Fourth Session Report – The Isle of Dread

After a month hiatus due to attendance, we return to the Isle of Dread…only I didn’t feel like playing or socialized due to work-related stress, so it took me a while to get my brain in the right mindset, even after the players arrived. Application of homemade Devil’s Food birthday cake helped. Yes, it was my birthday. 30 years ago (not to the day), I started playing D&D with the Tom Moldvay-revised Basic Set (that’s the magenta box w/Erol Otus cover art). My first D&D-related purchase was the Expert Set which included X1: The Isle of Dread. Fitting, then, that we should be playing that adventure on my 38th birthday.

We rejoin our would-be, treasure-seeking heroes as they prepared to cross the rope bridge from the high terrain of the island near the river gorge to the central mesa. The group chose to send the lightest member over the bridge first, so the elf, Wikki Swiftwind (finally feeling better) across. He did not fall to a horrible death three thousand feet below, so the rest of the group made their way across the bridge. It was then they noticed that Finias Jinx was no where to be found. Since he had a habit of wandering off, then showing up at opportune times, they pressed onward.

The top of the mesa was flat and mostly featureless. A few stands of trees lay off, miles in the distance. Directly ahead of them was a high ridge. Seeing no settlements, they set off for the nearest forested area. Several miles of banter later, they arrived at the edge of the forest. The sun was setting, so they decided to make camp while Wikki hunted for meat. While Wikki was only marginally successful, bringing back a brace of coneys, they were able to supplement the meat with foraged nuts, berries, and mushrooms. They set up a watch rotation, hoping for an uneventful night.

With the exception of a pair of large, hairy elephant-like creatures stomping around at night (mastodons), the evening did indeed pass uneventfully. Soon after breaking camp, they found the far edge of the forest; apparently, it was smaller than it appeared when they first arrive on the mesa. At Kilos’s suggestion, the group headed toward the ridge that appeared to be in the center of the mesa. After another few hours, they found their way barred by a small river. Fortunately, it was fairly easy to ford. Lorelei took some time to attempt to spear some fish to supplement their rapidly-dwindling supplies. Her first try wasn’t entirely successful, but the giant bass she was attempt to spear turned and attacked her! She and Kilos made short work of the huge fish and the fresh fish was enjoyed by all.

The ridge loomed over them now, a jagged mountain range which was far larger than it appeared from the rope bridge at the edge of the mesa. There was some debate whether they should attempt to circumnavigate it or just climb over it. At the prodding of the dwarves, the intrepid explorers chose to climb over it. The going was slow and the terrain treacherous. Several times, falls were averted only by the strength of the other party members. The cold and darkness crept in on them as they climbed. Twelve hours later, they reached the summit. In the pitch blackness, they saw only twinkling firelight far, far away. They made camp, hoping nothing would choose to eat them this far up. Wikki found a spell in the spell book they recovered from the haunted mansion that allowed them to make the fire from their torches shed much less light (and use less fuel) and cast it directly from the book, destroying the pages in the process*.

When dawn broke, our heroes could see they stood on the edge of what appeared to be a caldera. They could make out a small village at the edge of a lake. The lake covered about half of the bottom of the caldera and contained an island. Once again, they began climbing. The descent, while not easier than the ascent, proved shorter. The air grew warmer the further away from the peaks they descended and lush jungle vegetation again began to cover all surfaces. By the time they reached the bottom, dusk was once again falling. They approached the walled village, wondering what awaited within…

* An oft-used house rule for Basic D&D and AD&D wherein magic-users can cast directly from spell books, but it burns the spell like using a scroll. The spell in question was “Affect Normal Fires” which is actually an AD&D spell, not a Basic D&D spell.

There won’t be a Doctor StrangeRoll update for June 1st, as I will be out of town on “vacation.” It’s in quotes because I’ll have to spend a portion of each day working remotely. Hopefully, I won’t have to spend ALL day every day working. That would suck.

My Geek Chic Spartan Gaming Table

It is here. It is assembled. I have pictures!

You can see here, the gaming area awaiting delivery. It’s so empty. So lonely.

It starts unassuming. Boxes being carried up by two men suffering in the unseasonably warm & humid spring Indiana weather.

More boxes. It actually looks like parts of a table now.

The top is unboxed and awaits assembly.

Assembly commences. They’re nice enough to provide me with an instruction booklet. If I ever move, it’ll have to be disassembled to get it out of the room in which it resides. (No, I didn’t have to assemble it myself, they were just out in their truck when I took this picture.)

It…is…ALIVE

Here is the interior storage space.

Next, here’s the table with the top fully removed.

My ginormicus Ptolus map has a new home!

Here I have two leaves in with the Leaf Guards installed so they can be used as playing surfaces.

And finally, a detailed shot of the table top/interior with the leaves & Leaf Guards in.

And I was up way too late getting these pictures uploaded. Apparently, my 12MP camera makes pictures too large and WordPress chokes on them. :p

My Spartan Gaming Table

As you may have surmised, I’m fairly excited about the impending delivery of my Geek Chic Spartan gaming table. Lemme share something with you all:

 

This was my first look. I’ll post further updates as it actually arrives, is brought into my house and installed.

Upcoming Game Dates

If you think my updating is sporadic, it’s not really. We do play every two weeks, but sometimes it takes me a few days to write the update.

May 4th – Star Wars: The Old Republic – Galaxy at Peace (’cause it’s May 4th – Star Wars Day – May the Fourth Be With You!)

May 18th – Doctor StrangeRoll D&D Basic featuring a brand new Geek Chic table and birthday cake (the cake is NOT a lie; it’s my birthday)

June 1st – No game; I’ll be on vacation and won’t actually be at my gaming table. My beautiful gaming table. It is…precious to me… [gollum gollum]

June 15th – There will be a game, what it is will be determined by attendance.

June 29th – The game will likely be the one we didn’t play on June 15th.

The Star Wars game is going to be a mini-campaign, probably no more than 5 or 6 sessions, I think, depending on how much we avoid conversational tangents, Monty Python references, and talking about Doctor Who instead of gaming. Once the Star Wars game is wrapped up, one of my players has volunteered to run some Doctor Who for us (the new one by Cubicle 7, not the old FASA game), so I’ll play that (though still provide updates on the game) while I prep a post-apocalyptic game for our alternate sessions, probably Gamma World or Atomic Highway (Fallout flavor), depending on what the group prefers. By then, it might be time for me to play test some of the adventures I’ll be running at Gen Con. I won’t post any spoilers about those here, though, just in case anyone who plays in them at the convention reads this blog.

Off Session 2

Sorry for the delay in updating, work has been … stressful.

When we last left our Heroes of the Old Republic, they were hiking up a mountain path to the mine staffed by the occupants of Outpost 3 on Dantooine. They arrived to find the mine seemingly abandoned. Four large insect creatures (laigrek) were milling about the main processing area and moved to attack when our intrepid investigators entered. Despite the Jedi’s lightsaber, the battle seemed to be going poorly until Baccus used some mining explosives. When the dust and bug guts settled, they went about investigating the control room near the processing area.

They found evidence of another bug in the control room (probably fled from the massive explosion that just took place), and a curious thing: the surveillance system had been sabotaged. Something strange was in the air, a discordant musical sound echoing through the mine. They set out to investigate, following the rails deeper into the mine until they found a working shaft lift. As they descended the lift, the musical notes became louder.

At the bottom of the shaft, they found a labyrinth of mining tunnels. However, one was clearly used more than the rest, so the heroes followed the trail to a large chamber full of copper-colored translucent crystals. The chamber contained several examination tables, medical diagnostic equipment, some odd-looking machinery, and many empty cages. One of the cages was not, in fact, empty, and contained a strange creature that looked like a butternut squash on top of banana leaves wearing a mushroom. A Squib was fiddling with the lock on its cage whilst making the musical noises on a strange instrument.

The Squib, whom our heroes had difficult getting a name from (they alternately called him Ikky, Rikki, Tikki, but not Tavi), was a prisoner of a scary-looking Mirulakan, as was the strange, plant-looking alien, who introduced himself as “Bob” (with a strange emphasis on the “b” sounds). Both “Bob” and Padawan Jakar could sense the Force in one another. The heroes freed the aliens, collected some samples of crystals and poked around the makeshift lab. They found a datapad with a slicer’s spike attached to it. Fortunately, the spike was rigged to not work properly, so they were able to see several journal entries entered by Ben-Dara Jobi.

Ben-Dara Jobi Alpha Phase Journal

They concluded that it appeared Ben-Dara Jobi was experimenting with sapients to attempt to infuse them with Force energy in the hopes of repairing his own severed connection with the Force. They searched around the lower levels some more and found the masticated corpses of the missing miners–presumably the people upon whom Ben-Dara Jobi was experimenting. They left the mine and returned their borrowed mining equipment to Outpost 3, told the remaining citizens of the remains of the miners and headed back to Garang. There, they attempted to track down the man who sold the data spike to Ben-Dara Jobi. They found him in an electronics store, but to their dismay, he only SOLD the data spike, he didn’t program it.

Next, our intrepid band went to a cantina to attempt to locate the slavers with whom Ben-Dara Jobi dealt to get offworld. While subtlety wasn’t their strong suit (Baccus just out-and-out asked a seedy-looking fellow where he could buy someone to do work that he didn’t have to pay). Fortunately, no one called the police on their for their suspiciously-specific inquires and they learned that the only people who recently visited Dantooine who might be involved with such nefarious dealings was a Rattataki named Karsta Djannis. The man was reluctant to say more, so he suggested Baccus look around “sunfall.” Baccus suggested to the rest of the group that they wait until dusk to see if he came back to the cantina.

Meanwhile, the others discussed attempting to track down a slicer who programmed the data spike and was apparently jilted by Ben-Dara Jobi. They had the names of the only two slicers of that skill known to operate in Garang: Moki and Dandy Black….

The next game will take place on May 4th. As that is “Star Wars Day” (May the 4th be with you!), we’ll likely continue the Star Wars campaign and pick the Doctor StrangeRoll game back up on May 18th.

 

Third Session Report – The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh/The Isle of Dread

There were several ways I could have dealt with the complete derailing of the first Doctor StrangeRoll adventure. If you don’t want to read back through older entries, basically, the PCs burned down the adventure locale before finding the necessary clues that would lead them to the second part of the adventure. In a video game, this would lead to a “Non-Standard Game Over.”

Fortunately, in a tabletop RPG, short of the DM or the players quitting, there doesn’t have to be a non-standard Game Over.

Option 1: Give them the clues they need, pretending that they actually discovered them (and withheld the treasure they would’ve found) and proceed with the adventure as written.

Option 2: Mark the Low-Level Adventure Phase a “Fail” and move on to the Mid-Level Adventure Phase of the Basic D&D DoctorStrange Roll campaign.

Option 3: Throw up my hands, moan and wail that my players have ruined the game, call the Doctor StrangeRoll Campaign a total loss and play something else, like HackMaster.

Option 4: And Now For Something Completely Different–This is the option I chose. The PCs were hauled in front of the town council of Saltmarsh and offered a choice in leiu of punishment for burning down a house that someone was going to move into and renovate.

The council told the PCs of the smuggling ring they disrupted by utterly destroying the secret hideout. They were given a choice: help the town track and destroy the rest of the smugglers on the high seas, or go to jail. If they helped hunt down the smugglers, they’d each be pardoned and receive a 500 GP reward.

They finished their business about town and boarded the ship at dusk, as instructed. The Serpent’s Kiss set sail to intercept the smugglers (they had some idea of their route). That night, a storm battered the ship. The relentless storm battered the ship for days until finally, it ran aground and the crew was killed.

Our intrepid heroes (the PCs) were now marooned on…the Isle of Dread*.

By the time they regained consciousness, the weather had cleared. Since they didn’t know where they were, they went about collecting supplies from the wreckage and the deceased crew of the Serpent’s Kiss. Among the items they collected was a note and map stuffed in the Captain’s rutter. The map showed the outline of an island, with only the coastline detailed. The note told of a central plateau containing vast treasure. They debated over the true motivations of the Captain, wondering if he was really interested in stopping the smugglers after all.

They spent hours collecting supplies until a loud roar and the breaking of marsh trees alerted them to the presence of a large predator seeking tasty morsels.

While their first instinct was to flee, the instead held their ground and fought the terrible lizard. Herrick had the idea to lure the beast toward the ship and perhaps goad it into charging the figurehead, hopefully impaling itself on the broken timbers jutting out. Both he and Kilos were nearly bitten in half before the beast fell.

They celebrated their victory by binding their wounds, butchering the giant animal, and discussing various uses for its head (carry it between two pikes like a canopy, stuffing Wikki and Pat (who were still unconscious from the shipwreck) into its maw to frighten them when they woke up, etc.

In the end, they simply trudged south through the marshes. Pat recovered well-enough to carry the still-ill Wikki. For days they slogged through the marshy terrain, climbing trees each day to determine if following the coast was still the best strategy or if there was something to be gained by heading inland.

More days passed, and a few more large reptiles avoided, before the marsh turned into jungle and then mountains. After a day of navigating the mountainous terrain, they found a river to follow deeper into the heart of whatever land they were on. Following the banks of the river proved to speed their travel considerably (and Kilos and Herrick were chagrined that they left the t-rex head behind; perhaps it could’ve been used as a raft!). Finally, they found a plateau towering 3000′ above them and a rope bridge leading from part of the mountains above the river to the plateau.

They made camp at the mountain-side of the bridge. What dangers and riches await on the other side?

*This has the advantage of preserving the mystery of what they were supposed to find and do in the rest of the “haunted house” and UK1: The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh. Since they have to play the adventure again with AD&D, then with AD&D 2nd edition, then with Pathfinder, and finally with D&D 4E, at least one of the play-throughs will have new stuff to discover.

In preparation for the new phase of the adventure, I bumped everyone up by 5,000 XP. I wouldn’t normally do this in campaign play (unless I was doing a time-skip of several years), but for the Doctor StrangeRoll campaign, it’s more important to be able to experience the classic adventures as written through the “eyes” of each edition than any sort of continuity. The whole shipwreck thing might be a little contrived, but at least it’s a little more natural than just giving them all the clues they inadvertently destroyed and say “Here’s what you WOULD’VE found if you hadn’t burned down the house.”

The next session of Doctor StrangeRoll will be on April 20th. We’ll most likely be returning to the Star Wars campaign for that session.

Gary Con IV Report

Ahh…four days of gaming and no work. That’s what Gary Con is to me. Gen Con may bill itself as “The Best Four Days of Gaming,” but I spend over half of my time at Gen Con working on ENnie Awards-related stuff. I get more gaming in at Gary Con.

The convention started off with me driving in on Wednesday afternoon. After getting settled in at the hotel and having dinner at Popeye’s (NOT the Chicken & Biscuits place, but a better, locally owned/operated restaurant that was there FIRST), I headed to the Lodge to collect my badge and see if I could get in on a Shadowrun game. I played a street samurai with a mild addiction to stimulants and a gold allergy I called Rio “Goldie” Cancíon. She really liked her guns, but sadly, did not get to use them much. We were a group of unknowns hired to provide security for some meeting. We never found out what the meeting was about, but we kept the location secure without killing anyone.

On Thursday, I was able to sleep in and, in fact, didn’t have anything scheduled until after lunch. I actually don’t remember if I went there in the morning to walk around and check things out. I might have. The days blur together. My first game of the day was a Hackmaster game. It was my first time playing Hackmaster (we were using the new rules; the PHB just went to ther printer last week). Our group did pretty well; there weren’t any deaths and we saved the town from the cultists who were kidnapping people for some nefarious purpose (either to turn them into undead or feed them to undead, I don’t quite remember). After that, I had a brief respite for dinner (Popeye’s again), then I was running my Ghostbusters game, “Bustin’ the Con.” One of the other Dead Games Society GMs had some custom Ghost Dice created and was able to give me one. It looked better than the one that originally came with the game.  The game went well. When I wrote the adventure, I had NO idea what the solution to main problem was. I trusted (and hoped) the players would come up with something, and they did. I’ll probably run this game at Gen Con in some capacity, so no spoilers.

Friday was a busier day than Thursday. I started with a game of Hercules & Xena (which I didn’t know was  game until I signed up for Gary Con this year). The game went really well and was easy to play with very fast task resolution (it was a West End Games d6 variant, Legends, I think). I played a Monster Slayer who was supposedly very good with the javelin and sword, though they way I was rolling, I was only good with a sword. Strangely (I didn’t plan this), it was the third game in a row I played/GMed featuring undead. For the afternoon, I was GMing Paranoia, “Soylent People are Green” (which made its debut at Gen Con about 4 years ago). I was once again told how difficult it was to get into my Paranoia game (it sold out in less than 10 minutes after registration opened). I even had some newbie players. My rough calculations indicated there was about a 250% mortality rate for this adventure, so everything turned out as it should’ve. The team leader (with Machine Empathy–those of you familiar with Paranoia KNOW what that means) died the most. He was on Clone #5 by the time the adventure wrapped up. The Loyalty Officer was only on clone #2. There was much wackiness and once again, I showed WHY people who can’t throw shouldn’t have the grenades. After Paranoia was another dinner at Popeye’s, then back to the convention for my second Hackmaster game. I was prepared for a late night, but my character died less than two hours into the adventure (rapidly and in a most bloody fashion). It was fun while it lasted (I played a close-talking elven mage with low wisdom…he didn’t always make good choices about what spells to cast).

Saturday was another busy day. I started off with an early morning Star Frontiers game. I played a vrusk (a two-armed, eight-legged insect guy) medic I called “Doctor Ix.” He wasn’t sure how many stomaches humans had and was sure they had at least two splanches (in practice, he was a VERY competent doctor, it was just funnier this way). I patched up my team regularly, even performing major surgery in the field. I was like a one-man MASH unit. After completing our goals, I had time to eat lunch before running my Star Wars game, “Imperial Entanglements.” In this game, I learned how one skill check assisted by a Force point could succeed so wildly it would “break” the adventure. I also had the least shootin’-est group I’ve ever run for. If there was an alternative to a straight-up fire fight, they looked for it (much to the chagrin of the Trandoshian soldier-playing 10-year-old who just wanted to blast something). They managed to complete the objectives in a nearly-completely non-confrontational way and never set foot on the resort & casino space station that was supposed to be the central location for the adventure. Note to self: remove all stun grenades from future versions of this adventure–they’re TOO useful in the enclosed spaces of an Imperial Shuttle. After the Star Wars game, I enjoyed an excellent dinner at Sprecher’s Restaurant & Pub.

Sunday was the last day of the con. I didn’t have anything schedule, but I managed to get into another Shadowrun game in which I played Rio “Goldie” Cancíon again. Our mission this time was mostly recon, so we spent the whole game casing a corporation’s compound near Puget Sound. There were some run ins with some jackbooted thugs driving a black van I dubbed “The A-Team,” but we were able to evade them without trading shots (I really wanted to open up with my machine gun, but didn’t get the chance). There was a wacky plan to have me parasail from the sound over the compound to take pictures, but once we hired a hacker and found out what sort of security they had, I’m rather glad I didn’t get that reckless (besides, parasailing over a coniferous forest just sounds like a bad idea). We didn’t get as much intel as our employer would have liked, but we did acquire a lot of nifty tech to sell, so our payday was quite lucrative.

A good time was had by all. I’ve already started contemplating what my games for next year will be. I could probably get away with running nothing but Paranoia all weekend and have full tables each time, but that might get a little boring for me. We’ll see…

 

Gary Con IV

There isn’t a Doctor StrangeRoll game this week due to Gary Con IV in Lake Geneva, WI. I’ll be there, so I can’t be here. See you in a couple of weeks!

Second Session Report – The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh

We pick up where we left off, with our intrepid group of heroes exploring the Haunted House. Wikki, still suffering side-effects from the mushrooms he was force-fed after being poisoned, passed out. With the group unable to wake him, Finias Jinx reappeared to drag him back to town (both players were absent this session, so this was a convenient way to remove their characters).

Unperturbed by this set-back, the group pressed on and continued exploring the mansion. In the final bedroom on the second floor, they found a bundle of clothes that Ned proclaimed to be his belongings (stolen by the people who tied him up). They then proceeded into the attic and it it was much like the rest of the house: empty save for old clothes. Unfortunately for them, one stack of junk was home to a nest of stirges. The oversized blood-suckers flew around them, one latching onto Lorelei and drinking a considerable portion of blood before Kelos could splatter it. For their trouble, they found a fairly nice ring in the nest.

Once they decided the attic was thoroughly explored, they headed back downstairs to check the cellar. The stairs from the kitchen area led into the wine cellar. As Lorelei set foot on the first step, they heard terrible screaming from the basement (someone made the sound of ultimate suffering). They rushed downstairs and found broken bottles everywhere. In the middle of the room was a recently-deceased corpse clad in plate mail (though not recently dead enough to be the source of the screams). Lorelei decided she needed new armor, so she set about stripping the corpse while the others checked out the rest of the room. Unfortunately, grubs burst out of the corpse and started burrowing into her flesh! They tried brushing them off to no avail. In an act of desperation, thinking of leeches & ticks, Kelos doused Lorelei in lamp oil. Still nothing.

Then their DM threw them a bone* and *cough*fire*cough*…

After setting Lorelei ablaze, the rot grubs were killed and they proceeded to burn the corpse, filling the wine cellar with the putrid stench of burning flesh. Lorelei, slightly burnt, but not incapacitated, took the dirty, nasty armor anyway and they continued to search the room, finding a secret door. As they prepared to open the secret door, Ned showed his true colors and attempted to kill Kelos. Unfortunately, Ned wasn’t a very good assassin (the fact that Basic D&D didn’t have assassination rules did not help him) and the party put him down in short order. Then took his stuff (what little he had).

The secret door led to a very well-maintained barracks. Food, drinks, bunks… all recently used and recently vacated. They deduced that the occupants of the barracks high-tailed it out of there upon hearing them set their companion on fire to deal with the rot grubs. Searching through the foot lockers, they found nothing. Herrick decided to pour leftover gravy from the dinner table into each of the footlockers and between him and Pat, they took all the remaining food and unopened brandy. They also found a stairway in the middle of the room which apparently led nowhere**. A short corridor at the end of the barracks led to two door, once of which was barred and had a sign reading “DANGER.”

Despite the temptation, they opened the unbarred door first and discovered what looked to be the leader’s bedroom. They looted it, procuring more books, more oil and some candles. They then turned their attention to the “danger zone” (as Lorelei put it). Upon opening that door, they were beset by undead! Six skeleton came out of the darkness, hacking and hewing. Herrick’s faith was insufficient to turn them, but the axes of the dwarves proved sufficient to destroy the abominations before they killed poor Lorelei and Herrick. A note they found upstairs reading “Beyond skeletons” came to mind and the group made a concentrated effort to search for secret doors. The door they found led to another room where they saw a figure in wizardly robes sitting at a table.

Taking no chances, Pat brought her axe down on his head, shattering it and scattering the long-dead remains. There was a brief moment of nervous laughter as they realized he was neither alive nor dead and the slight embarrassment of having been fooled was replaced by elation as they looted the room of all the gold in it (including a book entitled Ye Secret of Ye Philosopher’s Stone***. Also found was the dead wizard’s spell book and a small, curious-looking rock.

At this point, the group decided they’d had enough of the Haunted House. They went back upstairs and doused as much of it with oil and brandy (not much brandy though, as by this point, the dwarves had drank most of it) and set the house ablaze.

Yes, they burned the house down. *cue sound of a train derailing*

Our intrepid heroes returned to town feeling smug and victorious to take stock of their winnings. What challenges will they face next time?

That is a very good question. The group failed to discover a crucial secret door in the barracks that would lead them to the rest of the clues they would need to proceed to part two of the adventure (if this was regular campaign play, I would NOT be talking about this). Part of the point of the Doctor StrangeRoll campaign is to run the adventures as written, and now, there is a significant bridge needed that is not part of the original adventure. It wasn’t the only thing they missed, but it IS something that is plot-crucial.

In normal campaign play, I would have to come up with something and make it makes sense. However, in this case, I think it would be OK for me to just tell the players “This is what you missed and how you were supposed to get to part 2.” After all, we’re going to be playing this adventure at least three more times.

* Since I was running Basic D&D, I should have just let the rot grubs kill her. However, none of these players had ever encountered rot grubs before and had no clue what a devious trap they were in these old editions. Part of me is sad that I pulled my punch here, but another part of me says “We’re playing these as a comparison of the editions–it’s NOT that important to be a rat bastard DM in this situation.” Were this actual campaign play, I probably would NOT have pulled my punch, which may seem like it’s backwards, but it makes perfect sense to me. I would’ve been killing a newbie player’s character on her second adventure which could send an appropriate Old School Play message, but also could serve as a frustrating experience for someone who is still learning how to play.

** Seriously, it’s on the map but it leads NOWHERE in the adventure. I some how missed that detail during game prep. Obviously, the rooms were either cut for space or never developed and someone forgot to remove the stairs from the map. Or I’m missing something REALLY obvious. No matter.

*** The smart ass in me wishes I’d been quick enough to say “Apparently, it talks about how Snape kills Dumbledore who was gay, but was really protecting Harry all along, and Ron ends up with Hermione, and Harry lives and marries Ginny Weasley…but that would have just been silly and cheap.

 

Off Session 1

This past Friday night was the second meeting of the group, but our first off session. When I started Doctor StrangeRoll, I always intend to play an alternate RPG on the days when several members of the D&D couldn’t make the game, and we were down to 50% attendance Friday night (only one of which was unexpected).

So, I broke out the West End Games Star Wars Roleplaying Game. That’s the D6 version that went out of print in the 90s for those of you keeping score at home. It’s nice and rule-light and easy to run, so it makes an excellent alternate game to play when we’re down enough players that picking up the D&D game where we left off would be a problem.

Two of my players showed up with characters already made, so we had to wait while the third made his character (not unexpected). My game prep was pretty lacking because I really only knew ahead of time what one character would be (I knew about the second about 2 days before game day). I find it hard to prep if I don’t know what kind of characters there are going to be. For example, it’s not really appropriate to create an adventure around a Jedi Master sending his apprentice out on tasks if the entire group is made of smugglers, bounty hunters, and other fringe characters, nor it is appropriate to have them indebted to a hutt if most of the characters are closely affiliated with the Jedi. I can usually ad-lib Star Wars pretty well (probably because it’s been part of my life & imagination for 34 years), but I did have a little trouble Friday night getting into things; I suspect it was a result of fatigue. It was a very taxing week.

 

Anyway, our Star Warsian odyssey starts with Padawan Jakar, a mon calamari and former Sith apprentice of Darth Ul being tasked by his new master on Tython, Jedi Master Shayl Bey’lya, to go to Dantooine and investigate reports trouble near a mining town, thought to be caused by a fallen Jedi, thought to be dead. Jakar is accompanied by a togorian Bounty Hunter, Khalendri. They received the name of their target: Ben-Dara Jobi and the knowledge that he was once a Jedi. Ben-Dara Jobi fell to the Dark Side during the Cold War and was severed from the Force, rather than being killed. Some time, near the end of the Cold War, he was presumed dead. The two impulsive, would-be heroes rushed off to find transportation off Tython.

While in the Spaceport, they ran across a human pirate, Baccus, who was also looking for transportation. A Republic Captain crossed their path, barking orders at his command crew, and with the help of another Jedi, S’oona Onos, they convinced Captain Damatos to grant them passage on the Republic Cruiser Crimson Hammer (Jedi stick together, and Dantooine wasn’t too much of a delay from the cruiser’s regular destination). Baccus attempted to break into the cruiser’s armory, but when he discovered it was guarded by two battle droids and a couple of armored turrets, decided the potential gains weren’t worth the risks, particular when one takes into account the fact that there’s no where to run when you’re on a cruiser in hyperspace.

The Crimson Hammer dropped our intrepid crew off in Garang, the capital of Dantooine. From there, they headed to the nearby Jedi Enclave to see if they could find more information about Ben-Dara Jobi, such as his description, possible location, and other important details for which they neglected to ask Master Bey’lya. The Archivist at the Jedi Enclave, Dorak wondered why the Council didn’t contact them about Ben-Dara Jobi’s possible resurfacing, but was more than happy to assist Padawan Jakar and his friends. They learned that Ben-Dara Jobi was a miralukan, a species born blind who “see” through the Force. Severing Ben-Dara Jobi from the Force would have robbed him of his most important sense.

Armed with knowledge of Ben-Dara Jobi’s background, they rented a speeder from a shift rodian and traveled to the mining town, Outpost 3. They learned that the mine at which most of the townsfolk earn their living recently suffered a collapse and they’ve been unable to determine a cause or get help. Also, laigreks indigenous to the area have become unusually aggressive since the collapse of the mine. Baccus suggested they acquire some equipment to help them explore the mine and they convinced the shop keeper to supply them with the mining corporation’s equipment free of charge since no one was using it anyway right now. Equipped with detonator packs, syntherope, mining lasers and one breathing mask (the masks available would fit neither a togorian nor a mon calamari and Baccus’s attempts to modify them met with catastrophic failure), they set off toward the mine….

You can read more about the setting and background on the “A Galaxy at Peace” campaign page.