DF Whiterock Session 10: Into the Mines, and a Mystery Duergar

Date:

2018-06-29

Weather:

Hot, partly cloudy

Player Characters:

Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 196 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 192 (+1) points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 173 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 201 points

Significant NPCs:

8 Orc slavers of the White Talon tribe
Tarik, orc slaver boss
unknown Duergar
10 human commoners, pressed into slavery by the orcs


Garreth wanted to investigate the clue they had found in the slaver monk leader Ikenvar's quarters: a mostly burned paper with "Umberwood Coffins" visible.  Ibizaber and Seépravir came along.  It turned out there was a business with that name in the Common Quarter of Cillamar, a small coffin factory.  But when they visited the premises, the factory was closed and the doors locked.  A neighbor said that creepy tall guy Mortimer Umberwood had locked up the factory and left a few weeks ago.

The group considered talking to the authorities to try to get permission to search the place, but then decided it would be easier to turn Ibizaber invisible and let him search the place unofficially.  So, after receiving Invisibility, Hush, Keen Vision, and Infravision spells from Seépravir, Ibizaber picked the lock and searched the place.  He found a few assembled coffins (just cheap thin pine boxes, really), a few planks and nails, and a partly burned ledger that talked about logs a lot.  The ledger was suspicious, but Mortimer Umberwood was gone, so that lead appeared played out.

After waiting a bit in vain at the Inn of the Slumbering Drake for Polly or Durkerle or Bernard to show up, the three decided to head to Castle Whiterock without them.  They all did a better-than-usual job of hiking the familiar path, and made good time.  Garreth wanted to go downstairs and look for more orcs to kill, but Ibizaber and Seépravir wanted to first check out the trap door down they found last time, under the fallen tower where a giant praying mantis had ambushed Polly.  Garreth agreed, and then opened the trap door, finding a rusty metal ladder leading way down.  Ibizaber carefully climbed down the wall instead of the ladder, making it to the bottom easily, then shook the ladder and found it was stronger than it looked.  Seépravir didn't trust it, and cast Levitate on herself instead.  Garreth took the ladder, without problems.  At the bottom of the ladder, the group found a winding passage leading mostly southeast, eventually ending at a staircase going down and east.  The staircase dead-ended at a blank wall, and they found the obvious secret door and opened it.  This led into a previously-found storeroom, near the orcs' former slave storage pits.  So now the group knew a second way into the orc slavers' level, and they were conveniently there to kill more orcs.

However, the western part of the level was still conspicuously empty of orcs.  It appeared they'd run out of reinforcements to guard it.  They visited the trollhound kennel, and found four trollhound corpses still there, about as stinky as before.  Garreth dragged two of them back to the stairs up, since Quintus had been interested in trollhound bits.  The three then walked over to Kaernga's throne room, and found it unoccupied, with the large pig on a spit still there, with a lot of the meat having been cut off it (with tools not animal teeth), but now a couple of weeks old and attracting flies.  Given the choice between continuing to the east to explore more of this level, or going down the secret stairs behind Kaernga's throne, they decided to clear this level first.  So they snuck carefully into new territory, with Seépravir invisible and levitating.  She also cast Infravision on all three of them, so nobody needed lights, as long as they didn't need color vision or the ability to read.

The passage opened up into a large cave, with 4 orcs with crossbows guarding 7 human slaves, 3 of them walking around carrying rocks, and 4 of them turning a large wheel to power some kind of mechanical contraption.  (It later turned out to be a conveyor belt, used to move rocks.)  There was also a huge pit to the north that the slaves were dropping rocks into.  The cave was loud enough, the heroes stealthy enough, and the orc guards lazy enough that the party achieved complete surprise.  A melee ensued, with Ibizaber backstabbing an orc in the face (I know, the face isn't in the back of the head, but he reached around from behind the orc to where its open-faced helmet didn't protect), Garreth missing with a sling then pulling out his greatsword and stabbing orcs, and Seépravir switching between Rapier Wit and Stun to keep stunning orcs every time they recovered from being stunned, so they hardly got to do anything.

The orcs had ideas, involving using slaves as human shields, threatening to throw slaves into the pit, calling for reinforcements, hitting the intruders with crossbow bolts, etc.  None of these ideas worked.  The orcs were very tough and wearing scale armor, so it took a while to kill them, but they never really accomplished anything beyond running toward reinforcements, screaming, missing, and getting hurt.

At some point during the fight, a familiar Elven voice with a woodsy accent came up behind them, accusing them of leaving to kill orks without her.  Polly didn't have Infravision, so she could only shoot where there was light.  (Fortunately for her the human slaves didn't have Dark Vision like the orcs, so there was some light in the cave for them to work.)  But there were enough lit-up orcs for her to have someone to shoot.

One of the orcs eventually fled through a passage to the southeast, screaming for help, pursued by Garreth and Polly.  Seépravir cast Haste on Garreth to let him give chase more effectively despite his armor.  In the room there was a huge orc with a whip and a greatsword, who the fleeing orc had called Tarik.  He saw Garreth coming and a greatsword duel ensued.  They were both huge and strong, but Garreth appeared a bit more skilled, or maybe a bit luckier.  He landed a vicious blow, enough that Tarik was slowed by his wounds.  After a few more misses, Garreth feinted Tarik out of his mail.  Realizing that he was in deep trouble, Tarik gave up on defense and went for a fast all-out attack.  Garreth parried though, and then struck a massive blow, killing the huge orc.

Meanwhile, the retreating crossbow orc fired its bolt at Garreth, and missed.  Polly then fired a whole lot of arrows at that orc, a couple missing, the rest hitting.  It went down hard and did not get back up.

Two more orcs with crossbows came up from the southwest, and loosed at Garreth right after he finished Tarik.  Neither hit.  These orcs were good at pointing crossbows at helpless slaves to intimidate them into working, not so good at actually hitting moving targets at range.

The group heard some other orcs running away into the mine passages, but there were a lot of places to check, so they decided to loot the rooms they had cleared instead.  They found a crate, which Ibizaber forced open.  It contained some uncut rough blue quartz stones.  Otherwise, they hadn't found any treasure, other than the orcs' weapons and armor.  But then Ibizaber found a secret door, behind the crate.  It was a well-constructed (surprising in this orc mine, which looked like it had not exactly been built to dwarven code) vertically sliding slab of rock  Ibizaber found the catch, and it slid down, silently.

The group headed down the secret passage behind the door, which went down some stairs, and then opened into a nicely appointed room.  The room contained a bed, a desk, a platform with some manacles, and an unarmored bald-headed dwarf with gray skin, facing the other way.  All four figured out that he was a duergar, and most decided to try for capture.  Polly decided the best way to stop him was by shooting him in the back with an arrow.  She missed -- and almost hit Ibizaber in the back instead.  He used Luck to make her miss.  Then Ibizaber decided the best way to capture the duergar was by stabbing him in the eye.  This was quite effective, as his knife went through the eye, into the brain, and got an instant knockout without doing enough damage to kill the duergar.  Seépravir performed first aid to keep the prisoner from bleeding to death.  Ibizaber searched the room and found a secret compartment, containing some ledgers in an unknown language.  The group also gathered up the dwarf's mail shirt and hammer and some coins and gems and a key, and headed back toward the surface.

Garreth thought of offering the liberated slaves cash to help carry back loot, so they made it back to Cillamar with a dead trollhound and an unconscious tied-up duergar in wheelbarrows, and a bunch of former mine slaves carrying scale armor and crossbows.  Interrogating the duergar to figure out what he was doing in the dungeon would have to wait until he woke up, if he woke up.

GM's Comments:

We got off to a late start, due to two players needing to start late, and a third player unexpectedly missing the session.  So we didn't quite get four hours of play in.

Chasing down the Umberwood Coffins rumor didn't pan out, because it had been weeks since the fake-monk slavers on the surface level of Castle Whiterock had been wiped out.  Maybe if they'd checked sooner...

The trap door they found last week turned out to just be another way into an area they'd already mostly cleared, so not that interesting, just tying up loose ends on the map.

Infravision and Stealth and Invisibility were effective, though.  The PCs started both fights with surprise this week.  The big fight against the orcs took a long time, but I didn't feel like the orcs ever really had a chance, since they kept getting stunned or hit or missing with their crossbows.  Tarik the giant orc with the greatsword could have done some real damage if he hit someone, but Garreth has a good parry and rolled defenses well, and Tarik kept missing when he took Deceptive Attacks to give himself a chance to get around Garreth's parry.  (This may have been the first time I had an enemy take a Deceptive Attack in this campaign.)

I like the house rule that you don't roll Feints until right before the next attack, so that the defender doesn't know how badly he's been Feinted.  I forgot to mention it until after Garreth feinted though, so next time.  Since that house rule was not in play, Tarik got to respond to being Feinted horribly with an All-Out Attack, but it didn't work.  (Running away is another great tactic if you know you've been Feinted horribly, but Tarik was slowed by his wounds and couldn't have gotten out of range.)

There was very little time left in the session when the group found the duergar.  He was surprised and didn't have his armor on, so it wasn't much of a fight.  The biggest danger a PC was in all game was probably when Polly shot through Ibizaber's hex and almost hit him, but he used Luck.  (Odds of an accidental hit are never better than 9 or less on 3d6, so 3 tries to not make a 9 are usually enough.)

Besides the Feint house rule, there were two interesting rules questions in this game.  One, if you're backstabbing from behind, can you hit the face?  The eye?  I ruled yes for the face; faces are pretty big, and a cheek shot from behind seems reasonable.  The eye is a tougher call, one I need to think about more.  (Of course slitting throats from behind is a common trope, but in DFRPG, the neck location gets protection from torso armor, so it doesn't always work well against armored enemies.)  Two, does Move and Attack benefit from the sprint bonus, like Move?  I thought that was a clear yes, even if the rules as written aren't 100% clear.

Next week: Maybe the group gets to interrogate the captured duergar, if he wakes up.  And what's in those ledgers?  Plus, they know at least two orcs are still running around in the mines somewhere, and the rescued slaves said there are more enslaved miners and orc guards back there.  Will they finally finish mopping up the last of the White Talon Orcs?

Using a private Discord server to coordinate a roleplaying game

Peter mentioned that he was trying to coordinate more stuff with his Felltower group between game sessions over email, so that more of the time during the game session could be spent having fun.  I'm trying to do that too with DF Whiterock, except we use Discord rather than email.  Figured it was worth going into a bit of detail in case it's helpful to some other gaming group.

Discord is a voice and text chat system marketed at gamers.  There's a web client, plus dedicated clients for Linux and macOS and Windows and Android and iOS.  You can setup your own private Discord server for free, and invite whoever you want to join it.  (You give them a URL via email or whatever, and that URL is a bearer token that lets them into your private server.)

Once you have a server, you can add an arbitrary number of voice chat and text chat channels.  We have two voice channels: General (which we use for group chat if we run the game over voice), and Sidebar (which we could use if we needed two voice chat rooms at once).  We currently have four text channels: #general, #announcements, #ooc-planning, and #character-sheets.  #general is for whatever.  #ooc-planning is for separating out the Serious Talk about who gets the +2 Icepick of Flensing from the general discussion.  #character-sheets is for posting updated GCS character sheets, and summaries of character point spending.  (In this game, players don't mind the other players seeing their sheets.  In a game where sheets were private, that might be handled via private message to the GM.)  And #announcements is a place for the GM (only) to post brief announcements like when the game starts or if the character points spreadsheet has been updated.

Discord supports reactions to posts, so instead of posting "I agree with what you just said" you can just put a little picture of an upward-pointing thumb under it.  I know, I know, get off my lawn and learn to type actual words, but it's actually useful for things like voting: it's easier to count 3 thumbs up and 2 thumbs down right under the question than look for the right 5 text responses at random places further down in the channel.

Discord also supports pinned posts.  Used sparingly, this makes it easy to find important stuff (the link to the blog, the link to the character points spreadsheet, the link to the Roll20 game, etc.) in a busy channel, rather than searching through tons of text.

And that's pretty much all I've setup so far.  Make a Discord server, invite the players to join it, add a couple of a text and voice channels, configure the announcements channel so only the GM can post but players can react to posts, and done.  The only other thing I'd like to add is a bot to 1. allow rolling dice in Discord (we currently roll in Roll20 but I might want to move some between-games rolls to Discord) 2. Automatically notice when the blog, character points sheet, loot sheet, etc. get updated and automatically drop an announcement in the announcements channel, to save me the hard labor of doing that.  I'll probably write that bot next time I have a free weekend and can't think of anything more fun to do.

I guess the obvious question is, seeing that we run the actual game in Roll20 (mostly because of maps), why don't we do all this in Roll20?  The answer is that Roll20 has both voice and text chat features, but they're not as good as Discord's.  The voice chat has technical issues.  The text chat is fine, but there's only a single channel per game, plus "whispers" which are private messages.  And Roll20 pretty much just works from computer web browsers, not phones.  (It's a website, but it's a big heavy website.)  And it doesn't beep at you to get your attention when someone says your name.  And it doesn't support pinned messages.  So we use Roll20 for the main in-character game text chat with integrated dice rolling, but we use Discord for the other chats.

I guess that's enough on why we use Discord and how to set it up.  Next time I'll talk about what we handle during the game session versus between game sessions.

DF Whiterock Session 9: Bugs and Books

Date:

2018-06-22

Weather:

Warm, cloudy, sunny

Player Characters:

Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 188 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 167 (+1) points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 196 points

Significant NPCs:

4 Monstrous Centipedes
1 Giant Praying Mantis
1 Water Hydra, unknown number of heads


It was the longest day of the year, a popular time for travel and festivals.  Durkerle was unavailable while running the Solstice Festival at the Temple of Danethar.  Garreth was unavailable because he drank too much at a slightly less classy festival.  Hugin had left Cillamar to go back home and see his family, who needed to know that he was okay after his stretch as an unwilling guest of the White Talon Orcs.  And nobody was quite sure where Bernard was.

Ibizaber and Polly and Seépravir decided to go back to Castle Whiterock without them, but be really cautious, since there were only three of them and none of them was a big strong heavily armored melee fighter or a healing cleric.  They made some extra healing potions, loaded up a wheelbarrow, and hiked back to the castle on a warm summer day.  Ibizaber stubbed his toe (surprisingly for such a nimble guy, but he'd recently found some Dwarven Deepwine made from some really strong mushrooms) and slowed down progress a bit, but they still made it to the castle in good order.

They decided to stash their wheelbarrow and some of their gear outside the castle, in case they needed to flee.  Then Seépravir started casting spells on herself -- Lighten Burden, Levitation, Keen Vision, and Invisibility.  She also made Ibizaber invisible, but Polly declined, as she said it would go away as soon as she took a shot at something.  And there's no way Polly could avoid taking a shot at something in a situation where invisibility mattered.

Polly wanted to go downstairs and kill more orcs ("orks" in Elvish) but Seépravir and Ibizaber said it would be safer to explore more of the surface instead, and save the orcs for when they had more allies.  Polly didn't argue too long, and they set out exploring, with Holly creeping along visibly, Ibizaber creeping along invisibly, and Seépravir flying invisibly a few yards up.  They went through the gatehouse, around the stable, and past the slavers' tents that they had previously explored.  Polly went into one of the tents and grabbed a free bedroll.  They then continued west to the ruins that the slaver monks had allegedly been exploring.

Searching the ruins, Ibizaber found a silver holy symbol of the Order of the Dawning Sun, and Polly found a gold and ruby ring.  But then four human-sized monstrous centipedes found Polly and started crawling over to eat her for lunch.  After a twinge of Elvish conscience, Polly determined that the centipedes were clearly monsters not natural, and shot one with an arrow, killing it.  Seépravir caught the other three in a Glue spell, they all failed to resist, and they were all stuck in place while Polly shot them.  Ibizaber didn't even bother helping, as it would have required switching weapons and avoiding stepping in the glue, and Polly would have been done killing them by the time he got around to it.  He did, however, think to collect the venom from three of the four centipedes.  (The fourth had been shot right through the poison sac, so there wasn't much left to collect, though Polly jammed the head of an arrow into that poison sac just in case there was some left.)

Just to the north of the tower where the centipedes had attacked, Seépravir spotted a faint, almost vertical, path down the cliff face to the lake below.  It would require a climb rather than a hike, but both Ibizaber and Polly were strong climbers, and Seépravir was levitating, so they headed down to the water.  They looked for caves in the cliffside.  But there was no cave, at least not above the water.  Polly, the strongest swimmer, decided to look under the water.  First she set her bow and backpack aside, then she tied herself to a rope so the others could pull her to safety if needed, and then she stuck her head underwater.  It was pretty dark, so she came back up and asked Seépravir for a Keen Vision spell.  Seépravir suggested Infravision instead, and Polly agreed.  She went under again, and saw some cold blocky shapes that looked like ruined castle walls, far below.  Who builds a castle underwater?  She started swimming down, and then noticed something really big and really far away swimming towards her, fast.

Polly yanked on the rope frantically, and swam hard for the surface while the others pulled her up.  The huge thing got within about 50 feet by the time she hit the beach, and she was pretty sure she saw multiple necks and heads, but didn't have time to count carefully since she was trying not to die.  She kept on going, climbing up the trail a bit to get more separation, before turning around to look again.

Polly paused to look back.  The invisible Ibizaber climbed up a bit, then also paused to look in the water.  And Seépravir flew high over the water and looked down.  Eventually, two reptilian heads breached the surface, scanning the cliff wall for Polly.  They watched her for a while, the three delvers watched back for a while, but nobody started a fight.  Eventually the sea monster went back underwater.  They figured it was some kind of water hydra, and decided to be careful around the lake.
Seépravir noted the location of the trail on her map, but said she would not put it on any maps they offered for sale, wanting to keep it a secret.

After climbing and flying back up to the castle, the three continued exploring to the southwest, then to the southeast.  They found a promising pile of rubble near the (once) top of a fallen tower, but didn't find any thing interesting in it.  They continued circling around to the southeast, and then Ibizaber spotted a suspicious groove in the rock face.  He stuck a knife in there and moved it around until he found a latch.  It was a stone secret door, pretty heavy, which apparently hadn't been opened in a long time.  He managed to drag the door open.  Inside was a small room, containing a skeleton holding a book, and a bookshelf.

Some investigation showed that the skeleton was the dead kind not the undead kind, that it was wearing a silver holy symbol of the Order of the Dawning Sun, and that the book had the same short line repeated over and over in four languages: Common, Elf, Dwarf, and Draconic.  In at least the three languages they could read, it said "Knowledge is the Key."  (None of them read Draconic but they figured it probably said the same in Draconic too.)  They grabbed the book and the holy symbol.  Seépravir spotted something magical among the bones, which turned out to be a bleached driftwood wand, with some words in Draconic etched into the side.  She grabbed that too.  Finally, they started going through the books on the shelves.  All were blank inside and out, with some water damage.  Nobody was quite sure what blank books were good for, but they decided to take them anyway.

With so much stuff to drag, Polly went to go fetch the wheelbarrow they'd stashed outside.  She decided to take the most direct route to the north around the fallen tower, rather than the long way they'd just explored.  And while walking around the rubble, something tried to eat her.  It was a giant praying mantis, significantly bigger than her, and it had achieved total surprise.  Things looked bad for Polly, but someone she managed to dodge its bite, even while mentally stunned.  It took her a second to get her bow out and her wits back, during which time she dodged another bite while frantically backpedaling.  Then Polly screamed for help and started shooting arrows, while her friends started running and flying to her aid.

The mantis was quite fast and agile, but eventually one of Polly's arrows hit it squarely, but didn't go through its thick chitin.  Polly realized she needed to switch to armor-piercing bodkin tips, which, like any good archer, she had plenty of.  She wasn't quite sure where a praying mantis's weak spots were, and the eyes looked like a difficult shot, so she just focused on the center of mass.  Meanwhile the mantis repeatedly tried to grab Polly with its front legs so that it could hold her still and bite her head off.  But she was too fast, and kept dodging.

Seépravir still had Levitate on, so she flew up until she could see over the fallen tower and rubble to where Polly and the huge bug were, and yelled which way to run to Ibizaber.  Then she dropped back to earth, because she could run faster than she could fly, and ran toward the fight, occasionally flying over obstacles.  Ibizaber ran as quickly as he could toward the fight, occasionally needing to acrobatically vault some rubble rather than slowing down for it.  Unfortunately, he was still invisible, so neither of the female elves could see his amazing parkour moves.

At some point the mantis grew tired of chasing the unhittable Polly, and went back to its lair in the rubble.  Polly thought about letting it go -- but was too angry that the thing had tried to ambush and eat her, and decided to keep shooting at it instead.  And that drew the mantis charging back out of its lair, at high speed.  (Did you know that giant praying mantises can fly?  Polly didn't, until then.)  Polly kept plinking it with bodkins, causing small amounts of green blood to leak out each time she hit solidly.  The bug kept trying to grab Polly, then tried just biting Polly.

Eventually the invisible Ibizaber caught up, and tried sneaking up behind the mantis to land a killing backstab.  But it had heard him running, and spun around to look for the new threat.  Ibizaber stopped and went silent, not wanting to give himself away.  Polly kept shooting, plunking the mantis in the back.  Seépravir cast Hush on Ibizaber, not taking any chances on his Stealth skills.  (He was invisible, so it was a bit tricky to target him, but she had heard him a second before, and made a good guess.)

With Ibizaber both silent and invisible, and Polly continuing to drill arrows into its backside, the mantis spun around again to face Polly.  Ibizaber landed a strong blow with his knife into a gap between plates in its exoskeleton, right next to one of the larger arrow wounds.  The huge bug continued to spew green blood, and was starting to slow down, but still wouldn't fall.  The attack dispelled Ibizaber's invisibility, though, so now the mantis knew it had opponents on both sides.

The mantis went a little crazy, spinning back and forth between facing Polly and Ibizaber.  No matter which one it chose, the other was at its rear.  It chose Polly.  Seépravir cast Darkness where Polly was standing.  She could see out, but it couldn't see in.  Polly shot out of the darkness, and the mantis completely failed to understand the concept that arrows could come out of that dark blob.  It didn't get to dodge.  Unfortunately for Polly, she was now out of bodkins.  Her regular arrows hadn't done such a good job of piercing mantis-armor.  While the bug was focused on Polly, Ibizaber kept stabbing at it from behind.

Polly took careful aim with an impaling arrow at the mantis's eye, and just barely missed, hitting its body instead.  Seépravir put another Darkness behind the mantis for Ibizaber to stand in, which he did, as he kept stabbing.  The mantis flailed wildly at the dark blob containing Polly, missing her completely.  Finally, Polly fired another arrow into the bug's eye, and this one didn't miss.  The eyes were unarmored, and the arrow went straight through the eye into the brain, killing the mantis.  It had been a long and drawn-out fight with many small hits needed to wear down the giant bug, but the eye shot ended all that.  Fortunately for Polly, who was almost out of arrows.

The group searched the mantis's lair in the rubble at the base of the fallen tower, finding half of the body of a human monk slaver.  It had a few coins in a pocket and a nice dagger in its boot.  They then started digging through the rubble, and found a trap door leading down.  Ibizaber considered opening it, but Seépravir suggested leaving it alone until next time.  The group fetched both their wheelbarrows (travelling close together this time), chopped the giant mantis corpse in two in case it was worth money, and headed back to town.

GM's Comments:

Only three PCs came, none of them heavy fighters.  That's very dangerous.  The careful decision to mop up the unexplored bits of the surface level made sense for this group.  Seépravir could make everyone invisible, and if they explored the surface in daylight, they didn't need lights to give them away.

The centipedes were total mooks.  Anything with no damage resistance that's vulnerable to impaling damage is archer-bait.  The Glue spell made it just unfair, especially when Seépravir made her spell roll by so much that they had almost no chance to break free.  I made Polly make her attack rolls to kill all four centipedes, but in hindsight I could have just declared them dead.  Good thinking by Ibizaber to collect their poison.  It's not very strong poison (just Monster Drool in DFRPG terms), but free poison is free.  

The path down to the lake is supposed to be hard to find, but this group is really good at finding things.  There was no reason to expect anything quite as nasty as a hydra down in the water, but excellent preparation (rope, Infravision) gave the group time to pull the Polly-bait out of the water before she got eaten.  (But I would have turned her invisible too.)  Underwater fights are really difficult for surface dwellers in GURPS (your weapon skill is limited to your swimming skill, swung weapons take hit penalties and do less damage, you can't breathe, etc.), so it'll be interesting to see if they ever come back to fight it, or keep a wide berth.  In any case, the group now knows that acquiring a boat and taking a shortcut across the lake isn't as safe as it appears.  And that there's a ruined castle down there.

The secret cave was also hard to find, and they found that too.  I'm not going to say anything about the mystery of the books.  Seépravir was pretty psyched to find a wand, though they won't know what it does until they take it back to town and cast Analyze Magic.

Polly going back alone to get the wheelbarrow was not smart.  There was a bit of debate as to reality here, with the other PCs wanting to be closer, but Holly was the only one who'd moved her token in Roll20, and going back through the logs I didn't actually see anyone typing "I'm right behind Polly" or anything, so I went with harsh reality: she's up here alone, and the other two are still back by the cave.  (One huge advantage of an all-text game is that you have logs for everything.  No question of what anyone said.)  That meant she had to fight the giant praying mantis by herself for about ten rounds before they got anywhere near the battle.  I was pretty sure she was dead, especially when it made its surprise roll.  (In hindsight I should have asked if she wanted to use Luck on her Perception roll there; because it was a GM roll she didn't know to ask if she could use it.)  But she made her Dodge even with the -4 for mental stun, and then for the rest of the fight kept making Acrobatic Retreating Dodges.  Given space to back up, and a ranged weapon so you don't mind backing up, and good acrobatics skill, that's a great tactic to have +5 to your base Dodge most of the time.  Polly also had Luck to save her if she blew a dodge or the mantis rolled a critical hit, but she never needed to use it.

The mantis had DR 4, and neither Polly nor Ibizaber does a ton of damage, so that was a problem.  After the first 3-damage hit didn't penetrate, Polly switched to bodkin arrows, which divided its DR in half.  She asked if she knew where its vitals were, but her default Naturalist roll failed, so nope.  When he finally reached the battle, Ibizaber aimed for armor chinks (the mantis wasn't actually wearing armor but I ruled that there were gaps between plates in its carapace which were functionally the same), also cutting its DR in half at the cost of a big hit penalty.  Ultimately I think Polly would have been better off going for eye shots -- not an easy hit at all, but if you hit, lots and lots of damage, a crippled eye, a knockdown roll, etc.  Of course I had the mantis's stats in front of me, while the players had to figure them out, so it's not as easy from their side.  This is one of the interesting things about this campaign for me: because it's using converted D&D monsters rather than stock GURPS/DFRPG monsters, the players never know exactly what their opponents can do.

When Polly shot an arrrow out of the Darkness, I gave the mantis a hearing roll to get a chance to dodge the arrow, and rolled an 18.  So, I ruled that this mantis was just too dumb to understand that arrows could come out of darkness, and that it would never get a dodge roll against such an arrow for the rest of its life.  (That wasn't very long, though.)

They didn't get a whole lot of loot this session (depending on how valuable the wand turns out to be), but they only have to split what they got three ways, so I think they made a profit.  And they found the books and the wand and the path to the lake and the trap door.  So, I think it was a good session overall.

Also, I need to make up rules for selling partial maps.  DFRPG says that characters with Cartography can make and sell maps of what they explored, but if you deliberately leave stuff off the map, what happens?  Obviously you can try (unless you have honorable mental disadvantages like Honesty or Truthfulness and fail your self-control roll to do the right thing), but maybe the buyer gets a chance to Detect Lies or something.  This would also apply to Selling the Tale: if you leave some of the juicy bits off, shouldn't that reduce your odds of getting paid?  After all, the juicy bits are what people want to hear.

DF Whiterock Session 8: Kaernga's End

Date:

2018-06-15


Weather:

Warm, clear, sunny


Player Characters:

Durkerle (M.C. Warhammer), Dwarf Cleric, 175 (+10) points

Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 186 (+2) points

Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 160 points

Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 180 points

Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 179 (+9) points


Significant NPCs:

Hugin, Human Caravan Guard
Quintus, Human Wizard
Alrux, Dwarf Armorer
Kat Glimer, Gnome Wizard
4 starving caged trollhounds
Chu-Thuk the Ugly, Half-Orc Wizard
Findle Glimer, Gnome Gemcutter
4 Orc Harem Ladies
1 armored trollhound with spikes
Kaernga, Orc Barbarian Chief of the White Talon Tribe


The party started in town, waking up early this time to have more daylight hiking time.  They ran into an oddly familiar elf named Polly, who turned out to be the sister of their deceased ally Holly, and rather unhappy about her sister's demise.  Needing an archer, they immediately asked her to join.

But first they had some business to take care of.  They asked Quintus to identify a magic rock and some smashed bird eggs, and tell them if they could make armor out of their rust spider webs.  He figured out they had a Thunderstone, some smashed Blood Hawk eggs that were no longer worth anything because they were smashed, and not really enough rust spider webs to make spider silk armor beyond maybe a glove.  Also that a rust spider's rust gland would be valuable (though difficult to remove since you have to use stone tools), and that a live huge spider would be really valuable if it didn't kill you.

They took the rust spider webs to Alrux the dwarf armorer, who told them that he didn't work with that kind of vile stuff, preferring honest materials like metal and stone, but maybe they should try some pointy-eared elf in Mystenmere, a few hundred miles northwest.  He also suggested that everyone buy some heavy plate armor.  Nobody had enough cash for that.

Ibizaber went looking for Kat Glimer, who they had rescued from the orcs, to find out about a reward she was offering for the safe return of her brother.  She was pretty sure the orcs were still keeping him alive, since he was a gemcutter and they had a mine full of blue quartz that needed cutting.  And Hugin reminded the others about a reward that the old fortuneteller Sukuhn the Snake was offering for the head of the orc chief Kaernga: a stack of silver coins and a magic helmet.

Their town business done, the group hiked to the castle.  They made it there without significant incident, and made good time thanks to the usually slow Durkerle picking up the pace.  They headed immediately for the stairs down to the orc guardroom.

This time, there were no orcs standing guard.  The group snuck down a passage to the east, and found a locked door to the south.  Ibizaber picked it, and revealed a storeroom full of casks and barrels and digging tools.  Durkerle smashed a crate open while everyone else told him to be quiet, but nobody appeared to hear the noise.  The containers were full of low-quality food (a mix of mystery meat jerky and dried fruit), or water, or lamp oil, or mine cart wheels, or other mildly exciting things.  There was a secret door behind some crates, which led to a secret passage back to a torture chamber they had previously discovered behind the slave pits.  Seépravir and Ibizaber carefully explored that whole area of the dungeon, finding another mostly-empty storeroom and two mostly-empty barracks.  Then they found a room with a locked metal box containing some actual treasure: a bearskin rug and a locked metal box containing some more Thunderstones and a little statue and some coins and some dwarven deepwine, made from fermented mushrooms.  It smelled awful, but Durkerle assured the others that it would get any non-dwarf seriously drunk.

They heard the sound of howling behind a door, and geared up to fight.  When they finally stopped preparing to ambush and opened the door, they saw a room containing 3 large cages, with a total of 4 huge hounds inside, trying to break out of the cages.  Polly thought they were probably trollhounds, horrible unnatural creatures that she'd heard of but never actually seen.  They had green-black fur and scaly skin, huge jaws with underbites, orange eyes, and pus-filled blisters.  There was some debate about whether they were demonic.  Garreth stabbed one between the cell bars with his greatsword, and it bled a bit, then started regenerating.  The hound was smart enough to back out of reach, but then Polly put an arrow through its eye and it went down.  That started healing too, so Durkerle cast Flaming Weapon on Garreth's sword, and he opened the cage and killed it with fire.  That worked.  With the other 3 trollhounds also in cages and unable to really defend themselves, they repeated the same steps a few times: shoot them in the eye until they go down, then open the cage and stab them with a flaming sword until they don't get back up.  Thinking the regenerating trollhounds might contain valuable magical ingredients, but not wanting to carry a 350-pound dog corpse home unnecessarily, the group chopped a trollhound ear off to bring back to town as a sample.

With that section of the dungeon explored, the party headed back through the first storeroom to another door.  When they opened this one, it revealed a chained gnome cutting blue gems, and a very ugly orc (much smaller than the other White Talon orcs, without their milky-white skin) supervising.  The gnome dove for cover as the PCs attacked the orc using a mix of tactics, such a shooting it with arrows, hitting it in the face with thrown knives, stunning it with spells, and stabbing it with a greatsword.  The orc lasted just long enough to beg for its life and claim to have useful information, but not all of the party were in a mode for parley, and it died.  The gnome thanked them for showing up and asked them to unlock and give him some decent food.  He was Findle Glimer, brother of Kat, and had been enslaved and forced to cut blue quartz rocks into pretty blue quartz gems full time.  Once they freed and fed him, Findle pointed in the direction of the rest of the orcs, and said he'd box up the gems for them while they went adventuring.  Besides the pile of cut blue quartz, the orc also had a magic gem and a potion in its pocket, a magic staff, a couple of interesting non-fiction books (one about fungus recipes and one about gemcutting), a couple of spellbooks (one of them Kat's, which Findle asked be returned to her), and an Orcish romance novel which, fortunately, most of the group could not read.  (Unfortunately, it had pictures.)

The group then continued down the passage, which forked, giving them a choice of southeast and southwest.  Seépravir picked southwest, and she and Ibizaber did their usual slow stealthy sneaky searchy movement that way until they found a big wooden door.  It had a tapestry above it showing a white talon holding a morningstar, very Orcish, probably the banner of the White Talon Tribe.  Listening at the door revealed some indistinct conversation inside, so everyone lined up in Ambush Mode, and then Garreth kicked open the door.

Unfortunately for the group, they didn't achieve surprise.  Instead, they saw a big room featuring a fire pit with a huge pig on a spit above it, four scantily-clad female orcs, a huge trollhound wearing spiked armor, and an even bigger orc wearing studded leather armor, lounging on a huge thronelike chair.  A fight ensued.  Polly shot the closest harem orc, but she dodged.  Ibizaber aimed his throwing knife at the big orc.  Hugin aimed his crossbow at the trollhound but couldn't get a clear shot off without risking hitting his friends.  The trollhound charged Garreth and failed to bite him, and Garreth stabbed the trollhound.  Durkerle moved up to cast Flaming Weapon on Garreth's greatsword.  Seépravir moved up to cast Stun on the trollhound, succeeding.  The remaining harem orcs grabbed improvised weapons: a kitchen knife, a platter, a goblet.  Kaernga the orc leader readied his great axe and charged across the room.

It turned out that the female orcs weren't very good fighters.  Holly shot one a second time, and this time she didn't dodge the arrow and died.  Another one critically failed her attack on Garreth and managed to stab herself to death.  Another actually almost hit Durkerle with a silver serving platter, but he dodged.  Ibizaber threw a knife at Kaernga's face, and hit, but it bounced off his tough skin.  Garreth chopped and burned the trollhound again, killing it, then stepped and took a good swing at Kaernga, who almost dodged.  Almost.  He was a tough orc though, and didn't go down despite the massive cut.  Seépravir used her Rapier Wit to insult and stun Kaernga, then cast Itch on him to lower his dexterity.

The last harem orc ran out of the room, but Ibizaber threw a knife into her back and she went down.  That left just Kaernga.  Polly put an arrow through his eye into his brain, which did a lot of damage but didn't knock him out.  Then Garreth stepped up and used Rapid Strike to double-hit the stunned, itchy, knocked down, and extremely wounded orc chief.  He failed his third death check, and that was the end of that.

Kaernga's pleasure chamber had some nice pillows and goblets and platters, plus some decent (if overcooked) pork barbeque.  The elves immediately saw that Kaernga's armor and cloak were magic, and marked it for taking.  Hugin started hacking Kaernga's head off for the reward, which he was informed he would be sharing with the group.  Ibizaber found a secret door behind the throne, leading to a spiral staircase down, but nobody went down it.  Instead, the group grabbed Findle and as much treasure as they could fit into their two wheelbarrows, and headed for town.

It was a very profitable session, with rewards due for both Findle and Kaernga's head, plus the loot from Kaernga's house of pleasure and the gem-cutting room / orc wizard's lair and the orc ranger's quarters.  Not to mention a trollhound ear.


GM's Comments:

After multiple sessions fighting orc reinforcements in the same guard room, the orcs apparently ran out of guards to put there, and the PCs got to run around in empty rooms for a while.  Some of the players thought the orcs might have all left the dungeon, but then they found a few, too proud to flee but too few to survive.  Are there any left?  We'll see next week.

The trollhounds were pretty tough, but the first four were were in cages (because their handler had been killed last week, too far away to free them), so they never really had a chance to fight.  We did the fight against the first one the slow way, and once the players demonstrated that they could murder the caged hounds at no real risk to themselves, I fast-forwarded through finishing off the other three.

The orc wizard never really had a chance either, because it was one of him against 6 invaders.  He tried to parley instead of cast spells, and it didn't help him because at least one PC had Bloodlust and missed their self-control roll.  (He was unlucky not to hear the PCs making noise in the nearby storage room.  If he'd heard, he would have had a chance to run away, or go get reinforcements, or something.)

Kaernga and his armored trollhound were tough, but his harem were unarmored and almost unarmed mooks, so numbers told again.  And the room was big enough that it took Kaernga a few turns to get into melee, by which time his trollhound was almost dead.

"Defeat in detail" was the story of the day.  If all 11 enemies the PCs faced this week were in the same room (and not locked in cages), they might have won.  But orcs don't always use the best tactics.

Keeping Squishy Characters Alive in GURPS and DFRPG

The DF Whiterock game had our first PC killed this week.  Holly, a Wood Elf Archer with 9 ST, 9 HP, and no armor, ran in front of 3 orcs with glaives and an orc with a bow.  Two of the orcs with glaives attacked her.  The first one hit, she failed to dodge, she used her Luck to get two more rolls, and she dodged.  The second one hit, she failed to dodge, and it rolled 12 cutting damage.  12 - 0 DR * 1.5 for cutting is 18, which put her at -9, a death check.  She rolled a 15, 4 greater than her HT of 11.  Dead.  Durkerle the dwarven cleric tried really hard for Divine Intervention, but missed his roll, so she stayed dead.

So how do characters this squishy survive in a dungeon?  Well, it's not always possible.  Sometimes you get ambushed by something huge and invisible and silent and unfair and you just die.  But you can increase your survival odds greatly through two easy steps: Be Less Squishy and Use Better Tactics.

Be Less Squishy

1. Via armor.  It's hard for starting PCs who aren't built around armor to afford the cost and weight of armor, but even a little armor goes a long way.  Just DR 1 (light leather or furs) on the torso would have reduced this hit from 18 points and a death check, to 16 points and no death check.  (Yes, if you only armor your torso your opponents can aim for the unarmored body parts -- but now they're taking a penalty to hit, so the armor is still indirectly helping.)

2. Via hit points.  Sometimes you don't have the 10 points to buy a whole point of ST, but a HP is only 2 points.  Even one extra HP would have made this 18 HP blow not a death check.

3. Via better HT rolls.  +1 HT is 10 points, pretty expensive.  Fit gives +1 to HT rolls for 5 points.  Hard to Kill gives +1 to death checks (only) for only 2 points.

4. Via Luck.  If you do everything else right but roll horribly, Luck can save you.  Unfortunately, Luck only works once per hour, so it only saved Holly from the first enemy, not the second.

5. Try not to die with unspent points that could have saved you.  There's a tradeoff between saving earned character points to buy expensive traits that you really want, versus spending them sooner on minor things that you desire less.  In the long run, the expensive things can be worth it.  But if you die before the long run comes, the fact that you were most of the way to affording +1 DX doesn't matter.  Especially if a character is super-squishy, I'd go for cheap quick survival bumps before saving up for major upgrades.  Eventually you run out of cheap options (you already have Fit, your HP are as far above your ST as allowed, your weapon and shield skills are high enough that you can't raise your parry or block by only spending 1 or 2 points, etc.) and then saving up for the big ticket items feels more reasonable.

A note for the Whiterock campaign in particular: I often allow trading in small upgrades toward bigger upgrades.  Like, +1 HP and +1 Lifting ST and 5 points gets you +1 ST.  So, there's less of a penalty for "wasting" points on small upgrades in this game.

Of course, nobody ever has enough points to buy everything they want.  Tradeoffs are hard.  This is where much of the player skill in GURPS comes in.

Use Better Tactics

1. If you're squishy, don't run out in front of enemies that might kill you.  Hang back behind your beefier allies as much as possible.  This one is pretty obvious, but not always followed.

2. If necessary, wait for your slower allies in turn order.  Being both squishy and fast is a trap, because everyone wants to do stuff all the time.  Slowing down and waiting for your slower allies to move up so you can hide behind them is less fun than doing something fun right now, but more fun than being dead.

3. Pay close attention.  If an enemy with a 3-hex weapon announces a Wait, you probably don't want to step within 3 yards (or maybe 4 yards if the enemy can Step) of it until that Wait has expired.

4. Think twice before using Move and Attack.  It's fun to get to attack more often, but Move and Attack caps your attack roll to 9 or less, so you're probably going to miss.  In exchange, you lose your ability to retreat, and you lose your ability to parry with the weapon you used to attack.  This is usually not a good trade: you get a crappy attack, and then your opponent gets a better-than-normal attack.  Of course, it's fine if the only enemy within range is stunned.

5. Think three times before using All Out Attack.  It's fun to get +4 to hit or +2 to damage or an extra attack.  But if you don't take out that opponent and they get to swing back, having no defenses at all can get you killed.  Of course it can still be a good move, if your opponent is already disabled or you're so beefy that your opponent can barely hurt you anyway or if you absolutely must take down your opponent this turn before it rains unholy hellfire down on the helpless village.  But, most of the time, it's not.


Of course, one of the great things about RPGs is that you can always make another character.  (And you can sometimes afford to get your dead character Resurrected, but unfortunately the PCs in the DF Whiterock game aren't that wealthy yet.)

DF Whiterock Session 7: First Casualty

Date:

2018-06-08


Weather:

Warm, overcast


Player Characters:

Bernard (threethreethree), Human Fighter, 163 points

Durkerle (M.C. Warhammer), Dwarf Cleric, 175 (+5) points

Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 183 points

Holly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 160 (+5) points

Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 173 (+2) points

Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 177 (+6) points


Significant NPCs:

Hugin, Human Caravan Guard
Quintus, Human Wizard
4 Orcs of the White Talon Tribe


The heroes spent a week in Cillamar, resting and training and buying gear.  At the end of the week, they met for dinner at the Inn of the Slumbering Drake to plan their next trek to Castle Whiterock.  Bernard, who'd been out of town on personal business, made it back for the meeting.  So did Hugin, fully recovered from the wound he'd taken on the last trip, and still eager to kill orcs and recover the gear they'd taken from him.

After a good meal and a few minutes of planning, they set off for the Castle.  This time, they brought two wheelbarrows along, hoping for a great haul of treasure.  By putting some of the slower PCs' heavy items in the wheelbarrows, they made good time on their hike, and arrived in good spirits.

A debate ensued as to whether they should head straight for the orcs in the basement, or continue exploring the surface level a bit.  Durkerle wanted to go downstairs as always, because lower is better.  Holly and Hugin and Bernard wanted to kill orcs.  But Garreth argued that they should check out the tents on the surface first, and Seépravir agreed, so they took a brief detour to do that first.

The five tents, which had been set up by the human slavers who had been pretending to be monks of the Order of the Dawning Sun, turned out to not have any monsters or significant treasure.  One had some digging tools, which appeared to have been sitting there for a while.  One had a table containing some minor artifacts from the ruins.  And three had hammocks and empty footlockers.  Ibizaber detected that the tent with the table was rigged to collapse quickly if a rope was pulled.  Durkerle couldn't resist kicking the tent until it collapsed, which it did nicely, but with nobody inside.  Seépravir wanted to collect some canvas to put rust spider webs in, and Gerrard wanted a free bedroll, so after that minor looting was complete, the group continued to the stairs down.

Holly pointed out that last time they sent Hugin down alone then back up and ambushed the orcs, so this time they should send everyone down together and ambush the orcs.  This plan was mostly adopted, though Ibizaber scouted in front a bit, without a light.  The orcs in their guard room saw the lights coming down the steps and were waiting in ambush, though they didn't see Ibizaber sliding along the wall in the shadows.  Ibizaber saw three orcs with glaives flanking both sides of the stairwell exit, waiting to ambush.  And one more orc with a bow hanging back off to the side, waiting to shoot.  He gestured "four" to the others and then froze in place.

Bernard thought there might be someone sneaking up behind the group from above, and returned to the stop of the stairs to guard their rear.

After a few seconds of nobody moving, one of the glaive orcs got impatient and stepped out in front of the stairs.  At that point it was on.  Holly shot an arrow at the orc, but it dodged.  Garreth threw a glowing knife (maximum brightness Continual Light) at the orc, but he missed.  The orc started yelling details about their group to its companions.  The remaining three orcs held their positions, waiting for the intruders to come down the stairs.  Hugin and Holly overconfidently obliged.

The three waiting polearm orcs laid into Hugin and Holly with their glaives.  Hugin, a tough fighter wearing a mail shirt and some leather armor, was badly hurt, but not badly enough to take him out of the fight.  Holly, a rather slight wood elf with no armor, paid dearly for her bravery.  She failed to dodge the first attack, then used her Luck to get another chance, and made it.  But then she failed to dodge the second attack, and with her Luck used for the hour, had to take the blow.  The big strong orc rolled good damage, which was enough to subject Holly to a death check, which she failed.  A bit too much bravery plus four bad dice rolls was enough to end her brief adventuring career.

Ibizaber ambushed one of the orcs that had stepped up to chop Holly, and gave it a solid cut to its well-armored vitals, enough to hurt it but not too badly.  Garreth continued advancing while throwing knives.  Durkerle stepped up to cast Major Healing on Hugin.  Seépravir started hurling insults with her Rapier Wit, stunning one of the orcs with a cruel jest about his low-tech nature.  Durkerle, realizing Holly was not just knocked out but dead, stopped fighting and just dropped to his knees crying and praying for her.

It took a while, but the PCs gradually advanced into the guardroom full of orcs and started landing a combination of minor wounds and stuns on them.  Seépravir ultimately dropped four Rapier Wits (one per orc) and a couple of Stun spells, keeping those orcs from attacking and reducing their defenses.  Ibizaber cut one of the orcs several times with his knife, including one minor face stab that caused an unexpected knockdown and stunning jackpot.

Hugin cut one stunned orc down with his broadsword.  Garreth hit one of the polearm orcs, but then ran past them to the archer, and seriously wounded him with his greatsword.  Ibizaber kept getting small knife cuts and stabs in on one of the glaive orcs until it finally dropped.

The archer seemed very skilled but very unlucky -- he kept blowing his Fast-Draw arrow roll or his Fast-Ready bow roll or his shot.  And then Garreth was all over him while Seépravir was harassing him with spells, and that was that.  Garreth finally chopped him in half.  The orc archer had a composite bow and arrows, a great axe, a bearskin cloak, some arrows, a potion, and a key.

Durkerle was still praying, hoping that somehow Danethar would intervene and bring Holly back to life.  But it was not to be; she was really dead.

With all four orcs and one PC down, the group decided to head back to town, but Hugin asked if he could grab his gear first.  So Seépravir cast Invisibility on Ibizaber, who snuck south past the minotaur room (now empty) and the cells (now empty) to the storeroom where Hugin thought the orcs kept prisoners' items.  There they found Hugin's and Sapphira's equipment, along with some random peasant clothing and some ladders and hooks.  The party kept their deal, letting Hugin recover his gear and his friend's, in exchange for her potions, which Hugin identified as Minor Healing, Strength, and Paut.

On the way back out of the dungeon, the group visited the guard tower to recover some rust spider webs and some live bird eggs.  (The parent birds were again not home guarding the nest.)  After some discussion of how to keep the eggs warm, the group decided that Ibizaber should cradle them, as he was the most dextrous and least likely to drop them.  But he rolled an 18 on his DX check, with his Luck not available, and face-planted on the eggs.  Oops.  He attempted to bring back some bits of egg to figure out what kind of bird they had been, but their value as treasure was gone.

The party made it back to Cillamar in low spirits.  They had killed four more orcs, including one very tough archer, but it had cost them Holly, and they hadn't found a whole lot of treasure.


GM's Comments:

GURPS combat is for keeps.  If you have 9 HP and no armor, then one good hit from a strong orc with a glaive just might kill you.  Holly was the first PC to die in this game, but will probably not be the last.

Bernard's player had technical difficulties early in the session and had to drop out, so Bernard guarded the rear rather that participating.  This was a significant blow to the group's fighting ability.  I've been getting better with Roll20 with experience, but it's still a big heavy website that sometimes gives players grief.

Holly only got off one shot before she died.  The orcs had open-faced helmets, so if she'd hung back she probably could have killed a couple of them without breaking a sweat.  Instead, with her down, it was a long slow grind.

Everyone knew Durkerle liked Holly, and he didn't take her death well.  After healing Hugin, he spent the rest of the fight on his knees, getting closer to Danethar.  I gave him +1 to his Divine Intervention check for the convincing level of pain and sacrifice, but he still needed a 9 or less, and rolled a 10.  I guess Danethar had more important things to do that day than save a nature-loving wood elf.

The orcs keep re-deploying to cover their front entrance, but the PCs have now killed at least 15 of them, plus their minotaur ally.  Are they running out of troops yet?  We'll find out next time.

DF Whiterock Session 6: Second Trip to the Castle

Date:

2018-06-01


Weather:

Warm, thunderstorms brewing


Player Characters:

Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 176 (+2) points
Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 178 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 150 (+23) points
Durkerle (M.C. Warhammer), Dwarf Cleric, 175 points
Holly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 160 points


Significant NPCs:

Hugin, Human Caravan Guard
Kat, Gnome Wizard
Quintus, Human Wizard
Lyssa, Human Wizard's Apprentice
Chauntessa, Human Innkeeper
Rust Spider
4 Orcs of the White Talon Tribe


The heroes had made it back to Cillamar with Lyssa, the wizard's apprentice they had rescued from orc slavers, along with 16 other prisoners, 13 horses, and two slave wagons.  They had been given a reward of $500 each from Quintus for returning Lyssa, plus another $100 per stolen horse for its recovery.  Redcap the gnome took his share of the money and left Cillamar in a huff.  The others spent a week in town, healing and training and shopping.

Kat, the gnome wizard they had rescued, told them that her brother Findle was still a prisoner of the orcs, pressed into service cutting gems for them, and asked that they rescue him as well.  Hugin, the beaten-up caravan guard they had rescued, expressed an interest in going back with them, to kill the orcs and recover the gear they had taken from him and his friend Sapphira.  The party agreed, with the stipulation that they got the remainder of the treasure.  He also mentioned a price on the head of Kaernga, the leader of the White Talon orcs, and that he planned to earn it.

Bernard was out of town, and Ibizaber was off drinking somewhere, so even with Hugin the group was a bit short of firepower.  They met a wood elf archer named Holly in the Inn of the Slumbering Drake, and she agreed to come along to plink orcs.  Hugin suggested bringing a lot of food along in case they managed to rescue more underfed prisoners, so the party loaded up a wheelbarrow and started hiking.

They made much better speed this time, with their knowledge of the route ,and the wheelbarrow helping to shift some of the heavy gear.  They made it to Castle Whiterock without significant incident, and carefully made their way back to the room behind Ikenvar's quarters.  The room had a door leading to the stairs down to the orcs, but also featured an unopened secret door, an unopened pair of doors, an unsearched pile of rubble, and a twice-dead owlbear skeleton.

After some debate, the group decided to try the secret door first.  Seépravir finally found the hidden button to open the secret door, before they had to resort to just smashing it.  Beyond, they found a large rectangular meeting room, with a pile of wood in the middle (probably the remnants of a great table), and a completely faded tapestry on the wall.  Searching behind the tapestry found nothing, but Hugin spotted another secret door in the northeast corner of the room.  Opening that one revealed a circular room with a trapdoor on the ceiling, reachable by a rotting, rickety ladder.  The PCs figured out that it was the basement of a tower, and, after some debate, decided to climb up.  ("Up is finite" was someone's logic.)

Garreth and Holly climbed up first, Seépravir cast Silence so that Garreth could smash the trap door silently, and when Garreth bashed the stuck trap door open, they found a room containing a door, some arrow slits, some stairs up to another trapdoor, some hard-to-spot webs, and a man-sized spider trying to spring at Garreth.  Garreth spotted the spider in time to avoid surprise, and a fight ensued.  Garreth missed, the spider missed, Holly plinked the spider in the thorax with an arrow (that was actually intended for its brain but missed by a wee bit), Garreth chopped the wounded spider in half, and that was that.  Seépravir Levitated herself up, Durkerle eventually figured out how to stand on the wheelbarrow to get past some broken ladder rungs, and the group started looking for loot.  Seépravir thought it looked like a rust spider, and warned everyone not to touch it or its webs with metal.  Holly spotted a lump encased in webs about 15' up, and climbed up to check it out.  It turned out to be a dead halfling, holding a very rusty shortsword with a red gem in its pommel.  They extracted the gem.  They also tried extracting the spider's rust gland, but nobody was very good at surgery, and they batched the job.  While all this was happening, a rather drunk Ibizaber called from below.  He had finished his tour of Cillamar's drinking establishments, with the last one, the Inn of the Slumbering Drake, kicking him out in the general direction of his friends.  Fortunately he hadn't been attacked, wandering drunk and alone through the wilderness.

Garreth went up the steps and tried the next trap door up, which was also stuck.  Once again, Seépravir Silenced it and Garreth bashed it.  The next level of the tower was full of nests, but no birds were home.  A quick search of the nests revealed some eggs, which the elves thought were those of some kind of eagle or hawk.  There was a quick debate about taking them, but the group wasn't confident they could keep the eggs alive, so they left them for the time being.  There was another ladder up to another trap door.

Repeating the silent trap door bashing drill, they found the top level of the tower, which was much cleaner than the others, and contained a bedroll, a bird cage, and a chest.  The chest contained writing equipment, some small strips of parchment, and a little pouch that looked designed to attach a message to a bird.  There was also a rope ladder going down the side of the tower.  Seépravir levitated up to the roof and drew a map of the aerial view of the castle, then the group went back down to ground level.  They unbarred and opened the ground-level exit from the tower, saw a trail running down the bluff back toward the castle entrance, decided that was boring, and figured it was time to go after the orcs again.

While the group was discussing tactics, Ibizaber decided to search the pile of rubble, and found a chest.  Some digging extricated it from the rubble and revealed the chest had a lock on it.  Rather than waiting for Ibizaber to search the chest for traps, Durkerle just smashed the lock with his mace.  This was surprisingly effective: it revealed a poison needle trap on the lock, which had no effect since maces are immune to poison.  Durkerle smashed it some more, and opened the chest, revealing some coins, some jewelry, and a key.  Durkerle and Ibizaber then had a treasure-grabbing contest while the other PCs pointed out that it was all going to be split evenly regardless.  The key in the chest fit the door heading down to the orcs, though Ibizaber had easily picked that lock before so it probably didn't matter much.

Rather than charging down the stairs into a probable orc ambush again, the heroes decided to try to taunt the orcs in their guard room at the bottom of the stairs up the steps into a counter ambush.  Hugin volunteered, as the orcs recognized him as a former prisoner, hated him for trying to escape several times, and he figured he could outrun them since they wore heavy armor and he didn't have any.  Nobody objected to this foolhardy plan, and Hugin ran down the steps, holding a dagger with Continual Light on it, yelling various mean things in Orc.  There were four orcs in the room at the bottom of the steps, two with crossbows and two with polearms.  One of the crossbow shots missed Hugin, he dodged the other one, and he ran back up the stairs with the two glaive-wielding orcs chasing close behind.  His friends at the top of the stairs achieved total surprise, and the two orcs were knocked out of the fight with greatsword and arrow.  The other two at the bottom didn't come up, though, so eventually the group headed down the stairs carefully.  When they got there, the room was dark, so they had a hard time seeing the two orcs with crossbows waiting.  One of them shot at Holly and missed.  The other one nailed Hugin, fortunately not in a vital area, so not fatally.  Crossbows take a few seconds to reload, and the remaining PCs finished off the crossbow orcs quickly.

Durkerle healed Hugin to the point where he was no longer in danger of passing out, and could walk at reasonable speed.  At this point the group decided to go back to Cillamar, rather than pressing further into the orc lair.  They looted the four dead orcs of their armor and weapons, went back up the stairs to their wheelbarrow, and walked back to town.


GM's Comments

This session introduced a new PC, gave the group some time to explore some areas they had previously bypassed, and finally let them take out another group of orcs in their guard room.  Ibizaber's decision to search the rubble, combined with a good roll, let them find a chest containing Ikenvar's loot, so there was a reasonable haul this time.  But the time taken exploring the tower meant they didn't get any further into the orc level than before.

Holly was quite effective against both the spider and the orcs, as Heroic Archers tend to be against anything vulnerable to impaling damage.  The lack of ranged damage was probably the group's biggest weakness before, so I think they're more effective now.  Bernard didn't come, so they only had one dedicated melee fighter this time, but Garreth was enough.

They had a choice whether to go back to town or stay in the orc level, and they chose town.  I would have been fine with either choice.  Town meant an easy way to rest, spend points, and buy gear.  (And, for next session, an easy way to bring in other characters.)  Staying in the dungeon would have kept the pressure on the orcs, rather than letting them notice the dead sentries and rearrange their defenses again.

The idea to map the castle from above was a good one for the players, a mildly annoying one for the GM, as now I have to draw another map.  Because of limited time per session, I've decided that if PCs attempt Cartography rolls, I'll give them maps, between sessions.  (Of course they won't necessarily be good maps.)

I thought the low disadvantage total for this game would result in less silly PCs, and I think it has, but we've definitely seen disadvantages come into play.  Curious caused some unwise lever-flipping last time, and Greed is causing periodic squabbles over treasure.  So far the players seem to be mostly pulling in the same direction, though.