Bloodfall 23

This marks the second week in the row that the group's Plan A didn't pan out. Raylan had discovered in downtime that a high tower at the keep in Sland displayed strange red and purple lights around midnight every night. The party tried to find a spot that would allow them to observe it and also for Ojisan to use the palantir to scry it during the... whatever it was.

A trip down a dark alley, the feel of being surrounded, and an abundance of caution had them abandon their site and head back to the Temple of the Jotun. Unfortunately, things went even worse there, after an encounter with venomous spiders saw Gunnar of Syf and Thorgal Twice-dead killed and the party retreating post haste.

Thorgal suggested that maybe Thor would respond to his pleas as he lay frothing at the mouth, since the party had freed him and bore his mark. Boxcars on my trusty 2d6 said what the hell, why not? He traded 3 permanent points of dexterity for another saving throw vs poison. He failed that one too and was doornails dead.

Raylan guided the party back to Bloodfall where they cashed in the remainder of the original credit carried with Fost and a significant amount of cash from Thorgal's saddlebags in order to raise him from the dead. Gunnar was not so fortunate, but the ever-resilient Hollyfelled whom I seem to kill every time he plays laughed it off that Gunnar was happy with the Valkyries.

I let dice decide the effectiveness of certain actions and modify them by the players' input, but this time they couldn't get right. I swear I'm not pushing them to this dungeon I don't even have prepped.

Grading:

Raylan: Excellent. Called, led, scouted, tracked, exfilled.
Rune: Excellent. Bold, aggressive, helped with exfil.

Combat
Total XP:	539
Cuts:	4
PC:	269.50

Percival, Lijiang Tower's Greatest Ally

Having recovered from our brutal prior session, we were hell bent to cleanse the evil that we'd been battling (and get fucking paid). We'd hired some thief henches to help us with the many traps of the Tomb of Amonkhet (or whatever the BBEG's name is) and spent quite a bit of time chit chatting and catching Zimon up to speed after his absence.

The BBEG was a Lawful Crusader turned mummy through poor/corrupt/inept embalming practices in a notEgyptian tomb bloated with corporate bureaucracy as indicated by power point presentations, safety regs, and dubious PPE. Someone's expressing their frustrations with RL corporate life. Originally we thought to cleanse the evil of the place through some sinkhole or something, but it appeared that the evil was the HR policy writers that ruined the company along the way. If there was no hub of evil, there might still be treasure, and we had yet to GET PAID FOR OUR EFFORTS. Inexcusable.

Off we set on fresh mounts, with fresh trap fodder, into the wilds of the Dreadwood. Some burnouts interrupted our progress briefly, I gave them the ultimatum I give all such, and Cassian preached at em to get right with Pelor. They didn't actually have anything on them, much to Zimon's disappointment, so we let them go with stern warnings. The elf patrol we met next we set after the hippies to encourage them to move along.

The graves around the mausoleum had all been dug up by scarabs. They weren't graves at all! Turns out they had the canopic jars of the mummy lord stashed away in plain sight basically and all indication was that he had collected his improperly preserved organs and flown/teleported/disappeared from the edge of the property. We wracked our brains for ways to track him down and came up empty, so into the tomb we went.

The thieves did their job well as we searched over every inch of the place. Benny the Thief was lost to a falling rock trap, paralyzing him from the neck down. Oof. We pulled him out and laid him with the fallback group to be restored upon our victorious return to civilization, or Lijiang, whichever came first. Tia the Other Thief led us through the remainder of the dungeon skillfully.

We picked up some fresh unused canopic jars and some tomes from a library in the hopes of using them to track down the BBEG. We sat through a magical power point presentation and learned a little about the organization that ran the joint before everything went tits up. Finally we came to what appeared to be the final room of the dungeon. Unfortunately it was infinitely large, both wide and deep, at least to our ability to scout.

Football fields left and right, massive giant columns at least 500ft tall as supports, and running low on session time. We poked around as best we could, Zimon and his mage hench Aunt B trying to scout some with magic. Tia fell into a coma from falling off a magic staircase that the mage produced to interact with one of the columns and we had to bounce.

We arrived in elf town empty handed. Again. We'll throw some magic at the thieves to get them back in action but they're probably down for a while. We've got some things our studious folk can hopefully use to research some additional information. This nut will crack, eventually. Let's hope it's worth it.

Play by Post: Reducing Friction

If you want to succeed at a play by post game, your first challenge is identifying the intent of the scenario that the Ref has prepared. Whether a wargame, a Braunstein, or downtime during an RPG campaign, you must deliver your orders with the least friction possible. You must avoid friction by coming to a common understanding with the Ref.

It doesn't matter how knowledgeable you are in 19th century military logistics, the exact placement of your overlapping fire in the jungle, or the equipment loadout of your Space Marine Squad if the Ref isn't utilizing that information. You have to identify what information the Ref needs from you in order to be successful and deliver that information as clearly and concisely as possible. Remember he's fielding the same orders from 6-20 people.

I have observed this as a pain point during the wide breadth of play by post games that are basically always happening in our sphere. Whether it's a slice of life Western experiment in Livingstone or a gritty Kriegspiel set in NW Canada, the first step is always the same. What does the Ref need from me and how can I clearly communicate my desired outcome without A) Pixel bitching him to death with needless minutiae and 2) Leaving him to guess at necessary information?

Belloc and I have recently been reviewing the USMC Mastering Tactics Workbook in an effort to improve our performance during GI BRO Ref'd by BrainLeakage. This valuable resource explains some fundamentals that might not be readily apparent to the uninitiated. One such is the advice on giving orders:

During the set up and initial turns of the Warlords of Pergamuth Ref'd by Joshinyu, it occurred to me that issuing orders for a play by post is not so dissimilar to issuing orders to subordinates in these tactical exercises. The recipient of the orders needs to understand the:

- situation that you find yourselves in,
- mission that needs to be accomplished,
- intent behind your orders,
- general concept of the operation,
- main effort upon which the mission relies,
- subordinate tasks that your moving pieces need to accomplish,
- coordinating instructions between different factions, allies, or units

A subordinate player commanding a unit in your faction, an ally in your endeavor, or the Ref that has to adjudicate the action all share the same requirements to most successfully execute your orders. The specifics will naturally change with the scale involved in the scenario but these fundamentals remain the same.

Consider using this format the next time you find yourself issuing orders. The less friction the better, for you and the Ref both.

Bloodfall 22

We took a week break which allowed everyone to train up and get back on their primary PCs. We had a few bonafide Heroes in the mix this session, with Broderick, Raylan, and Ojisan clocking in at level 4. More on that later.

The crew started out looking at the dragons based on some (old) recon from the rangers that the gnolls might be away raiding. It turned out that everyone was back safe and sound at their glacial fortress and the PCs figured it wasn't the right time.

Thorgal shared that he had used Frigga's bowl to locate Thor's chainmail, pointing them at the weird Temple of the Fallen Jotun to the northeast. The party made it there without complication and left their handful of mercs to guard the horses while they delved.

It was a compound of 4 smaller buildings around a large central structure. A massive corpse laid across the top of the building, impaled on it, and dripped an unending stream of gore down the sides which pooled in a nasty pond around the place. Scrying let them see into one building that seemed accessible without having to brave the putrid goop so that's where they started.

Dinklage kept them from twisting an ankle on a rotten board and they entered the first building. It was a guest house of some sort, with old musty linens and wardrobe that held a small jewelry box. The box was trapped with lightning which Dinklage discovered after a failed open locks check.

The next building also smelled bad, but this time more like rotten garbage. It was a study with some fiction novels along the bookcases, some overstuffed leather chairs, and a bar. Dinklage found a nice crystal decanter and serving set and Thorgal cut open a chair to find a hidden satchel. That's when the ghasts hiding in the rafters chose to strike!

The party tried to collapse around Broderick to gain the benefit of his holy aura but the ghasts were faster, striking and paralyzing Thorgal and nearly finishing off Ojisan and Dinklage. The rest of the fight went better for the PCs and eventually they won out, only Raylan becoming paralyzed of the remaining group. There was treasure in the satchel and a key which fit the box, containing more treasure. We love treasure.

While the group rested, adventurers from the nearby city of Sland entered the room. Neither side was surprised but it took quite a bit to calm everyone down. Drugr's Warriors agreed to depart after sharing some recon about the place with Dinklage, who paid them for it. Ojisan sekritly read the mind of Drugr to ensure he was honest and was satisfied by what the spirits told him.

The central temple had statues to several of the goodly norse gods, doors leading out, stairs leading up, and a giant disgusting rift in the floor oozing pus like an infected abscess that had burst. The group didn't want to investigate the gross mystery so went up the stairs. They found a storeroom and kitchen, the latter which had a golden bowl filled with clean water and runes around the rim about hope.

Thorgal drank from the bowl and gained 2 inches in height and several points of strength, joining the other bigswole fighting men in the party. They figured that was as good as it was gonna get and bounced, heading to Sland to sell off some treasure.

Musings:

There were some differing views on how to begin the campaign originally among refs in the club. Some chose to start their PCs at higher levels or bonus experience for particular class/race combinations that they wanted to encourage. I started at 1st for a couple reasons. I wanted to DM from the ground up having never run AD&D before. I also wanted players to earn the status of "experienced" as referenced in the DMG when discussing starting players at higher level. My internal milestone for that qualification was reaching 4th level organically, which shows that the player can navigate the game well enough to survive.

Going forward, any player who has reached 4th level in Bloodfall will be considered "experienced." This means that if they have no other characters in the game and need to reroll due to PC death, they will start above 1st level. The gist of the idea is referenced DMG 111. The details will be determined as we cross that bridge.

I tried to poll the players on what they planned before the session but they were very hush hush. I don't think they really knew themselves. They have a crystal ball of sorts in the definitely not cursed or evil palantir they pulled out of the cursed swamp so they can pick and choose hooks to scout until Ojisan's brain melts. Unfortunately 2d6 went against them here putting each of their targets in a situation that was not ideal. There was some intraparty chatter about taking initiative, but that's not a DM problem. I didn't really mean to point them at a dungeon I wasn't prepared for but there it was and the rest is history.

Grading:

Thorgal: Excellent. Scouted and tried to be bold, but got paralyzed. Can't dock a man if he can't move.
Rune: Excellent. Bold in the face of ghasts.
Ojisan: Excellent. Good use of resources, especially limited combat ability.
Dinklage: Excellent. Good use of thief skills.
Broderick: Excellent. Bold, diplomatic to fellow norsemen
Raylan: Excellent. Bold, scouted, tracked.

Combat
Total XP:	774
Cuts:	12
PC:	129.00

Walk like an Egyptian

We froze time last session and had a bit of a logistics issue. The party was stuck in the middle of nowhere with heavy casualties and minimal mobility. First we had to tend to the wounded, then burn the undead bodies, then figure a way out.

Cassian sent a message to Elftown requesting an evac while we took care of the local business. It took basically a whole day to round up the horses, collect Zimon, and tend to the dead/wounded. Elves showed up and offered to pull us out, which we accepted, but not before trying to ensure the problem was dealt with permanently.

We located a mausoleum of sorts which revealed an Egyptian style tomb dedicated to a Lawful Crusader of an ancient deity. Already something wasn't right. In we went to find the sinkhole or whatever other source of corruption that had turned this apparent hero into a mummy lord.

As one might expect, it was a maze of twists and turns and traps and mysteries that we simply weren't equipped to deal with. We were hoping to find the source (and collect the loot) since we fought so hard for it last session, but with a larger undertaking in front of us we pulled out to regroup. We could fight pretty well but lacked significantly in thief skills for trap finding and such.

The elves flew us back to elftown. We had to release our horses but they were able to rig up a swaddling net for Fiddlesticks the Kali, much to the groaning anger of the cat thing, and airlift her out like Operation Dumbo Drop. The rest of the session was marketplace stuff that bears no repeating here.

Bloodfall 21

The Blackjack session had a B team of misfits and cutpurses running amok in the occupied city of Svartalfheim. They were unwelcome as travelers and suspected by the local dwarves of being elven sympathizers and nosy neighbors. This friction led to the action in the session as racial tensions boiled over into a near brawl and then vow of vengeance.

The planned murder and robbery of the dwarven tax collector was essentially flawless, aside from the two dead and one unconscious PCs. Using illusory magic to divert the tax cart into an alley didn't work, so they started blasting. A heroic charge by the fighter/thief Treeman was met by the leveled dwarf, who cut him down to exactly zero. The powerful illusion was inflicting heavy damage so the dwarves finally did run into the alley where an assassin and druid waited to strike. In a frankly miraculous 1v1, Tonga Lua nearly defeated the very tough dwarf but was slain, joined shortly thereafter by Cathbad the druid as bloody footnotes in the gutter. RIP valiant highwaymen.

A final arrow from Aelrond the elf killed the wounded dwarf leader and the one survivor didn't last long. The escape from town hinged on their wisely forethought exit strategy of "find elves, be elves." A frivolous and petty sentry squad taxed Skelbroj the human illusionist for being human but let Aelrond go, aided by groveling and swallowing of ego.

The score was real, but heavy, and the boys opted to hot foot it all the way Bloodfall before passing out for three days due to the exhaustion. This type of session is always electrifying, with PCs that have less player investment willing to take bigger risks and the zero prep nature of looking for trouble in the city being extremely swingy.

Grading:

Tonga: Excellent. Scouted and planned an ambush, struck when he could. Unfortunately outmatched. RIP.
Aelrond: Excellent. Annoyingly good theatrekid funny voice RP, planning and executing a heist.
Cathbad: Excellent. Nobly persuaded the dwarf mule to seek freedom. Funded the expedition. RIP
Skelbroj: Excellent. Smart use of his one spell, smart RP to escape, integral to planning, proper care of the dead.
Treeman: Excellent. Bold in the face of danger, sneaky part of the planning, scout.

Combat
Total XP:	558
Cuts:	6
PC:	186.00

#FuckCassian

We had a few treasure maps from our last score that we were going to hunt down, hopefully to destroy some evil and get some loot. They weren't terribly far away and we opted to tackle the most lucrative one first, a note from some Egyptian sounding mfer we found in the dragon's hoard. On the way, our park rangers of Yogi and Smokey received their uniforms and informed us that they were making progress with the territory around their lair. June of Ehlonna was spearheading that operation and would soon have picnic tables and hiking trails and other park services available for the peasants of Horizon.

We ran across some likely bandits who didn't want the smoke and a weird obelisk formation that led us to a secret treasure trove. So far so good. We camped near the trove to give us the most time in the following day for searching the treasure map location out, which was just a hex over. Fresh off of a good rest, we searched. And searched. And searched.

We failed to find the location by the end of the day and needed to rest again. We considered the danger of camping in the hex of our target, but if it was that hard to locate, surely the terrain was rough enough it'd be easy to hide in. We were wrong.

Essentially every randomly determined roll that could be rolled went against us, resulting in crusader Fr. Cassian Dominated by a Mummy Lord and 100+ HD worth of mummies, zombies, and greater hell hounds ambushing us while we slept. Without the ability to turn undead, fighting in our underwear, and having a powerful PC added to the enemy as a force multiplier, we basically got our asses kicked after a slog of a battle.

Zimon was able to pull June and Fife the henchman out while Percival and his henchman Abraham escaped on some horses. Everyone else was dead while Fr. Cassian, the Bishop of Horizon was Dominated by a Mummy Lord. We were able to heal up thanks to some consumables and equip ourselves but we were still pretty outclassed. Unfortunately, I couldn't abide surrendering Cassian to the Domination. I was going back in.

We buffed as best we could and returned with the intent to strike hard at the Mummy Lord and maybe break his hold on Cassian, the other undead, etc. After another brutal, bloody fight, only June, Zimon, Percival, and of course Cassian remained standing. We won, but at what cost? 

Garth the Bard PC was dead, along with the small roc mount Sam the Regal, Zimon's ethereal mount Springer, June's monstrous cat Fiddlesticks, and all of our henchmen. We were not particularly close to home and our mobility was seriously hampered. If we were going to recover our many levels of henchmen with any hope of success we needed to do it ASAP, but we were already two hours over session time so we broke there.

Our next priorities are finding the den of evil to make sure any sinkhole related to it is destroyed and escaping the wilderness with our asses. We'll have to see what we can salvage from the disaster. Ultimately, if you want to make an omelette, you gotta break some eggs. It wasn't a TPK and I didn't hear no bell, so I'm calling it a win.

Bloodfall 20

The boys were hard up for a ruby, lamenting their failure to secure any real scores for several sessions. They dance around big hauls by bad luck and when they do bring home the bacon they split it among a million PCs. There are hooks out there, but everything outside of "go delve the dungeon" is intimidating because it's dragons or bandit forts or some other dungeon or region altering events. Treasure tables have produced a lot of magic items too and less liquid wealth, impacting the early level training/upkeep loop.

Clever use of the crystal ball made them think the dragon glacier was ripe for looting and/or whittling down the gnoll guardians. The dragons were out hunting. The group gambled that the big lizards wouldn't return and made their way to the glacier.

Through a sekrit tunnel and into combat with the off duty gnolls in their barracks. Oregano and Rune went down, but the party killed a couple dozen gnolls. They were tying up the subchief when another patrol came down the hallway. The party beat them too, but not without some fleeing to warn the rest of the complex. Time to go.

They carried out the subdued subchief and charmed him. He told them all about the complex. Broderick the Paladin was very sneaky in duping the gnoll into a feint to draw out the tribe while the PCs could loot the joint and free the prisoner Thorgal and Wooderson encountered many sessions ago. Paladins have to be careful about being sneaky. It would have been much more on role to actually challenge the gnoll chief to single combat or actually meet them in the field. Oops.

The chief bought the ruse and drew the clan out to go fight the humans, except the humans weren't there. They were busy liberating the captive man and treasure from the lair. Did they get it all? No, but they got enough, and they were happy about that. They also freed Thor, the God of Thunder, from chains binding him by his word. He thanked them, summoned Mjolnir, and flew off to go beat Loki's ass.

When generating the region however many months ago, this lair came up with a captive. Ok what's that mean? 2d6 and a 12 says it's a very important captive. Thor's always gettin' himself in trouble. Bam dropped him in there and forgot about it until Thorgal and Wooderson got captured in downtime and imprisoned beside him. Dropped a bunch of Thor-themed campaign events pointing at hooks and threats. 

Then they decide to use their palantir to scry the white dragons. 2d6 and 11 says the dragons are in an advantageous position. They aren't asleep and helpless, but maybe they aren't there. That's enough to draw the players in and off they went. I don't like dictating or preparing moving parts, and parts that move without interaction or observation from a player simply don't matter anyway, so I'm content to determine what's happened with X faction at Y interval. If I think they should be doing something, I'll do it in downtime, but the dragons have been mostly idle while their gnolls [redacted].

They free Thor who's been there for ages. 2d6 and 10 says he's super thankful and remembers Thorgal's name, shakes his one remaining hand. How thankful? 2d6 says 2 oh shit he's just gonna run off and thank them later maybe gods are fickle. I polled some of the URF refs after for ideas and quite liked that the thanks the party got was more adventure. Thor's legendary equipment was scattered by Loki cuz he's an asshole and the PCs are tasked with getting it back.

I'm happy with how this session turned out, especially with threads coming together and explaining some of the other regional nonsense like the weird temple they found and the storms. The dragon hoard, while substantial, was more magic items than liquid loot which I know they were disappointed in. This party is what I'm calling "adventurer poor". Covered up in magic items, hooks, and experiences but desperate for a payday of hard cash. Also, robbing the two big dragons will definitely not be a problem.

Grading:

Broderick: Superior. Bold, frontline destroyer of evil. Pursued the liberation of the captive. The means do not justify the ends and takes a hit for his plan of luring the gnolls out and sneaking in behind them. Pretty Norse thing to do tbh and had it been one of the fighters or rangers it could slide. But paladins are held to a different standard in exchange for being so bloody powerful.
Raylan: Excellent. Bold, frontline, scout, Gnollsbane indeed.
Thorgal: Excellent. Bold, frontline, scout, tie in with Thor.
Rune: Excellent. Bold, frontline. Got his bell rung but hung in there and survived.
Ojisan: Excellent. Clever use of spells and items. Crystal ball MVP
Oregano: RIP, KIA.

Combat
Total XP:	1678
Cuts:	10
PC:	335.60

Sparkystan the Dragon

Another week, another victory for the Holy Rollers.

Our goal this session was to explore west of our domain and scout the route to a valuable treasure map that we had from way back. Historically, these types of things are plagued by distractions and various other adventure hooks and we rarely actually make it to where we want to be. This was not that.

The party of June, Cassian, Garth, and Percival struck west through the Dreadwood, missing our mage Sanji and assassin/bounty hunter Zimon. I was not confident in our ability to really engage with anything super tough so we aimed to scout, maybe pick off some smaller lairs, and develop a plan to engage with whatever uber guardian there was to this hoard.

We met some elves and offered them safety at our fire. Cassian healed their ailments and sent them off with a prayer and blessing of Pelor. My insistence that elves aren't people just does not hold water in this campaign that's heavily influenced by Tolkien. DM loves elves so elves are just awesome all the time. I've seen this show before and will adjust play accordingly. They are now uber allies in the battle against Chaos and we're gonna win.

The land near to our target was inhabited by enormous celestial or divine or otherwise blessed feline creatures with long reptilian tails. They guarded an ancient monument to Ehlonna, Lawful goddess of the woodlands and nature, so we felt safe to stage the rest of our activity out of there. The creatures recognized our intention and welcomed us in their way, responding well to Garth's songs and our offerings at the altar there. June even converted to Law, finally.

Our treasure map indicated a central location and a hidden trail or route around it. It bore the lines, "_____ on the mountain, lightning in the air, gold in them hills and it's waiting for me there." June spotted a scorched part on a nearby peak and we narrowed our search to that location. Garth communicated with some of the local critters and found a sealed sekrit door. I suggested that he sing the song, which opened the door, and in we went down the stairs.

We had no details from the map and the DM dropped on us that oh yeah it's a big blue dragon that lives here. Ok great timing. We'll scope it out and fall back with the real party later. We overheard some gnolls planning a revenge raid against elves and figured we could take some beastmen. Charge!

Unfortunately the dragon was leading them in an inspiring speech disguised as a Viking warrior, planning to kill elves and get revenge for you know, something. It was too late to change our minds so we started blasting. The gnolls were cleared out pretty easily by a Seismic Horn (Horn of Blasting) and June's basilisk mask. The dragon was much tougher but we weathered a few breath weapons and were able to put him down after some serious magical buffing from Cassian.

We freed some captive elves who led us further west into the territory of the elven empire. We renewed our relationship with the Emperor, sold off some goods, and took his offer of teleportation home where we start our downtime after about a week. It was a good session, surprisingly successful given our habit of "ooh squirrel" moments in the wilderness. The dice were with us.

Bloodfall 18

Grading:

Thorgal: Excellent, pathfinding, scouting, bold.

Raylan: Excellent, pathfinding, scouting, bold.

Ojisan: Excellent, spells, "sage advice"

Broderick: Excellent, bold, virtuous, honored the gods

Kirk: Excellent, warrior priest combat medic hybrid role, spells, bold, honored the gods

Gunnbjorn: Excellent, bold, leader of men

Combat
Total XP:	9117
Cuts:	12
PC:	1,519.50