tome and were translating it. Selumil was lucky to keep his life because he knew very little of the book and was also lucky to receive his cleric training. He was even luckier to eventually smuggle away the book of translations that his parents were working on, though without the original copy. He has vowed to kill and subvert the order of his cult for forcing him into this life and to obtain his power and the power of the companion book he’s carrying. That being a rather long term goal, however, Selumil is currently under loose orders to find some sort of powerful staff in the North. So off he goes looking for it. He also wants to find some cronies that he can order around to help him kill the head of his order when he comes back, staff in hand. This seems like a good opportunity to get out and do just that.
The Character Sheet:
So here’s just a quick look at my character sheet. We started at level 5
Selumil Halathunal, Elf Cleric of Vecna 5
STR: 12
DEX: 15
CON: 11
INT: 15
WIS: 20 (Periapt of Wisdom +2)
CHA: 13
Feats: Still Spell, Spell Focus (Necromancy), Spell Focus (Enchantment). Third feat from my Arrogance flaw (will explain in text later).
Domains: Knowledge and Magic. I took the alternate class feature from PHBII which allows me to spontaneously cast domain spells of the chosen domain (Magic) in lieu of spontaneously casting inflict spells.
25 HP, 20 AC
The Hook:
While surreptitiously gathering rumors about powerful magical items in the north, I am approached by a man dressed in black. Since I’m wearing long black robes myself, I’m not really thrown by this at all. The man pulls out a black scroll case from his robes and tells me that he has heard mention of my power and that there is a possible job for me to do if I agree to do whatever is asked of me by the scroll. He also mentions that others like me have been asked to do this job. Mysterious job delivered to me? Sounds great, right? Of course, the catch is that once I open the scroll case there is no turning back and I will be magically bound to complete the mission. I find it very troubling that the fine print to this contract is completely hidden from my sight, but finding no leads on this whole staff mission I feel that this could be a great opportunity to find some henchmen to help me in my eventual plans. Of course I agree. I crack open the case to find a simple note saying to meet at the Prancing Pony (this is what happens when names are given on the fly) in the next town and to ask for Johnny when I get there. Once I’m done reading, the man in black is gone. Typical second rate courier service. No tip for you, mysterious stranger.
Faithful to the anonymous note’s instructions I show up to the Prancing Pony and go to the bar and ask to speak to Johnny. The barkeep bangs his fist on the bar, points to a door at the end of the bar and tells me to go downstairs. At the bottom of the stairs I find a large room at the end of a hallway that is lit. Inside is the man in black who I saw the other day. He tells me that I’m the first to arrive and that everyone should be there shortly. As I wait four more people come downstairs one by one shortly after I hear four loud thumps from above. The first two to arrive are Asian looking (see Rokuganian) humans. The first guy appears to have some standard ninja gear on him and he is stone silent. The second guy seems to be loosely dressed, bare chested with tattoos, and carries no weapons with him at all. See: Monk. Whatever mission we’re going to set out on, kung fu is going to be involved. The third person to come downstairs is also a human but Greyhawkian, heftily chested and an imposing figure. I eye him up as a fighter. Sometime after that a cloaked Halfling finally makes his way downstairs. He’s carrying a rapier, which is an ambiguous clue towards his class, but he appears to be wearing lighter armor. I’m thinking rogue. Or burglar. All halflings are burglars, right?
With the gang all assembled the man in black explains to us that there is a town two days away that is causing him and his boss problems. The mayor has recently decided that the pirates smuggling drugs through town have gone too far and he is putting a stop to it. To end this, he has hired some adventurers to stop the smuggling. Our job is to go to that town and send a message to the mayor to stop this effort to clean up the town however we see fit. Well, not exactly HOWEVER we see fit. We should try to do it subtly and preferably without killing the mayor if this is possible. Also, we have three days to do this…and since the town is two days away, we really have one evening to do this. One evening to kill some good guys and threaten the mayor? We’re all in. The man in black leaves after explaining everything and right when he does, the bearded fighter stands up and says that in his there opinion we should meet outside of the gates of town just before sundown of the third day. With everyone agreeing, we file out of the room without speaking or sharing spice cake recipes. The joys of paranoia and mistrust in an evil campaign.
Meet and Greet Outside of Town:
When I arrive outside of town two and a half days later I am not the first one there. I see the ninja fellow standing in a field with some cows and he appears to be meditating. The unarmed guy is sort of awkwardly standing there, looking like he wants to talk to the ninja but wouldn’t get anywhere if he did. I start talking to the monk about how it looks like we’re missing the other two when beardy finally shows up being loud and forceful. When I remark that we’re only waiting for the Halfling, he appears out of nowhere. Whoa! I’d say he’s some sort of ninja, but we already have one of those.
Now that we’re all together I propose that we come up with some sort of plan. The fighter seems taken aback by this. I guess he thought we needed to be organized enough to get here, but not organized enough to coordinate once we got here. Idiot. Since we have no reconnaissance on the town and we know that adventurers are waiting for shady characters to show up, I suggest that we enter in groups (two groups of two and one person by themselves) and see if we can figure out who these adventurers are. After we figure that out, we should meet back up, and decide how to take them out. Sound good, team? Break!
Night on the Town:
The Rokuganians walk in to town first and after about 15 minutes the Halfling and I follow them. The fighter has instructions to follow us 15 minutes after that. As we walk in to this small, walled in town we notice four main clusters of buildings. Imagine the town as a walled in rectangle and then four quadrants of buildings. We walk into the upper right quadrant because all of the other entrances are sealed off for the night and find some rather poorer houses. More importantly, my keen elf ears hear something shuffling around on the top of the first house. Adventurer #1, check. But then I see something from the corner of my left eye amongst some large piles of bags of grain: the ninja uneasily sunk into one of the bags. Oh good, this is starting off well. We walk down the right side of the wall and see a large farmhouse before us on our right, making up the lower right quadrant of the town and further to the left of the farmhouse a Dwarf leaning against a well in some full plate male and leaning on some massive shields. Adventurer #2, check. Knowing how rare creatures like elves, halflings, and dwarves are in Greyhawk, I start to approach him to ply some information from him about where his other buddies might be hidden, but as soon as I start to walk towards him he interrupts me. “If you’re lookin’ for the inn, it’s that way!” Nuts.
Thanking him the Halfling and I walk to the center of town. In the lower left corner we find a wide assortment of shops and other buildings. In the upper left quadrant we find the largest building in town with many glass windows (the mayor’s residence) and a couple of other buildings further up. Since we still don’t know where the other adventurers are in town we head in to upper center portion of the town and find the monk looking around. He tells us that when he and the ninja walked in, the ninja saw the dwarf and attempted to stealthily jump across the bags of grain, and clearly failed. I share with him the information about the adventurer on the first building and we start to talk about the dwarf when we notice the bearded wonder stumble in to town much earlier than he was supposed to. His idiocy has been reaffirmed but at least he has now been joined in the ranks of the idiots by the ninja.
Ignoring those two, I tell the monk and Halfling that we need to know exactly if there are others guarding the town and if so who they are. Revealing himself to be quite the crafty rogue, the Halfling picked the lock on a house and snuck up the stairs to peer onto the roof where I thought I heard someone. When he comes back down, he verified my instincts. Score! The monk then decides that he can crawl up onto another roof and see if he can spot anyone else. Up he goes. And then I hear voices. Oh yes, the monk appears to have picked a rooftop with another adventurer on top. Adventurer #3, check. More concerning is the fact that this adventurer could have been easily watching us the whole time we had this conversation. I decide to move down to the lower central part of the town to see if I can spot anyone else. The monk continues to talk to what sounds like a woman on the roof. The Halfling sort of disappears from my sight.
Looking over at the well I see the fighter guffawing with the dwarf who is less enthusiastic about this unwanted conversation. From my angle I can’t see on to any other rooftops and I have no one else to strategize with. But seeing that the monk had not been attacked by anyone, I reason that he was able to talk himself out of danger. I sneak around a building and cast Clairaudience on their rooftop, hoping that I can glean information about who else is protecting the city. Unfortunately, by the time that I decided to listen in, they mostly decided to sit in stony silence up there together. The monk did say something about how we (him and I) were also defending this city and the woman sort of seemed to accept it. I want to get more information about other defenders, but I come to terms with the fact that I can’t find it on my own. I decide that the only way to find them is to flush them out.
Light the Match:
Playing off of the “defenders of the city” angle, I pretended to see something over the wall at the bottom center portion of the town. The monk and the woman he was with rushed over to investigate.
Woman: What did you see?
Selumil: Strange bat people! They swooped in over the town. Do you see them?
Woman: *magic spell casting and large splashes of light emerge from her wand on to the other side of the wall*
Selumil: Well, do you see anything?!
Woman: No…
Monk (signaling to me behind her back): Should I snap her neck?
Selumil: *shrug*
At this moment we heard loud stumbling from the other end of town and some bags of grain spilling out: the idiot ninja tried to jump across the grain and biffed it again. This time, with all of the commotion of the spell casting the dwarf starts to charge in the direction of the grain with his shields and whoever was on the first building jumps down. Seeing her two friends spring in to action, Cat Woman runs along the outside wall towards that quadrant as well. The monk runs after her. Well, that’s one way to get this party started.
I run to the center portion of the town and then head back towards the road that the Halfling and I veered off from when the dwarf told us where the inn was. I don’t see the Halfling anywhere, but I do see the human fighter who had apparently decided to walk towards the inn before. Alerted by the noise we approach the end of the road and look both ways. Towards our left and the entrance/exit we see our ninja friend getting his ass kicked by the dwarf and his rooftop buddy: a human with some nasty throwing knives and ninja stars. To our right, where the farmhouse and the well are we see the monk doing remarkably better. He has stunned the woman with his mighty fists and taken her weapons and magic items. My quick tactical mind springs into action and I tell the fighter to hide behind the corner until I tell him otherwise. I turn towards the farmhouse and cast a spell of cause fear at the 12 or so cows boarded up there sending them into a panic and bursting out of their paddocks. I then yell to the dwarf and his buddy who are clobbering the ninja. “Leave that one! We need your help over here! Bat people are swooping in!” That’s right, when I find a ridiculous cover story, I stick with it.
The objective of my plan was to get them to abandon the ninja, run towards me, have the fighter attack them solo until the monk finished the woman and could help him, while I sneak past them all to heal the ninja. But so goes the best laid plans of mice and men. I guess the dwarf and knifey boy weren’t buying the “I’m on the good guy side” after all. The human pulls out a sling shot, magically animates a bullet so that darkness surrounds it, and then he shoots it at me. And wouldn’t you know it, the thing sticks to me. Not that I can see what’s going on, but I can sort of sense things working in my favor and spiraling out of control at the same time. The cows bust out of their cage and sort of trample the woman. That’s good. But then they start heading towards me. That’s bad. The farmer and his wife come out and the monk convinces them to help him kill the woman. That’s good. The ninja gets crunched hard by the dwarf. That’s bad. I’m able to sort of navigate my way to the animal gate and am hopefully standing out of the way of the cows. That’s good. The dwarf and the human seem to be running towards me and the cows. … That’s bad.
The bulls do stop the human and dwarf momentarily. Long enough for me to shake like mad hoping that the bullet will fall off of my robes. Alas, it was in vain. The cows also hit me in the process and start to rouse the rest of the town. At least they fell in to my clever fighter trap though, right? Right? Fighter guy? Yeah, he must have split sometime after the darkness enveloped me. And now the dwarf charges into the darkness and slams me against the gate. Guess he figured out that 20’ foot radius, huh? Well, I’ve only cast one spell in this fight today and now seems like a good time to cast another one. I reach my hand to his shoulder. “Hold person!” One successful will save later, he hits me again. Ow! Okay, new plan. I drop to the floor and crawl under the gate leaving Grumpy behind. The monk seems to be fighting the knife thrower from what I can hear, but then the farmer and his wife decide to start stomping whatever they hear writhing on the ground in the mysterious ball of darkness. Things aren’t going well.
I try to dispel magic on the darkness, but I roll a crappy check and fail. The dwarf gets over the fence and this now becomes a tiring game of hide-and-go-seek in the dark with repeated climbing up and over fences. The monk fights well against the knife thrower, but he’s eventually joined by the dwarf who determines that I’m not going anywhere. The monk flees, easily scaling the wall and leaving those two behind…but leaving me behind as well. Once I hear the knife thrower enter the paddock and swinging blindly for me I’m quite dispirited.
Me: I guess I’m going to have to cast dispel magic again and hope that works.
DM: You know there is a much simpler way to do this, right?
Me: … I take off my robe.
Success! The bullet was stuck to the robe. With it gone I am free to sneak out of the darkness and run like hell. I know a fight that I’m not meant to solo when I see one.
The Turnaround:
Apparently the monk wasn’t leaving for good. He drank a potion climbed back up the wall and called the dwarf and human out. The human is still looking for me and the dwarf was trying to calm and reassure a group of townsfolk who had assembled. The monk starts to fight the dwarf and the human is interrupted by the farmer who is sick of all these outsiders scaring his cattle away. The farmer takes some bad swings at the human while the monk tries to convince the crowd that their secret heroes are actually their enemies. When the knife thrower cuts the head off of the farmer in order to help the dwarf tackle the monk, the crowd goes crazy. They attack both the dwarf and the human, stomping the dwarf into an unrecognizable mess. The human starts to get beaten up but then decides that he needs to get out of town with 2 of his 3 friends toast. The monk pursues and I see the monk chasing after him, so I follow as well. I do some limited spell casting that invariably helps very little but encourages the monk to finish this fight. Eventually they take their hot pursuit out of town and I pick up my robe considering the job done.
Dénouement:
Walking towards the center of town I find the Halfling who had disappeared earlier. Apparently he had looked at the lock to the mayor’s mansion and determined it was easy enough to pick. Once inside he drugged and poisoned the mayor, eventually killing him and his three kids all with no whacky ramifications. Lucky bastard. We can’t find the fighter who abandoned me, and the ninja was smashed up really good. We eventually meet up with the monk who had captured the knife thrower. After some unhelpful torture, we killed him. Back to the other town for our just reward!
When we get back to the inn that we had first met in we find the man in black and the human fighter there. The human complains that we botched the plan by creating a ruckus and killing the mayor and that he should get the reward and we should be killed. We all object and say that while it wasn’t ideally executed, the three of us actually accomplished the task while he did nothing. Just as I was readying an action to cast hold person on this idiot, the man in black slashes his throat. He congratulates us for completing the task and gives us a big bag of gold then leaves. We greedily take our gold, only to discover that it was poisoned! Translation: We completed the mission, but we kind of messed it up. If you can survive the poison you can keep the gold.
We were able to cure the poison and live before ominously hearing a king’s messenger state that the adventurers that he had sent to protect the town had been killed and that vengeance would be sought. Keep in mind, the mayor is the one who hired the adventurers. Whatever is going on with the king, we don’t want his ire to rest on us. We stop here.
Reflection:
This was a really awesome first adventure. It gave us a good chance to meet our new dungeon master who ran the whole thing really well and we had a good time playing it. To end the suspense (if I successfully built up any to begin with) the Halfling and the monk actually were the other two PCs and the ninja and fighter were the NPCs. It was really cool that it sort of naturally worked out that we were the most successful. I had walked in to the mission thinking that I would play the evil character thing correctly and try to recruit the people that I thought were the most competent on this mission, regardless of if I knew they were a “PC” or not. It was also cool because the DM wasn’t forcing us to be best buddies. The ninja just happened to roll two really poor checks when jumping on the grain sacks and the fighter was more or less prepared to throw himself in to the fray when I held him back for my plan. It just turned out that he thought my plan was stupid and decided to leave me to it. But because of that the monk and the rogue really had a chance to shine. They were both definitely the MVPs of this mission. I only managed to cause distractions until the other two could do their jobs.
So that is session one. I actually have three other sessions of the nine that we've played already written up, but I thought that I would put this out as a sample to see what you all think of it. So, thoughts?