At today’s D&D Encounters session my poor cleric Gretzyln was vanquished by those most evil of elves, the Drow. He was supposed to be a hardboiled deep gnome ex-dungeoneer turned fanatical cleric of Pelor, the sun god. I thought it was a cute idea: a guy who spends his whole life living underground leaves that life behind to worship the sun.
Gretzyln was not alone in his fate: it was a total party kill. I didn’t think this blog would earn its name so quickly.
There were 5 people playing at session today: two wizards, an avenger, a vampire, and my cleric. It’s probably not an ideal mix for a party, but that’s always a possibility when you play in these sorts of pickup games. I didn’t think it was particularly out of whack. We were facing off against some sort of Drow necromancer, her henchmen, and some skeletons she animated during the course of the fight.
I’m not completely sure what went wrong. The monsters were all higher up in the initiative order then us, so we did spend a lot of time reacting to them rather than getting out there and messing them up. I had to heal two of our party members (back from death’s door) very early on in the encounter. The skeletons, though there were a lot of them, never really gave us any trouble. Our wizards were well suited to deal with them. We probably could have done a better job trying to avoid the Drow and all their ranged attacks, but I didn’t feel like we were ceding that much of the fight to them. Then our DM started rolling like a man of fire, and our attempt to chase down the Drow and finish them off ended in ruin.
Dungeon’s Master has a more detailed write up of the week 3 encounter. In the game he DM’d the party of 6 players defeated the Drow, but barely survived. That DM is a player in my game, and he mentions our defeat at the bottom of the post. He felt our lack of ranged attacks and a defender were the two biggest obstacles we failed to overcome.
Still, it was fun. And all is not lost. No doubt next week another of Pelor’s followers will wind up chasing down some Drow to avenge their old friend and companion, that foolish cleric Gretzyln.
I played in my first D&D encounters session last week. These are pickup games run by people at your local games or comic book shop, using episodic adventures published by Wizards of the Coast. Each adventure runs for 12 or so weeks. Wizards of the Coast set up the Encounters program to introduce new gamers to D&D, and to get people who might have stopped playing back into D&D. It’s been going on for a few years now, so I’m going to assume Wizards has decided it is a success.
The Encounters adventures usually tie into the current set of books Wizards is pushing. The adventure I am playing in is about The Underdark and the Drow. Conveniently there are a couple books about these very things out right now.
It’s been an interesting experience participating in the games. The groups are a strange mix of people. At my local gaming store there are a bunch of little children and a bunch of adults. They split the two groups up for the most part, though both games I’ve played in have included kids. The first game included a quiet girl who I assume was the daughter of one of the other players, while the second game included a boy who was full on into D&D. (He played a Thri-kreen whose family’s knees were all broken by raiders when he was young, so now he is evil and goes around destroying other people’s knees: seriously.) Kids are the best. (Though I suspect playing with a whole table of them would be tiring.)
One of the dungeon masters from Dungeons Master is a player in the game I participate in. He has write ups for the game he runs at another gaming storing in the city, if you’re curious about the specifics of the adventures and how they play out. I’ve enjoyed both games I’ve played in thus far.
Encounters really distils 4th Edition down to its core. So far there has been a little bit of role playing followed up with some full on tactical combat. I suspect depending on the group you play with you’d end up with a different experience week to week. The great thing about D&D is that everyone can approach the same situation very differently. When I read about other Encounters sessions they are nothing like my own.
If you are looking to satiate your urge to play role-playing games D&D Encounters is certainly worth a look. (You can even play online!)
The Random Dungeon Generator as a Dungeon Map by Paul Hughes was the first D&D product I backed on Kickstarter. It’s really through this project that I ended up discovering the community that surrounds old-school D&D. I have since spent far more than I ever thought I would on other D&D crowd funded projects. There is something so earnest about these projects I just can’t resist.
The poster arrived today and it looks really great. It’s massive, so I’m not sure how well it would actually function as a game aid, but as a piece of art is is definitely cool. I really need to frame it so my wife tell me I can’t hang it up on our walls.
Yesterday I received my copy of Crawl!, a fanzine for Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG. In a surprise move the fellow behind the zine, Dak Ultimak, mailed out limited edition copies of the zine to people like myself who pre-ordered. The cover of the zine mimics the cover of the limited edition DCC RPG book: it’s black on black, with a little gold foil sticker. It was a pleasant surprise.
The zine is 20 pages long, and features 4 articles filled with new ’crunch’ for your DCC RPG game. The opening article discusses tweaks to the character creation rules that will help create a more traditional sword and sorcery feel for your DCC RPG campaign: dropping demi-human classes, and moving the skills and features of the cleric and thief classes elsewhere. This article is followed by one about a new patron for wizards. Apparently this character came about from Dak’s actual home game. The third article presents rules for variable DC: easy ways to randomly make a mundane task difficult or a difficult task easy. The zine ends with some rules on converting OSR material to the DCC RPG system. Subsequent issues will expand on some of the material presented in this issue. I thought the articles were all quite enjoyable. The article about the new patron really stood out. It features a great backstory along with some humorous wizard corruption descriptions.
For a bunch of paper and cardboard, the zine’s actually very well put together. Running contrary to the classic zine aesthetic, Crawl! is a well designed little book. The layout is quite well done. The articles are laid out neatly, and there are lots of great little illustrations throughout the issue. For a DIY publication it feels pretty professional. Well, except for the fact it’s cardboard and folded paper, I suppose.
They fled through the pseudo flesh farms, back to the maintenance zone, to dis/assembly yard, the storage zone, and finally to the hangar on the 6th floor. They were trying to be direct, since they could hear the station falling apart. They took Silus with them, “downloading” him to a strange hive-mind artifact they had found earlier. (Sure, why not.) They met another diver, confused about what was going on, who followed them out as well. What’s his deal? We may never know, not sure when we’ll pick this all up again. Some threads for the future anyway.
More chit-chat with Silus as the party move through the Pseudoflesh Farms on his pointless errand to feed “the maw”. The party move past the giant lake of pseudomilk and on to the eel storage. Here they found rows upon rows of eels in cryrostorage. They are admonished by Silus for nicking a few pods to take with them. Who knows when a frozen eel might come handy. The parties android coterie each take an eel. The room is quiet otherwise, besides the hum of the refrigeration units.
Moving on the party enters the head sculpting room, a horrific sight. The group must make their way through the rows open rows of heads, each being sculpted by strange tongue like devices reaching out from the ground. It’s all quite dense, so making it through without getting licked by one of these tongues requires some swift reflexes from the group.
Finally the group find themselves in the Waste Flesh Reclamation room, where they try and placate Silus by feeding the huge maw that takes up the middle of the room. Conversation continues with Silus about whether the amount of food they are feeding the maw really is substantial enough to constitute a feeding, and then more conversation about its relationship with Monarch.
The group moves on, heading up into a small maintenance room. Hazard strips mark a access hatch on the floor. Silus chirps up once more, warning the players off. Do they listen? Of course not.
The hatch goes down down down for a long while. They lose gravity at some point. The air is super cooled helium, their vacsuits working overtime. They drift for hours. And then they are deposited into a large open space, a cavern of slate. In the centre of the space, an upside down mountain, wires and cables flocking around it. They have found Monarch. There is silence save for the hum of the supercomputers.
Their is an obvious tear in the mountain, one they enter. Behind them they can hear the sounds of pursuers. They explore the mountain, looking for a place to use their Helbox. Kjell is on guard, floating up above the entrance to the space. Suddenly a wave of security androids begins to pour into the room, searching for the intruders. The marine keeps those he can occupied and distracted.
The Hellbox does what it says on the box. Monarch is no more? Seemingly so. The security androids look to revert to non-hostile programming. They mill around like mall cops. The group push their way past the androids, and back up the shaft, back to the 3rd floor.
The players leave The Furnaces behind as they move into a clean room of sorts. There are three interlocking sterile white rooms, each hermetically sealed. They enter into the space cautiously. There are other doors also leading into this initial space, but they decide to move further into this room, into the second sterile white room. Here a voice with a bad british accent informs them they must put on fresh containment suits, found in the room, before venturing to the Psuedoflesh Farms! This AI’s name is Silus. Decked out, the door infront of them unlocks, and they can move on to the final room and then through a chute towards the Psuedoflesh Farms.
Floating upwards they cover a good distance before they catch glimpse of a creature in the distance, barely lit by their lights. In pushes itself downwards, towards them, a big mess of flesh. An android twisted into something terrible. And there is much fighting in the confines of the chute, the players manage to make it out victorious. Well, except they are now covered in the disgusting ichor of this android.
Silus welcomes them as they reach the well lit Gravity Acclimator room. Gravity slowly ratchets itself up. This is the first well lit room the party have seen in some time, and the first gravity they have felt in ages.
They start travelling through the spaces, making small talk with Silus as they move from room to room. They check out the workers lounge, where they are told there are some choice snacks. They opt to not have any. They see Biocide Supplies, but leave them alone lest they upset the AI, that looks to have eyes and ears everywhere. In the course of their travels Silus gets a little frustrated in the conversation and demands the party feed some organic matter to the Maw further inside this factory space.
The first factory room they encounter is the Nursery. Giant vines of pseudoflesh grown around tall poles, each bearing fruit of hands, faces, feet, eyes, etc. Small androids harvest this ‘fruit’. They seem to take interest in the androids in the party, and so they decide to book it out of the room.
They move onto the Psuedomilk Vat storage room. Standing atop a gangplank they have a good view of a huge vat of grey sludge below. Strange eels can be seen swimming in the liquid. The whole mixture churns and roils. Disgusting.
The group leave the Mind Thief and back track towards the exit out of the Brain Construction zone. On their way back they stumble upon two children, clearly androids. They have escaped from the labs on level 4 and are seeking the The Mind Theif themselves. The party convinces them they are his representatives, and they should join them on their quest to blow up Monarch. The children are onboard and so off they all go.
They continue to backtrack, through the Maze Cage to the Condensation Falls. They pull themselves down on the chains that run from top to bottom in that space, looking to see what is below in the darkness. They find some industrial equipment they decide to leave alone, and full themeslves backup, exciting through a door that leads to cramped maintenance corridors. Making a left into an even small tunnel, they find themselves in a room that’s a jumble of cables. Kjell rigs one of his frag grenades up with a remote trigger, and leaves it behind. This might come in handy. They return to the original corridor and continue onwards, into a larger space.
A solid steel bridge covers the space with the occasional handhold. The walls are covered in a texture that on closer inspection is the phrase “BORN TO SUFFER” again and again, in languages dead, living, and imagined. It is unnerving. They continue on.
At a T-junction just past this space they encounter two androids fused together. They tell the group they are resting before continuing their search for the Minotaur, a name they haven’t heard since they first arrived at the Bell. These androids also believe the Minotaur is the saviour of all humanity, and though they are androids they feel compelled to seek it out. The party ask if they want to help destroy Monarch, and of course they do. They collectively refer to themselves as Erreh-4.
They move on to what looks like it might have been a former entrance into this space. A shaft leads up to the 2nd floor, formally the exhibition space on the station. The group move up into a meeting room where they see a floating dead body, it’s face completely pulverized. Scott Van Clapper investigates and determines the android died from his face being totally pulverized—good job.
They move towards a room emanating heat, and come up the furnaces, huge monoliths. There are 8 in the total, and they are covered from top to bottom in the graphic depictions of human suffering painted on in grease.
Back where they started, but with a plan to travel through the Brain Construction floor. Kant, now with some of the memories of an old Cloud Bank employee mixed in with his own memories, suggests a route that avoids the UV Blaster completely, and takes the players to an area of the factory that seems isolated enough to be a good hideout for the Mind Thief. They begin by backtracking to the the Power Bank, which they manage without incident.
While travelling through the Power Bank they hear another group of androids ahead of them, seemingly lost, but they decide not to find out. They give the group a wide berth and move on to the Engraving Needles room and then on to the Void.
The space is cavernous and pitch black. It’s almost disorienting. They hug a wall and move across the room, walking sideways along a wall. After travelling for some time they hear a metallic clink and from the darkness emerges 3 robotic dogs, barrelling towards them. The quick reflexes of the marine Kjell and a fragmentation grendade manages to take care of the beasts (and takes out a chunk of the room as well). And then they are back to marching through the blackness of the room, eventually reaching the other side.
The group carefully move through a room where silicon is being prepared, and on to a clean room. Past that they enter a circuit testing floor. The room is filled with small slices of silicon floating about like shrapnel. They move cautiously through the space, slowly, through a door that leads to … The Mind Thief!
He seems to be expecting them. Or, at the very least, doesn’t seem shocked or intimidated by their arrival. He makes them a proposition: help him kill Monarch. He gives the group a small cube he calls The Hell Box. He claims it can destroy Monarch, the group just need to find Monarch’s AI core. A quandary, this was the person they have been trying to find and kill. In the end the group decide to take Helios, The Mind Thief, up on their offer.
The group venture through the tight steel maze like space attached to the Condensation Falls, eventually stumbling upon a door leading to a maintenance shaft. Eventually this shaft narrows down to a duct and the duct deposits them in a white room, three dead security androids floating in the middle of the space, their heads ripped open, their logic cores missing. That seems like something a Mind Thief might do!
The group move through a door to the North into a space bisected by a large glass tube full of sand. The sound of the sand flowing is a quiet roar. Discussions about whether to blow it up and see what happens are had, but the party moves on. They move through a door marked with warning signs.
They enter a small room, black with yellow hazard stripes. There is some safety literature on the walls, discussing the dangers of UV Blasters. There are also some UV survivals suits, which on cursory examination are all clearly damaged. There is also a giant off switch, behind some glass. There is once again much debate on how to proceed, whether they can make a working UV suit out of a bunch of garbage ones, etc. The Android companions from Scrap Town that are travelling with the group convince them to at least explore the start of the UV Blaster, which they decide to do.
It’s a giant room filled with cat walks orbiting several giant lenses. They decide not to go into the room the lenses a focusing light into, and retreat back to the Safety Room and from there to the Power Bank.
The room is filled with massive capacitors. They line the floor and walls and equal intervals. As they explore the room they can hear the whine of the capacitors as they charge and discharge every five minutes. The group decide to climb/float up a ladder to the mechanical space that sits above this room and floor.
There are cables everywhere. This sea of colour makes movement difficult. They push their way through one clump of cables to find a “maintenance worker” starring back at them. He freaks out! Kant feels sharp pain in his logic cores as the creature relays his pain and trauma into him. It is a mind bending experience, and it takes effort to separate these other memories from his own. The group decide to flee, dropping down a nearby hatch.
They catch their breath for a quite moment, but when the create floats down through the ceiling they realize that’s not going to work. They decide to ask the Ghost questions, about what it wants from them. This seems to calm it down. It gives some confused answers, and then fades away.
As is the groups signature style, they are back in the room they started in (with three dead androids floating in the middle of the space).
