Session 51: The Quest for Sharles

Session 51: The Quest for Sharles

10/1/23-10/12/23, rest 10/13, active 10/14

PC: Zektel, Cracaryn, Alari (Spellsword), Karl (Explorer)

Hench: 

#ACKS

This session took a while to get off the ground due to much indecision about what hook to pursue. The high risk, high reward payout from Bigtoe was still on offer, but the players did not feel that they had the resources to tackle it. They tossed around the idea of a return to the Fallen Castle dungeon, but they couldn’t come to a consensus. Eventually one of them remembered Sharles the Nightblade had been a captive of Talston for over a month. Surely with the town having fallen and under new management, the elf had been released! The Quest for Sharles was on.

The group was in Deinwick and did some shopping. Coincidentally, Sharles was also in Deinwick after having escaped during the battle for Talston. I gently probed them about asking questions around Deinwick about the missing elf on the off-chance that they’d get lucky, but the crew was focused on the goal. Shop, then head to Talston. Ok then.

Sharles and I had a mini session in his downtime channel on Discord while his other PC Karl looked for himself. While the party went the opposite direction, Sharles was mugging folks for money, connecting with one of the syndicates in Deinwick, and hiring on to assassinate Teutch the Alchemist.

The group traveled to Talston and met up at EARS, which has become kind of a hub for them to trade info between their various teams. They were able to contact Gwendolyn the Goat and get a meeting set up with a LT of Marshal Hummel’s who had helped them in the past. Solid reaction rolls got them some good info about who was released from the dungeons and who was still kept there, none of them matching Sharles’ description. Apparently he looks like Guile from Street Fighter with pointy ears.

Zektel Communed with his ancestral spirits to learn that Sharles was alive, he was not within the city of Talston, and he may or may not have been liberated which caused some confusion. The party hit the streets and bars to dig up rumors about the strange looking elf. Zektel got shaken down by thugs, which would become a theme for his attempts at gathering information this session.

They learned that an elf matching Sharles’ description had been seen in company with a Valestrian cavalryman fleeing Talston during the recent battle towards Deinwick to the west. Off the party went back to Deinwick to continue the trail.

Several more rumormongering mishaps and Zektel was running from guards, dodging thieves at a gay bar, and paying off other thugs. The crew eventually overheard that an elf matching Sharles’ description had signed on with the syndicate to spy on Teutch. Apparently they believed the wizard to be some sort of competition. 

When the crew arrived at Teutch Tower, they went immediately to Barbinikus the Butler Mage to report their suspicion that there was an assassin at large. Barbinikus nodded and listened attentively, “Yes yes, all very important, please right this way” as he showed them to the door leading back out into the courtyard. Before they realized it, they were standing outside with the door slammed shut and latches and bars and things clicking and clanging behind the door. Barbinikus shouted through the door that should they find the assassin, they should take care of it.

Meanwhile, Sharles was working on imbedding himself among the elves that loiter around the place. When the party showed up, I had to consider how they were supposed to find a guy that didn’t want to be found. I decided that Sharles’ move silently roll would be the target for the party’s rumormongering roll. Unfortunately, Sharles did Sharles things and rolled like a 4 or something so the party found him basically immediately as soon as they started looking.

There was a tense moment of confrontation when they found him in a bar and he fled. Zektel chased him and threw his snek at him, which eventually wrapped him up. Sharles’ hench buddy surrendered after facing the whole party alone. Lockleaf the elf showed up on scene with some soldiers to investigate, taking everyone down to the small prison that Teutch keeps ne'er-do-wells in before hanging them or setting them on fire or turning them into toads or whatever.

The party was able to convince him that there was evil chaotic magic afoot, so some local mages were summoned and determined that indeed Sharles and his dude were under the influence of… something. They just didn’t know what. Lockleaf, “Listen I feel your pain, but if he stays here he’s gonna die. You need to move on or it’s gonna be ugly.” All the while Sharles was assailing them with claims of injustice and persecution and I was trying hard and failing not to laugh. The party tied the two up and carried them off.

Bigtoe the Wombat has a workshop in Teutchland and the party decided to hit him up to see if he had anything to offer. (Cracaryn is played by the same player). He had a leveled cleric on his staff who attempted to Remove Curse to combat what they believed to be a Quest spell, but was insufficient level to overcome the original caster.

There was some talk of stopping the session there or trying to get to Redcorn (another Cracaryn PC) or trying to get to Bellport. They eventually decided on Bellport by way of Redcorn to check all the known boxes for a potential cure. Sharles and his guy were steadily berating the party until they were gagged.

Back to Deinwick through the ruined Rushford, pillaged by Tyring during the Brigstein, saw them with few random encounters but an eager to escape set of prisoners. Each night I had Sharles rolling an escape attempt but he was on a roll with single digits today.

When they arrived in Millon, they found Redcorn there and tried to get a cure from him, but even he wasn’t high enough level! Unthinkable! So they had to try to get to Bellport and the Bishop Dante Relos who had brained one of the party’s captives in the past during a failed exorcism. Sharles got locked in Millon’s dungeon overnight, so of course that’s where he rolled his best escape attempt. Unfortunately with the negative for an actual dungeon, he was still captured.

At Bellport the party talked their way easily into the gate with a great reaction roll, earning an escort from some 14 year old schmuck in an oversized helmet. With a cracking voice he led them to the cathedral district of the tiered city and to the temple to Heironeous. Bishop Relos himself was summoned to oversee the attempted Remove Curse, with a prompt to the party about donation to the church and an overabundance of theatrics to cast the spells. Satisfied with their donation and his performance, the Bishop bounced and the boys were cured.

The Valestrian trooper just wanted to go home. With a poor reaction check he was confused and scared and just fled. Sharles blamed the party for leaving him to be tortured for weeks. He thanked them for the cure but also fled, theoretically seeking a peaceful cabin in the woods somewhere but who knows?

Musings:

Another slow start to the session. I try to encourage preliminary planning in the Discord channel in downtime to avoid that, but sometimes it doesn’t stick. What can ya do? Weird session with a lot of players playing multiple PCs and talking to themselves and whatever. After the session, we talked about relinquishing control of their PCs as NPCs when they weren’t the active party, like we do with Patrons. I think everyone understood the value and purpose there and endeavored to set contingencies for their PCs if they ran into other adventurers during a session.

There was no real score here in terms of gold or xp, but everyone seemed happy enough to have done right by their boy, especially Cracaryn who seems to be the lone survivor a lot. We also settled on a limit of time advancement that a party can make during a session at 2 weeks. Plenty of time to tackle most goals and not so long as to scum up the rest of the living world at 1:1 time. We’ll play that way a bit and see how it goes.

 

The Brigstein - Setup and AAR

Oberholt After Action Report

Brigstein 1, 8/28/23 - 9/24/23

In my living ACKS campaign of Oberholt, there’s an explicit setting of political tension and imminent civil war within the settled portions of the map. While the PCs in the game have adventured in and around this tension, it never really seemed to impact anything. I was driven sometime over the summer to do something about that.

It was always my intention to have something happen on a large scale. At first, I thought that I would have permanent Patrons installed in these various factions and the conflict would arise organically but I failed to put forth the time or effort to recruit the players needed to do such a thing. I was going to need to run an event to get the in-game conflict that I wanted. I could either run it myself as a series of battles or I could do something more ambitious.

I had recently had the opportunity to play in Mollison’s Decembork and Belloc_Poitiers’ Hundreds of Cambria, two Braunstein style wargames that were inspirational to my choice to run the event in the way that I did. Decembork had weekly orders with varying starting resources/locations, environmental locations of interest, and a scoring system to determine the winner. Cambria had orders submitted every two days with fixed starting resources and faction based objectives to determine the winner. Both games had combat resolved by the DM, Decembork by CRT and Cambria by Chainmail.

I cherry picked the parts of the two games that I thought I liked the most. I was incorrect in some instances which I’ll go into more detail about later. I really wanted the faction leaders to have as much control as possible over their day to day operations, including the existing Patron level players within the game. Oberholt is run at 1:1 time and is effectively “always on” so I felt it best to plug in the faction leaders on that same scale. We would have orders submitted daily.

I chose to allow open communication between factions, both to encourage shit talking in public and to reduce my workload. I could not act as a mailman on top of running recon and battles. It seemed to work well and was popular with the players.

I developed the weather a month in advance using the weather rules in the Greyhawk boxed set from 1984. It’s as good now as it was then, if a little weird to parse at first. I posted it the day of so that actions would be hampered by the weather without the ability to know it was coming. Contingency orders were used at times to account for this. Another strategic wrinkle for the boys to consider.

While the game had been live for a year and a half and nearly 50 sessions, many of the factions involved were mostly broad strokes on the page. I had not generated their armies or fortresses and only had a few sentences on some regarding their relationship to the setting at large. I chose to have the faction leaders build their armies on a fixed budget across the board based on the relative power levels of those factions that I did have that information on.

I may not have had much in the way of statistical information on the various factions, but I did have some setting information. I knew the strife and tension between them that would lead to conflict, much of it generated from the emergent play of the PC parties during sessions. I chose a scoring system with points awarded for winning battles, taking territory, and achieving faction-specific goals.

Finally, I hemmed and hawed over how to run battles. I knew for daily orders that I needed a way to do it quickly and I was really intrigued by using a CRT or group of CRTs for various scenarios. After building and scrapping a few tables, I remembered the ever-applicable “ACKS Already Does That” meme. I chose to just use the abstracted mass combat resolution system from Domains at War: Campaigns, with some adjustments made to streamline it a bit for the faction leaders that were completely new to ACKS. This would also provide the backbone for supply, recon, and magic rules that I would use, always with an eye towards streamlining for simplicity. I really did not want to bog the game down with mechanical pixel-bitching.

The rules were set. Now I needed players. The beauty of the online gaming space is that there is a wide, deep pool of players from which to recruit. The horror of the online gaming space is that there is a wide, deep pool of players from which to recruit. I had intended to cast a net and select players from the applicants, but then I realized that I personally knew some of the coolest dudes in the game. So I started with private invitations and was fortunate enough to fill the factions with frenz. 

The Cast in no particular order:

Arbrethil: Lord Eros Tyring of Blackhold, Crusader of Hextor and Disturber of Shit. Recent hostilities with Deinwick by allying with Talston. Vassal to Valestrian but outgrowing that relationship. Primary objective was to kill Issac.

Macho_Mandalf: Lord Nathan Talston, recently ascended to leadership with a mysterious oracle guiding his path to power. The death of his father was under suspicious circumstances. Recent hostilities with Deinwick. Primary objective was to kill Deinwick.

Boldvay: Lord Grueller Deinwick, aggrieved lord of the west with the mad extraplanar wizard Teutch the Alchemist across the river to the west and the insufferable offense of (allegedly) stolen ancestral land held by Talston to the east. Recent hostilities with Talston/Tyring. Primary objective was to kill Talston.

Irish Bob: Marshal Eli Hummel, newly raised Lord of Loch Lucerne. Rewarded for his part in quashing a rebellion over taxes. Lucerne suffered in the event, the city's in shambles and many nobles are resentful of the outsider and the Baron. Primary objective was to take and hold two locations from Valestrian by the end of the event.

Hollyfelled: Lord Burbank Valestrian, the deceptively docile lord of the east ignored by most others as nothing more than an up-jumped farmer. Opportunistic and the uneasy liege lord of Eros Tyring. Primary objective was to take and hold two locations from Hummel by the end of the event.

Belloc_Poitiers: Baron Heinrik of Donwal, "the Bloodletter", Lord of Bellport and ruler of Oberholt. Earned his seat by defeating the invading beastman army at the Teesar Torrent roughly 11 years ago. First among equals rather than a true overlord. Ferocious reputation. Recently sacked Loch Lucerne and replaced the ruling noble house with Hummel. Primary objective was to ensure that the starting territory of his vassals Issac and Hummel and his own were still in their possession by the end of the event.

KyleOconner: Lord Issac de Molay of Riverstride, Crusader of Heironeous, paragon of justice, and full-time Patron of Oberholt. Newly sworn directly to Bellport rather than Talston after sketchy circumstances of Lord Nathan's rise to power. Primary objective was to kill Tyring.

S1AL:  Volrag the Unhinged, Fire Giant overlord of the Butzkrag driven away in disgrace by Lord Issac. Primary objective was to take one of any 5 of the main castles. Bellport, Talston, Deinwick, Valestrian, or Loch Lucerne.

 

Bdubs: Teutch the Alchemist, an off-world wizard and full-time Patron in Oberholt that resides in a purple tower fortress west of Deinwick across the Teesar. His intentions are hardly ever straight forward or make a lot of sense to anyone but him.

FinnThann: Player that runs both Redcorn the Cleric and Bigtoe the Machinist in the campaign. Bigtoe got called up by his liege lord Teutch and Redcorn had some quantum conversations going on that I probably should have nixed but I had a lot on my plate and missed it.

How it started:

Only half of the participants had any experience with ACKS as a system. In hindsight, it would have been best to either use a simpler system or have a longer lead-in time to the start of the event for players to familiarize themselves with the rules. An important trait of these online pop-up events is keeping interest high. If there’s too much homework, it’s harder to recruit for, so it’s important to find that balance. I think we did ok with a rules summary prior to the game and the guys were great about asking questions.

I had them build their armies the week prior based on a budget but the C&C portions of ACKS are unique to the system and I suspect it was a little confusing for some. I liked the budget build out, but I missed some of the economic concerns that tie into sieges and supply. Sacrifices were made for the sake of streamlining the process. I modeled my revised supply line system after Belloc’s in Cambria and overall it worked ok.

The strategies for building armies were interesting: 

Heinrik built an infantry heavy force and worked closely with Issac and several others pre-game, leaning more into the diplomatic side of things than preparing for head to head combat. He ended up loaning an entire division of longbowmen to Issac along with some additional captains to add to Issac’s C&C capabilities and presumably strengthen the border guard along the river against the certain encroachment from Volrag.

Issac was the only full-time, established Patron from the campaign that I intended to include in the event. This decision was based solely on the military strength available to him. None of the other Patrons could punch at this level on the battlefield and I didn’t want to make them the targets of bullies. Issac’s force was built over a year of recruitment and wilderness battles. He’d already reclaimed Northbridge from beastmen and bested Volrag in combat once, at the Butzkrag. He had some gaps in C&C for combining everything together into a single force, but solid diplomacy got him there with a little help from his friends.

Hummel built a very balanced force and split them in two, personally leading one to the fighting while the other guarded the home base. His territory was situated far to the east so he was a bit removed from most of the other factions and it would take a while for him to get involved.

Deinwick went for balance, with three evenly built armies sitting at each of his potential border points. It seemed to me like he wanted to test the waters a little and cover himself once he decided to move. He also had a dedicated scout division of light cav that he intended to use to screen his march.

Talston built a very strong, balanced core of veteran units as a primary army, then garrisoned his secondary towns with some lighter units that included light catapults. Since we were using the simplified siege rules from D@W:C, siege equipment was a bargain due to adding significantly to the unit count during a siege. This allowed him to hold his less important positions with a deceptively strong and inexpensive garrison.

Valestrian went entirely light cavalry and horse archers, with a strong core of officers to give him flexibility. It was clear he valued speed above all and he would flex that muscle throughout the game. It was interesting as this was the second army I’d seen Hollyfelled build this way. The man’s a speed demon.

Tyring leaned in a bit to his character’s subversive ways, hiring a core of cavalry that he would personally lead then fielding the rest as conscripts that he could call up as needed instead of having a massive standing army that would get him undue attention. He was also the only one to invest big in heavy trebuchets, absolute monsters in abstract battle and siege resolution.

Vorag was an outlier, the only beastman army in the mix and starting across a reasonably well defended river. He built a balanced force with a little siege equipment himself. He had the advantage of uncertainty among the humans about what he might do or where he might strike.

Teutch the Alchemist was not originally intended to be part of the event. He just didn’t have the military strength to tangle at the level the others did. But it was foolish of me to think that he would sit it out. The wizard would get involved later in the event, along with some of the PCs, most notably Redcorn the Cleric of Team A, infamous for his part in the Wounded Ear Fiasco.

The Receipts:

A Day by Day accounting of orders can be found here. It's long, 28 days with 8-10 factions. I've included a map and the weather for each day as well as a little commentary on my thought process as things went. These thoughts are by no means comprehensive, just what I was running across as the DM.

Conclusions:

Overall I'd say this was a success. The players enjoyed it for the most part, I got 3 additional patrons to sign on full time, and the original goal was achieved in shaking up the status quo for the campaign. I could have done better with leading into it and better with in-game motivations for sudden armed conflict. I've a tendency to overthink things and will never pull the trigger so I had to just go on this and hope it worked out.

There's always opportunity to second guess decisions made. Would weekly orders accommodate the campaign better than daily? Would it be as fun? Economics, communication, all these things are important to consider. Ultimately, as long as everything remains consistent and the playing field is fair, it will work. Commit and execute.

Congratulations to Arbrethil on his victory and drastic expansion in the East of the realm. Welcome Tyring, Valestrian, and Volrag to the campaign. A sincere thank you to each of our participants, good friends of mine who honored me with their time and dedication to the event. Stay tuned to see how the world develops going forward.

Session 50: Reluctant Adventurers

Session 50: Reluctant Adventurers

9/24/23-9/29/23, rest 9/30, active 10/1

PC: Zektel, Cracaryn, Alari (Spellsword), Karl (Explorer)

Hench: 

#ACKS

If you’re into milestones, it’s Session 50. That’s like, half of 100 or something. I don’t know if it’s significant but it feels good to have a lasting game. We’ve rotated out some players but it just keeps on keepin’ on. Open tables are the way.

The players came together at Teutch tower with some new PCs because they keep dying off. Zektel and Cracaryn were returning while Alari and Karl were fresh level 1s.

Cracaryn, as usual, wanted to chase his other PC’s hook about some artifact located deep in enemy occupied territory to the north. The other players were having none of it. They’d spent a few sessions on it but usually spontaneously, with no plan or resources to ensure success. Goes to show that even with a big (huge) payout on offer, Patrons have to excite the players to get them into their hooks. It is an age-old problem for our erstwhile NPCs.

They tossed around ideas and settled on heading back to, of all places, The Fallen Castle dungeon near Teutch’s Tower, which had been there since nearly the beginning of the campaign. This was the site of a crashed storm giant castle that revealed deeper levels within the mountain beneath. Teutch had offered many loaner items and hooks and things that led there in the past, but after a few delves the players never went back. It had been over a year since their last visit.

There were signs of activity outside and they recalled having seen a band of mercs camped there the last time they came through. Apparently, they had gone by now and the PCs had a clear path to the skewed giant-sized double doors on the front of the wrecked castle. There was a large gap that they could squeeze through, which many an adventurer and monster had squeezed through before.

The foyer was as the players remembered it, a few ever-burning torches high on the cracked and slanted columns that barely held the thing together. They chose a door that led further in and descended to level 2 through a wide opening in the floor. 

Much whining was shared about “why are we here” and “what are we doing” and “I don’t want to be here” since they had a ranger and explorer for outdoor work. Despite over a year in the game and the system, there was still some belief that wilderness adventure was easy peasy no big deal for a bunch of low level turds with no punching power vs. random encounters that could outnumber them 100:1 and environmental hazards that literally killed their last party. I laughed at them and prompted them for action. They chose deeper into the dungeon. Such Chads.

We had a new mapper today, a man I’ve played D&D with in various forms for 30 years and never once seen him put pencil to graph paper. Much laughter was had but he did well, especially since without any navigation or mapping proficiencies I wasn’t being particularly helpful as the DM.

The group advanced through this second level of the dungeon pretty cautiously, certain that they were doomed. At the end of a long hallway they came across hulking, huffing forms that were– “Are those gnolls? They’re gnolls” said Alari. Dammit, yeah fine, they’re gnolls, whatever. A short battle with some damage spread around ended in two dead gnolls and some wounds that Zektel was successful in bandaging with his healing proficiency. Karl had to use his fate point to recover after setting himself on fire with military oil and burning to death. He’s now in permanent pain and suffers a penalty to initiative, but did not require bed rest due to the magical healing received from Zektel’s newly acquired spell slot.

Beyond the gnolls was a cavern with wet, slick walls of stone that had deposits that glittered in their light. Two elves in the party make finding secret doors pretty likely, which was demonstrated by them finding the small crevice in the southern wall leading to a little grotto. Within was a bubbling pool, the edge of which was chiseled in ancient Flannish runes. Someone, Zektel I think, was able to dope out the metaphor of the runes, put something of value in, get something of more value out. They tried everything they had, magic items and weapons and whatever, to no results. Then Karl put his gold in. It came out as platinum! I asked Karl to roll a d6. He got a 1. This will matter later.

Instantly, the cheese was summoned. “How do we sell this to patrons, how do we go get all of our gold from the bank and bring it back, how do we find more gold in the dungeon, what if it’s limited”. Cracaryn kept his wealth in gems for the reduced weight so even though he was well-off, very little was in gold coins. The party figured they’d look around a bit then jet off to town to retrieve actual gold pieces. Zektel was a champ and shared out his new platinum with the party, which turned into XP. The player thought it ludicrous but he plays his roles and plays them well.

Empty rooms and map confusion followed, eventually leading to a cell block of sorts where they found clay pots filled with silver coins. The pots were trapped with poison darts but they didn’t know that. It also didn’t matter because Karl picked them up one by one and smashed them against the wall. “I’m going full-out Link!” Shake. My. Head.

In another of the cells, they found a stairway leading very far down into the darkness. It was flanked by two everburning torches that went out when removed from the sconces. Did our heroes leave these to continue to add flavor to the dungeon? Nay nay, they ripped them from the walls with the intent to sell the sconces themselves. Looting a dungeon is sometimes looting the dungeon itself.

Onward they explored, discovering a large room with a shadowed back wall. There were wolves there that Cracaryn was able to convince to hunt with them as long as they didn’t go north. Back through the dungeon towards the staircase, the party tripped a trap that they miraculously all missed the first time through. Pit vipers dropped from a spot in the ceiling and it got serious quick. The wolves took the brunt of it and fortunately the PCs who were bit were able to save. Otherwise, they’d have died to poison. The one surviving wolf failed morale and bounced. The party harvested snake parts and decided to cut their losses and aim for cheese.

Back to town where they converted all their wealth into gold. Quick turnaround back to the dungeon where they hoped to really rack up on converting gold to platinum. It only took a few days to get back, but by the time they dunked all their gold into the fountain, nothing happened. It appeared the magic had expired. Karl’s d6 from before was the number of days the fountain would stay active. That’s a shame.

The party cut their losses here and retired for the session.

Musings:

Little Appendix A action for the 2nd level of the dungeon gave us some interesting things. The wolves clued the party into something scary on that same level. Will they pursue it? Probably not. After all, what were they even doing there?

 

Session 49: PCs are Wild Cards

 Session 49: PCs are Wild Cards

9/10/23-9/12/23, rest 9/13, active 9/14

PC: Gwendolyn, Flynn, Cleet, Legany, Elkland

Hench: Beyza, Amadayo, Mahin, Madrof

#ACKS

We’re two weeks into the Braunstein event that I’m calling the Brigstein. Armies are stomping around in a civil war and killing each other and sieging and burning cities and all manner of madness. The normal table players are playing sessions while the Brigstein players are burning the place down. Last week they avoided the chaos, this week they jumped right in.

Most of Team A’s PCs were within the city of Talston, which was currently under siege by Marshal Eli Hummel, the new Lord of Loch Lucerne, and troops from his frenemy Lord Valestrian. That was the only group not in time jail so they figured they’d get into some trouble within the framework of a siege.

Gwendolyn traveled there in downtime and had to talk her way past the Hummel siege camp. She didn't see any Valestrians to interact with and in fact didn't even know they were there. The soldiers weren’t just going to let her in, so they interrogated her and eventually recruited her to act as a spy in the town after taking all of her crew's rations. Charisma is a hell of a stat.

At the Talston gates, it was going to be much harder to talk her way in I told myself as I rolled a reaction check and maxed it out. FML. Turns out this platoon guarding this particular gate on this shift were mostly fans of the famous Gwendolyn the Goat, renowned for her songs about goats and cats and barbarians and other things she’s seen on her many adventures. They even wore little goat pins and she signed autographs and shook hands and would have taken selfies if that was a thing but after short order she gained access to the city and kept her hood up to avoid notice.

Once the group reunited, Flynn and the gang inside which included a couple fresh PCs learned of POWs being held by Talston. The Lawfuls in the bunch were uber offended by Lord Talston hanging POWs from the walls to taunt his enemies and did not want the survivors to suffer the same fate. They talked their way into the camp under the guise of concern over the captives’ well-being. A heavy rainstorm helped dampen any zeal the guards might have had and they were able to check on the prisoners with a promise not to do anything to make the soldiers kill them.

Unfortunately the camp was in pretty terrible condition, especially with the rain, and Flynn the cleric went to work trying to offer what aid that he could. The group was able to interview a captive NCO and encourage him to rouse the troops in the event that the party was able to formulate some kind of rescue plan. They talked of using signal lights on top of a windmill to signal someone outside the city and tossed some other ideas around about what to actually do.

The PCs split off at this point to scout entrances to the primary castle and scout guard rotations and dispositions at the gates. Some of them were being followed by mercenaries belonging to the Black Stag company, employed by Talston. Shenanigans ensued where they tried to lose them in the rain and detect evil and such, ending with Gwendolyn and Beyza the Hench being cornered in a tavern by a handful of menacing dudes.

Turns out these were the same guys that had kidnapped the two of them previously and had told them to leave. Again a positive reaction check kept them from being attacked, but the mercs warned Gwendolyn to leave town or else. She dropped some payroll off at EARS and she was out. The new shift of guards searched her for contraband or spy stuff and didn’t find any, so they let her leave the gates. Charisma.

The next day, a plan was hatched for “National Guard Appreciation Day” wherein the remaining PCs would fashion ribbons and buy booze to pass out to any veterans or active duty soldiers in the town. Cleet the tweaker spiked a few barrels of ale with poison and went for the gates they had scouted while Flynn took some wine and spirits to the POW camp. Where Cleet intended to eradicate the guards on the two gates, Flynn just wanted to get them drunk and stage a breakout with a bunch of clubs they had bought.

While the POW guards were enjoying their unexpected holiday, Legany the barbarian left to light the lamp at the top of the windmill. The miller gave him some trouble but a bribe smoothed things over and in short order the signal was set. After enough of the POW guards were drunk, some others got wise and started poking around the cart, asking questions and getting suspicious. The group sprang the POWs and they quickly overcame the few capable guards. The party marched their mob towards the gate and miraculously didn’t hit any interference in the streets.

Poison, a mob of prisoners, and a well placed sleep spell secured the first gate, which was opened to a charging division of Hummel’s troops. Talston, while surprised by the treachery, was not completely helpless and sent units to defend. While there was a big battle at that breach, the party ran for the second gate, again using the POWs to subdue the reduced soldiers. But the garrison had called for reinforcements, so when this gate opened, Talston’s troops were going to arrive before the invading Hummel could make entry. A rousing speech from Elkland the enchanter allowed the POWs to pass a morale check to hold the gate long enough to give Hummel’s troops a chance to enter. Chaos ensued, with Hummel overwhelming the two breach points and pushing Talston’s remaining troops back to the old castle and its inner walls. By the end of the day, the party was paid their reward that was uh… foraged… from the town by Hummel’s men and the city of Talston had fallen, if not the castle.

Musings:

Running sessions during an event in the background is interesting. I think next time, I’ll run the macro level faction players on weekly turns instead of daily turns. I chose daily at the outset to allow for more control and interest from those players but if the session runs into the future, which they almost always do at least a few days, then I’m having to guess at likely actions and dictate the next X days worth to any faction player involved. For instance, Hummel and Talston are now essentially in time jail for a few days to account for the actions that took place during the session. It’s nothing that can’t be worked around but it is interesting to consider. Big props to the Brigstein players for understanding their part in the greater scheme of things.

I was glad that the players were able to find something to interest them for the session. A lot of the results were driven by favorable reaction checks, which is always interesting and sometimes difficult to parse. I think in the future I should add more situational modifiers as I may have been too easy on the bard entering and leaving the town. A few PCs have died recently so it was nice for the group to get a win. Lookin’ forward to the fallout from this session.

Session 48: Beware the Wild

Session 48: Beware the Wild

9/3/23-9/12/23, rest 9/13, active 9/14

PC: Ellin, Cracaryn, Mycroft

Hench: Taki, Kissare

#ACKS

A civil war had erupted and I was running a Braunstein event in the background with eight online friends driving the various political factions. Some of the patrons had reached out for assistance from the PCs for shenanigans but I think the prevailing thought was “a man could get killed out there.” So the group opted to chase one of their other hooks.

Bigtoe (PC/Patron Machinist) had achieved name level finally, which by my reckoning gave him the ability to award not only material goods but also experience points for completing missions on his behalf. He offered the party some obscene amount of gold to retrieve an artifact for him, probably an amount that conventional wisdom says the DM should step in and say yo that’s too much but… nah. I just put it deep into enemy territory.

We sat around and shot the shit for a bit longer than normal, which was fun, but eventually I had to push them for a decision on the session’s goal. Mycroft wanted to do something less risky, like the ever-present Fallen Castle dungeon near Teutch’s tower. Cracaryn, the same player that plays Bigtoe, wanted to get the artifact (big surprise). Ellin didn’t care and Mycroft’s player buckled under the pressure and leaned into losing a character every session, declaring that they were certainly going to die.

The group set out to Teutch’s tower from Deinwick to pick up the treasure map in question. They encountered a deserter from the Deinwick army on their way back, kicking his heels over the rail of the Friendship Bridge. Cracaryn was concerned that he was gonna jump, but he was just chillin’. He was too high level to hench, so that conversation went nowhere and the party moved on.

I thought. Mycroft stopped at the end of the bridge and used gnome trickster ventriloquism to try to startle the guy into jumping in the river. Madness. Unfortunately the guy failed two saving throws and fell into the Teesar Torrest (the notMississippi). He didn’t make it. Mycroft cackled. When folks complain about murderhobos, pretty sure they mean Mycroft.

When the group got to Hillfort, the garrison at Hillfort shared a little about the local war efforts, which hadn’t been much up to that point, and nods were shared all around about how smart they were to avoid tangling themselves in that. They paid big to hire a ship to carry them upriver and drop them off on the opposite bank and started to the north into the Bone March.

Last session we had used the wilderness stocking table in Axioms 8 and everyone was over the moon with how successful and interesting and lucrative it had been. This session, Axioms 8 advised the table to hold its beer. I will summarize for brevity the events the table shared with the party this trip:

• A shortcut clogged with corpses. Would have sped their trip some but not while having to pick through and over tons of meat.

• A localized storm that reduced their travel speed.

• A cursed copse of trees right at camp time cost several of their members like 6 points of wisdom, driving the loaner hench Kissare insane after being reduced to 0 wisdom.

• A barrow mound that was avoided out of laser focus towards the goal.

• A plague knocking half the party out for 4 weeks, leaving them to be carried by their horses like cargo. This is where they decided to turn around.

• Another storm, even worse than the first causing damage and halting travel.

• A wretched orchard of corrupted apples and peaches.

• Another diseased field that left only Cracaryn and Taki able to move freely.

• More terrible weather.

• A field of comfrey that despite their current state Cracaryn stopped to harvest.

• A kobold lair detected at distance and surprised, so the elf could evade.

The group was making progress back towards civilization, struggling mightily but with some hope. The bugbear ambush was insult to injury. Or disease. Or madness. Whatever. Twenty bugbears leapt out of the brush near the group and only Cracaryn was not surprised. The elf called to flee and won initiative, so he did just that. We randomly determined which reins of the cripples he had hold of which was only Kissare, so the two of them sped away. Ellin, Mycroft, and Taki were brutally murdered under a wave of bugbears and most of their comfrey was confiscated.

It was pointed out that maybe the diseased characters would pass it on to the bugbears that were eating them so yeah sure, I rolled some saving throws. Cracaryn was going to leave them behind but Ellin’s player reminded him that she had several magic items on her corpse. The ranger circled back under cover of night and observed that several of the bugbears had succumbed and been left on the side of the trail they took back to their campfires. Cracaryn executed them and then tried to figure a way to take on the remaining 9, but ultimately chose the better part of valor and fell back, eventually flagging down a passing ship to get them back across the river. He limped into Teutch Tower with an insane henchman and another notch in his PTSD belt.

Musings:

The wilderness chart is just awesome. There was some absolutely horrible luck this session, but many of the obstacles may have been overcome with a balanced group composition. There was zero planning for the session and spontaneously chasing an artifact into the furthest reaches of beastman held territory was a bold choice for such a session. Mycroft’s player hit ‘em with the “I told you so” and we joked about his schtick being two-session PCs, perpetually. Cracaryn’s player has yet to lose a PC, but his time is coming.

I was surprised there wasn’t more interest in the war efforts. Historically, player controlled patrons have been very generous with the PCs in Oberholt and shenanigan type sessions are usually more accessible to smaller parties. I think their last shot at Lord Talston and the fallout still had them gun-shy.