Session 66: Raggedy Hobos

3/24/24-4/7/24, rest 4/8, active 4/9

PC: Gwendolyn, Aldric, Bebe

Hench: Amadayo, Madrof, Mahin

#ACKS

Gwendolyn the Goat (Bard) was approached in downtime about creating and performing songs based on locomotives for the domain level player Bigtoe. The Machinist had created a train system and wanted to sell it to the lords of the realm. He needed hype and was paying well for it.

The group decided that they would escort Gwendolyn on this quest. She had spent the last few days retrofitting classic train-themed songs with campaign specific lyrics and dropped them during the session as they traveled to much laughter from those of us old enough to get the references. The young mage Bebe was a little lost but he had his smartphone so didn’t suffer too much trauma.

The travel was mostly uneventful, but Aldric the Paladin did have a chance to speak with a large group of pilgrims devoted to Hextor. He had a long conversation with their leader which was respectful and the two groups parted without violence.

Once at Teutch tower, Bebe came alive a bit, seeking out alchemical ingredients and picking the local, extraplanar purple flowers that decorated the eastern facing slopes of the Friendship Hills. He was certain that they were mind-altering when eaten despite being informed that they simply tasted like edible blossoms and turned his mouth purple. He staggered in a placebo high while the rest of the party enjoyed more train-themed songs.

They got on the newly constructed subway train that went in a loop through all the domains of the west, arriving in Bigtoe’s personal domain of Carnotkhan many hours later. Bigtoe met with them and laid out the terms of his deal which offered commission on each sale of a subway system to the lords of Oberholt. He also produced a model of a train in a cabinet on wheels and a bag full of SWAG, conductor’s hats with his business logo on the side.

The party accepted the terms and stayed for Gwendolyn to perform at the grand opening of the subway. Not knowing what a train actually was, the bard did her best, closing with classics from the chart topping band Train like Toes of Jupiter, Meet Virginia, and Hey Soul Sister. Laughs were had by all except Bebe who I’m pretty sure didn’t know who Train was. When queried whether we were too old or “boomers” as the kids love to say, he responded, “Jokes I don’t get, day drinking, and jokes I don’t get? Yeah, you’re boomers.”

Throughout the travels, Bebe had been attempting to collect herbs and experiment with them, often making him sick, but on the way back to Oberholt he finally found William Holden and copped some hallucinogenic substance on a postage stamp of a red frog. That put him down for the rest of the trip but seemed to satisfy his curiosity. I’m not sure why this campaign attracts drug addict mages but there it is.

By sending messages ahead, they shaved off a little time from their anticipated meetings with the lords of the land, beginning with Lord Grueller Deinwick. While he was interested in the idea, he simply did not have room in the budget considering two of his fortresses had been destroyed in the last 6 months. He would need subsidies from the Baron in order to even entertain the idea.

Lord Delco Talston was unavailable for quite some time, so they moved on to Millon and the cleric of Ehlonna Redcorn who ran the place. This was another domain level PC played by the same player as Bigtoe and Aldric. I don’t allow players to play their domain level dudes when met during session to try and keep the handouts to a dull roar. 

Redcorn hates Teutch, hates Bigtoe, and hates the unnatural abominations of automatons despite the protestations of his player. He could be convinced to give it some serious thought if his liege Lord Delco Talston was on board but he was pretty strongly opposed to it off the rip. He did however have a task for the adventurers to handle, but they were focused on the train thing and blew him off.

Off to Bellport and the Baron Heinrik of Donwal, the key to the kingdom so to speak. If they could get the big dog on board they were sure it would sway others to fall in line. Unfortunately their meeting was to be several days in the future, which would cause them to miss their meeting with Lord Talston. They rescheduled and since we were up against the 14 day buffer of future time, we called the session there.

Musings:

Welcome new player Bebe. Kind of a slow session to start the game off with, traveling in civilized lands. Lots of sheep and merchants but he made the best of it. He’s got creative ideas and I hope he gets a chance to realize them.

ACKS has mercantile or domain XP thresholds for missions like this, where there is some risk but not the same as delving a dungeon or clearing a lair. It explains how politicians and merchants level to gain proficiencies to further their vocations without necessarily being badass adventurers. Just because someone’s leveled in ACKS doesn’t necessarily mean they’re tough, which is something I like.

You have to maintain separation of interests as best you can in these situations, which is why I don’t let the players play their patron level PCs live. Despite their protestations to the contrary, they will blur those lines and make every mission much too easy or profitable. Fortunately, it is well-documented that Redcorn and Bigtoe don’t care for each other, so I just cranked that to 11 and ignored the pragmatic commentary from the player.

I’ve got a patron at the helm of the Baron now, which takes some pressure off of me. I encouraged the group to discuss these things with the Baron in downtime, but they’re well into the future so it’ll be a minute.

Session 65: Back to the Well

3/17/24-3/19/24, rest 3/20, active 3/21

PC: Gwendolyn, Flynn, Aldric

Hench: Madrof, Mahin, Amadayo, Poe

#ACKS

A bit of a bombshell was dropped in downtime as Zektel of Team B related to the party that Lord Tyring (Patron Paladin) apparently had evidence against that group pointing to their alleged involvement in the December arson in Bellport. A long conversation was had in regards to what actions they may take to mitigate this danger. Ultimately, the players decided on playing Team A for the session in order to keep Team B flexible in case they had to flee the country or something.

Redtoe’s player couldn’t convince anyone to take on any of his offered treasure maps, so the group went back to Ornaron’s Spear, the underwater dungeon off the coast of Bellport. A quick encounter with a couple Hobgholls was their only real challenge before arriving at the great mural with platinum accents. In true adventurer fashion, they destroyed a beautiful piece of artwork in order to pry the platinum accents out of it.

The group continued on through the room that was previously pouring blood rain, this time only experiencing a drizzle. Flynn was curious about the portal but they moved on. Lots of buffs were stacked prior to entering the room where they believed an ochre ooze waited. It did, and was waiting for them due to the “We Will Rock You” that Gwendolyn was chanting for Inspire Courage.

The thing was very tough and immune to most types of damage, huge and slimy and cleaving through summoned manes easily. Once Aldric was able to get some fire on it they realized that was the move and big AC kept them safe while the rest of the party got after it. Unfortunately there was no treasure so they moved on.

The next room had gale force winds blowing debris and sand and grit everywhere, clearly dangerous to anyone who would brave the storm to collect the treasure that had accumulated in the corners and creases. A successful dispel magic from Flynn calmed the storm and they counted up a solid loot score. Sharing the load and leaving a bunch of copper behind, Team A extracted to the boat where Flynn convinced everyone to return to the dungeon and look at the portal or the bottomless snake statue on a previous level by mocking them for having no sense of adventure.

Bullying works. Back into the dungeon and straight to the snake hole, a large coiled serpent of obsidian with a cavity in the center. I frankly had no idea what this was so when the party secured a rope and Flynn started climbing down, I relied on my ever-trusty 2d6 to tell us what was up. I let Flynn roll it in the open and assigned very vague “low bad high good” criteria in my head. He rolled very poorly and the party was chattering a bit about what that might mean. I grabbed one of their ideas and behold, there’s a giant worm at the bottom that tried to snap up Flynn. And did. And killed him in one shot. Gulp.

The rest of the group reeled in the suddenly slack rope and dipped out, convinced by the massive chewing noises and uneasy feeling that this thing wasn’t gonna stay down there that there was no helping ole Flynn the Crusader.

The rest of the session was discussion around the heroic funeral and reserve xp systems in ACKS, which we’ve never used before. I suspect after this session everyone’s gonna have a clear will written up.

Musings:

I didn’t expect them to go back to the dungeon but I’m glad they did since there was a solid score of treasure still there. Sucked for me to know that it was left behind. Flynn’s push to adventure was the right call imo, playing tee-ball is boring. It didn’t work out this time but if it had, he’d be a hero. Either way my man’s gonna get a big ole send off so that his next PC doesn’t have to start at 1st level. I can’t imagine anyone goes back in that place but there’s still a giant worm in a hole and a portal to an unknown location awaiting those of adventurous nature to discover.

Sojenka Exit Thoughts

The Sons of Mithra have retired after completing our objective within the Shadows over Sojenka Campaign and have been tasked by the DM with providing some parting thoughts about our time there. These are my feelings on the game as a founding player of the Tuesday group. I played Cassander the Fighter and Castile the Paladin and was the primary Caller during sessions. I also developed our tracking system for our economic and military assets.

I will begin with opportunities for improvement and obstacles to gameplay. This is intended purely as constructive criticism as requested by the DM and in no way should impugn any member of the campaign’s playstyle or reputation as fine men and accomplished gamers.

The economics of the game struggled to adequately support and balance the efforts taken by different members of the campaign. The DM used several different sources and game rules to put together a system for play, often caught off guard by the specific needs of the session or downtime requests at hand, which created gaps that could be exploited. This issue was almost solved by the DM asking if a swap to ACKS was the right choice earlier in the campaign. It was the right choice in hindsight but at the time we had begun to exploit the gaps and were unwilling to lose the effort that had been spent by both DM and players to cobble something workable together. We voted against it. I do not recall the other members’ of the campaign votes.

The aforementioned Frankensystem, as we so lovingly called it, ended up being quite a point of friction. It’s unreasonable to expect a DM and party of players to create a game system by cobbling pieces together from all over on the fly. We are not game designers. The Blueholme ruleset that the game started with was simply insufficient to the task that we ended up putting it to, which was beyond the scope of the original stated purpose of the campaign.

Originally, players were solicited to join a campaign to explore the megadungeon of Tonisborg and all the faction play that that would entail. Events during the game led us to press into the domain and military side of campaigning early on and the DM graciously obliged. We also perceived, fairly or not, that there was a competitive aspect to the game due to a separate group of players in the same campaign and the presence of Patrons. In retrospect, I believe we took that competition more seriously than some others.

A more dynamic environment could have been achieved with more freedom allowed between Patrons and players. Instead communication with and even the identity of Patrons was carefully monitored and restricted until very late in the game. I’m sure this was part of the experimental nature of the campaign. Everyone involved has to get comfortable with the flow of things.

We learned early on that our contemporaries in the Thursday group were playing many PCs per player during a single session. I felt then as I do now that this is an exploit. Rather than hiring henchmen for specific tasks/roles/abilities and managing a team, you can simply create the needed roles without all the headache of managing their loyalty. With very small groups of two to four members each, the DM was probably lenient about this in order to improve survivability but Tuesday only fell to this dark path in the final sessions. Even then it wasn’t necessary and I regret that we did.

Now on to things that were successful and well-done with the campaign. We played for a year in an exciting, growing, living world with an experienced and thoughtful DM. We set objectives and achieved them in a satisfying enough way that we could, as much as you ever can, call it a victory. The reality is that barring disaster, this style of game rarely “ends”. It’s a series of ever-developing scenarios. We set a win condition for ourselves but could easily have kept playing into the evolving landscape.

The DM set forth a scenario involving a megadungeon that we almost immediately flipped the table over on. He graciously endured our shenanigans and leaned into the direction of the game that we were most interested in, despite not being prepared for it. This is the correct tack to take and proper DMing. The game is only as successful as the group as a whole makes it through their excitement and engagement.

The world-building was on point, with a rich and varied set of cultures, monsters, and a general vibe that was definitely not the standard western European medieval fantasy setting. The DM clearly enjoys preparing setting details like that and for those desiring deep immersion this guy’s got you covered. I only regret that some of it was wasted on our sloped-browed wargaming antics.

The adventure locations and magic items that we experienced during the game were some of the most interesting that I’ve had the pleasure to come across and I’ve been playing D&D and the like for 30 years. The Sons of Mithra faction is still in play with many of these items so I won’t go into detail but if you’re into content inspired by classic pulp fiction then again, this guy’s got you covered.

One of the most positive experiences of this campaign was the cohesion shown by the members of our party. Generally, adventuring parties are a loose gathering of independent actors who seem to rarely show any concern for overall objectives beyond their own petty goals. Not so this time. We started the game with a fixed objective as a win condition and sought to achieve it with every action taken. It was truly satisfying to play the game as a team.

In general, training times and other “time jail” mechanics are designed to encourage multiple PCs played by the same player. These separate parties are traditionally at odds with one another and are in fact encouraged by Gygax in AD&D to explicitly avoid cooperation. This separation of interests is key to avoiding the development of an overwhelming power base and stagnant game world. While I agree with this approach, it was interesting for the DM to allow each PC to be part of the same party and pursue a collective goal. One of our teammates became our utility player, generating a different useful utility class when one was in time jail. This allowed our mercenary company to have a toolbox to choose from when approaching challenges that normally would not be available. It was fun but ultimately I think tradition should win out in this regard.

The DM and players in our group had varying but solid experience with wargames. It was exhilarating to be able to apply those concepts to an RPG campaign even if it felt like sometimes we were the only ones playing that game style. This is another spot where the Frankensystem hurt a little in that generating an army is generally a very specific thing based on system. Combining systems gets a little messy but we learned a lot from how to do it procedurally and had a lot of fun marching around stomping out enemies.

There were many Patrons involved with this campaign at varying levels of complexity. One thing that stood out early on was that the DM ran on monthly and weekly turns for Patron level actions. This seemed to allow him to keep organized and throttle the demand on his time. I liked it so much that I’ve applied something similar in my own campaign with a “State of the Faction” kind of update weekly to keep up with what’s going on.

Ultimately, this campaign was a success and a lot of fun for our group. We set and achieved our goals as a team, experienced a rich and unique setting, and got to experiment with a lot of different aspects of RPGs. I don’t know what the future holds for the Sons of Mithra or the Shadows over Sojenka campaign, but I know that they’re in good hands. I will continue to game with these gents into the future and look forward to the next table.

Session 64: Jump on that Grenade

3/10/24-3/12/24, rest 3/13, active 3/14

PC: Gwendolyn, Legany, Galt

Hench: Amadayo, Mahin, Madrof, Godfried, Chase, Thomas, Mike, Freddy

#ACKS

The session led off with discussion about potential targets, with one player attempting to refrain from pressing for his own interests in the form of missions from his name level PCs. The party decided to try and finish off the Black Shaft dungeon which they felt was nearing completion. I allowed for the likelihood that resources from PCs that were not present would be available in lieu of any downtime action declaring otherwise, so they had magical light and a boat to get them in.

They went straight down towards the lowest unexplored level but ran into some assassin bugs just like the ones from last session. We learned that last week’s miracle victory using the Hypnotic Sigil spell had an asterisk by it since the spell only affects Humanoids. I need to read spells in conjunction with players rather than trust what I’m told! There was a hard fought battle that almost broke the players’ morale but they carried on at least to scout out the next level, accompanied by a conjured fire elemental dubbed Mr. Sparkles.

The landing at level 5 had flashing magical images appearing randomly throughout the room of the ACKS goddess Lammala in battle and/or lustful contention with the ACKS god Ornaron. When I described these entities abstractly since Oberholt uses the Greyhawk pantheon, the party dubbed them Ursula and King Triton from Disney’s The Little Mermaid, with Gwendolyn’s player hittin’ us with the “well actually'' when he was called Poseidon. We promptly got a collective grip.

They explored a little and discovered a trap of some kind. The party chose to avoid it rather than disarm it. A large mural of a storm tossed sea dominated the entire wall of a long chamber with the whitecaps and accents inlaid with platinum. Some attempts were made to estimate the value and how long it would take to remove all the little pieces. The group chose to come back to that later.

A gale of raining blood ruined visibility and made for quite a disgusting scene in one room, so they noped away from that. A mural of a stern-faced King Triton overlooking the next relatively small room gave them pause, since the ceiling was obscured by storm clouds and lightning walked along the walls about waist high. There was much discussion about which room was worse, blood or lightning, before they sent Mr. Sparkles across to see what might happen. Predictably, lightning blasted the creature. They chose to dismiss it rather than pull it back to them and suffer another lightning bolt. How kind of them. Mr. Sparkles hung them a flaming middle finger when he faded away.

Back to the blood room and in they went, doing their best to protect themselves but ultimately failing. They discovered a plinth of obsidian like stone that had a plaque inset within it and a marble portal that pulsed with a rhythmic light. The plaque crawled with shifting arcane symbols in an unknown language, the same language was on the marble archway but in a much different tone.

While the rest endured the downpour, Thomas the thief attempted to remove the plaque. I called this a Trapbreaking check, which he failed, and failed, and failed, but no random encounters. Shucks. This gave the party time to summon some manes and prepare to move forward.

Weird arcane plaque finally in hand, they pushed on, discovering another trap just before Galt stepped on it to his certain doom. Backing out, they put one of the manes on triggering it, which released a 10,000 lb Ochre Ooze from a trap door in the ceiling. It smashed the manes flat and the party fled.

They hit on a random encounter on their way out. I made them roll the dice for it and it was bad, two humanoid females with snakes for hair and wings and straight busted faces. ACKS II Gorgons are like badass Medusae, but they had a max reaction check. So what to do with that?

Well, first the stone gaze was voluntary. So the monsters didn’t hit em with that, yet. Second, they were affiliated with Nasga, the ACKS Chaotic goddess of beauty, pain, and lust, so they were gonna be a bit sketchy with their motivations and ambitions. Third, they were super tough and knew it, so were going to negotiate from a position of extreme strength.

I decided that they were going to demand a frankly absurd amount of gold as a toll to leave their level of the dungeon safely. They gave the vague impression that they would take trade in flesh as well, whatever that meant. Some members thought it was just sacrificing one of their own to their death. Others thought it was something dangerously sexual. After a painfully long discussion, the ever-greedy Galt opted to give himself into their custody rather than pay the toll, gaining an assurance that they would drop “whatever was left of him” at the beginning of the dungeon.

I whiffed here as the Lawful Crusaders in the party probably would not have been comfortable with this arrangement, but they have a shitload of henches and I miss things like that sometimes. The party left Galt with a healing potion, a blindfold, and an inspire courage from Gwendolyn the bard. They were able to get out without any further encounters and deposit their tablet on the boat with one of their tougher henches to guard it while most of the party returned to wait for Galt’s delivery to the entrance.

I decided to have the resolution of his… uh… encounter… resolved by a mortal wounds check. Death by snu snu was certainly possible, but I allowed him to use his healing potion as part of the recovery. The bonuses went his way and he only suffered notable scarring as dictated by the Savage Mortal Wounds table. The party scooped him and sailed back to town.

After a day’s rest and some magical healing, they returned to Jolus the Laughing Skull with donuts in hand for Irrelevant the Caretaker. The party was led up the mystical tower where previously it was a brutal, arduous climb. This time they walked easily to the Master’s room and met with Jolus a la Emperor of Mankind on his golden throne. A psychic image entered their minds and thanked them for delivering the agreed spell formula before it broke into a thousand pieces and was absorbed by the corpse-like figure on the mechanical seat.

Payment was never discussed when they took the mission, surprising no one more than myself, so now they were offered “Power or Riches.” Characteristically, they chose Riches unanimously and piles of treasure materialized at their feet. They scooped it, waved goodbye, and immediately sold what they didn’t want and traveled to Millon to trade Redcorn for some items. End of session.

Musings:

Disappointed that I didn’t press the issue with the Lawfuls in the party. Unless they’ve got interest in that portal, I think Team A is done with the Black Shaft. Congratulations to the team on a successful objective.

Session 62: To Catch a Predator

 

2/25/2-3/9/24, rest 3/10, active 3/11

PC: Valda, Zektel, Cracaryn

Hench: Elizabete, Arif

#ACKS

Team B was in play this session, having been locked away in the besieged vaults of the late Nekane the Great (Patron Dwarf Vaultguard, deceased). Finally free, they got with their latest employer Bigtoe the Wombat to get paid, and paid they got. It took a long time to get this session actually moving but it finally lurched into action by way of a trip to Millon.

The scheme was to get double-paid by Patrons for a mutually beneficial hook. Bigtoe had a map to a lair with potential components for his machines that the party had discovered a while back was guarded by or coincidentally located near or under a unicorn grove. Redcorn the Cleric wanted to befriend all Lawful fantastic creatures he could find. Easy money, what could go wrong?

They sent a messenger pigeon to Redcorn in advance to try to cut down on the days they’d need to spend waiting to see him. (I don’t allow PCs to just show up and meet with high level NPCs unless it’s a Patron with an explicit order of “I will see X Y and Z adventurers about such and such problem”) The travel to Redcorn’s domain of Millon was pretty tame, only running across a thief named Arif who was picked up as a henchman by Cracaryn and would prove to be useful down the line.

They languished in Millon for a few days waiting on their appointment, eating up Martha’s baked goods (throwaway NPC baker from way back that naturally became a cornerstone of the campaign because PCs). They haggled with Redcorn, got some rewards for information on unicorns and gnomes, and then were left with a lack of actual adventure to pursue. I think they expected Redcorn to drop everything and fly out to the location or something, idk, but nah bruh. What now?

They had pulled mysterious metals, weapons, and other goodies from a dungeon a while back and had it delivered to Bigtoe, but one item, a golden double-headed eagle sign, was stolen by the thief that had insisted on escorting the item. They decided that now was the time to hunt the guy down and get their loot back.

Zektel the Shaman smoked and shrooms and rolled around with his snakes and creeped everyone out to gain his Commune class ability, learning that the thief still lived, he was not in Riverstride, and he was not in Talston. So that pointed them towards Deinwick to start. I randomly determined if the thief lived and where he had ended up as they were drafting their questions but they didn’t know. Unfortunately, the dice said Deinwick so there wasn’t likely to be some wild goose chase.

When they arrived in Deinwick, they made all manner of claims that they were super tight with the thieves’ guild in the city because they bought some poison once last year. Nay nay, said I, for the thieves’ guild has layers of protection for just such an event. You don’t have a business card for the shady mfer you bought illegal goods from, sorry. The party went about trying to locate a contact, which is when Arif the new thief displayed his talents. He knew a guy who knew a guy and in short order they had a meet.

The fence they were meeting was modeled after Watto, the blue flying dude in the Star Wars prequels that owned Anakin. I tried once to do an annoying New Yorker accent (read: all New Yorker accents) but it was awful so I dropped it. My future with CR is in shambles.

He told them that their target was pissing off every fence in the city by haggling prices over the stolen item then backing out of the deal at the last minute. He’d be happy to lure him into a confrontation in order to get him out of everyone’s hair. Watto agreed to the party’s plan to offer a higher payout for the item and would set the meet.

Fast forward to an abandoned warehouse at night, the party set in ambush, and Watto with a couple thugs loitering near the rubbish inside. The thief Mel showed up, gestured to someone hidden in the shadows behind him, and approached. He clearly did not have the item on him.

The party stayed hidden and allowed him to haggle with Watto again, who just agreed to whatever price to get the item on site. Mel left then returned, sneaking up on the building with the large sign in his hands and a dozen or so zombies in tow. They burst in the front door and attacked Watto, apparently intent on stealing the money offered for the item instead of selling it.

Mel didn’t know the party was there and the ensuing fight was pretty one sided. The zombies were mostly turned and easily defeated by the adventurers, and although significantly tougher for some reason, Mel wasn’t all that formidable either. He did manage to beat Watto to death using the sign as a weapon, which gave the PCs pause, but ultimately he was killed by one of Zektel’s giant pythons. It squeezed him until his head popped off, blasting blacklight and violet gas into the air of the warehouse.

With the threats defeated, the PCs started looting the area. Valda the Fighter tried to carefully bag the sign, but failed the saving throw to avoid contact. I’ve been very soft on cursed items in the past and I think going forward they are going to be truly impactful. Anywho, the sign was a corrupted Aquila, the icon of the God Emperor of Mankind in 40k. The eagle heads were deformed and fanged, the proportions were wrong, and it was possessed by Khorne.

The fighter went into a bloody rage, attacking Watto’s surviving henchmen and beating them to death. She turned on the party but was talked into some semblance of calm, agreeing to have a drink back at the Helpful Hobbit tavern before resuming her rampage. When her back was turned, Cracaryn the Elf Ranger tried to lasso her so the party could take her to a church for help. It did not go well.

See, the sign behaved as a weapon in the hands of a martial PC, provided magical protection, and advanced their prowess by 4 levels. In the hands of Mel the thief, it was unwieldy and ineffective. In the hands of an actual fighter, oof. Valda made contact a few times, nearly killing Cracaryn before eventually being killed herself. The fight dragged and dragged as the PCs tried to subdue her rather than kill her, but eventually they had to get real before she started cleaving them down.

In another of many examples of why I hate fate points, Valda was able to stabilize to 1 hp but would require bed rest and/or magical healing. They tied her up anyway and left the cursed item laying where it was. She was ranting and raving and foaming at the mouth so they were pretty sure she was still affected.

A late night visit to the local Heironeous temple and a massively upcharged “donation” got them the Remove Curse spell that they needed while Zektel and the sneks stayed to guard the warehouse with the item in it. The following day, they debated whether to try to sell it to some unsavory entity or have it destroyed. “Well, how are we even gonna find someone to sell it to?” Arif the thief tentatively raised his hand and said he might know a guy. The implications of that were not lost on the PCs but hey, they’re tryna get paid. Arif was dispatched to make contact with a definitely not problematic entity and the rest of the party took turns guarding the item in the abandoned warehouse.

Musings:

I knew the eagle was cursed when they got it and I knew that’s why Mel the thief stole it. I didn’t really know what it did at the time but I do now. Had they interacted with it sooner, it’d have been developed then. It was fun to have that thread picked up and it served as a good session for a party otherwise a bit lost on what to do. It’ll be fun to see if they can sell the obviously cursed item. They’ve shed all their Lawfuls in that group so they don’t have anyone preaching at them.

Session 63: Balls and Cones

3/3/24-3/3/24, rest 3/4, active 3/5

PC: gwendolyn, flynn, legany, galt

Hench: amadayo, mahin, madrof, godfried, chase, thomas, mike, freddy, po

#ACKS

ACKS II is still in the final stages of development but there’s enough of a game there that we’ve swapped over. This was our first session after the conversion and it was a little slow getting off the ground mostly due to chit chat and last minute questions. Eventually, they settled on a team and a target. It was time to return to Ornaron’s Spear, lovingly referred to as “The Black Shaft”.

They’d done the infiltration into the underwater dungeon enough times that I didn’t require a roll. They had all the proper resources and safety measures to make it trivial. The place was humid and oppressive and they determined that today was the day they were going to clear Level 4 but the dungeon decided to fight back.

First, the abstract vaguely humanoid statue on Level 2 had 4 ghoulish creatures genuflecting around it when the adventurers stumbled into them. Armed with many Crusaders (artists previously known as Clerics), the party made short work of that encounter. The ghouls were branded with crossed thunderbolts, the same as the brass medallions that were pulled off of the troglodytes in a previous session.

The party continued to descend, arriving at the disgusting room filled with disgustingly placed statues that made up what their mapper was calling “the lobby” for each floor. They had locked some giant bug things behind a door to the west by stacking statues in front of it and those remained in place. To the east was the fireball trap room that did such damage during their last trip.

The replacement thief Thomas got to work searching the area for a trap that he knew was there based on description. With some bonuses due to foreknowledge and the new mechanic of “methodical” searching, he easily found it. They chose not to disarm it and so he continued to the door beyond and investigated it. No traps and it was stuck so he dipped out and let others take a look.

First was Gwendolyn, the new and improved Bard. The ACKS II conversion for the Bard class is pretty cool, making them quite a bit more martial and gaining some abilities at the cost of HD. She Listened at the door, hearing the sounds of chicken scratching and some clucking. Chickens?

Some of the players had seen this show before and suspected a cockatrice. I smugly flipped over to the new Monstrous Manual to dig up the revised stats for the classic little monster but what’s this? Cockatrice didn’t make the cut? Oh no. Good thing ACKS is mostly backwards compatible so I ran with it anyway.

Next, one of the mages cast Summon Berserkers, but no no, now it’s Summon Manes. For this mage’s level it equated to about the same thing except the manes would last an entire day. Neat. He threw a few of them at the door to bash it down and failed, certainly alerting whatever was inside. At this point Legany the Barbarian offered to bash it in and bash it in he did, stumbling into the waiting beaks of three cockatrices.

The new ACKS surprise rules are pretty cool, basing chances of being surprised on foreknowledge and line of sight to the enemy. In this case, both sides had foreknowledge and both sides had LOS since bam they were all right there. Surprise chart says no surprise for anyone and the heat was on.

Legany was able to win initiative and withdraw away from the creatures, who pursued and pecked away at the party. They were literal birdbrains so I decided to randomly assign targets, most of which targeted Flynn the Crusader and his ridiculously high AC. Only scoring one hit of significance before being slain, the cockatrices didn’t even get to turn anyone to stone. Bummer.

Certain of treasure beyond, the party rushed in to find naught but chicken shit and some exits to the room. They spent some time searching and listening, hearing a “sticky waterfall” to the north. On investigation there was a curtain of blood flowing down the northern wall in a gross viscous wave. There were angry faces protruding from it periodically and though it pooled, it did not flood the room. There was a brief conversation about how to destroy it but eventually they left off and retreated to the cockatrice room.

The next chamber had hundreds of different humanoid skulls bleached and hanging from large deep sea fishing hooks in the ceiling. The party was confused a bit by this but insisted that there must be treasure, so they sent the 3 remaining manes in to pull on every skull. Ok fine, it was thorough but it was gonna take a while.

Time is a resource, especially in a dungeon with random encounters, but alas there was no deadly enemy to assail them. One of the manes released a hidden cache of loot that crushed it beneath the weight of the treasure. 2 manes remained but they had a modest stack of loot. I made them roll it live off of the random table so I couldn’t be blamed. Good thing too because they missed a solid opportunity for a big payout.

The adventurers policed up the gear into sacks and beat feet back to the boat to store it in case the worst happened. I equate this to the regular advice given to establish a forward position as a base of sorts to store treasure and rest if needed. This dungeon requires something like that, but it’s good advice in other situations as well.

Anyway, back in the dungeon after a decent score, back to the blood curtain room, and on to the next where they discovered an abandoned camp used by 3 or 4 humans. There were bedrolls and supplies and WHO WOULD CHOOSE TO LIVE IN THIS PLACE ugh. No one was home and they didn’t find any treasure so onward the party went.

An obsidian sculpture of a giant coiled snake dominated the next room and the mapper declared that this had to be the last room before the big bugs that they had locked away. Despite there being two open passages leading that way, no effort was made to guard or scout. Instead, they sent the manes to investigate for them. 

Possessing no proficiencies and indeed being compromised by their state of undeath, one of the manes poked the snake in the head while they other climbed over and into the interior of the coils. The mage immediately lost contact with this one and the party was sure there was a sekrit to uncover. When they sent Legany to throw a torch down the hole within the center of the snake, we finally hit on a random encounter roll!

I didn’t even look at the chart, this was a no brainer. The encounter was the giant bugs from the next room over scrabbling up to see what the hubbub was. I rolled this dungeon a while back and while cockatrices had been removed, ankhegs had been replaced and upgraded by assassin bugs that carried the corpses of their victims as temporary hit points. What a badass monster, let’s fucking go.

Galt panicked, swearing they should have never come here and insisting everyone flee for their lives. Flynn went the other way, casting a protective spell that made him immune to normal attacks from “evil” creatures, defined as hostile creatures of an opposing alignment or explicitly evil creatures like undead, and standing in the breach. 

Most of the party fled while a few stayed to hold the line to give those in the room a chance to retreat. I had to endure a lot of whining and bitching about how deadly the dungeon was until someone offered a solution instead of a complaint. One of the mages cast a hypnotic sigil spell, similar to the old hypnotic pattern except it was a cone now instead of an AOE. This made it much more of a precision weapon and due to some poor saves by the monsters’ had them all hemmed up. It was really a matter of time now until they could defeat them, which given the AC and hps took a while. Unfortunately no other random encounters hit and after a long battle, the adventurers emerged victorious.

The bone pile lair of the assassin bugs had the chance for a real solid score in it, but again the players rolled poorly for random treasure and came out with something much more modest. They took their loot and bounced back to the boat, leaving a mystery with the snake hole behind.

Musings:

ACKS II is cool. We didn’t get a chance to use the revamped wilderness encounter tables, but we did spend a lot of time confirming new mechanics. The game doesn’t play that much differently in practice. It’s really about getting the small details like conditions and action economy down. Spells changed a lot but it’s reasonably intuitive and didn’t bog us down too bad. Practice makes perfect and I’m excited to keep at it.