Low Country Crawl: Session Report 1

Hell yeah, Title Card!

So I'm running the Low Country Crawl via Play-by-Post (PbP) on a discord server I manage. I know PbP isn't for everyone, but as a professional and a father, I have little to no time to set aside to run a real-time session. Plus this allows me to play with individuals across the world that I'd normally never have a chance to play with. Regardless, for these "session" reports, I'm going to post up updates as they seem appropriate rather than per "session" as scenes are played out usually over the course of days rather than hours.

We have pool of players for this game who come and go somewhat West Marches style. A few of the players have RPG experience before hand, but none had played GLOG or any OSR system so I've decided to give them a mini tutorial dungeon and a little leeway to learn the ropes.

THE PLAYERS

Georgia Georgie of the Georgie Clan. A member of a clan/coven of swamp witches who make foul pacts with a hideous soul-devouring goose. An impulsive Animist who doesn't take shit from anyone.

Father Mortimer. A Fire and Brimstone style preacher who has come to the Barrier Islands to bring the word of the Authority to the ignorant masses. He preached so hard though, he is now incapable of saying anything but the word of God. A serious Paladin of the Word following the divine plan.

Ghostcutter Wob. Once content to live a solitary life as a lumberjack with his dog as his only companion. However when malicious ghosts took his dog's life, this morose man pledged his cutting power to cutting ghosts rather than wood. A depressed Sword Exorcist who seekers eternal John Wick-style vengeance. 

Brother Dorvus. A spiderling who heard the call to the priesthood early on, only it was the priesthood of the Goddess of Sewers. Polite, excited, and somewhat lackadaisical, Dorvus is always certain that his Goddess has him in good hands. A faithful Night Soil Priest who is ready to clear your pipes.

Piercy Montana. A young hot-headed man with a posse of foul followers and a hunger for revenge. He seeks a man named Dixon Beaumont who killed his father over a parcel of land. He is a man of bold action and is willing to do anything to fulfilled his goals. A strong-willed Fighter who does all his own stunts.

Unpictured and currently inactive are The McCoys, a clan of inbred swamp-hicks who act as single unit ala Many Goblins and Yanny/Laurel, a pipe smoking illusionist.

THE LOCALE

A VERY rough flowchart of the pointcrawl because I am shit with anything that isn't a Windows Office product. The players are starting off in Lord's Landing, a fairly well established port city spread out over a few connected islands. As they opted for a more traditional start, I provided them with a tavern in the residential district of Lord's Landing. As we play, I plan to drop adventure seeds and leave my players access to this map. I feel like it gives them enough of a taste to see what is going on without spoiling much for them.

THE ADVENTURE

Our adventure opens in the Thunderlock Tavern, a little something I'm adapting from the Rolled and Told free July Issue, to give our would-be heroes a stage to test their skills before venturing forth into the Islands. The adventurers gather here on their own accord, each here for their own purposes and serving their own needs. Some are locals, some are new to the area, all of them have something to prove.

After a little bit of time for characterization and introductions, they players tentatively started to interact. Georgia cast Charm Person on the barkeep after not agreeing with their gruff attitude and getting her to open up more as an information resource. After few rounds of drinks rotgut moonshine for everyone, and a peppering of refreshing lemon scent from Dorvus, Wob inquires about local hauntings and receives an earful about how you can't spit without hitting a ghost in the Islands. They learn of the heavily haunted Last Folly Island, of the Hainsely Hall ghost infested Halls, of the unresting Lady Elmyra and her indigo plantations, and several other lesser ghost-related seeds.

Just at this point, Piercy Montana bursts into the scene seeking a party of would be mercenaries to help him avenge the death of his father due to one Dixon Beaumont. Not originally part of any plan of my own, this type of introduction was too good to pass up and I've adapted Beaumont to be one of the larger antagonist background NPCs. Piercy, however, showed himself to be all swagger and no coin, claiming after Georgia's inquiry into the pay that looting Beaumont should be all the pay she'd need. Several patrons point out the madness of this revenge plot, Dorvus and Wob being particularly pessimistic about it. Father Mortimer, however, smelling the chance to put down a corrupt sinner, pledges himself to Piercy's cause. Georgia, being more practical, suggests splitting the loot should everything go well. If everything goes south though, Piercy has agreed to give Georgia all the fingers on his left hand.

From behind the bar, a metal door opens and drops a trio of bleeding and burned elves onto the tavern floor, followed by a gruff dwarf-- one of the tavern's owners, Merp Ticklelock. The trio had failed the Thunderlock Pubcrawl and Merp was looking for the net batch of victims volunteers. The task was simple, survive the mini-dungeoncrawl below the tavern and get your picture up on the wall and 100 gold. Piercy, Georgia, Father Mortimer, and Dorvus leap at the chance to prove their skills while Wob, the McCoys, and Yanny hold back to watch things unfold.

To give everyone a potential chance, I've ruled that if a character dies or is incapacitated, they will be teleported out of the dungeoncrawl and the next in line will take their place.

Thus the party of four signed legal papers waiving their rights to seek reparations against the tavern for any harm done to them and stepped through the gates.

The first room was a rather simple one. Two shabby looking demon statues stood holding braziers on either side of an open door. One brazier was lit while the other was cold. Above them a runic phase was written out. As none of the characters implicitly knew dwarvish, I gave them the option to do Intelligence Checks to recognize and read the script, Dorvus with his 16 Intelligence quickly figured out the runes stating "Fire reveals the treasure, but flame conceals the Key." Wasting no time, Dorvus immediately pokes a stick into the lit brazier revealing it to be a magical flame hiding a key.

Piercy, already seeking treasure, recruited the assistance of Father Mortimer to lift the magically lit brazier and drop it and its flame into the cold brazier. I mean they could have figured a way to just get a real fire going in it, but hey whatever works. This caused some mechanisms deeper into the dungeon to grind into place, but otherwise the players do not yet know the effect of this action.

Georgia, tired of the brazier business, gets a look into the next room. A trapped gauntlet if there ever was one, the room is half filled with acid and covered in obvious traps. Piercy shoots and arrow down the hall in hopes of triggering a few of the traps, and it gets less than a quarter of the way before a fire rune trap incinerates it. A little bit of fussing from the rest of the party, and Georgia take the initiative again by stepping into the room. And triggering the trapped spiked wall.

A few successful shoulder rolls later and the party is faced with a hallway of traps ahead of them and a slowly moving spiked wall behind them. Piercy once again uses force to solve the problem by pushing against the wall to give the rest of the group more time to get through the gauntlet. Georgia decided it was time to take out the big guns and used her Animist powers to turn into her spirit-animal, a hideous Canadian Goose with a human face. Using her superior flight speed Georgia flew past all the traps to safety flew directly into the fire trap and got her goose cooked.

A few lucky rolls and Georgia was left burned, scarred, and disabled but alive and the contingency spell set up in their contracts ported her back into the tavern for a shot of moonshine and a few hours of rest. Wob the Ghost-Cutter took her place, appearing right on the edge of a 15' long acid pit. Using a piece of wood kept from his lumberjack days, Wob tested the pit to confirm it was indeed acid. Dorvus, knowing his goddess would protect him, ignored the shoddy wooden planks that acted as bridges and stepped right in with his rubber sewer-wading outfit. I felt that it was a reasonable risk given the things he's normally wading through and gave the item a resistance check. With the blessing of his goddess, Dorvus successfully made it to the other side, though his waders were not going to be able to take another go at that.

Meanwhile Father Mortimer and Wob considered their options while Piercy continued to hold back the wall. Deciding to let fate decide their path, the pair succeeded on a couple of dex checks to roll past the fire trap and balance their way across the acid pit, leaving Piercy alone on the other side. Piercy shows himself to be observant as well as strong as he noticed that the fire trap seems to be on a recharge cycle and is set off by movement. Instead of risking the planks, the young man hauls himself ONTO the spiked wall and holds on for dear life as it begins to make its way across the room again. With the help of Dorvus shooting arrows and Father Mortimer lobbing cheese, they get the fire trap to go off in time for it to reach its recharge state by the time Piercy moved past it.

Father Mortimer, concerned for Piercy's ability to continue holding on, called on the aid of the Authority. He spoke aloud for the first time and intoned, "HOLD" causing Piercy's muscles to strain beyond what he thought possible, giving him a divinely inspired grip on the wall. Once the wall and Piercy reach the other side, he and Father Mortimer work together to keep the wall at bay once again.

Meanwhile Wob has started to inspect what awaited them on the other side of the acid pit. A pair of shoddy dwarf statues faced each other across the hallway, their mouth open in a silent scream. Sensing another trap, Wob pulls out his Sword of Exocism and its nigh indestructible sheath and waved it in front of the statues, keeping his arm out of reach. One statue loosens a deafening thunderous blast while the other vomits putrid fungal mist. A number of lucky saves leaves everyone safe, but the dangers of the traps are established.

After a little dinking around with the statues, Wob takes action. He first tossed his blanket from his pack over the fungal statue, its heavy curtain causing the spores to float safely to the floor rather than being dispensed across the room. Their careful pokings at the statue revealed them to be made of wood rather than stone. Wob's lumberjack instincts kicked in as he pulled out his old ax and with a good roll beheaded the thunder-statue.

Dorvus, not even pausing to investigate further, mutters "Cloacia Protects" and steps forth. The pressure plate between the statues sinks into the floor and unleashes a spray of deadly arrows from the walls. Well...should be deadly. I completely fail every attack roll against all of the characters. In stunned disbelief, the party leaves the trapped hallway and approaches their next challenge.

NOTES

I believe we got ourselves to a good start on this one. We have folks from non-RPG backgrounds and non-OSR backgrounds, but they are making use of their resources and environments in a creative manner. Rolls continue to be either Great or Terrible with very little in between. I'm finding that play PbP is great for this as it gives me a reference for rules I made, I only ever have to scroll up the log to remember how I handled similar situations. All art once again is a donation from http://monsieurlebattlier.tumblr.com/

Tomb of the Serpent King Play Report Session 1 & 2

The Best Dog

So two weeks ago I had a chance to run two small sessions of Tomb of the Serpent King with my wife, sister-in-law, and brother-in-law. We were not able to get particularly deep into the adventure due to timing and baby needs, but we've gotten ourselves a pretty fair start.

Session 1:
Human Barbarian- BiL
Elf Ranger- SiL
Really Good Dog- Wife

So as a prelude, I will note that our trio of players have about 4 sessions or so of Pathfinder experience and nothing else. Their RPG backgrounds primarily come in the form of JRPGs and Dark Souls and thus GLOG and TotSK really work here as tutorials. Michael Bacon 's Index card sized character sheets were an instant hit after having only dealt with the ten tons of math that a Pathfinder character sheet is. I offered them to either have a small starting adventure in a starter town or just skipping right to the dungeon. They decided on the latter, feeling that they could both learn more and be less prone to getting lost in the concepts by going directly to a dungeon crawl.

We used Arnold's Lifepath generator to get the Elf Ranger and the Really Good Dog, the first an accomplished and weirdly muscular weaver and the latter a disgraced temple dog. BiL was less interested in something so convoluted and just rolled 3d6 for stats right down the line.

Having some meta knowledge about how dungeons worked, the Ranger and Dog spent a lot of time on the first floor trying to sniff out traps and secrets, seeking any minute detail to use to their advantage. When they encountered their first coffin, the Dog used her sniffer to detect something wrong with the hollow statues they found within, but the barbarian just heard "hollow statue" and decided to slam it with their hammer. Luckily a good CON roll kept the rage-prone foreigner from succumbing to the acrid gas within.

You'd think they'd proceed with more caution. Tomb 2 was met with another hammer blow and a less enthusiastic CON roll. Tomb 3 had more of the same. Tomb 4, the Really Good Dog decided to save the Barbarian from the pain and jumped into the coffin and broke the statue with its weight. Having survived this though, now bedazzed with a few golden amulets, the trio decided it was a good time for lunch. Crossing off a ration, a dead opossum, and some carrot sticks from their inventories and coming back to nearly full strength, the trio decided to take on the stone door at the end of the hall.

The barbarian investigated the door and took notice that the pegs that it rested on were pressed down by the weight and no single one of them could lift it on their own. Instead of teaming up to try and lift it, the party came up with a lever idea. The Really Good Dog dug a hole in the pounded earth floor and piled up dirt and stone to act as a fulcrum, while the Ranger tore the lid off of one of the coffins. Using the lid as a lever, the Barbarian gave it a good pull, successfully lifting the door themselves and successfully taking a massive hammer to the face. Really Good Dog avoided the trap entirely by diving into the hole it dug. The Ranger's animal companion stood valiantly before them and was turned into jelly, but provided enough padding to leave the Ranger at 1 HP.

This left us needing a new character for the BiL and teaching us all a lesson in how lethal a dungeon can be. So, instead of choosing a race and a class, BiL opted to just randomize everything and ended up with a Boarling Paladin of the Voice who had been left in the room beyond the trap after a hazing by their own order. They brought the mute Paladin back to their camp outside to try to get details out of him to little avail. In the mean time, the Ranger went out to the swamp and  Steve Irwin'ed an alligator into being their replacement animal companion. Thus they rested, ready to take on the room beyond the stone door the next day.

In the large chamber beyond the door, the trio was faced with 3 coffins and immediately were on the defensive. They've gotten to this point and there was no combat yet, obviously there was something going on here. And they were, of course, right. As soon as they touched upon the coffins, three Snakeman skeletons burst forth to combat them. It took a few rounds for them to get used to Attack+(10-Defense) but they soon got the hang of it. Through some coordinated efforts and a really excited dog, the skeletons were defeated with no lasting damage done to the party. About at this point my daughter decided that it was time to stop playing with Megablocks and we concluded our session.

The Terrible Snake God!

Session 2:

Boarling Paladin- BiL "Man-Bear-Pig"
Elf Ranger- SiL
Really Good Dog- Wife

So before Session 2, the group decided that it was fantastic that it only took 3 minutes to roll up a new character instead of an hour to generate one and the idea of completely random characters appealed to them greatly. Thus the even before, I randomized 20 characters and put a number of 1-20 on them. This way when a character dies, we just need to roll a d20 and pull out an index card. 

In this session, our heroes encounter a massive statue of a hideous six armed Snake-Man-God. The Really Good Dog quickly discovers the water damage hinting at a trap door below. Instead of attempting to brute force move the statue, the party decides that there must be some sort of puzzle. There was not some sort of puzzle but there was now. I declared that they should give a closer look at things and find clues. Returning to the previous room, they realized the walls had tapestries depicting the Snake-Man Empire's conquests. At the center of it all was a depiction of this same six armed god, only instead of merely baring its claws, it's hands were occupied holding weapons or treasure or directing its troops. Returning to the statue, the party pulled on one of the arms that had been pointing in the tapestry, and the statue moved aside with no need for physical effort.

Sticking a torch into the dog's mouth and weaving together a harness for him, they lowered the dog down the trap door below the statue to investigate. After noticing the statues below, some meta worries above golems came to mind and the party proceeded downward with caution. It may have been some fault on my part, but I described the middle of the long hall they now faced as having the middle worn smooth. I meant for this to seem like it had often been slithered across by the Snakemen, but the party took it as a sign of some Indiana Jones style rolling ball trap and were exceptionally cautious. They eventually noticed an out of place statue, but they pushed it back into place instead of noticing the trap door behind it.

Figuring that the long hall posed to threats, the party proceeded down to the large tomb space beyond, first lighting a number of sconces around the room to provide more light. After investigating the various doors, the dog noticed the water at the center of the room and did what any good dog would do and writhed in it. The mummy claws took this chance to strike. A nearly deadly battle took place that saw the dog brought to 0 HP, and though the Death and Dismemberment table only gave the pup an Interesting Scar, only the very last stabilization check saved the pup from death from Fatal Wounds. One of the claws took hold of the Paladin in an attempt to strangle them, but he unleashed the voice of god upon them, yelling "UNHAND!" The boom echoed through the dungeon and Fus Ro Da'd the claw off of the holy knight. After cleaning the mess up, the party strapped their dog to the Ranger and returned to the surface for rest.

We will have to see next time how they handle the tomb's true inhabitants.

Now in Color

Thoughts:

So a major thing I noticed during play is the different personality types I'm getting in gameplay. 

SiL is a long time JRPG completionist type, who obsessively looks into every nook and crany for every possible thing that can be collected, unlocked, achieved etc. etc. While to an extent, I feel this is a good OSR instinct, I feel like she is still coming at it more from the perspective of searching for the Wonder Chef in a "Tales of" game rather than collecting booty in a dank dungeon. 

BiL is fairly big into Dark Souls and looks at tabletop RPGs as like a slower paced Dark Souls. He is looking for a smash and grab, pulverizing statues and looking for brute force answers. I do feel that playing as the Paladin has encouraged him to think more creatively than just playing his standard two handed axe barbarian type and I look forward to see how that develops.

My wife loves Mass Effect and other modern western RPGs and has played a few sessions of tabletop before. She is also an English teacher and regularly writes creatively. She, of the three, got the most "in character" with the Really Good Dog, trying to act within the limits of an adventurous Lassie-like mind. I think that while the OSR encourages treating characters almost as throw away lives, given the high fatality rate, getting into character helps create some fun scenarios that might not otherwise occur.

All three players were happy to have character sheets that could fit on an index card and characters that could be generated in less than five minutes. SiL does miss the large PF sheets, mostly because she enjoyed it from that sort of completionist aspect. However giving her the task of journalling the adventure has greatly contributed to her enjoyment and I believe using the Last Gasp Grimoire style inventory sheets will fill that void further.

BiL really enjoyed the idea of random characters and as such, I have generated a random character for as many GLOG classes as I could find. I have assigned each a number so when a character dies, they merely need to roll to see which random character they get, thereby increasing the speed of play even further.

I hope further exploration will continue to see the development of these three players as they delve deeper into the OSR and into the Tomb of the Serpent Kings.