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Morghen
2012-06-07, 02:14 PM
We've begun a new campaign. For those of you who followed my old log (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=194737), we followed through with our GM's plan to run a Harry Potter-style game that follows around a bunch of 11-year olds as they go through seven years of school.

For those of you who didn't follow my old log, you prolly oughta. It was pretty good.

I do a 1st-person style that uses a ton of pop-culture references and is very self-aware and wordy. Expect a lot of links. Also: This whole thing is very much under construction and will be for a bit as I continue to gather information about the world and the school. I'll also be including information about how HackMaster works.

General Stuff


This is not a game I run, but a game I play in. We play once a week on Monday night.
The game is HackMaster.
The youngest player at the table is 34. That's me. Oldest is 42. I think. I joined the group about 3 years ago and we just switched from a high-level game to this 1st-level campaign after a two-month-ish hiatus.
If I explain something poorly, ask me to clarify. I sometimes get too impressed with my own cleverness. Let me know if I'm being too obtuse.
This campaign takes place in the same world as our previous campaign. It also happens during the exact same time frame as that campaign. We are basically on Earth in the 1300-1400s. About a year ago, a lot of the world blew up because of blah blah godwar and other stuff I explain in the other campaign thread. I'm not sure how this part of the world dodged that bullet, but I'm sure we'll find out at some point.
We're all playing the same character class. It's called a Charlatan. From the HM Griftmaster's Guide to Life's Wildest Dreams (http://www.enworld.org/forum/your-reviews/119477-griftmasters-guide-lifes-wildest-dreams.html):

The charlatan is part liar, part faker, and part learning savant. Unlike the other classes, he possesses no special powers or talents, save the ability to copy what he sees. The charlatan is a true jack of all trades, able to learn anything another teaches him. Whimsical storytellers often claim that life is the charlatan's teacher, but do not listen to such pansies. The charlatan learns from everyone around him, putting in hours of study when the rest of the party is drinking themselves into unconsciousness.

The charlatan, more than any other class, must rely on his intelligence and his charisma to get him through life. Where the fighter has his sword, the magic-user his spells, the cleric his faith, and the thief his skills, the charlatan truly has only his wit and his charm. Charlatans travel the world learning from those around them, and to do so they must be quick on the uptake and plaeasant to have around. Most charlatans have to lie and deceive in order to join an adventuring party, for inexperienced heroes often believe that a fellow with no discernable abilities is a liability and the charlatan may quickly find a torch thrust into his hand with the instruction, "Hold it high so we can see."

However, if he can find a suitably supportive environment, the charlatan can flourish. Using his skills and abilities to complement those of his fellows, a smart charlatan is indispensable. He can heal the injured, fight with the warriors, function as a face man for the party, and provide occasional spell support. As a last resort, he can even fake an ability he doesn't have.

The shortsighted player might turn his nose up at such a class, but do not fall prey to this foolishness. The charlatan possesses the most powerful of all powers: the ability to become whatever he chooses. What other HackMaster class has such freedom? None, I tell you. But this is not a power to be wielded lightly. Let this serve as a warning to inexperienced or weaker players: the charlatan is only as much as you make him. In the hands of a a lesser individual, he is doomed to certain failure and an early death. Do not be that player! What that means mechanically is that we can pick up all kinds of awesome abilities like "Dodge or deflect missiles" like a Monk. The downside is that when we start out, we can't do ANYTHING. We have the worst saving throws, attacks, and weapon proficiencies. On the other hand, if we spend a measly 80 XP, we can cast magic-user cantrips. At 2nd level, things like "Cast Cleric Spells" become available, but spending that 220 XP gets you 1st level only. You have to spend another 220 to get 2nd level spells. Then you have to progress to 3rd level and spend another 220 to cast 3rd level spells. As a standard character who is part of an adventuring party, it's far cooler than it is practical. Picking up "Cast Cleric Spells" takes either a month of sneaky observation, two weeks of instruction by a Cleric, or a week of school. However, in a campaign where we're ALL spending every single week in school, the end result is going to be sick. By about 6th level, we're all going to look like this guy (http://i42.tinypic.com/10hsw1i.jpg).


Things You May Need To Know About HackMaster

There's a stat called Honor. It accumulates as you do cool things or diminishes if you do uncool things (back down from a challenge, pee yourself in court). You can burn a little bit to affect a dice roll here or there but the only time we ever use it is to change something that just happened. Usually used as a "get out of crit free" card or to unfail a save. Purging your Honor reduces you to 10% of your former total, can only be done one time per level and until you regain a certain portion, all of your rolls suffer a -1. Saves, damage, skill checks, HP rolls, everything. And you earn reduced XP when you're in dishonor (too low for your level). An important note: When your character is in "Great Honor" (fairly high for your level) you get one mulligan per session. Any roll you make can be mulligan-ed, but you must accept the new roll.
Damage and healing explode when you roll the max. If you roll a 4 on a d4, roll again and subtract one... unless you roll another 4. Keep rolling until you roll something that isn't the max and then subtract one from that.
Skills are based on a percentage system.
People say that Hack (http://www.kenzerco.com/images/rpg/hackmaster/hm_playershandbook.jpg)Master (http://sob.apotheon.org/img/dnd_1e_old_full.jpg) is what 2nd Edition should've been.
HackMaster is nowhere near as high-powered as 3, 3.5, etc. At 1st level, you're probably not going to be soloing... well, anything. It's also far more deadly. See my encounter during the first session for further proof.


The Party
These will get tightened up as the campaign progresses and I learn more about the backgrounds of the party members.

Sigismund Habsburg - Elf
That's me. I'm the heir to the Duchy of Swabia (parts of modern-day Germany, Switzerland, Austria) and I'm an Elf. I'll be going out of my way to make connections with other students (with an eye toward keeping those relationships going once I'm actually ruling) and I'll also be making every effort to form relationships with the cleaning people, groundskeepers, cooking staff, etc. at the school. My father always told me, "The people who keep a palace running are the people who run the palace." At the beginning of my schooling career, my intention is to be a Fighter/Magic-User type. We'll see if I stick with it.

Vittori Vilano - Half-Elf
Remember that old high-level campaign? This is Giovanni Vilano's youngest sibling. He's cut from the same cloth, but is much less imperious. Then again, Vittori is only 11. We'll see how things progress.

Grimm (He's not very chatty) - Half-Ogre
This is the guy who played Brunt the Half-Ogre in our previous campaign. Now he's playing Grimm the Half-Ogre. Grimm likes to eat things?

Kahaal Brandenburg - Elf
This is the guy who played Arinon in our previous campaign. Kahaal is the Crown Prince of Bavaria and heir to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire. He's, um... a little spoiled. He's also an exTREMEly private person. Note - This player has the most ridiculous luck with dice I've ever seen. He'll take the d20 you just used to roll 4, 18, 11, 1, 15, 7 and roll 15, 16, 14, 20, 20, 19.

Laurence Llongo Gamehater - Gnomeling
This character doesn't show up until week 2. We'll know more about him soon, but I'm guessing that he goes into sneakery as a career. Gnomelings are good at that. This player was the guy who played Sheba Sugarfist in our previous campaign. Unrelated: Here he is with an absolutely majestic afro. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U3Gk4MIJi4)

Another guy is dealing with some personal stuff. Hopefully he'll come back to us soon.

Stuff About The Campaign

There are five houses at Warthog's. They are Teranic, Aviaxin, Pyrotus, Hydral, and Wraithward. Those correspond to Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Spirit. The house colors are green, yellow, red, blue, and black. We are in Hydral.
We'll be going through seven years of schooling. At the end of our first year, we'll move to 2nd level.
Warthog’s is in Scotland.


First Session: 5/21 Game
Characters Present: Grimm, Vittori, Sigismund
Week 1

When I finally got to the school (on Sunday night), I was greeted by Professor Blash. He’s one of the primary professors who deals with 1st-year students. He was plenty nice, showed me to the room I’d be sharing with five other students, and told me that he’d have some dinner sent up because dinner was almost over. Looking around the room, I saw that I was the last one to show up. One of the beds was quite a bit nicer than the others and had big fancy drapes blocking my view of the inside. There was a foot locker and a closet for each of us. I decided that I wanted to start moving around and checking the school out a bit.

As I was leaving the Hydral common room, I ran into a half-elf and a half-ogre coming up the stairs. The half-elf asked if I had just gotten here and deduced that I must be the missing roommate. He introduced himself and Grimm kinda stood there like a jerk and I told them that I was going to go walking around and explore the place. Vittori immediately decided that he liked me and Grimm kind of stood around and acted sullen. Half-ogres, right?

So the three of us went walking. I wasn't just going for a walk, though. I've got a Talent called Photographic Memory that lets me recall anything once I've seen it. So I was really heading out to make myself a map of the place. As we walked, I learned two big things. One: Warthog's is fracking huge. Like, huge huge. Two: Parts of it are currently under construction. I should check and see if something has happened recently or if it’s one of those situations where things are being modified or renovated or what.

Vittori, Grimm, and I were exploring and we found ourselves on the first floor of the castle. We heard a deep rumbling sound (that I JUST NOW realize we didn’t explore any further), looked around for a second and then Grimm saw a black cat farther down the hall. We discussed the cat for about 10 seconds, and decided to go interact with it because, you know, why include it if it’s not part of the scene?

The cat didn't like us. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68BrauMLt_0)

We approached and it hissed at us. I got closer and it hissed at me. Oh. The cat was standing a couple of feet from a doorway. That’s pertinent. I asked Grimm and Vittori if they had any food. Grimm had a biscuit. I didn’t have a lot of confidence that the cat would be interested in a biscuit, but I was willing to try it if I could get the cat to just chill the **** out.

I still don’t know why I didn’t just leave the cat to be pissed off by itself.

I offered the bread. It didn’t take it. I got closer for some damn reason. The cat responded by tearing me to pieces.


I’m not kidding. I was literally one round of attacks away from being killed by this goddamn housecat. Grimm stood back and watched as I got my face torn off, but Vittori, to his credit, jumped right in. Unfortunately, neither one of us managed to hit the thing for something like three rounds before I grabbed the damn thing by the neck and held it at arm’s length.

The cat immediately started screaming like I’d lit it on fire.

About .5 seconds later, the closest door banged open and a professor stormed into the hallway and started getting all up in my biznass about putting his cat down, and “What do you think you’re doing?” and rageface. I put his cat down and he told me to go to the infirmary. So as it turns out, he DID see the gaping wounds, but chose to ignore them while I had my hands on his Precious.

So we went to the infirmary. Where we met the smokingest-hottest nurse in the whole world. Vittori and I were instantly smitten. I asked her what the deal was with Professor Blofeld and she told me that the professor’s name was Gotman and the cat was Jester. Then Hotnurse put some healing salve on my wounds that took me back to full HP and I passed out because, you know, hot nurse or something.

When I woke up, I was in our room. According to the little magical time-telling device on the wall it was 11 pm. My plate of food had turned into a big fat plate of “Grimm is an ******* who eats the food of his passed-out roommates”. So I went looking for some grub.

From my earlier walkabout I knew where the cafeteria was and I found the kitchens pretty quickly after that. I found a guy named Pavel making some pastries for the morning. I chatted him up and put on some charm and ended up making myself a new friend. He told me that I’d almost always be able to find some kind of pastry in this part of the kitchen at night. He told me to help myself, and I ended up complaining about facing Gotman’s Worst Cat Ever. Pavel laughed and told me that Jester is very protective of Gotman’s territory and that Jester loves sardines. So my little trip to the kitchens ended up being a pretty successful one. Information, access to a resource, and an ally. Score.

Monday morning! The entire student body met in the cafeteria and I got my first look at the assembled school. I was hoping that the students wearing black would all look evil, but they all just looked like students. Bummer. Anyway, Headmaster Ygarstan gave us a little speech about a new year and blah blah and told everybody where to go. The 60 new students (six boys and six girls from each house) were told to meet in the Entry Hallway and wait for Professor Gotman, so we went.

Whatever the opposite of “excited” is, that’s what I was.

Gotman gave us a little speech about learning and blah blah and how for the first 14 weeks we’d all be learning a specific set of skills. We’d be taking one class per week and for our first class, we’d be learning how to work.

Gotman gave each group of six a specific task and told each of us that he’d be coming around to check our work. At some point in the middle of this, Gotman gave the three of us a look that indicated that he recognized us from last night. We gave a collective, “Well, ****.” Some groups got wound up cleaning chandeliers, some were mopping floors, some were washing windows, and some were cleaning toilets.

Guess who was cleaning toilets.

Yup. So we cleaned toilets like crazy. And cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. Gotman showed up and told Grimm that his area was clean but that Vittori and I still had some work to do. And he was kind of a **** about it. I couldn’t believe that he snapped at us like that. After a while he came back and acted like a **** some more but ultimately told us that we'd finally gotten our area clean. And then he surprised me by apologizing for Jester tearing me apart the night before. I gave him as much of an "It's okay. Animals, right? Whaddaya gonna do?" as I could muster and we called time on the session.

By way of wrap-up, the GM told us that the 1st-year students spent the entire week doing manual labor around the grounds and that by the end of it we'd all picked up the General Laborer skill.

And then we really did call time.

Questions? Comments?

Morghen
2012-06-07, 02:16 PM
I'll use this post for something at some point.

Orran
2012-06-08, 07:08 AM
Good to see you back, looking forward to reading more.

And that is quite an impressive fro.

Morghen
2012-06-09, 08:19 AM
The first post has undergone a massive overhaul.

Morghen
2012-06-11, 11:00 PM
Here's a thing about the game that I feel is definitely worth mentioning: We're playing 11-year olds. I know I posted that above, but it bears repeating here. I'm kind of digging playing somebody who is barely done with being a little kid. We get to do stupid **** and chalk it up to being 11. It's kind of refreshing.

6/4 Game
Friday Night through Saturday Afternoon
Characters Present: Sigismund, Vittori, Kahaal

At the very tippy-top of the session, the GM had Kahaal go through the whole bathroom-cleaning thing from last session. Kahaal was... less than eager to clean some other person’s ****. He objected for a bit, but when he was informed by Gotman that the week’s lesson was not negotiable in any way, Kahaal settled for cleaning toilets by himself away from the rest of us.

Our first week of school was finally over and we were ready for some down time. Over the course of the week, the three of us had heard rumors about things that were going on at the school. I’d heard about a nest of strange eggs down by the pond (on school grounds). Kahaal heard that there was a ghost in the south tower of the school who had a history of adopting a group of 1st-year students and helping them through their seven years, then finding a new group of students. And according to the rumor, this was the year that the ghost would be looking for a new group. But here’s the rumor that got our 11-year-old selves worked into a tizzy: Vittori heard that from a certain spot on the roof of the Hydral common room, you could see straight into the Hydral 6th-year girls’ bathroom.

Given that it was beginning to get late, we weren’t that interested in heading down to investigate anything remotely monstery. Also, Kahaal’s MOAR PRIVACY quirk manifested itself as a need to exclude people from... something. Anything. So Vittori and I didn’t even know about his rumor at that point.

But Vittori did have this one rumor that he could investigate and he certainly couldn’t resist investigating because OMG BOOBS.

Vittori hadn’t told either of us about his rumor at this point. While the two of us were off doing something else, he did a quick look-around to see if he could find a way onto the roof. After some extensive searching he found that the only way was to go straight up the chimney. So he made an unskilled climb check, climbed the 20 feet up to the roof, and gave the sneakiest look-around that he could. It was still daylight, so Vittori knew that he couldn’t just stand around. He hunkered down to stay hidden and spent about 10 minutes looking across the way into the bathroom. Apparently they were all getting ready for whatever the 6th-years do on Friday nights because three different girls rolled through there.

And, yes. Boobs.

So then he went to go and get us. Unfortunately, “going” meant climbing down the chimney. Which meant another unskilled check. Which he failed and took enough damage to kill him. But if you remember above in my first post under the “Things About HackMaster” spoiler I talked about, Vittori was in Great Honor and rerolled his unskilled climb check.

Which he promptly failed.

But that also meant the GM had to reroll the damage, which meant that Vittori survived. He immediately went to the infirmary. The Hotnurse patched him up and asked him a few questions, but because he looked like he’d hurt himself falling she believed his “I was practicing climbing walls” story.

Vittori immediately found Kahaal and myself and let us know what was up. We decided that having three of us on the roof was a bad idea during the day, so we agreed to meet up again after dark.

I decided to use the time until then to meet some more of the evening staff. I cruised around and met a woman mopping the halls who seemed to really like me, I met a guy trimming some hedges who seemed to really like me, and I met a guy polishing some brass who seemed to not like me all that much. Two more solid contacts who I can call on in a potentially tight spot = happy me.

I should note that even for an 11-year old, I’m really smart and very charismatic. In a school full of smart and charming kids, I’m gonna stand out.

About then it was time for us to go back up the chimney. So Vittori and I climbed up the chimney while Kahaal stayed down below and kept a lookout. We presumed that as the Crown Prince of the Holy Roman Empire he’d had easier access to nudity than having to climb a chimney and look across a 30’ gap in the dark. So Vittori and I looked at boobs (because apparently standing around with their tops off is all the 6th-year girls do) for a bit and then we climbed down. Actually, Vittori fell down again. That was kind of fun. I fell as well, but I’ve got a tumbling skill that kept me from injuring myself. As I was climbing out of the fireplace, one of the older Hydral students came out into the common room and saw me climbing out. He gave me a funny look and asked what I was doing. I told him that I was trying to practice my climbing skills and that since we weren’t supposed to go outside at night I’d figured that a 20’ tall chimney would work nicely. He told me to be careful because there had been a lot of ‘accidents’ in that chimney over the years. Then he smirked at us, grabbed a snack from the main table, and went back to his room.

Vittori and I high-fived each other. Hard.

Since it was about time for bed, we all went. This is going to be important: At character creation, I took a Talent called Less Sleep. It means I only have to sleep half as much as I normally would so that I can get out and explore the place/get into hijinx without suffering any sleepy side-effects.

Because of my sleep thing, I woke up super-early (like 2 or 3 am) and went to the library. I asked the Night Librarian for some books on the history of Warthog’s and read those for a while. I chatted with her for a bit and she likes me already. Any kid who shows up looking for books and then sits and reads for three hours is probably going to get along with the librarian, but I’m also all charming and ****. So then I went to grab the other guys and go to breakfast.

After breakfast we headed to the pond to check out the situation with those eggs. When we got there we found that the pond was surrounded by tall grass and that there was a lot of life in the area. Mice, garden snakes, things like that. Instead of wading right into the mud, I proposed that we circle it once to see if we could spot the eggs. Kahaal made his Observation check and spotted the eggs from the other side of the pond. So we basically just walked up to the eggs instead of having to flounder around looking for them for 10 minutes. We approached the eggs and Kahaal made an unskilled check (of course) to identify the eggs as those of Fire Salamanders.

It might have been slightly meta-game-y but we figured that with two royal heirs and the youngest brother of one of the world’s most powerful Magic-Users we had a pretty good chance of knowing that we should probably tread pretty carefully from that point on. Also, the eggs were radiating heat from about three feet away.

So instead of the three of us grabbing the eggs and high-tailing it out of there, we decided that since I’d been doing a lot of Face-ing I’d go talk to somebody in the Alchemy and/or Monster Lore departments. While I was doing that, Kahaal and Vittori would go see what they could find out about Kahaal’s rumor.

I headed back to the Entry Hall and found Blash basically on hall duty. I talked to him and found out that he’s one of the primary Alchemy professors and does a bit of Critter Lore on the side. He told me that my friends and I should definitely leave the eggs alone but that we could tag along when some of the faculty went to deal with the eggs. He told me to wait right where I was for a minute, ducked out of the hallway and returned with a scroll. He told me to head back to the eggs, read it, then clear the area immediately.

I trotted over to the eggs, read the scroll, made like a baby, and saw a little dome shimmer around the eggs for a split second.

No, 1st-level characters shouldn’t be able to use scrolls. Whatever.


Meanwhile, Kahaal and Vittori went to the South Tower to investigate that ghost rumor. From the outside it was apparent that the building was four stories tall. They just went inside and they found a storage-y feeling room. There were desks and **** piled around (very dusty) and a staircase leading up. They did a cursory look at the desks and found “Class of XX” kinds of things scratched into the desks. Of note: some wise soul had scratched “GOTMAN BLOWS HIS CAT” onto one of the desks. They proceeded upstairs.

The stairs to the second floor were kind of sketchy, but they made it up them without mishap. The second floor was full of books. The books were pretty old and the two explorers basically gave them a once-over and moved on.

The third floor was full of dorm furniture. They checked for loose coins, but found very little of interest. They moved on.

Unfortunately, they found a door between the 3rd and 4th floors. Locked of course. They gave it a push and a pull, but the two 11-year old adventurers weren’t quite strong enough to break the lock. Kahaal tried to climb the outside wall from the 3rd floor to the 4th, but the window was barred. He made a ridiculous Observation check and saw through the heavily-obscured window that the 4th floor was a very dusty apartment.

Kahaal climbed back down to the 3rd and they decided to go talk to a professor about the ghost. They found Blash. He told them that he’d heard the rumor when he was a student but couldn’t swear whether it was true or not and apologized for not being more help.

So K and V decided to go talk to the groundskeeper. The found out who that was (my pal Cyril as it turns out) and went to talk to him. Kahaal was the one who approached Cyril and basically tried to pull a power trip. Cyril told him to go get ****ed. Not the exact words he used, but the message was pretty clear.

Lunch happened in here, and then we spent some time futzing around until 4 pm. That’s when Blash told us to meet in the Entry Hall to follow along with the grown-ups. There were six of them, five men and one woman. The men were Blash, Gotman, Cyril, Questquaz (who we learned was the head of the Learning About Monsters department), some unknown guy who was probably a Cleric or Tank, and the woman was Prasi, a smoking-hot wizardy type. Blash, Gotman, and Cyril were wearing armor.

They told us to stay at least 20’ behind them and we headed down to the pond. We got there and Gotman put on some humongous padded/chainmail gloves and approached the eggs. An enormous Alarm went off but Gotman continued to the nest. About the time he grabbed the first egg, two 8’-tall Fire Salamanders poofed into sight about 10’ from him. As soon as they showed up, Gotman threw himself onto the ground. Less than a second later, Prasi let loose with a Cone of Cold that flattened both Salamanders. The grown-ups grabbed the rest of the eggs and both dead Salamanders and we headed back to the school. Oh. Before we went, Questquaz banged out three teeth from a Salamander and gave one to each of us. They were hot to the touch and he told us they always would be. So that was cool.

And then we walked back to the school. As we approached, we saw a ton of students hanging out of the windows watching the activities. I made sure to walk plenty close to the professors and engage them in conversation so that everybody could see I was totally part of the group.

And then we called time.

------------------------------------------------------------

Questions? Comments?

Morghen
2012-06-15, 11:27 AM
6/11 Game
Characters present: Grimm, Vittori, Sigismund
Saturday Evening through Sunday Evening

We started the session by talking to Cyril about the South Tower. He told us that it used to be the apartment for a Professor Murdo. He told us that he only knew of one key, and the Headmaster has it.

At that point, Grimm brought up the rumor that he’d heard during the week. Apparently, people had been talking about “OOOOOH, MAGICAL CRYSTAAAAAALS” in the West Dungeon. Since it was nearing night, we had no intention of going into anything vaguely dungeon-y. So we were just about to wind down for the night, but I wasn’t ready to close up shop.

I headed to see my buddy Pavel in the kitchens. I was chatty for a bit, asking him how he’d been, then I grabbed a dish and a dozen little one-hander desserts from the cooler he’d told me about. Since we hadn’t had any contact with the 1st-year Hydral girls, I wanted to fix that by introducing myself by way of “Here’s a ton of dessert. We’re friends now, right?” Grimm had made some dumb crack about me, so I left him behind and just took Vittori. We walked in the door and the girls attacked the pastries like they’d never seen food. Vittori and I chatted with them for a bit (OOC. The GM RPing half-a-dozen people at once would have been weird and I’m glad he didn’t handle it that way.) and got to know them some. Here they are:

Moira - Elf
Rachel - Half-Elf
Rosa - Half-Elf
Isadora - Human
Yselle - Human
Jinsa - Human

After about 15 minutes, Vittori noticed that one of the girls (Isadora) was wearing my necklace. Important note: I’d never seen Isadora before I walked in their room. It was definitely my necklace, though. Vittori pointed it out, and I called Isadora out for showboating. I complimented her on her skill and asked for my necklace back. The eight of us chatted for a little longer and then Vittori and I left for the night.

And then sleep.

I got up early (like always) and headed to the library. Pumi was there again. I knew that magicking was where I would be going ASAP, but as a 1st-year/level Charlatan I knew all I’d be getting into was cantrips. Unfortunately I didn’t know how to get ahold of any books of cantrips, so I asked Pumi about ‘em. She told me that 1st-years need instructor permission. So that’s maybe kind of a downer, but we’ll see.

Because I’m nosy, I asked Pumi for biographies of former professors so I could go looking for adventure hooks cool rumors about the school. She brought me a couple and I read for a while. The only thing I got was that the current Headmaster was part of a little controversy over his appointment. Somebody got passed over and then left the school. Seems minor, but we'll see. What Pumi had given me wasn't exactly burning up the place, so I told the GM that I wanted her to find anything that would lead me to cool hidden stuff in the school. Like... a chamber of some kind. And maybe it has secrets in it.

So then I grabbed my crew and we went to breakfast.

After breakfast, I went back to Cyril and tried to give him a story about how Kahaal was being an idiot and he'd locked his keys inside his foot locker and I wanted to borrow a crowbar to break it open so Kahaal would stop crying. Cyril said I should just have one of the professors pick the lock or talk to Larry the maintenance guy. Since Cyril wasn't giving me a crowbar (or a hammer, I tried that too) I decided to pack it in and see if Larry would hook us up.

Vittori talked to Larry getting a crowbar for Kahaal’s locker but blew a “Can you tell I’m lying?” check. Larry called him on it so Vittori leveled with him about trying to break into the South Tower 4th Floor apartment. Larry told him a couple of things: 1) The ghost of a former professer named Towlit has been... living(?) in that apartment for a while; 2) He may not like it if you break into his house; 3) Why would you try during the day?; 4) Maybe see if you can offer him something instead of just busting through the door and demanding his attention.

So.

Vittori and I decided to head to the library and find out what we could about this guy Towlit. In the library we met the weekend librarian, Marotri. She bought that I was all bookworm-y, but she could smell the “I’m looking for trouble” on Vittori. We told her what we were looking for and why and she brought us a textbook he wrote 300 years ago that was a landmark in magical research at the time. Vittori started flipping through that and we sent Marotri back to find something in magical research from the last 10ish years. She left and came back with two big texts, one on abjuration and another on magical structures (like Opulent Manor and whatnot). By this point, Vittori and I had settled on using our personal service as the gift we would give Towlit for his favor. To clarify because that sounds kid of icky: We’d read to him. Ghosts ain’t got no substance, so turning pages is tough.

Since we wouldn’t be heading to talk to Towlit until that night, we decided to go look into those crystals Grimm had heard about.

In my reading at some point I’d found that the West Dungeon used to be where they kept the magical creatures before the enormous renovation project the school began a couple of years earlier.

To the West Dungeon.

The West Dungeon was under the West Tower (duh), down three flights of stairs, and closed with a big iron door. The door really didn’t want to open, but we had Grimm (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAyh23l1mx4).

Once the door was open, we could see that we were facing a hallway about 100' long with 10 doors on each side. We stood there for a second, trying to decide what to do, when we heard some squeaking coming from the second door on the right. It definitely sounded like rats. A couple of checks told us that it was probably 4-8 rats. After having been through Cat Smackdown just seven days ago, I was in no hurry to take on a bunch of rats. Vittori agreed with me and we were just about to ignore the hell out of the room when the GM played us a sound clip of something (http://www.hark.com/clips/wbkwhrwnlx-badgergruntsscream-at030101) in the room with the rats.

When we heard it, we all gave a solid "HOLY ****ING ****. WE'RE LEAVING RIGHT NOW." Then Grimm (with more made checks) told us that A) it was a badger; and B) it was fighting the rats. For a moment or two we were going to just let the fight play out and then open the door to kill whatever was left. But after a minute Vittori('s player realized that the GM's 5-year old daughter would be rolling dice for the badger and) switched gears and recommended we get in there and help the badger.

So Grimm opened the door and we ran in and tore up some rats. They actually folded a lot easier than I thought. The room was a "cages against each wall" kind of affair and there was also a hole in the wall that must have lead the rats and badgers in here in the first place.

The badger looked at us for a second and ran past us. (The badger was told that it smelled some food that smelled really, really good.) The badger ran to the 4th door on the left and started scratching at it. We followed the badger and Grimm opened the door. Inside, we found a whole mess of badger food and the crystals we'd been looking for. So... yay.

Also a snake. With a skill check, Grimm told us that it was an asp. We weren't excited about facing a poisonous snake, but whatevs. Crystals, man. I tried to just scoop up the crystals but the asp was all, "Lolwut? You have to kill me first." So we did and then scooped up the 12 crystals. They were: 3 clear glowy ones, 3 red, 3 blue, and 3 yellow. We also grabbed the asp to take to Blash.

We gave the room one more check and then scrammed. The badger followed. As soon as we hit the entry hall the badger high-tailed it out the door. We got to Blash and told him about the jacked-up situation with wild animals just hanging out in the West Dungeon. He told us he'd tell the head of Hydral and then we showed him the crystals. He seemed to recognize them immediately. He said the glowy ones were simply Continual Light crystals but that he didn't know what the red, blue or yellow ones did. He DID tell us that the older kids make them as pranks, but he couldn't tell us specifically what these ones did because the students are constantly coming up with new ones. Grimm, Vittori and I each took a CL crystal (even though we each have infravision) and then we offered Blash the asp. He did some quick work with a couple of knives and removed everything from the asp that was alchemically valuable. And he thanked us and we left.

And then we called time.

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Questions? Comments?

Orran
2012-06-15, 01:25 PM
So you'll be staying at level 1 until the secocnd year? Will there be a time skip? You seem to be playing days as they come, so won't that be a while?
Aside from that it seems pretty cool, would like to see Grimm get upto some shenanigans though.

Morghen
2012-06-15, 02:49 PM
So you'll be staying at level 1 until the second year?Yup.


Will there be a time skip? You seem to be playing days as they come, so won't that be a while?The way it was originally presented was that we'd be 'adventuring' on the weekends and schooling Monday-Friday. We're only through week 1 but we've been doing that so I think that'll probably continue. I hope so, anyway. I'm sure some plot will show up at some point. One of the things that is making the campaign progress slowly so far is that 50% of it has been me talking to people. Also, anywhere we need to go is less than 15 minutes away by foot. Yeah, it's a big building, but essentially the campaign is limited to one building and a few acres of park. When you remove travel time from a campaign the days pass much slower.

I just did some rough math and if we get through an entire in-game weekend a session we'll be taking something like eight or nine months to get to second level. That's assuming something like 36 weeks in a school year. Hmmm.


Aside from that it seems pretty cool, would like to see Grimm get upto some shenanigans though.Same here. But I'm not holding my breath.
Grimm Something-Or-Other
This is the guy who played Brunt the Half-Ogre in our previous campaign. Now he's playing Grimm the Half-Ogre. Grimm likes to eat things?

Morghen
2012-06-24, 11:08 AM
6/18 Game
Characters present: Grimm, Vittori, Sigismund, Laurence
Sunday Evening through Monday of Week 2

First things first: You undoubtedly noticed a new name up top. Thankfully, we added one of our missing players. His character’s name is Laurence Llongo Gamehater. I’ve added him to the list of characters in the first post.

We got Laurence up to speed on what we’d been up to and his first order of business was to ask about hitting up the kitchen staff to give him some utensils he could use to improvise some lock-picks. The lunch lady(?) he approached sniffed out the fact that he was up to no good and told him to beat it. So he just sat around with the rest of us until after dinner when we had planned to head on over to the South Tower and the ghost of Professor Towlit.

8 pm. We went.

We approached the tower all sneaky-like, not wanting anybody else to see us, professor OR student. The front door was open like it had been before, so we went in. We were standing in the pitch-dark room pulling out our Continual Light crystals (ghosts don’t show up on infravision) when Laurence gave us a heads-up that he could hear noise from above. After another listen, he thought it was probably the third floor. I immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was some other kids and that we’d have competition for Towlit’s assistance. We decided that killing them and trying to hide the bodies was out of the question, so we had to get rid of them somehow. Fortunately, we hang out with probably the biggest kid in the school. I told Grimm to yell up the stairs and say, “What are you doing in here?” in as mean and adult-y a voice as he could muster. He did. It was very mean and adult-y. Almost immediately he was answered with, “What are YOU doing in here?” in a big, booming voice.

The four of us looked around at each other for a second and gave a collective, “Ooooookay.” I told Grimm to yell out that we were there to talk to Towlit and the voice replied, “That’s PROFESSOR Towlit.”

Somewhere in here, with Vittori and I giving Grimm paragraph-long responses to yell up the stairs, Grimm kind of threw up his hands and told us to go ahead and just do the talking ourselves.

So I conferred with Vittori while he talked to Professor Towlit. We told Towlit that we’d heard he was in the market for new pets and that we’d like to barter for his services, not just show up and hope he picked us. He told us to come up to the third floor.

We got there and immediately had to make saving throws to keep from running out of the building in terror. We all made it due to generous bonuses (because we’d gone there expecting him and had then talked to him for a bit) and when we got a good look at him he just looked like some dude. I don’t know if we were expecting Jacob Marley (http://www.stevescottsite.com/jacob-marley.jpg) or what, but he was just a dude sitting in a chair.

We introduced ourselves and talked a bit and we found out that we were the first ones in our year to come to him. We were excited about that, but he also told us that it wasn’t a race and that it wasn’t about who could offer him the most. He told us that he always looked for the group with the most potential. I immediately talked up how two of our group are royalty and Vittori chimed in with an “I’m sure you know who my brother is.”

We chatted for a little bit more and we got the impression that he was going to keep our application on file and that he’d make a decision around the fourth week of school. We weren’t too excited about having to wait another couple of weeks, but there wasn’t anything we could do. Vittori asked him if we could speed up his decision but Towlit told us that he never decided any earlier. We were getting ready to leave and we asked him if there was anything he needed. He asked us for three things: bring him more books on magic, don’t tell any other students that we’d found him, bring him parchment, quills, and ink.

We were surprised at that last one, but he told us that he IS able to physically affect things. So of course he wants to write stuff down.

Before we left, he gave us one little nugget of help. He told us that our teacher for Week 2 was Professor Alexeivna. He told us that Alexeivna is a halfling and that she likes to play a trick on the first day by posing as a student and waiting for the real students to act up when “the teacher is late to class”. Then she jumps up and busts the offending students because she likes playing tricks I guess.

He also asked us to bring him a lantern and a few flasks of oil. We got in a couple of seconds of head-scratching before it occurred to us that ghosts can’t see in the dark. That was kind of odd.

And then we left and snuck back into the school and went to bed. A thing: We were mostly interested in not letting STUDENTS see us. If teachers saw us and gave us a hard time we’d just tell them the truth (probably), but we didn’t want any other 1st-year students to see us and start asking questions.

As usual I went to the library early in the morning and found a brand new magical text on wild magic for Towlit.

We all ate and went to class about 15 minutes before it was scheduled to start. Some Teranic and Wraithward students were already there so we grabbed one of the front tables. We noticed a halfling sitting with the Teranic students and we ignored the hell out of her.

So we sat and the rest of the students came in. It should be noted that we didn’t have all 60 1st-years together in one room and we didn’t have all 30 of the 1st-year boys. We had half of the 1st-years and it seemed to be a random grouping.

9:00 (the beginning of class) came and went but nobody really made a peep yet. Two-ish minutes after 9:00, the Wraithward students at the back started getting kind of boisterous and noisy. After that, the GM rolled a couple of dice and started consulting a bunch of tables and took a couple of minutes looking at things, to the point that our table-talk faltered and I gave him a “Hey, what’s up?” Here’s what was up:

About 9:05, one of the Aviaxin kids chucked a rock straight at Grimm’s head. The blow from the rock knocked Grimm completely unconscious and Grimm fell off his chair. The mood at our gaming table suddenly got like this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Kjh9lQXLWk&feature=related).

In-game, Alexeivna jumped out of her chair, grabbed the kid by the hair (from behind), banged him face-down onto his table and pinned one arm behind his back. This all happened at Retired-Adventurer speed. A couple of the other Aviaxin kids stood up for whatever reason and Alexeivna gave them a very grumpy "BACK OFF" and told Vittori to go retrieve Professor Blash.

Blash arrived, grabbed the rock-thrower, and hauled him out of the room. Meanwhile, Alexeivna gave Grimm something to un-KO him and he got back into his chair.

And then we learned about maintaining our metallic equipment. (We learned the skill Maintenance & Upkeep.)

We basically polished silverware for a few hours until lunch rolled around. Before releasing Grimm for lunch, Alexeivna grabbed him and told him that the rock-throwing kid would be in for a rough couple of weeks from the professors and that Grimm should definitely not go instigating anything further. She did add that if the other kid continued in any way that he deserved whatever he got.

So that was that and we called time.

----------------------------------------------------------

All the dice-rolling and table-consulting was our GM dealing with the crit he'd just rolled on Grimm.

Questions? Comments?

Orran
2012-06-24, 06:29 PM
So do you have a plan for Towlit now that your page-turner services aren't needed? Being able to show yourselves as interesting through role-play seems a better idea than just fetching things. Although I could see this as a chance for your DM to give you some rivals. Even perhaps having him choose them and then you having to compete with a group who already have a leg up on you.

That crit huh? Wasn't really expecting that, but the halfling teacher seems an interesting character. Quite looking forward to seeing how grimm getting knocked out affects the rep he's yet to earn. Also, I hope there was some kind of listen check you guys failed to know about that little sneak attack, understandable mistake if not, but I would feel slightly cheated.

Morghen
2012-06-28, 11:40 PM
So do you have a plan for Towlit now that your page-turner services aren't needed? Being able to show yourselves as interesting through role-play seems a better idea than just fetching things.Agreed.


That crit huh? Wasn't really expecting that, but the halfling teacher seems an interesting character. Quite looking forward to seeing how grimm getting knocked out affects the rep he's yet to earn.Yeah, I can see more kids trying to mess with him if they think he's got a glass jaw. Also: I get the impression that most (if not all) of the professors are former adventurers.


Also, I hope there was some kind of listen check you guys failed to know about that little sneak attack, understandable mistake if not, but I would feel slightly cheated.I think what happened there was the GM just rolling to make sure that the kid didn't put it through the window or throw out his shoulder. And then that crit happens and suddenly it's a whole different ballgame. But yeah, an Observation check or something just to see if Grimm got a dodge woulda been nice.

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Okay, so here's an update:

I'm gonna be out of town for two weeks on vacation. I haven't updated this week's game and I'm not going to be able to get that done before I go.

So I'll be asking our GM or somebody to take half-way decent notes so I can catch things up once I'm back.

TopherKersting
2012-06-29, 10:13 AM
Also, I hope there was some kind of listen check you guys failed to know about that little sneak attack, understandable mistake if not, but I would feel slightly cheated.

This was a freak thing, by any measure. I decided against the listen check because of the chaos in the room at the time--along with the party's decision to behave, which I took to mean sitting quietly facing forward.

HackMaster is a weird game where crits are concerned though. In one major tournament, a PC had his head caved in by a bee sting, just because of freakish dice rolls. Crit severity is based on the attacker's class/level (or monster hit dice), the bonuses to the attack roll, the defender's armor class, and the roll of a d8 (which can penetrate upward on a roll of 8 or downward on a roll of 1), to get a result from 1 to 24 (results under 1 are treated as normal hits, rolls above 24 are treated as 24). In this case, the attacker was aiming for the head (-6 to the roll) and was non-proficient in pebble (-3) and was a 1st level thief (-4), but Grimm had a head AC of 8 and I rolled an 18 on my double-penetrating d8, for a result of 13.

By my calculations, something like that should only happen about once in every 1300 attacks. :smallbiggrin:

Topher