Bloodfall 24

In a rare bit of luck and planning, the boys settled on a location for their adventure AND a target! Hot damn. The Tower of Helsja and the scried eeeevvvil within called to our band of mighty heroes.

They made friends with gate guards, scouted the area, talked to the Duke, and READ HIS MIND. Sorta. But enough to verify Ojisan the Spirt Theurgist's suspicions that the visions he viewed in the definitely fair and not game-breaking in anyway Palantir was indeed the Duke making some heinous pacts with a devil lady. Ojisan was nearly hanged for witchery but narrowly passed suspicion by the Duke's Elite Guard.

Broderick marched directly to the Tower of Helsja with the intent to knock and gain entrance, but runes above the door flared to life and paralyzed him! In what would be a series of advantageous rolls related to this session, there were no witnesses to this and the party pulled him free. A very rude servant woman opened the door, bitched at them in weird monosyllables, and slammed it in their faces. Ormr tried to scale to a balcony high above their heads but failed to throw his grappling hook and thought better of it.

The night is for scouting, which they went to with gusto, coming up miraculously with Fitzerg the Warrior, a known associate? Employee? Consort? of the witch Helsja. Ormr was able to gain a favorable reaction with the drinking fighter and introduced him to the rest of the party. An attempt to gamble magic short sword for magic longsword was rebuffed, but then a different offer was made.

Broderick the Neon, Hersir of Bloodfall wagered to the warrior Fitzerg that the witch was evil, and not only that, that the witch would attack Broderick ON SIGHT. Fitzerg, knowing the witch to some degree, claimed otherwise and accepted the bet. A deal was struck to meet at the same tavern the following day and Fitzerg would introduce the party to Helsja, but that would never come to pass. They were also able to get the password to the front door protection runes from and share Raylan's endless supply of deer jerky with their new best friend.

The scheming paladin had a different plan and used the bet as a ruse to keep Fitzerg from the location as a potential enemy combatant. This was very clever, but one may recall that the last time the paladin was clever didn't go great for him in almost exactly the same type of scheme. While Fitzerg was distracted, the party used their friendly contact on the gate to gain entrance to the Keep's compound and access to the tower.

The password worked like a charm and in they went. A round foyer and big spiral staircase greeted them, but no defenders. Up they went where they discovered a caged elemental of each of the four primary types being dusted incongruently by feather dusters in the hands of the rude maidservant people things. When the creatures struck out like Plastic Man, the party knew something was amiss!

Protection from Evil is a powerful ability, especially when confronted with devils and outer planar things like these creatures were. The fight was over quickly, but the things looked to regen from every sort of damage the party could offer. Some time was spent on ways to deal with that, settling on throwing half of them down the stairs and the other half into the cage with the earth elemental who was happy to pound it into silly putty.

Ormr moved up the stairs to discover what other foulness laid ahead. A dungeon grossed them out and they passed that pretty quick. The next level held wispy curtains flowing in an unknown breeze and a bajillion beautiful spirits meant to entice. Ormr, running ahead, got got. The rest were able to resist again due to Protection from Evil. They collected Ormr, who was irresistibly dancing to an unheard tune, and continued their climb.

The final level of the tower was larger than logic could account for, clearly some sort of pocket dimensional space. There was a massive ritual design in the middle and nerd stuff on one wall. Personal affects were opposite and everyone spread out to search. The waiting invisible Erinyes and plastic lackeys struck, targeting the apparent weak link in the magic-user Ojisan.

Thorgal noticed a puff of dust from a foot print and warned the party, avoiding being surprised. The fight was on, but the plastic things could only fight Thorgal who was far enough away from Broderick to be vulnerable to their touch attacks.

Helsja deployed her whip of entanglement which nearly spelled disaster, but she had suffered enough from the slings and arrows of valiant warriors that Raylan's brave wardog Ole tore out her throat and Ojisan finished her off with her own wicked poisoned dagger. The rest of the devils disappeared in inky puffs of black putrid smoke.

Miroslav and Broderick destroyed the ritual circle, breaking the containment spell on the pocket dimension and shrinking the room to normal size. They found a hefty haul of treasure and a bunch of scrolls detailing the bargains made by the Duke with Heljsa, sacrificing mostly heinous criminals but some pickpockets and tax evaders to her for her fell magicks in exchange for repelling evil beings from Sland.

The group marched to confront the Duke only to find him dead in a pile of ash and them "guests" of the seneschal of the keep until the issue could be investigated. Again the 2d6 went their way and they were released shortly thereafter. A moot is scheduled to take place among the landed noblemen of Sland's territory to see who will take the throne.

Musings:

Another successful city adventure. Am I a city DM? Idk, I think my strengths are executing, if not designing, dungeons, but the players seem to enjoy these. Maybe the change of pace is it? Whatever the magic is, this one went well. They knocked over the evil, freed the town from the horrible pall of boringness that was smothering it, and developed some interesting flavor and contacts. I don't know what any of that means yet but welcome to emergent play.

The paladin was docked in a previous session for making a deal and then not holding up his end of the bargain. He did the same here and will be docked as a repeat offender. Much has been said about Paladining around, but the core of the issue as an observer is A) the party needs ideas in the moment and 2) whoever matches the idea best, preferably he who presents it, should act on it. I dropped hints in the tone of "are you sure you want to do that" a few times and the rest is history.

This is the kind of magic that comes from playing out of your comfort zone. It's easy to always play one role because you know how to respond to basically everything, especially a role that best fits your personality. Be brave, play outside your box, grow. Yeah you'll take some lumps sometimes but that's part of the fun.

Grading:

Thorgal: Excellent. Recon gathering, bold in combat
Raylan: Excellent. Recon gathering, bold in combat
Ormr: Excellent. Recon gathering, bold in combat, LOL's with RP RE: witch love
Ojisan: Excellent. Creative/effective use of notably limited spell list. Stupid Palantir.
Broderick: Poor. Repeat offender of breaking his word once given. Bold in combat, queller of evil. Paladins designed to fight devils man.
Miroslav: Excellent. Used what spells were called for, busted up evil circle, flavor of Ukko the Finnish deity? tf? Idk, it's Norse adjacent I guess.

Combat
Total XP:	1790
Cuts:	12
PC:	298.33

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.