The Tales of the Valiant Temple Campaign - One Year In

 

It kind of snuck up on me but our current campaign started a year ago this month. We had a Session Zero and then our first two warm-up sessions in July of last year, heading into Hommlet with the full group at the beginning of August. We have had 36 sessions at this point and should hit 37 before the month ends. That's pretty good, especially considering we took a month+ off in Nov-Dec last year. That's with a base plan of "weekly" subject to various schedule interruptions now and then. 

(And yes, I know I need to catch up on the session recaps)

Looking back my old Scarred Lands campaign ran for 3 years on a biweekly schedule from 2005-2007 and managed 54 sessions with 6+ PCs.

More recently my Deadlands game managed 33 sessions from 2021-2023 with a six-month gap in the campaign while I packed up and moved so figure a year and a half there. That one started on a bi-weekly schedule and then ended up pretty much weekly.

So pacing-wise we are getting more done more consistently. It's good to have a group of committed players and having 6-8 of them is pretty amazing. I had thought with the kids out of the house that scheduling would be even easier on my part and it is to some degree but maybe not quite to the degree I had imagined. The fact that one of them is still playing in the campaign does make me feel good though. 

The party is 7th now with a few of them hitting 8th last session. I do like this method of tracking individual XP as it rewards regular attendance and it feels more like the old days with mixed party levels. This campaign is giving us a chance to explore a wide range of the ToV system from 1st level on up and thus far everyone is very happy with it. 

As the DM though I have to say these characters are very powerful and I am typically dealing with 6 of them at once so keeping things at some level of challenge is a real ... challenge. I am swapping out monsters regularly and increasing numbers as well and this is in an old school adventure not recalibrated to the 5E encounter standards. If I had left it as-written they would be blowing through things with very little effort. I am running it as-is regarding treasure and if you are under the impression that old adventures were magic-light I can assure again that they were not. Also with gold as XP in those days these things were not gold-light either. My party is ridiculously wealthy and festooned with magic items. It's not an insurmountable obstacle but it does add a little to the challenge and it's a good refresher that yes, our AD&D characters were absolutely loaded after running a few published adventures in the old days. 

Looking ahead I suspect we will finish this one by the end of the year. Based on where they are I'd guess another 10-15 sessions and that puts us into November-December territory. Assuming we do this will be the first time, running or playing over the last 40 years, that I have run this adventure start to finish all the way through and that's going to be a pretty good feeling. I have some fun stuff planned for them as they approach some of the big milestones of the Greater Temple and the Nodes and I figure they will finish up 10th or 11th. Right now they are running about a level ahead of where I projected they would be, mainly due to wilderness and wandering monster encounters. Assuming they go scorched earth the rest of the way and definitely if they find and defeat the big bad of the place I suspect 11th is in sight. 

What's next after that? Could go several ways. The base plan is to roll into Against the Giants which I suspect will need to be beefed up as this party at 11th level is going to be doing some ridiculous things by then. Beyond that my dream would be to go ahead and finish out the D-series and enter the Demonweb Pits for the finale - though Lolth may need to bring Iuz or Orcus or someone else along to help by that point. 

We might also take a short break from Greyhawk. There is at least one vote for "finish Time of Crisis", there has been some chatter about the GI Joe/Power Rangers/Transformers campaign, and I am missing the Savage Worlds stuff a little bit, so who knows? I'm not going to go nuts planning it just yet, just sketching out what I would need to pick one 

Converting Adventures from One Game (or Edition) to Another

 

Certain published adventures in certain RPGs are considered classics, and there may be certain adventures that you personally love and it would be a shame to leave them behind if you change games or move to a different edition of a game. This happens to me in particular with D&D but I'm going to talk about other games as well.

First, why use an old adventure in a new game? Well, because I like it a lot mainly. Some adventures, especially with D&D, are touchpoints one can share with many people across multiple editions of the game - Keep on the Borderlands, The Giant series, Isle of Dread, Hommlet and the Temple of Elemental Evil are just a few examples. For Runequest it might be Snake Pipe Hollow or just exploring the city of Prax. For Mutants and Masterminds it's Time of Crisis (probably the only published superhero adventure I actually like). For Gamma World it's Legion of Gold. For Star Wars it might be Tatooine Manhunt. There are many ...

• Though I may have run or played these in the past I might have a group of players that have never been through them but are interested in some classic old-school stuff.
• My players may have started them at some point but never got to finish them. If everyone is interested why not revisit one and give them a chance to close that loop?
• Maybe I ran them some time ago and feel like I could do a better job now or have an idea to change up some elements that would flow really well with this group of players and characters.
• Maybe we want to test out a new set of rules against a known scenario - does it feel similar? Easier? More difficult? It can be an interesting experiment.

Second, what do you have to consider when adapting these things to a new game?

• I'm going to lead off with "setting" - as it's not just the mechanics we need to check. Does it make sense as far as time and place and NPCs and organizations or power groups within the baseline of your new game or are you going to need to adjust some expectations. Many games mix the setting and the rules into one mish-mash and a new edition means setting changes as well as rules. You need to find a place to work it in. Old D&D adventures tend to be pretty generic as far as location other than some geographic features so they are pretty easy to drop in but some editions also update their settings and kill off gods - you might need to re-work a few things if Bane is no longer the big evil power in the Realms.
• Characters - Are characters built and presented differently in the new game compared to the old game? Is there a level range involved? How different are the mechanics for the PCs in the new vs. the old? Imagine trying to run Keep on the Borderlands for a Rifts campaign ... yeah that's just not a great fit for a typical Rifts party unless you make a -lot- of adjustments - likely to the point of unrecognizability. Expedition to the Barrier peaks? Now that might work.
• Encounter Structure - D&D 3E & Pathfinder started and then 4E perfected the concept of X number of encounters per level of various challenge ratings all calculated up to provide a certain level of XP to allow the PCs to progress through the adventure at the appropriate pace and the appropriate level. That's not going to be relevant to your new game. If your new game has something similar you are going to need to re-work it using those rules if it matters to you.
  In contrast a game like Savage Worlds does not care about that at all. If it does not have that kind of structure then I typically look to the flavor of the adventure - it's not the exact number of stormtroopers are guarding the docking bay - it's that there are some stormtroopers guarding the docking bay and you need to sneak/persuade/bribe/shoot your way past them to get to the ship and if a fight breaks out you only have a limited time before reinforcements start showing up.
• Monsters can also vary dramatically from game to game and edition to edition - don't get caught up in exact monster levels or stats, try to keep the flavor of the thing. If there's a Behir in a cave and your game doesn't have a Behir or they are too powerful or too weak for where your PC's will be then maybe it's a dragon of some type. If another cave has a singular minotaur but in the new game that's not much of a challenge to the party then maybe it's a minotaur chieftain and some followers. If your players are talking afterwards about "those minotaurs" rather than "that minotaur" then you're still doing it right.
• Pacing - D&D has XP for monsters defeated and a milestone system where PC's level up at certain points in the story. Old school Runequest grants a chance to improve skills just for using them. The current edition of Savage Worlds uses per-session XP with advances granted after a certain number of sessions. An adventure may make certain assumptions about party advancement during the course of the adventure - it's usually worth taking a look at that and seeing how it will work with your system of choice. 
• General Mechanics - Old D&D had no skill system. Many newer versions of it and many other games do. That means there are no target numbers for things in those old adventures like finding secret doors or avoiding traps or leaping over pits or climbing walls. Your new system should have some baseline guidance on what easy/average/difficult tasks should be and in my experience that should be enough but if you want to assign some specifics you're going to have to come up with those yourself. That's just one example.
  

Having done this a few times over the years I can say after thinking through the things above there are some other points to consider:

• It's not really all that difficult to adapt a D&D adventure to some other edition or version of D&D. Pick the setting, make some notes on DC's if you need them and then start adjusting the monsters. Since D&D tends to have the same monsters and races and settings across the editions all you need to do is ensure you have the statblocks you need for your chosen edition. Goblins, bugbears, ogres, trolls, dragons - they all tend to stay around the same level range across editions though I would advise against pulling these on the fly - there are occasional outliers that can be much tougher or much easier than you - or your players - probably want. AD&D 2E's update to dragons compared to what they were in 1E is a good example.
• Adapting an adventure to a very different set of mechanics within the same genre is more complicated but still doable. I ran a short RQ2 campaign using Caverns of Thracia as the adventure so a lot of my GM processing power was used in on-the-fly rulings on when a skill check was needed and whether any modifiers applied. I had monster stats picked out ahead of time so that wasn't a drain. That said moving an old Judges' Guild adventure into the framework for an old percentile-based system was an adjustment but one I could manage mostly live. 
• Adapting completely different systems and genres - this is a little trickier and probably rare but sometimes inspiration strike and your knights and wizards or cowboys and mad scientists need to go up against the Legion of Gold or Cylons or the 21st Panzer Division. In this case you need to look at what you do have:
• You have an overall situation that you presumably want to keep
• You have maps!
• You have NPC descriptions and motivations
• You have a list of the opposition
• You have some idea of what the prospective group of PC's can do

    That's plenty! Again we are mostly working out numbers for the new game - target numbers, statblocks for monsters and vehicles, and equipment/loot if that's a thing. For Star Wars & Superheroes it doesn't usually matter but for D&D and Gamma World it will.

Some of these conversions are pretty easy. Updating Time of Crisis for M&M was really just a matter of new stats for the characters encountered. It's a 1E adventure and Green Ronin did publish a conversion in the 2E GM screen which made it even easier and then somewhere along the way the stats one would need for a 3E conversion came out as well. 

Examples I have done:

• I ran Red Hand of Doom (a large 3.5 adventure/campaign) in 4th edition - recap here - and it was fairly easy because it is still a recent (at the time) D&D adventure with all of the D&D assumptions. I ran it in Impiltur in the Forgotten Realms which involved a bit of customization beyond systemic stuff but a lot of my effort was spent working out how it should work within 4E's level and encounter framework - basically getting the math right, at least according to the designers. The thing is I really enjoyed that part! The challenge of keeping the original flow and monsters and situations while making it work within a new framework ... yes that was a lot of fun and then seeing it play out with a really nice level of challenging but not deadly was pretty gratifying. Most of the effort was going through each part and saying "alright we have an ambush by a bunch of bugbears here - how many and what types make sense here for level X?", adding in skill challenges where appropriate, and then typing up my notes. It worked really well and it helped that I was coming out of doing it for two prior campaigns. 
• Of those two prior campaigns one was a 4E version of Temple of Elemental Evil and one was a conversion of Pool of Radiance, er, "Ruins of Adventure". 
• ToEE was again pretty straightforward as I was trying to run it largely as-written so it was mainly a matter of determining what level each part of the wilderness or moathouse or dungeon was and then dropping in the new statblocks for those creatures on a cheatsheet to use while running. It might have been the easiest of all of these because it's so easily divided up - breakdown here.
• Return to the Ruins of Adventure was my first 4E campaign and it was not a strict conversion - more of a loose interpretation of the gold box computer game and the paper module associated with it. Like ToEE it was pretty easy to structure it for 4E with each area being a certain level and having a certain number of encounters but I had a blast deciding what to put where and linking the encounters in narrative ways where it felt right and figuring out how skill challenges could fit in for the first time. This was also mainly a structure and statblocks conversion as the scenario was already solid and it was still a D&D adventure. 
  
  
  
  
  
• I am running the Temple again ten years later using Tales of the Valiant but this time I have a 5e conversion from Goodman Games that handles a lot of the details and all I have to do is sub out the boring 5E monster stats for the more interesting ToV Monster Vault (and other books) versions which is ridiculously easy to do. This is a truly easy mode conversion
• As far as 5E D&D conversions most of the ones that have been published have been solid to excellent. WOTC published some in Tales from the Yawning Portal, staying very faithful to the originals. The Goodman Games conversions are just excellent, putting a copy of the original and then a 5E update in the same book in most cases and adding in some optional extra material where the original is a little thin. I've run both the B1/B2 combo package and Isle of Dread in 5E and I am very happen with them.
• Old Traveller adventures are handy drop-ins for some Star Wars campaigns and I've run the 3-part starter campaign for Star Frontiers in both d20 Star Wars and d6 Star Wars as I think it's a really good fit and it's mostly a statblock-swapping exercise: Space pirates attack a ship? I just pick out Star Wars space pirate stats. The characters travel in an air raft or are attacked by a jetcopter? I pick out an airspeeder. Traveller free trader/far trader = YT1300 - it's not hard, you just have to work through it to prep.

That's probably enough rambling on this topic but I wanted to get it out there -  just because the rules change doesn't mean you can't use an old favorite again - or for the first time!

How Much Input Does the GM Get on Player Characters?

 

This was stirred into motion by a post on an RPG Facebook group that pushed some buttons for me. In general it described how someone was starting up a new campaign and in so many ways it was the complete opposite of  my thinking on the subject. I figured this might be worth some discussion.

One of the statements was about how they usually start a campaign and this included some perfectly reasonable and expected stuff like world info but then it mentioned "... reasons they are there, some drives, and background story ... " mentioning that this could be a group one and some personal ones.

I have to ask even here - whose characters are these again? Why are you giving me drives or background at all? Reasons to be there is a little more flexible but even that can get tricky.

As for the specifics of the new campaign they mentioned some totally acceptable things but then it got into a family tree chart that showed how they know each other and some NPCs, along with a comic strip the GM created covering the starting story and background for the PC's.

For the chart there were more than 20 characters connected by various lines showing how one knows another - this is the beginning of a campaign with 5 PC's. I was kind of surprised as 

a) that seems like a lot of relationships for a game that hasn't even kicked off yet -if you have to chart it out like that maybe that's too many connections, and 

b) did this come from the players? or is this the GM setting all of this up?

It just seems like a really heavy GM hand for the start of an ongoing campaign. Defining the starting situation I get completely - Paladin Steve is setting up a new campaign that allows whatever background situation you want but it has to end with "you joined a caravan and travelled to a new city" and then he's starting the game in that new city. This example just seems over the top to me. This isn't a convention game - it's supposed to be the start of a new ongoing campaign. I am much more in the camp of "here is are the rules, the setting, the time period, and the situation - now make up your characters" and then any connections the players want they can work out themselves and run by me afterwards.  I don't care if "traditional party roles" for this particular game are covered - if the party cares they will work it out. I certainly wouldn't presume to start telling them who they know or are related to unless the game has mechanics for that kind of thing  - like Hero's Dependent NPCs or Shadowrun's Contacts - and they need some likely suspects.

I have been playing with the same group for quite a while so I am wondering how common this is out in the wild?  I don't remember it ever being too common except for maybe a brand new GM. Is this a generational thing, maybe a new GM,  or just a one-off?

Real Life Plot Hooks #1

 

Well I'm sure nothing bad could come from this. Mysterious radio waves coming from under the ice in Antarctica you say? I'm sure it's fine ... noting to see there ... move along!

This feels like an excellent plot hook for any modern era game, any superhero game, a pulp game ... I mean that's going to get some attention in any era. One of Scion's Trinity RPGs would probably handle this well, as would various Savage Worlds books. 

Alternatively it might be an alternate start to a Robotech campaign. "That ship's been frozen down there for a million years. I'm sure whoever it belonged to is long dead." - says the remarkably confident researcher investigating the source of the signal.

Supers campaign: Newly unfrozen alien dusts the remaining ice from his shoulders and says "hey thanks for getting me out of there. Those fourth-planet bastards must have hit us with a fast-acting polar inverter - froze us before we could stop it. How long were we out? And who are you all anyway?"

"What? Oh, we're from the fifth planet ... why do you ask?" 

So many possibilities.

The Mountains of Madness are calling ...

The "Barriers" to Old and Out of Print RPGs.

 

Thought I would put an AD&D PHB cover here didn't you?

This post was spurred by a couple of things:

1. A post asking why anyone would choose to play AD&D (1E) over another game
2. A post discussing the best ways to get players to try a new game where one of the responses was that a game needed to have merch, like T-shirts, because that helped get players interested.
3. Discussions on "when is an RPG dead?" and "what a successful RPG looks like"

So let's discuss ...

First up - Why would one choose to play an "old" game? Or at least an old edition of a game with newer editions? "Because I like them better" is all the answer anyone needs to give. RPG's are not technology. Newer is not automatically better - which is not even true of technology but that's how people tend to see it. RPGs are art, not science, and don't let anyone tell you different. Are there innovations in game design from time to time? Sure. Does that make a game that uses them "better" than one that does not? No.

Innovative but not a replacement for many

Let's talk about an example: Advantage/Disadvantage as described in 5E D&D. It's a solid mechanic. It simplifies a lot of what used to be separate modifiers, often found in charts, and lets the game play faster. It can be included in new games (and should be in some) and is pretty easy to retrofit to existing games, even non-d20 games like Traveller. But ... some people like granularity. Some people don't mind checking multiple modifiers for range, light levels, target movement, attacker movement, etc. That adds to the fun or immersion or realism for them, and abstracting it into advantage/disadvantage just feels less good. Sometimes this could vary by genre or specific game for the same person. Sometimes speed of play or simplicity is not the ultimate goal but that's where a lot of recent game design trends have been headed. "People don't have time to play games with complex rules" - maybe you don't. Maybe I do. Maybe I want to count every bullet in my Twilight 2000 game and not really worry about it in my Star Wars game.

Also nostalgia should not be discounted. I suspect that for many people the edition of D&D that you first played, or the one that "clicked" for you is what D&D is for you and that person would always be open to giving it another try. I started when AD&D was still coming out and we played it (and the various Basic, B/X, BECMI sets too) for a decade+ and so while clunky in places we know it is eminently playable and it feels like home to some degree. To someone else it may well look clunky, needlessly complex, and just old. That's fine. No one can make you play a game you don't want to play.

As someone who has taught multiple members of the Next Generation to play RPGs I can tell you they have been interested in some old games because they are good, not because of any nostalgia. Moldvay Basic, Runequest, and Warhammer FRP are all old at this point and all feel very different and the younger set liked all of them when they got the chance to play. RQ 1-2-3 in particular is not like any modern RPG and has a whole different feel to it. It's nostalgic for me to run these - it's  just cool and different to them to play them. Heck Blaster started out loving d20 Saga Edition Star Wars and then after playing just a few sessions became a d6 Star Wars Die Hard and refuses to play any other version - and this is a game that published its last supplement the year before he was born.

For the second part let's just combine those other two entries- "merch" and the current state of a game:

Right up front I will say I don't care about either of these things when it comes to RPG's.

Merch? Seriously? Does having a t-shirt for Game X make it a better game? A more interesting game? Does it make playing it more fun? I suspect this is the mark of some of the newer type of player we see that is more interested in tying themselves to a thing than in actually playing a game. I really don't understand this mindset when there are so many other hobbies out there one could join. It's the same with "does it have a YouTube following" or some other social media presence - who cares? Why does it matter? Does any of that make the game better?  How did we survive before these things existed? This kind of stuff is really satisfying something else as it has no bearing on actually running or playing the game.

It's the same for "is a game dead?" or "is the game still in print?" - why does it matter? A good local game store will have a used game section, there are online used game sellers like Noble Knight, even Amazon sells quite a few old games, and eBay is basically the world's attic or garage where you can find the most obscure stuff for pretty reasonable prices most of the time. That doesn't even get into PDF's which are widely available for the more known games, legally and not. So the question can't be a concern about availability.

Definitely on the TBD list

Is it about finding players? It's not on store shelves or it's not widely discussed on the socials so someone thinks finding players might be more difficult? I mean, it might be, but isn't everything outside of 5E a bit challenging now? maybe your players have never heard of Lords of Creation - if you want to run it then it's time to make a pitch*. You really only need 3 players for a fun time with most RPG's, maybe as few as two, so this is not an insurmountable obstacle. 

* You are talking about running it right? Otherwise you're going to have a hard time with any slightly obscure game. 

I'd be happy to run this tomorrow if someone asked

A fair chunk of the games I've run over the last 20 years were out of print, sometimes drastically so, at the time I ran them. The aforementioned d6 Star Wars, RQ2, WFRP 2E, Mechwarrior 3E, Marvel Super Heroes, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, B/X D&D, 4E  D&D ... the publication state of a game means very little in reality. If you have the core book for any RPG I can think of you could run a campaign for years with no outside support if you have interested players. Maybe you need to spark that interest at the beginning but that's often the GM's job, regardless of how current the game is. There's really no reason to not pull out that old game you've been thinking about running and make your pitch - take the grognards home and take the noobs somewhere interesting.

40K Friday: Introducing Some New Players to 40K

 

I mean I've done this before - starting around 2008 - but it has been awhile. Apprentice Boom Gun Brandon has been getting interested in 40K for a while. Not enough to actually read a book on it - that's a real challenge with the younger set now - but enough to keep asking me to play a game. Battletech Terry, longtime veteran of the Succession Wars, has also gotten interested. Invisible Patrick has also gotten interested but was not a part of this game. So, with a pool of interested players and having had a few tryout games in the past year I felt like it was time to get the wheels turning more consistently.

So we did 1000 points per side, Terry playing Eldar, Brandon playing Marines. I had things set up before they arrived and I picked the armies but I gave Terry some options on speed vs. firepower for a few units and Brandon mostly played his own forces with a few reinforcements from mine.

The Eldar - pretty much a sampler force to try them out:

+ FACTION KEYWORD: Xenos - Aeldari

+ DETACHMENT: Warhost

+ TOTAL ARMY POINTS: 1025pts

+

+ WARLORD: Char1: Maugan Ra

+ ENHANCEMENT:

+ NUMBER OF UNITS: 10

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Char1: 1x Maugan Ra (100 pts): Warlord, Maugetar

Char2: 1x Spiritseer (65 pts): Shuriken Pistol, Witch Staff

5x Dark Reapers (90 pts)

• 4x Dark Reaper: 4 with Close combat weapon, Reaper Launcher

• 1x Dark Reaper Exarch: Close combat weapon, Missile Launcher

5x Dire Avengers (80 pts)

• 4x Dire Avenger: 4 with Avenger Shuriken Catapult, Close Combat Weapon

• 1x Dire Avenger Exarch: Close Combat Weapon, Avenger Shuriken Catapult

5x Wraithblades (170 pts): 5 with Ghostaxe and Forceshield

1x Warlock Skyrunners (45 pts): Destructor, Shuriken Pistol, Singing Spear, Twin Shuriken Catapult

3x Windriders (80 pts): 3 with Close Combat Weapon, Scatter Laser

1x Wraithlord (140 pts): Ghostglaive, Wraithbone Fists, 2x Flamer, 2x Starcannon

1x Falcon (130 pts): Pulse Laser, Wraithbone hull, Bright Lance, Shuriken Cannon

1x Wave Serpent (125 pts): Wraithbone Hull, Twin Shuriken Catapult, Twin Bright Lance

 I don't have the Marine list handy but there was a Gravis Captain leading some Aggressors, some Bladeguard, a Ballistus Dreadnought, a Repulsor Executioner ("Boom Gun" needed the biggest gun the marines have of course - he has that nickname for a reason), and some assault intercessors.

Initial deployment

So we had the big marine tank plus the dread facing off against the Falcon and the Wave Serpent at one end of the table. Aggressors and the Captain looking at the Wraithlord in the middle. Bladeguard & half the assault intercessors just looking to secure an objective at the other end. The Marines went first.

Somewhere in Turn 1

Here the Jetbikes + Warlock are already thinning the Aggressors while the tanks are busy hurting each other  

The big fight in Turn 2

In turn 2 the Marines jumped out of the Repulsor and onto the objective but the Wave Serpent moved up on the Eldar turn and dropped out 5 Wraithblades and a Wraithseer who eventually wiped out the Marines completely.

We only managed a few turns as this was the first time in a long time for both of them and this was also before our weekly D&D game so there was a hard time limit. We ended up with a score of 8-5 in favor of the Eldar but the main point of this game was to shake off the rust and also to learn how Secondary Objectives worked since we had been leaving that out thus far. It's very energizing to fire the game up again with new players and certainly engages the painting circuits once again. We had a lot of fun and we have another game coming this weekend - which I will try to document better

Tales of the Valiant Kickstarter for Player's Guide 2

 

Well they have finally gotten around to a new book of major interest. I know monster books are a Kobold Press signature but I was hoping the first add-on to the line would be a character supplement, not a monster book, but at least now that is being corrected.

The preview PDF looks pretty interesting:

• More subclasses - I mean, this was pretty much a given and I would say necessary given the ridiculous number of subclasses in 5E. It looks like we are getting at least 3 new ones per class giving everyone 5 subs per class which should be enough variety to keep multiple campaigns fresh for a long time. Good.
• More Talents - good, they need to expand this area to some degree
• More Boons - this is an area I assumed they would expand in my initial review and I am glad to see it happening.
• Base building - My players are specifically interested in this as they are contemplating building a base in or near Hommlet (yes possibly pushing Rufus and Burne aside) and so this has direct relevance to what they are doing in-game. This is also a potential good outlet for all of the gold coming out of their temple-trashing expeditions so yes, please - bring it on.
•  New Classes: looks like we are getting the Theurge, the Vanguard, and the Witch. I haven't seen much about the Theurge yet but from one of their other 5E magic books:
•  "... the new Theurge class, an Intelligence-based spellcasting class capable of casting both cleric and wizard spells!" and I believe that was the point of the class going back to the 3E Mystic Theurge so sure, OK. Will this mean it gets to pick from both the Arcane and Divine lists? That's a lot of flexibility if so.
• Looks like the Witch is going to be the new second Wyrd caster which is fine - might as well even that out. I don't have a Warlock in my campaign so I don't have much experience with those spells.
• The Vanguard is the most interesting to me - a ToV take on the 4E Warlord, a martial leader/support type character. I had one of these in my 4E campaign and it was a real eye-opener. I've hoped we would get one of these for some newer version of D&D and it looks like we finally might be there. There was a lot of granting another character a free move or a free attack with the 4E version and it looks like that is continuing here. The banner thing also feels a lot like the Pathfinder 1E Cavalier which had a similar ability so this is definitely one I will be watching.

So yes I'll be backing this one and hoping for an early draft of the thing so we can use it in the campaign this year. We might finish out the Temple with just the existing material then if we move onto a new adventure open it up to the new stuff. Not sure and it doesn't really matter until it's available in some form anyway but we will be crossing our fingers here.

Valiant Swords of Greyhawk - Session 8: The Moathouse Finale

 

Yeah that's a pretty terrible picture of him

Back in Hommlet our heroes rest and prepare for another expedition into the dungeon beneath the Moathouse. Our Heroes:

Braeden (Human Ranger)played by Battletech Terry

Sir Kentor (Human Paladin) played by Paladin Steve

Sir Lantor (Human Fighter) played by Boom Gun Brandon

Xyzzifax (Human* Wizard) played by Blaster

Samson (Halfling Mechanist) played by Shootist Will

Jaric (Human Cleric) played by Variable David

 All are level 2 or 3 at this point. Grognard Mike is out this week so Malice is hanging out in Hommlet and Inigo the Rogue is also absent - as he often is)

The much more entertaining players account, written in-character again "As told by the Illustrious and Mighty Xyzzifax" is here.

The Ranger and Cleric head to the Temple of St. Cuthbert seeking holy water and information. They acquire the holy water and then meet with Terjon to discuss the symbol they found on the guards/bandits/armed hostile humans in the last expedition (The Flaming Eye). Terjon knows a little about about the organization of the temple and explains that while theoretically unified under "Elemental Evil" the four major factions compete with and seek dominance over one another. He also mentions that they have always sought to control the lands around the temple as well and so are probably building an army. 

The rest of the party makes some minor purchases and checks in on friends. Samson constructs a crossbow that can be attached to Lantor's arm & armor giving him an easier ranged option when called for as having to swap between a crossbow and his greatsword has been tricky for him. Samson is happy to help and Lantor is happy to have it.

After two days in Hommlet the team returns to the Moathouse and heads down to check out some of the areas they did thoroughly explore before. Spotting a pair of bugbears via the Miraculous Recon Owl they start a pretty serious discussion about how to proceed as the bugbear fight (see Session 6) was a tough one and they do not want to end up fighting the human cultists from last session and the bugbears at the same time, possibly being cut off by one or the other. They end up deciding to have the mage wizard-lock the door to the cult area first and then go back and deal with the bugbears. It's a solid plan - shame it didn't work.

Most of the party hangs back while the Braeden and Xyzzifax sneak up towards the cultist door and I will transition here to the first-person account:

The recently promoted Minion #3, Braeden, accompanies Xyzzifax, to provide support. The Ranger loses all recently gained respect, and falls in the rankings to minion #4, when he fails to spot a noise trap, a tripwire is triggered, causing a cascade of scrap metal to fall, with the clanging and crashing echoing through the dungeon. The pair’s presence is now surely known.

Xyzzifax ceases all pretense of stealth, spreading his wings, and launching himself into the air to cover the remaining distance to the door. Upon reaching it, he immediately begins to chant, casting his arcane lock spell on the door, betting that he can resolve his spell before the guards open the door. 36 seconds later, 4 cult guards fling the door open, brandishing crossbows! All four loose bolts at the chanting wizard, yet arcane shields spring forth, and all four bolts fall harmlessly to the ground. Combat ensues!

Yes, the all-about-perception-and-sneaking ranger blows a check and snags a tripwire and blows the entire plan to hell! This turns into a pretty serious fight with eight guards including another leader type who does not go gently.

After this the mage tries to wizard lock the door again and is again interrupted by more guards who kick the door open and start another fight! They push these guards back, heal up, and decide to push on into the cult lair. 

Passing through the second door (now safely wizard locked as well) they encounter a third door and pick the lock, open the door, and immediately encounter the cult guards and leaders waiting for them with spells and weapons readied. The cult leader orders his men to kill the party and the battle is on. 

Kentor, Lantor, and Samson all take a good beating - which is becoming pretty normal. Samson drops at least once and Lantor gets Held when Lareth the cult leader manages to get a spell off and then later gets Blinded. Xyz invokes a flaming sphere which is also becoming a pretty standard tactic for him. Eventually Lareth is the last bad guy standing and finally drops as the entire party lays into him. The party gets a ton of loot from this including +1 plate, a Staff of Striking, and a Ring of Free Action, all of which will prove to be a thorn in my side for the future. 

Definitely better with the helmet on

DM Notes:

This was the big finale for the Moathouse and ended with an appropriately spectacular battle that they kind of stumbled into. That last fight went about 5 rounds and they fought Lareth, 2 guard captains, 11 guards, and a Cult Fanatic. With spells going off on both sides, some vicious melee engagements, and at least one PC dropping, it felt like a pretty dangerous fight. Certain trends are emerging:

• The Ranger is the sneaking specialist who mostly fights at range with his bow, jumping into melee when one of the fighters drops. He's very much a pragmatist and rolls with whatever comes the party's way.
• The Cleric started off as the healing guy but has moved into more of a combat role as the game has gone on. He usually opens with Spiritual Weapon and goes from there. Now he has the Staff of Striking and will quickly develop into the Kill-Stealing Cleric as he wades into battle and clocks somebody already wounded with a triple-charge staff strike and blows them into vapor. Yes, it is annoying. Yes, the player is eating it up.
• The Fighter is not really a glass cannon but he does tend to be the one who drops in most fights. He's armored up but he uses a two-hander so he cannot use a shield and that means of the melee types he has the lowest AC. He also is the youngest player and tends to charge into a fight in round one regardless of what the rest of the party is doing so he ends up surrounded and gets pounded on first and most. As the campaign goes on this continues but he does work on upping his armor class so it gets a little better.
• The Paladin is the experienced melee combatant who is taking all of the "tanking" type abilities that he can. Most of these punish an enemy for not striking him, as in giving them a negative modifier or giving him a free attack. He is very conscious of his AC and wants it to be the highest in the party - and it usually is, barring some spell going off. Also Smite is a devastating thing and he is very good at choosing his moment of glory to use it. He's still being played as Lawful Good even with alignment not being in the game and his loyalty to the party is unquestionable.
• The Mechanist is an interesting new type of character. He doesn't cast spells but he can buff his party (including himself) with various gadgets and enhancements to equipment. Here the paladin is carrying a hammer enhanced with a +1 and "returning" to give him a good opening ranged attack. The fighter now has a light crossbow built into his armor keeping his hands free for melee.
  
  Samson is also good as a skill monkey focused in on detecting traps and picking locks - any gadget-related thing he is unstoppable. Also, he can basically "Identify" magic items by touch. This is also pretty annoying at first as a DM because that whole sub-section of the game of figuring out what an item can do has been part of the fun for a long time and this just eliminates that entirely. It does get to be fun later when they find a cursed item though so it's not entirely one-sided. There have also been many jokes about "hey, bring your magic hands over here ..."
• Xyzzifax - the wizard has been the real revelation here. He speaks in an immediately identifiable voice, he has questionable morals, some fuzziness on party loyalty, and often refers to the other characters as "minions", sometimes ranking them on the fly. Game-wise he is powergaming the shit out of ToV's wizard options and showing me just how ridiculous they can be at maximum effort which I suppose I deserve since he is my kid. The familiar rules are very lenient and he has used them ruthlessly to make mapping the dungeon and recon in general a very low-effort undertaking for them. He knows his spells like a pro and knows when to cast them, when to use a wand, and when to just go with Ye Olde Firebolt. He is also not averse to jumping into a fight up close when needed, made easier with his built-in wings (He's a ToV "Beastkin" lineage, which gives a fair number of options to cover a variety of animals, one of which is wings & flight = to your walking speed). That said, he is also quick to jump out of combat when hit with anything significant as he is fairly concerned with his own skin.

It's been a lot of fun up to this point and it only gets better.

40K Friday - Monday Edition: Death Guard

 

The Death Guard codex coming out and all the hype around DG being good again did get my attention and inspired me to break out the Plague Marine kits and get those built. I'm also working on finishing or fixing some of the unfinished & broken vehicles etc. to be able to get them on the table in a presentable fashion as opposed to the "well if this helbrute had an arm it would be an autocannon" kind of approach. Since they are "good again" my poor Defiler is even being reassembled after losing legs and guns etc. in various drops and moves and I'm pretty happy about that. I may even manage to get the various terminators all built (finally!) and usable as well. 

My vision for this army is built around 2 squads of Plague Marines in Rhinos moving up the board built for up-close melee with melta and flamers as the main ranged weapons. I'll have a 3rd and maybe a 4th squad built more for shooting to either hold the backfield or move up as a second wave. A max squad of Deathshroud Terminators with a Lord of Contagion will be one of the heavy-hitters, deep striking in. Blightlords will be utility players, likely in 5-man squads. 

I have the aforementioned reassembled Defiler, various Helbrutes, Daemon Princes, Blight Drones (also being built and painted), Blight Haulers, and Plagueburst Crawlers to add in as needed. I don't know that it will fit The Meta but it should look like a Death Guard army at least and I'm looking forward to playing it. 

Also of note - we actually played a game of 40K this weekend  which has inspired me to make some more progress. I'll post up some pictures in Friday's entry.

Valiant Swords of Greyhawk - Session 7: Ghouls, Guards, and a Giant Crayfish

 

Back at the remote camp near the Moathouse our heroes prepare for another expedition into the dungeon beneath ...

Braeden (Human Ranger)played by Battletech Terry

Sir Kentor (Human Paladin) played by Paladin Steve

Sir Lantor (Human Fighter) played by Boom Gun Brandon

Xyzzifax (Human* Wizard) played by Blaster

Samson (Halfling Mechanist) played by Shootist Will

Jaric (Human Cleric) played by Variable David

 All are level 2 or 3 at this point. Grognard Mike is out this week so Malice is back in Hommlet and Inigo the Rogue is also absent - as he often is)

The much more entertaining players account, written in-character "As told by the Illustrious and Mighty Xyzzifax" is here.

The goal this time is to explore the passage downward hidden in a column that they had discovered previously. The portcullis is still down so they work around that and make their way to the prison area where they had fought the zombies and start inspecting the passage. 

DM aside: Once again we have the totally engaging exercise of the wizard's familiar scoping out the various rooms and tunnels like a recon drone. I have been a fan of wizards having familiars since I started playing way back but this version is pretty ridiculous and has become an annoying thorn in my side with it's unlimited range-flying-stealthy-darkvisioned self. Yes the owl is the power choice here and of course my son jumped on that right away and has been abusing it ever since. I am seriously considering locking it back down to the earlier 5E limit of 100' or whatever it was. The running joke is that Bubo's nemesis is the closed door which is the only thing that stops his out-of-control scouting. Coincidentally just about every door in the dungeon is closed and some new doors might have been added recently ...

Once they determine it is safe to proceed the group climbs down the hidden rungs and figures out they are in a crypt area as demonstrated by the large number of burial niches and the smaller but still concerning number of ghouls. The Cleric turns most of them and they run a pretty good distance away while the party handles the one that sticks around. As the turn wears off, the other ghouls come back but the party is ready and has a chance to hit them at range on the way in, thinning the numbers and in the end only the Fighter gets bit and paralyzed.* The area is searched, minor loot is found, and the party continues on ...

Next, to quote from the players log ...

Xyzzifax and his minions venture forth after some scouting by the faithful minion Bubo, and advance down a set of stairs into a square room with a pool of water in its center. To investigate the pool, minion Samson creates a 10 foot pole, and gives it to the only one in the party stupid enough to do it, Minion Lantor, who sticks it into the pool. Before he can react, minion Lantor is seized by a giant claw which locks onto his torso and clamps down, locking him in place!**

...and the battle against the giant crayfish is on!

For one (1) round!

Even at only (only?) six members, this group is hell on single large targets. Everyone in the room opens up on the thing and the Fighter (even grappled) and Paladin just tear it up using their special abilities. I thought it would be tough enough to go a few rounds with them - nope! So the pool is searched and looted of some scrolls and jewelry and the party continues onward.

Coming down the long diagonal passage they encounter locked doors - which they unlock - and then armed guards - who proceed to feather the party with crossbow bolts! The fight starts with just 3 guards and then escalates as 3 more plus a leader type charge around the corner  to join the battle. This proves to be a bigger challenge than the crustacean as at the end we have the Paladin, the Fighter, and the Ranger all in melee with the guard captain who finally succumbs but not before dealing out some punishment of his own as his minions fall around him. 

The team quickly checks the fallen then heads out and back to Hommlet to recover and recount their adventures.

They are still not completely sure what's going on with the Moathouse but they are almost done with it. signs of Bandits up top then Bugbears, Gnolls, and organized humans in the dungeon have them discussing who or what is running this place which is a good thing to have. Mechanically it's working well with PC's feeling like they are in danger but not dropping dead like some of our older edition attempts at this one. My group works together at this point like a machine most of the time and there is a ton of banter along with teasing Lantor's player about dropping every fight. They are having a lot of fun so now I have to maintain it.

For a better fight with the Crayfish from back in 4E here's a link to one of the old session reports.  Where we had a different mix of players and characters.

*This will be a recurring theme as Lantor (the Fighter) is constantly in melee, uses a greatsword, and so has a lower AC than some and is in a position to get multi-attacked almost every fight.

** See?