Campaign Journal: Queen of The Spiders!

[SleepyShadow]

I may have mentioned this in other places 'round the net, but I'm an old-school gamer and I have a soft spot for the classic adventures. So when my group got TPK'd in the battle against Tyrgarun and Co. in the Red Hand of Doom (:smallsigh:) I decided to change things up and run an adventure that I remember fondly. So what do we have?

A module that none of my players have ever heard of? Check.
A group of decent 3.5 optimizers? Check.
An intriguing experiment in on-the-fly edition conversion? Check.
A chance for me to cackle maniacally every five minutes? You bet yer ass :smallamused:

So I'll be keeping this campaign journal up and running for the general amusement of those who care to read it. Also, any advice for either myself or my players will be greatly appreciated.

The party is level 8, and currently is made up of this group:

Tari Ironhoard, a dwarf Barbarian with a ridiculous Scottish accent.
Naori, a halfling Druid who follows the great tradition of bear use.
A nameless Pathfinder Synthesizer Summoner who emulates Spawn (yes, THAT Spawn).
Nami, a Ninja/Beguiler/Unseen Seer from the Lion Clan of Ken Kosuta.

In Which the Party Nearly Kills Itself, and Plot is Discovered
The party was introduced to itself outside the small town of Capendu, several miles northwest of the ruins of Brindol. Immediately, Tari and Spawn hit it off ... mainly with axes and tentacles. After a narrowly avoided crit and several grapple checks, they showed no signs of ceasing the internal conflict, so I threw a wandering monster into the mix. Namely, a rather angry fire giant.

Needless to say, once they were no longer fighting each other, the party focused fire and brought down the poor giant at the top of the third round. I got two good hits on Tari before Nami blinded the giant :smallfrown: Having settled into the idea that they were a group, the four of them headed down to Capendu to see what was going on, since that was the direction the giant had come from.

Since the only member of the group with any modicum of social skill is Nami, she talked to the locals and gathered up a decent amount of information about the giant raids, and in particular about Big Johann. It's about that time Tari beats up a local drunk (one of Johann's henchmen) and shortly after beats up Nami for preventing the dwarf from beating up an innocent commoner (Chaotic Violent is Tari's alignment I believe :smallannoyed:).

We left off just as Big Johann the frost giant and his crew of hobgoblins (holdovers from RHoD) showed up, looking to take revenge on the PCs.

[CapnVan]

A module that none of my players have ever heard of? Check.

That's outright sacrilege. Seriously. Beat them. Physically. And hard.


An intriguing experiment in on-the-fly edition conversion? Check.

If you're interested, slash need help, I believe you can find a conversion on enworld. But do be careful — I've found that the straight conversions can be hit or miss on the appropriate CR.

[SleepyShadow]

Indeed it is sacrilege, but my players have sadly only been playing since 3.5 edition. They can recite outrageous feat combinations off the top of their heads, but I had to explain to two of them who Gary Gygax was. :smallannoyed:

As far as the CR goes, I know how, um, imperfect the system is, so I only use it as a guideline rather than a hard rule.


In Which Big Johann Arrives, and the Players Dig in the Wrong Direction
The session started as a pack of ogres came crashing into town and started terrorizing the villagers. Even with Naori suffering a case of narcolepsy (a.k.a. missing the session), the remaining group naturally went out to deal with them.

Since the battle as written looked too harsh for them to handle, I had decided to break it up into chunks, with eight of the ten listed ogres showing up first.

The battle was easier for them than I expected. Spawn and Tari simply devour the ogres one after another, and Nami holds her own using ghost step to trigger both sudden strike and iajutsu focus. The ogres proved a fair challenge enough though, since they held out for four rounds against them.

Next came Johann's human henchmen Albere (rogue 4/fighter 2 I decided), and two RHoD hobgoblin clerics I decided to replace the two other ogres with. Sadly, this didn't even prove to be a battle. Tari uber-charged Albere into -40 something, and Spawn crit one cleric and cleaved into the other one for a double kill.

Hoping for the best, I sent Johann riding in on top of his mastodon. I had expected him to be a bit more challenging, but Tari beat him in initiative and uber-charged him down to 30 hp. Johann and the mastodon did get some good hits on the dwarf, but Spawn finished off the frost giant. I almost felt bad for Nami when she wasted some damage-over-time spell on the mastodon, since the other two killed it the following round.

Townsfolk cheered, hugs and small gifts were given to the adventurers, and the party sold off the loot from their kills. Since they were down a party member, they decided they needed to hire a cleric of some sort. Naturally, one of the townsfolk told them about the old grave keeper and how he may be able to help them. However, I was a little caught off-guard when Spawn decided he wanted to examine the gravestones.

Since I was not feeling particularly creative at that moment, I quickly popped open my browser and found a lovely link of creepy things on tombstones (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=201878). Unfortunately that idea backfired on me when Spawn thought there were people buried alive, and dug up not one but three graves. The rest of the party yelled at him about this while he tried to justify it as 'necessary sacrilege' or something like that.

We ended the session there :smallsigh:

[SleepyShadow]

My players are idiots :smallmad:

In Which the Party Self-Destructs
I'll merely gloss over the part when the party cleared out the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief. They worked together wonderfully until they arrived at the lower levels. The two hobgoblin jail guards immediately surrendered to the players, but Spawn decided to kill one and use Magic Jar on the other. Already upset that he had killed the first hobgoblin, Nami succeeded on her spellcraft check to identify that spell that had been used. Being LG in nature, she found his actions abhorrent, so she and Akurei (her cohort) left the party, not wanting to be around the LE character anymore. No one bothered to try to stop her, so the character sheet was begrudgingly put away and a fresh one was brought out.

So Spawn and Tari continued to clear out the dungeon by themselves (Naori was once again having a fit of narcolepsy). They handled things fair enough, discovering the magic chain that would take them to the Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl. After clearing out the torture chamber of the last two giants, they were introduced to Kuriyami, a CG tiefling sorcerer/shadowmage (slightly modified so that the Cha penalty was replaced by a Con penalty at the player's own request). Introductions were made, I cackled delightedly that she was using Sigil Slang and a cockney accent, and the little party went on its merry way back to town.

Back in town something was said or done (I don't remember what) that caused Kuriyami to become mildly irritated with Spawn, so she kicked him in the shin. Of course, his immediate response to the non-attack was to retaliate with a claw attack which dealt roughly half her total hp in damage. Tari stepped in to defend her while she fled the scene (being out of spells), initiative was rolled, an uber-charge failed to kill the synthesizer, and a full attack succeeded in slaughtering the barbarian in one round. Having witnessed what had happened to the dwarf, Kuriyami took sanctuary inside the local temple and will likely be delegated to the slowly growing pile of characters chased out of the party.

Idiots ...

[OracleofSilence]

Wow.
That reminds me of some games i have been in...

Just as a side note, how are the players taking this?

[SleepyShadow]

Well, naturally Nami/Kuriyami's player is pretty riled up about having to make yet another character. She seemed pretty excited to play the tiefling, but obviously that's not going to happen. She seems to be at a loss for what to do now.

Tari's player is intentionally going to be causing conflict with his new character, which is a drow cleric. While I find it hilarious that he's playing a drow in this adventure, I already know he'll be making the problem worse.

Spawn's player has repeatedly justified his actions, though the only one convinced is himself. Sadly, he really does believe he was justified in his actions.

[Togath]

wow, I've only once seen a party breakup like that, at least you're using a premade adventure, so it shouldn't be too hard to generate a new party and reenter it(I would suggest having everyone re-roll, as you're not very far into the adventure yet).

(if you're wondering about the other time I saw something like this, it was the most recent time I tried playing in a campaign as a player[about 2 years ago], the breakup happened due to me defending an enemy who surrendered from the chaotic good bard and neutral good rogue, and due to not having very many hp I was promptly killed and looted by them)
I’m just glad you as a gm can see that killing or breaking up the party over a character defending someone who surrendered is a rather idiotic thing to do.(I wasn’t so lucky, and ended up leaving the campaign I was in).

[SleepyShadow]

It was idiotic to kill the hobgoblins that surrendered, especially when someone in the party is LG, but it's doubly idiotic to kill a PC for defending another PC :smallannoyed:

While this may be the first time this particular group has imploded on itself, it's certainly not the first time I've had to deal with a self-destructive group. I've been a GM since 1st ed. so unfortunately I know far too much about this crap.

Long story short: I feel bad for Nami, Tari is an idiot for uber-charging a party member, and Spawn is an idiot for causing the whole mess in the first place.

[SleepyShadow]

Oh karma, how I love thee ...

Episode IV: A New Hope
The session was short-lived, but quite productive for some. :smallcool: Nami's player was present but sat out, so Spawn and Asura (the drow cleric) set out, but not for the Glacial Rift. Instead, they headed south to a small town called Arles to investigate an old plot thread I had unintentionally left lying around. The duke of the small town, Lord Zan Tarlas, was rumored to be a recluse with a lot of pretty lady friends. Naturally, they assumed that he was a vampire.

Granted, they were right, but he was not at all important to the adventure.

Spawn and Asura stormed the manor, greeted the butler and maid with threats and turn undead uses, both of which ultimately failed, and were finally shown to Tarlas. I hadn't really been expecting them to go after something so trivial, but I shrugged and pulled out his stat sheet for when they inevitably attacked.

The battle was quite brief, and at the end of the fourth round Spawn was dead and Asura fled. It will be entertaining to spring a vampire version of Spawn on the players sometime :smallamused:

It was shortly after that battle that Nami's player happily asked, "Can I play again?"

[SleepyShadow]

This campaign has turned out to be a bust.

Well thanks to the party's self-destruction, the group seems to have lost the spark it once had both in and out of character. None of the players are particularly happy with having had to create new characters so early in the adventure, especially when only one of the characters was NOT removed from the group by Spawn's actions.

I'm hoping to stem the bad blood growing between my players. I've put the Queen of the Spiders campaign on ice, and I'm hoping that by starting fresh the tension will be dismissed and soon forgotten. I plan on running Dungeonland at some point in the future.