Valiant Swords of Greyhawk: Session 26 - Bandits, Minotaurs, and (more) Fireballs

 

"According to Mighty and Illustrious Xyzzifax"

Our Heroes:

• The Mighty Xyzzifax played by Alex
• Minion Samson played by William
• Minion Jaric played by Dave
• Minion Lantor played by Brandon
• Minion Sir Kentor (Human Paladin) played by Paladin Steve
• Minion Braedon played by Terry

 The party is level 5-6 at this point. The Bard was out for this session. We begin on Day 71 of the campaign.

Continuing in their quest to explore the second level of the temple, the group proceeds down a hallway branching off from the main hall.

After scouting with Bubo, they proceed to the first, door which opens into a room with a large cistern.

Activating his arcane sense, Xyzzifax senses a magic item deep in the pool, casts mage hand, and pulls up a +2 shield emblazoned with a symbol of the Knights of Veluna. As the resident knight, Minion Kentor takes possession of it, passing his current +2 shield to minion Jaric.

Bubo is sent on another scouting mission, as 4 hallways branch off in various directions.

Moving to the next door, it opens to a room filled with mismatched furniture and various junk. Xyzzifax senses nothing magical, the paladin moves aside a drape on the south walls, revealing a door. Minions Lantor and Jaric promptly smash the door open, revealing a small L shaped side chamber with a curtain and another door. A stool sits in this room, along with some scattered supplies, and a barrel of crossbow bolts.

Through the next room lies a crooked corridor. It is lined with 10 bunks. A single sconce lights the room.

A beam with sharp spikes and some sort of trap is rigged up, with a not so secret door in the western wall. Minion Samson disables the trap, while the paladin and cleric light the remaining sconces. Minion Jaric notices that one of the sconces seems to move, after activating it, another secret door opens into the room in which the party eradicated bandits the day before. After searching the bunks, the party scrounges up some gold.

Samson opens the not so secret door, which opens into a large reception hall revealing a horde of bandits which loose a volley of crossbows at little Samson! 12 bolts fly, 11 plink off of Samson’s mighty magical armor, with one finding a home in a small chink. Samson returns fire with his returning javelins, slaying the bandit who landed his shot. Lantor fires his crossbow, wounding one.

The all powerful Xyzzifax fireballs the room and kills all 12 of them. This is the fate of all those who oppose him.

It helps if you imagine him screaming this - as he throws the fireball - in a voice very much like The Monarch from Venture Brothers. 

In the room is a single door, and a passageway to the North, which Braedon investigates and finds that it contains a spiral staircase going upward. The door connects to a previously explored long passageway which appears to ring around this level of the dungeon.

The party proceeds to hallway #3 with the room with wood and sacks. A large oaken door secured by a well oiled padlock stands in the eastern wall. Samson picks it open easily, and inside finds what appears to be a stash of armor and supplies taken from intruders. Several sets of armor, flasks of holy water, and a valuable mirror are commandeered by the adventures. Satisfied, the party proceeds to hallway #4.

While exploring, Bubo is intercepted, and destroyed. Moving down a diagonal hallway to investigate, the party moves into a room occupied by 4 Minotaurs!

Braeden moves forward, firing a pair of arrows, Lantor moves forward and sets to receive a charge, of which he does, as two of the Minotaurs charge, baring their horns and swinging greataxes. Slowly but surely, the minotarus are no match for the party, and fall to the mighty Xyzzifax and his minions,

Amongst the wreckage from the fight, several shattered jars and junk litter the floor. The room has scattered bunches of supplies and a stash of hand weapons in an alcove. The group takes a 10 minute break to bind wounds, replenish arrows, and remove the Minotaur horns to turn them into signal horns.

The next room discovered appears to be a room filled with refuse and other garbage. Xyzzifax Senses nothing magical, and the party moves on down the hall.

Minion Samson unlocks the next door, which opens into a small room containing 4 bugbears. Braedon fells one instantly with two well placed arrows, Lantor cleaves through another with his great sword. The remaining two gang up on Lantor, wielding spiked clubs, one misses to which Lantor ripostes and slays. The remaining bugbear flees in terror as his 3 allies have been felled in mere seconds. The door through which the lone bugbear retreats contains 13 more bugbears.

After a fireball from the great and powerful Xyzzifax, most of the bugbears are dead or close, and are quickly dispatched by the minions.

The group retreats back to the tower for another night of rest.

DM Notes:

They are roaming all over the northern half of level 2 this session and I am trying to keep it interesting. Room 234 by the book contains one su-monster. This is one of those encounters I mentioned previously where it's not particularly interesting, doesn't tie in to or set up anything else,  and all it's going to do is activate the combat sequence for one round and expend almost no resources. So I changed it to a group of minotaurs which have some interesting abilities for the DM at least and actually make the combat potentially consequential for the party. 

As far as the bandits (240's) with all of the fireballs going off, plus battle cries and general armed smashing of things they figure out what's coming and retreat into the one room. It doesn't help them but it is understandable. This party is absolutely not stealthy in any way. They don't sneak, they don't use invisibility - the one thing they do is use the wizard's familiar to scout out everything in advance until it hits a door or gets blasted by somethings that's alert enough to see it coming and has an attack that can hurt it. Occasionally this frontal assault approach hurts them but it works pretty well most of the time.

40K Friday: Terrain!

 

So it's that time of year where I start to think about what I -did- get done this year and probably think even more about what I -did not- get done this year when it comes to miniatures. The pile does not feel much smaller, despite a year of work, but that may be because more frequent bursts of consistency in 2025 helped remind me just how much there is on the shelves and the workbench and in the closet. "Yes, you've finished that squad but what about that entire army you picked up last year which his still sitting in its boxes? 

One thing I did to combat this was to try taking a purchasing sabbatical this year. After January I have not bought a single miniature for myself. That is probably the first time I can say that in at least 40 years. I do aim to complete the full year - mainly so I can say I did it. It's not a money decision it's a "let's see if we can work down the backlog/pile of shame to any significant degree" decision. Right now I'm not sure it made a real dent but I am knocking out some things that have been lurking around here for a long time.

Over Thanksgiving I decided to finally build some of the terrain that's been gathering dust. The main objects of attention were the 3 Imperial Bastions and the Skyshield Landing Pad I bought a couple of years back when they had a "made to order" run for them. They have been out of production for years but I've always loved these things, the pad in particular, so I went ahead and grabbed them ... and promptly let them sit for ... a year and a half. That's not too bad actually. It took them over 6 months to fulfill the order - which is apparently normal for them - so it feels like it's been a much longer time from "hey I should finally get one of those" to actually cutting things off of a sprue. 

I ordered 3 of the bastions  because I already had one that I had picked up somewhere built and painted. I liked the idea of having 4 to spread out on the table. I also liked the idea of doing the single-story and double-story options I had seen others make with this kit and that's what I have done:

So now I have the funky short one I think of as a command post, and then a pair of the normal sized ones, and then one bigger type. Should be enough flexibility there to keep things interesting.

The landing pad is still in sub-assemblies because I want to paint it that way, at least for the base coat, and the weather has not been cooperative these last two weeks. 

These are the big accomplishments for November alongside putting together some Dark Elves for The Old World. More about armies etc. next week and once I get these somewhere close to "finished" I will put up some pictures. 

Valiant Swords of Greyhawk: Session 25 - fireball Fireball FIREBALL

 

"According to Mighty and Illustrious Xyzzifax"

Our Heroes:

• The Mighty Xyzzifax played by Alex
• Minion Samson played by William
• Minion Jaric played by Dave
• Minion Lantor played by Brandon
• Minion Sir Kentor (Human Paladin) played by Paladin Steve
• Minion Braedon played by Terry

 The party is level 5-6 at this point. The Bard was out for this session. We begin on Day 70 of the campaign after a trip to Hommlet at the end of the last session and then an uneventful trip back to the Temple at the beginning of this session.

The party awakens in the tower, ready to venture into the temple again, only to find that Malice has once again contracted an illness from the Paladin’s chili. At this point Xyzzifax is convinced that she is either not very bright (despite her magical prowess) or simply a glutton for punishment. Braedon tells the story of his brother being eaten by a werewolf in gruesome detail. Again.

Under Xyzzifax’s masterful tutelage, the group elects to return to the air temple room from which they retreated from the day prior.

Upon opening the door, the group sees that the room is now occupied by 4 trolls.

The trolls rush forward, with two of them charging up the stairs, raking with their claws, at the fighter and paladin. After repeated arrows from Braedon, Magical javelins from Samson, multiple sword blows from Kentor and Lantor, sacred flames from Jaric, and two fireballs from Xyzzifax, the 4 trolls are but smoldering remains.

Jaric says a prayer of healing while Bubo is sent up the vertical passage previously taken by the fleeing Vrock. The passage is long. Very long. hundreds of feet long. It eventually opens up into a large chamber filled with columns covered in what can only be described as elementally evil markings. The now familiar flaming eye symbol adorns one wall. Several passageways lead off from this room.

Having seen that the passageway itself is very long an perilous to climb up (for the minions incapable of flight) The adventurers decide to continue exploring the floor that they currently occupy. As they move out of the air temple into one of the many hallways leading off, the first one evidently ends quickly in a dead end room. The room appears to have been some form of living quarters, with smelly bedrolls and rotting meat littering the area. Likely some of the bugbears the group has slain made their beds here.

Continuing in a clockwise motion, the party continues down the next nearest hallway. This short hallway ends in a locked door, with a peephole. After unlocking the door, minion Samson activates his magical goggles, seeing 5 humanoids standing in the room: evidently they have seen the group coming. Armed with this knowledge, Future Lord Xyzzifax engages his unmatched tactical wit to instruct the group that he will launch a fireball into the room the very moment that minion Samson opens the door. On the count of 3, the group does just this, instantly incinerating 4 of the humans inside. The one remaining bandit flees down an adjoining hallway, while Xyzzifax and his minions pursue.

As minion Jaric is the first to pursue, he bursts into a room full of adversaries standing around in various states of readiness. In this room are 6 bandits, 2 captains, a rogue of some sort. The bandits are incinerated by the 4th fireball of the day from Xyzzifax, leaving just the captains and the rogue, who stabs Lantor as he enters the room, and promptly loses his head for it. Braedon kills one of the captains with a well placed arrow shot. Kentor tells the remaining captain that he is very guilty and should be ashamed of himself.

The crew is always happy to see enemies in "fireball formation" ...

In response to this, the last remaining captain steals Kentor’s returning hammer, and slashes at him with a sword and a dagger. A door next to the rogue’s corpse opens, and a human in ornate black leather armor steps out next to Lantor, wielding a glowing sword. He swings it at Lantor, who easily dodges, and counterattacks, slicing into the man with his greatsword. Jaric moves in and launches a guiding bolt at the newly emerged foe.

Xyzzifax engages his masterfull intellect to consider hundreds of possible courses of action, and then responds to this new foe with yet another fireball from his wand, felling the remaining captain.

Now missing his hair, the ornately armored man is put down with an arrow through the eye by minion Braedon

(Behold Xyzzifax’s masterfull artistic rendition)

(and yes, I had passed out a paper copy of the illustration and yes he did "update" it to this)

DM Notes

At this point in the campaign I am really feeling the differences from the old school AD&D that this adventure was designed for. I like to think that D&D is still D&D for the most part, but there have been so many changes in design assumptions over the years that at times it jumps out pretty dramatically.  In this session it was the fireballs - AD&D wands had roughly 20-80 charges when found but were finite - by the book there was no way to recharge them. This meant that you felt every one of those things being used. Even if you had 50+ charges every magic-user I knew (including me) tended to hoard them because each charge was irreplaceable and you couldn't just go buy -or craft- a new one when you ran out. 

I have more to say on this but I will save it for a separate post.

At this point the campaign is going well and everyone is having a good time exploring their abilities as they explore the Temple.

Valiant Swords of Greyhawk: Session 24 - The Missing Episode or "Wiping Out the Air Temple"

 

Somehow both of my main player-chroniclers missed out on writing this one up despite at least one of them being there so we will be going solely off of the DM's notes for this one and it will not be a first-person narrative.

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
• The Mighty Xyzzifax (Human-ish Wizard) played by Blaster
• Samson (Halfling Mechanist) played by Shootist Will
• Jaric (Human Cleric) played by Variable David

 The party is level 5-6 at this point. This account is written by the DM. The Bard was ill and stayed in the tower for this run. We begin on Day 64 of the campaign.

The party returns to the set of rooms where they fought the bugbears and ogres the day before. Nothing new is waiting for them - as happens sometimes in this place - but some of the bodies are missing. Xyz decides to animate some of the bugbear bodies and this prompts a discussion as Kentor the Paladin is not totally comfortable with that. The wizard gets an assist from the bard in making the case that animating deceased denizens of the Temple of Elemental Evil and using them to fight other denizens of the Temple of Elemental Evil is a) prudent use of resources and b) poetic justice and the paladin decides he's OK with it for now as long as they are used in the temple and are not permanent additions to the party. With this settled they now begin poking around the various corridors, doors, and secret doors in this area.

DM note: I love it when a party generates their own internal moral debates - this totally sprang up on it's own and some of us have been playing together a very long time so I knew Paladin Steve was going to raise an objection. That said Tales of the Valiant doesn't use alignment so there is more wiggle room here, and it also allows paladins to follow a cause or something similar and not a particular god so there was no god-specific proscription against undead in play here. I believe one of the opening lines of the discussion was "I'm trying to kill them and you're bringing them back!" and then things developed from there. It all worked out though and Xyzzifax would have a small band of undead minions lurking around the back of the party for pretty much the rest of the campaign.

Soon enough they backtrack to the Water Temple and open the great brass doors to the east.

Let's talk about the layout here with a map:

• The 220+ rooms in the upper left are where they fought the ogres and bugbears etc. last session
• 213 is the Water Temple they attacked in Session 18
• 211 is the "Corridor of the Elements" where various magical elemental effects kick in as one moves through the hall
• 210 is the Air Temple

Yes, many of the temples are packed right on top of each other on the second level of the dungeon. Yes, I would have spread them out more, possibly one per level, and though that might seem a little obvious now I'm not sure it would have been cliched back in the early 80's when this was coming together.

Back to Our Heroes ...

They move from the Water Temple into the large corridor and start getting buffeted about by various elemental blasts as the walls glow in different colors and strange smells fill the air. Being experienced and resourceful adventurers though they quickly make their way down it and open the doors to the north, entering a large octagonal chamber. Here's the flavor text straight from the adventure:

Illumination in this large, octagonal room seems to come from everywhere-ceiling, walls, floor-a milky radiance which gives a dim and eerie glow to the whole scene. The floor of this place is 15 feet below the level of the normal dungeon floor, with short, broad stairways leading to it. The ceiling vaults to a height of 40 feet. The walls and floor of the room are of polished, gray stone with whorls of glittering mica; the floor is partially obscured by swirling, eddying mist that glows softly.

In the center of the area is a great, pierced square of bronze, 10feet on a side. A dome is pierced in the ceiling, a circular shaft some 20 feet wide opening directly over a pit of the same diameter and 5-foot depth. Immediately to the south of the pit is a block of alabaster measuring 2 feet wide, 4 feet high, and 8 feet long. Atop it are two knives and a bowl of finest crystal. Ranking the pit are two crystal braziers, suspended from tripods by chains of silver. Each emits a faint, sickly-sweet, perfumed smoke.

The party starts investigating the room - Bubo flies around, Samson uses his various vision options to look for invisible or hidden things, and the Wizard sends a zombie off to examine the crystal implements. Eventually they cannot resist and have the thing pick up the items and that's when it gets interesting as 3 Vrocks fly down out of the ceiling shaft and engage.

A furious fight develops as while much of the party is clustered up in the doorway and the stairs some of them have spread out and the speed of the flying demons lets them engage as they please. The clustered characters get multiple face-fulls of spores and have to deal with that for a round or two as well as some horrific screeches  Xyz shows just how expendable the zombies are as he fireballs a pair of demons even though his minion is caught in the blast as well. During the fight one of the creatures is turned and flees up the shaft. The team focuses and brings down the other two then waits out the return of the third one and hits it hard when it does, slaying it outright.

More thoroughly exploring the area after the fight they discover, among other things, a censer of controlling air elementals which ended up going to Samson which made him very happy. .

Having suffered various batterings and blastings the group decides to head back to the tower to pick up Malice and then head to Hommlet for some R&R

DM Notes

Vrocks are fun. They are reasonably tough, they can fly, they can make 3 attacks a round, and they have some other tricks:

This is not how the encounter was originally set up but I am well-into modifying things in this temple at this point as my party is capable of blowing through a lot. So I dropped the single drelb that waits in one of the side rooms which is no threat at all to my group and amped up the Vrock encounter by adding a third one and having them summoned if any of the implements are disturbed by someone not wearing a symbol of the air temple. 

There is a fair amount of this in the temple with a single not terribly strong creature (in modern terms, not necessarily AD&D terms) is lurking somewhere by itself and versus a 6 or 7 person party all it's going to do is trigger a one to two round combat during which the party is in no danger at all. The Drelb in this case is a single CR4 guardian monster and I have six 5th or 6th level characters walking into that room. You can't negotiate with it and its one attack per round is not going to cause significant harm to anyone. 

Some of this is just the modern game - hit point bloat, roll to save every round when hit with an ongoing condition (like paralysis) or damage (like poison) - so that the party doesn't even have to expend a spell or a potion to undo something. In my opinion it's better to avoid these random "nothing" combats and ensure the ones that do happen are more dangerous, meaningful, or can lead to something interesting like taking someone prisoner or negotiating a surrender. 

Anyway there are some thoughts from the DM side of the campaign - next time back to the player perspective. 

Valiant Swords of Greyhawk: Session 23 - The Battle of Air and Ogres ... and Bugbears

 

 Our Heroes:

• Sir Kentor (Human Paladin) played by Paladin Steve
• Sir Lantor (Human Fighter) played by Boom Gun Brandon
• The Mighty Xyzzifax (Human-ish Wizard) played by Blaster
• Samson (Halfling Mechanist) played by Shootist Will
• Jaric (Human Cleric) played by Variable David
• Malice (Human Bard) played by Grognard Mike

 The party is level 5 at this point. This account is mainly written by Malice. The Ranger was out for this session. We begin on Day 63 of the campaign.

We make our way back to the water temple, after a meal of Sir Kentor’s chili, which is enjoyed by Malice and Jaric, and Sir Lantor’s stories – Malice notes to herself that she’s come to recognize most of his tragic tales – brace the spirits of Samson and Xyzzifax. Then, we proceed through the single door into the unexplored region of the dungeon. And, it is just a small room meant for water temple functionaries. It smells rank in here, and something appears to have been sleeping here for some time, though its now gone. There is a small keg of wine, and a large barrel of water, and a quartet of green robes. We give the room a quick once over, then take a door to the left.

It leads to a short passage, and we continue, not taking particular care to be stealthy, instead paying more attention to our defense. It leads to a square room with heaps of old carpeting that look like they have been piled into crude beds. Though there is another side doorway to our right, we instead push forward, possibly towards the edge of this level of the temple. Or perhaps not – it leads to a hallway that goes to our left and our right. There is a hallway that dead ends into a wall – the architecture that Malice refers to as “the hall with the obvious secret door.” We send Bubo to scout off down the hallway – there is a whole lot of hallway, it is easily hundreds of feet of hallway that wraps around the water temple, and there is a single door off to a side, eventually is a door behind which he hears clanking chains and growling noise.

We take the secret door, Once again, there is a lot of hallway. Maybe we have reached the edge of the temple after all, and there is a loop around it. There is a door nearby, that leads to a rectangular room. There are a group of bestial humanoids, speaking what we assume to be goblin – Malice is certain that it isn’t orkish. The room is full of them, half wearing the green robes, the other half wearing gray robes.

Jaric is the first to charge into the room, spiritual weapon springing into being as he slams into the bugbear. But, against the bugbear leader in green, Jaric is the worse for the wear – the exchange leaves our war cleric bloodied. Malice calls out commands, her words laced with magic, and the knights push into the room as Jaric retreats. Samson is next to join the fray, punching with his magical gauntlets. Sir Kentor is the next in, concentrating on the bugbear that seems to be leading group on gray. And then, Xyzzifax blasts the room with a fireball from the wand. Though none of the creatures fall, many of them are looking in significantly worse shape. Then, finally Sir Lantor barrels into the room, and the Gray Leader is slain! The troop of bugbears engage with spiked clubs and thrown javelin. Only Sir Lantor is wounded, though, and he’s stunned by the exchange.

The green leader keeps the heat coming onto Sir Lantor, who is slammed down onto the ground. Sir Kentor, Malice, and Samson all pile blade, firebolt, and fists clad in magical gauntlets into the leader in green, who is showing the effects of so many hits. Jaric's wounds close, and he is looking no where near so bad. One of the great things about having a wand of fireballs is that Xyzzifax can keep using it. After this second explosion, two bugbears are dead, and the rest are all terribly wounded. Instead of fleeing, the bugbears attack in a rage. It is only because Sir Lantor is off of his feet that any of them hit at all, and Sir Kentor’s defensive prowess allows him to block every blow.

Once they found the wand, given the way fireball wands work in 5E and onward, there was no lack of fireball usage in this campaign. 

The Bugbear leader in green, still in his cold, deep rage, manages to slam with his shield powerfully enough that Sir Kentor’s arm is bruised. Malice utters the dark words to call a firebolt to kill this bugbear sergeant of the water temple. And the battle turns, Samson gruesomely kills another bugbear with his gauntleted fist. Sir Kentor cuts another down, then sprints across the room to the ones that had been throwing javelins. Xyzzifax launches a firebolt as Sir Lantor climbs to his feet. Swinging his mightly blade, he slays the last of the bugbears that were in melee, and then drags himself across the room, and cleaves another in twain. The bugbears, snarling, and losing control, stay in the fight – and in their rage they manage to hit Sir Lantor again. Then, Jaric’s spiritual hammer hits again and again, clubbing one of the last bugbears into a bloody mess, and then it springs to the other one, crushing its skull as well.

We quickly check the bodies of the bugbear leaders, Malice and Samson finding a total of 20 gp from them, as Xyzzifax orders the skeletons to grab a javelin. Jaric and Sir Kentor, quickly tend to Sir Lantor’s wounds, and then we retreat to the Water Temple, with its doors that we’ve arcane locked. That is secure enough that we’re willing to give Sir Lantor proper time to bind and bandage his wounds. While we’re taking this time, we don’t hear anything, but there is some distance between us and where the bugbear fight took place. We discuss which way we should go, and return in the direction of the bugbear fight, taking a door that we’d passed by before. It opens to a room that is unoccupied. There are pair of beds and chests, and a trio of barrels. Samson quickly gets them open, and we find 419 copper, 282 silver, 23 electrum, 133 gold, and 4 platinum within. And, a candlestick and rusty saw that we leave behind with the apparel. The clothing is large enough to fit ogres.

We push back to the room where had the bugbear fight, with Xyzzifax leaving Bubo to watch the long hallway. We loot the fallen bugbears, so the skeletons are now set with javelins. We manage to pull 35 gold from the bodies of the bugbears. But, there is nothing else of value in the room, we continue – revealing a hallway with a doorway to our right. We form up on it, and burst in… only to reveal a pair of ogres. We probably found the owners of the chests we rifled through. And, Jaric hears tearing down the hallway, from around a curve, what he thinks sounds like the sound of tornados.

Xyzzifax flies over Sir Kentor and Sir Lantor, and casts slow on the pair of ogres, and has his skeletons form up to prepare for what we expect to be incoming air elementals. And then the expected elemental tears around the corner, and blasts a skeleton to bone shards. Malice steps into the room just long enough to hit the ogre that was still moving at normal speeds with the wand of binding, and then she retreats to the hall. Jaric moves in behind her, and with a pair of mighty blows with the staff of striking causes the ogre to have his guts completely blown back against the far wall. Sir Kentor charges the air elemental, to keep it from closing on the Valiant Swords. As expected, Verminax finds its target. The elemental crackles lightning back at him, and backs away down the hallway. Another air elemental bursts into the room with the ogre. It flings debris at incredible speeds at Sir Lantor, a broken sword jabbing into him and drawing blood. Samson makes use of a magic spear that darts into that elemental, and tears at it by rotating the opposite direction. The ogre, wounded, lumbers out of the room. Sir Lantor steps up to the air elemental that so grievously struck him, and is a beast of a man. With a series of slashes that shows off the mastery of the great swords that he has developed over the time battling the forces of the temple, he completely destroys that second air elemental.

Xyzzifax gives chase to the ogre, and throws a fireball into the room he is in, in case there are even more attackers waiting. And, he has the skeletons join him, and throwing javelins at the ogre as well. The air elemental in the hall charges forward, and engulfs Sir Kentor, but he braces himself, and his enchanted armor and shield hold fast – he is undamaged by the assault! Then, an armored figure comes out of a secret door in the hallway, likely from the room where the ogre had retreated. The armored figure points at Sir Kentor, and says in the Common Tongue, says, “You, Freeze.” and utters a word of magic. Quickly, Xyzzifax utters a countering word, and the hold spell fails. “Alrim sent you, didn’t he? Always sending his minions to do his dirty work.” the cleric says. “I don’t know who that is, but I am better than him!” Xyzzifax retorts.

This is the DM attempting to remind the players that they do have some intel about this place but they mostly didn't care.

Malice can’t help but do the most ironic attack. Knowing that her own hold is weaker than the wand of binding, she uses it to hold the cleric, and is successful! Jaric walks up to the evil cleric, staff of striking crackling, and he crushes the evil cleric’s head. Sir Lantor swings Verminax through the air elemental, and Samson throws the magical javelin, and after it jabs the air elemental again and again, it is looking notably weakened. The ogre charges back into the room, and swings his club completely through one of the skeletons, and spraying the bone shards into both Sir Lantor and the last remaining skeleton. From within the room, though, Sir Kentor hears the sounds of many hob nailed boots retreating.

Sir Lantor takes a pair of steps, and slashes deeply into the ogre. Bleeding terribly, he keeps his feet. Xyzzifax flies in, and hits it with a firebolt, and a skeleton stabs it with a javelin, and the hulking monster is managing to stand, even though it looks in very rough shape. The Elemental continues to tear at Sir Kentor, this time the knight is beginning to bleed from many lacerations, some of them deep. Malice steps into the door jam, sending a pair of scorching rays at the ogre, and she smiles as it falls, dead. The last ray blasts through the elemental. Sir Kentor declares the Air Elemental a Foul Wind, that shall face Judgement. And with the mighty Verminax, the Air Elemental is dissipated. Then, he goes back through the secret door, into the room that the cleric came out of. It is a spartan room painted gray, now all singed by the fireball. He pushes across the room and looks on the hallway that what we expect were more bugbears fled. There is a fountain on the wall, and a large number of weapons are stockpiled against the wall, and a chest as well. A stairway leads down. This is the hallway that we used to come up to this level from below.

Malice asks Samson to check the cleric – and he has plenty of magical things. +1 chainmail, ring of protection, +1 ridged mace, a dagger of venom, and a spell scroll of darkness. We give the ring to Sir Lantor, Xyzzifax takes the scroll and Malice takes the dagger. The chainmail and mace go into the bag of holding. Samson checks the chest, and without breaking a sweat he disables the trap, and finds 176 silver, 28 ep, and 11 gold. In a wardrobe, there is a robe of crystal beads and jet, a ceremonial robe of the temple of evil, worth 1500 gold. Then, since we found our way back out, we pile as many weapons as we can into the bag of holding, and we retreat to the tower. Xyzzifax sends the last skeleton chasing after the bugbears on a suicide mission.

Valiant Swords of Greyhawk: Session 22 - Pool of Evil

 

Our Heroes:

• The Mighty Xyzzifax played by Alex
• Minion Samson played by William
• Minion Jaric played by Dave
• Minion Lantor played by Brandon
• Sir Kentor (Human Paladin) played by Paladin Steve
• Malice (Human Bard) played by Grognard Mike

 The party is level 5 at this point. We begin on Day 62 of the campaign.

At the appointed time, Xyzzifax opens the portal to Verbobonc, and Malice and Sir Kentor step through to Hommlet. The duo are are ready to tell the story of all of the different steaks they had tried, and the new recipes that Sir Kentor has learned. The rest of the party’s story of defeating a pair of juvenile green dragons, admittedly, is much better. Malice agrees, she would have loved to have been able to kill a dragon. Given the option of a long trek back to the Temple itself, we can instead use the Mirror itself to step right through…. tomorrow. We do feed upon the dragons that were slain first. Over dinner, we have a conversation about planar travel. On our way back into through the temple on our way to the water temple, the Arcane lock is still holding.

Bubo is sent to confirm what we know about the level of the water temple, and rather than going directly there, we head first to the great hall, which has much aged and hacked apart furniture, many skeletons, and ruined equipment. Xyzzifax takes the time to animate dead, and now how a skeleton minion. He has the skeleton don black robes. Then, he does this three more times. And, he makes a strong speech about using these skeletons against the temple to Jaric and Sir Kentor, with Malice taking his side. Samson finds this all intriguing! Sir Lantor is concerned that, even though they’re all wearing uniform back robes, that he may confuse them for enemies in the heat of battle. Sir Kentor finally decides that this is too far, and that the skeletons must be destroyed. Xyzzifax argues that these are all skeletons of former cultists, and that it is poetic justice that they will now rise to fight on the side of righteousness. And finally, Sir Kentor relents, for now.

Xyzzifax posts up Bubo in the great hall, and the Valiant Swords re-enter the water temple, curious about what we will find. The door is still off of its hinges. The room looks much the way we left it, but there is a lot of water on the floor now. The fountain on the far wall is still gurgling, but somebody has damaged it, and it is spilling out onto the floor. Shapes begin to rise up our of the water as we begin to cross the room. Four water elementals form in the corners of the room, advancing with hostile intent.

There was a swirling combat of melee and magic! Sir Lantor was able to bring into action before they were able to attack. It turns out metal beats water, at least when the metal is enchanted sufficiently. Xyzzifax’s Wand of Fireballs, however, is less impressive than normal. Sir Lantor lands the final blow on the first of the elementals to fall. One of the water elementals almost dropped Malice, flinging shards of ice. But she and Jaric worked together to keep her standing. But, that same elemental closed, engulfed Jaric, and is doing its level best to to kill him. They’re also proven to be resistant to the Wand of Binding. Perhaps its just wands. With Samson’s help, Jaric emerges from the water elemental like a flully grown, armor clad baby. A second fireball is sufficient to destroy the second, already seriously wounded water elemental. Jaric and the staff of striking are able to team with Sir Kentor and Verminax, and between the two of them slay a barely damaged one. The last Water Elemental manages to drop Sir Lantor into unconsciousness with a pair of terrible blows. Sir Kentor saves Sir Lantor on his way to defend Malice from the last of them, and then Sir Jaric disincorporates it with a Guilding Bolt.

After the excitement, it becomes clear that the three clerics we killed are no longer living. We press on, venturing behind the curtain to the two doors we know are there, and the double doors that we don’t know where they are. We take a moment, and bandage the wounds on Sir Lantor before we venture into areas of the dungeons that we don’t know. Samson reveals that his goggles now have many new powers, and he is able to see through the door – and into the room in darkness beyond.

The mechanist class in ToV gets some interesting abilities to build or enhance objects. The goggles-of-ruining-the-DM's-surprises are one of these.

Sir Kentor opens the door, revealing a richly furnished bedroom. A greenish light flickers into existence as the door opens. Jaric casts the light spell, so that we can more clearly read any parchment on the desk. The party goes into the room, and begins searching. The table service is fashioned from fine malachite, worth 2000 gp. We carefully load it into the bag of holding. Xyzzifax magic senses, and only finds the multitude of items that the party is carrying themselves. Malice takes the blank writing paper. Behind a curtain, we find a hidden door to a much lesser bedroom, likely for the underpriests. There are a pair of chests, both of which Samson is able to clear of traps and unlock. The first contains clothing, 4 texts on the Elemental Evil of Water – they may have some value. A sack with 87 gold, a bronze mace – which is given to the first skeleton , and a gold ring with a green pearl worth 555 gold. The second chest has more books on the nature of evil water, 21 platinum, and a potion.

We withdraw to the area behind the curtain, and Samson looks through the door, and he can see that it is a salon. We move into the room, and search the room to see what we can find. A green silk robe encrusted with gems, worth 6400 gp. 200 gold worth of incense. A suit of plate armor worth 1500 gp. An ivory tray is worth 50 gold, and notable table services worth 24 gold.

We find a private domicile behind a hidden door, and it too is laden with treasure. The volume on the writing desc deals with the rituals of evil water. The 32 gold dishes are worth 1900 gold for the set. A coral box worth 100 gold, with 1000 gold worth of pearls inside. And, a fish smelling cloak is a cloak of the Manta Ray. The trident… is cursed. And Samson gets the urge to immerse himself in as great a depth as possible. Being a halfling, he hurries to the fountain in the next room, and dives in. Jaric reveals that he will need to pray and rest to be able to remove the curse, so with Samson being hostile about staying submersed in the fountain.

The mechanist also has the annoying ability to identify magic items by touch. The occasional cursed item keeps this interesting. He had an item that let him breathe under water so it was not fatal, just annoying to the party - for a change.

Xyzzifax puts arcane locks on the four different doorways that we know of to get into the temple. So, it looks like we’re staying here for 8 hours. Malice begins wearing the Cloak of the Manta Ray that we took from the water temple. Over the course of the night, Bubo sees a group of bugbears that are on patrol – but that is one patrol over the course of eight hours, so this is not a lot of activity. Jaric finally removes the curse, Samson is able to let go and jump out of the fountain, leaving the Trident behind.

Finally, it is time to examine the double doors past the curtain. It is neither trapped nor locked, so Mer-Samson can use his goggles to peer through it. A blue green light illuminates what is beyond. There is a pool in the center of the room. We open the door, ready for more water elementals. There is a humanoid chained at the bottom of the pool. It makes mental contact with all of us, begging for it to be freed before the kraken depicted on the wall materializes and attacks. Sir Kentor senses evil within the pool, but still, he is sworn to try to help – even if he is certain this is a trap. Xyzzifax says wait, and sends in one of the skeletons to try to free merman. The skeleton jumps into the water, and quickly dissolves. Sir Kentor reconsiders his distaste of the skeletons. Xyzzifax gets a stronger mental push of Please, Jump Into The Pool And Save Me.

Yes, this is a illusion and a trap. Yes they were properly suspicious. They still desperately wanted to figure it out. Especially after failing some Will saves.

And Xyzzifax jumps in. Samson is fast on the reaction, though, and grabs Xyzzifax before he even fully submerges. The anklets of alacrity he was wearing are dissolved by the evil water, along with his shoes. Malice is quick to shout “Everybody out!”, and as we’re retreating the thing in the pool attempts to compel Jaric to jump in, but the Cleric’s will is too strong. We discuss a plan, and send Xyzzifax back in, anchored with a rope, being held by Sir Lantor and the skeletons. Samson, Jaric, Sir Kentor, and Malice are ready to react to strange, evil, supernatural effects. Magic Missiles fly forth, but dissipate as soon as they hit the water, though some pass clear throuogh the chained merman, leaving him unharmed. Xyzzifax senses magic, and can see that the pool itself is magical, and so too is the merperson and the chains. Xyzzifax tries fireballing it, but the pool and merman beneath does not seem to care about the fireball. Then, he attempts a dispel magic, but that does not work. The merman continues is pleading via telepathy. The merman says that the barrier can’t be hurt, you have to jump in and free him with his own hand. Xyzzifax sends in a Mage Hand down to the bottom. Then, he has it try to poke the Merman in the eye, but the mage hand sort of blends with it, it does not feel anything solid there. The Merman says that you can’t free him with spells, you have to jump in and use your own hands.

Malice grumbles that we may need to wait until we’re high enough level to just disintegrate the pool. We discuss a bit more, and swap out Xyzzifax with Jaric, who tries various radiant damage spells. The spiritual fire doesn’t do anything to the water, nor does spiritual hammer. As the water doesn’t seem to be effected, and neither does smashing up the mural of the kraken. Sending the spiritual weapon into the water, it looks like it phases clearly through the merman and the chains holding him. We all suspect an illusion, or something like it.

We pull back, closing the door, and finally leaving the temple once more.

They were pretty frustrated with this one. Not complaining, just puzzled. It stuck in their heads to the point I was still hearing about it months later. I need to keep these oddball illusion things in mind for the future because it was a lot of fun watching them exploring the situation.

Valiant Swords of Greyhawk - The Temple Campaign - Finished!

 

I know I'm still catching up on the session recaps - I will get back to those next week - but last weekend we finished playing through the Goodman Games revision of The Temple of Elemental Evil. Everyone hit 10th level by the end and somehow NO ONE DIED?! That is a first for me in any ongoing D&D type campaign so I'll have to mull that one over. Maybe I'm getting soft. They fought through hundreds of opponents, travelled a lot of miles, stood face to face with three gods, and utterly destroyed the temple in the end.

We have a wrap-up session this weekend in Hommlet where land and noble titles will be awarded, high-fives will be exchanged, and the Paladin will be getting married. All of that will be a lot of fun and a nice wrap to the campaign. 

After that we will put it on the shelf for a while. We've already started tossing around ideas for the next game and I expect it will be a) not a D&D type game and b) a shorter run with something, maybe even a tryout. Supers is finally a leading contender and it may just turn into finally finishing Time of Crisis!

I suspect we will return to this campaign again down the road though. Everyone likes their characters and this system too much to just forget about it. The long term vision was to run though the Giants series and then do the Drow series all the way through to their conclusion while working in Barrier Peaks somewhere too so we could say we've run that classic campaign and that's probably where I would start whenever we pick things up again.

Anyway I will have more detailed breakdowns on stuff down the road - the rules, the campaign, my players, things I could have done better, and what was going on with that no one dying thing. For now though I'm just going to enjoy the victory lap.

Valiant Swords of Greyhawk: Session 21 - Double Dragon

 

Our Heroes:

• The Mighty Xyzzifax played by Alex
• Minion Samson played by William
• Minion Jaric played by Dave
• Minion Lantor played by Brandon
• Minion Braedon played by Terry

 The party is level 5 at this point. This account is mainly written by Xyzzifax. We begin on Day 58 of the campaign.

As the party prepares to leave furby-bonk, Xyzzifax makes one final trip to the mage’s guild to see about a designated teleportation area. The guild does in fact offer this service, for the mere price of 100gp/year. Xyzzifax purchases the premium teleportation authorization package.

Malice and Sir Kentor have further business to conduct in the city, and teleport through the mirror of mental prowess at a predetermined future date.

As the group prepares to leave the city, there are rumblings afoot. Merchant traffic coming from Hommlet seems to have come to a complete halt.

Xyzzifax theorizes that this could be due to the monsters the group encountered on their way in to the city, or something even worse.

Minion Jaric runs afoul of some locals who attempt to burn him at the stake, however acquiesce to let him go under Xyzzifax’s assurances that he will be more useful to the city of furby-bonk as a slave sentenced to defend the city. Minion Samson sells this by creating some manacles.

6 hours into the party’s journey the group find the remnants of a shattered wagon. There are scattered weapons, and a strange smell lurking in the air. Some scattered blood is found amidst The shattered cart.

No bodies and no tracks are found.

The party continues uneventfully until the second day. As the group approaches the mid point between Hommlet and furby-bonk, marked by a small ruined keep, Bubo alerts the group to a winged shape in the sky.

Sending danger, the group makes for the ruined keep, with Xyzzifax casting unseen servant to drive the carriage if need be. The group arrives at the ruined keep with a few seconds before the thing arrives, but it has gotten significantly closer. Sir Lantor notes a greenish hue, and the group begins to disperse, and take up positions within the ruins.

At this precise moment, a second foe, a green dragon! steps out from behind ruins. The mighty Xyzzifax and his minions are to contend with not one, but two green dragons!

With it’s mate still closing in from the sky, the first dragon launches itself towards the party, breathing a cone of poison on minions Lantor and Braedon. Lantor remembers to hold his breath, but Braedon does not fare as well, and dives into the ruins, attempting to hide himself from danger. Minion Lantor, undeterred, launches into the beast, carving out 4 large sections of the beast’s hide, christening his new magical great sword with dragon guts. Minion Samson, having taken a position in the rubble, launches his now magically returning javelin (twice) while minion Jaric charges the beast, mightily swinging his staff of striking, knocking the beast left and right. The beast responds in kind by tearing into minion Lantor with its oversized teeth and claws, but, who manages to parry some of the worst of the bite. The mighty Xyzzifax attempts to cast slow on the great beast, but his spell fails to affect it. At that moment, the second beast arrives, landing amongst the melee, attempting to defend its mate, clawing and biting into minion Lantor, who falls under the ferocious assault. Minion Braedon responds with a stream of arrows, while minion Jaric calls out with magical healing to his comrades in range, reviving Sir Lantor, and commanding his spiritual weapon to strike the wounded dragon, dealing the killing blow to the beast!

The great and powerful Xyzzifax casts slow on the remaining dragon, and this time the dragon is affected, seeming to move in slow motion!

The party focuses its efforts on the wounded dragon, with Samsons javelin, Braedon’s bow, Jaric’s staff, and Sir Lantor’s blade, the dragon is battered. The beast roars, leaping into the air, and breathes its cloud of toxic breath on the party. With his minions out of the line of fire, Xyzzifax draws his wand of fireballs, charging up a mighty blast, and launches it at the dragon, engulfing it in flames, and sending it crashing to the ground as a flaming corpse. The smell is horrid. The party takes a moment to gather themselves, scanning the skies for more threats, but none are found. Xyzzifax and his minions are officially dragonslayers.

The background here is that the dragons have newly arrived in the area but they haven't had time to set up much of a lair, gather treasure, or lay eggs. So it's a good fight but not a double-dragons' worth of hoard.  

Braedon manages to skin one of the beasts, but the other is too charred to be of use.

The party returns to Hommlet, sporting the skin and head of their recently vanquished foes.

Having done a great service for the town of Hommlet, and Viscounty of Verbebonc, Xyzzifax leads his congregation of minions before  Burne and Rufus, wanting to purchase some land in the town to build a structure. Having picked the tall hill overlooking the tower, Rufus remarks that generally, that would need to be owned by a noble considering the defensive position.

This launches Xyzzifax into his bid to be appointed a noble. Having rid the road of bandits, cleared the moathouse, raided the temple of elemental evil, slayed ogres, bulette, wyverns, and now TWO dragons, the case is clear. Rufus and Burne admit that Xyzzifax does in fact have a solid claim, and says that they will talk to the Viscount.

The party also visits with Azin, the magic carpet riding, magic item merchant. They sell the ebony fly, and purchase a smattering of minor magic items, a ring of water walking, rope of climbing, and an arrow catching shield.

This was a really good session with wrapping up the visit to Verbobonc - including Jaric blowing some social rolls and talking himself into trouble - then heading out onto the road. unlike the trip to the city, I had decided to have a set encounter along the road this time. I was looking at ToV's encounter balance guidelines and figured out that a pair of adult green dragons were going to make a decent encounter for the party and as we hadn't had any dragons in the campaign yet I decided to give it a whirl. It was a good outdoor fight that lasted 5 rounds and had the party feeling some danger. Lantor dropped but he was carrying quite the load with Kentor being out and buff-master Malice being out as well.  The group wasn't giving him too much grief for it given the situation. 

Combat-wise they are turning into serious combatants - armor classes are creeping up, the damage they can deal is creeping up, the cleric is a real front-liner now when he wants to be, and the wizard is exploring more of his utility spells - like the slow spell he used here. Future battles, especially with a full team, are going to be a challenge.

This is the first open conversation about going for nobility titles and claiming some land. The whole party is interested, the wizard is just the most vocal about it. It's going to add a really fun extra element to the campaign.

Opening of the fight where they are entering the ruined keep and the other dragon steps out from behind the tower.

Valiant Swords of Greyhawk: Session 20 - Shopping and High Crimes

 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
• The Mighty Xyzzifax (Human-ish Wizard) played by Blaster
• Samson (Halfling Mechanist) played by Shootist Will
• Jaric (Human Cleric) played by Variable David
• Malice (Human Bard) played by Grognard Mike

 The party is level 5 at this point. This account is mainly written by Malice. We begin on Day 56 of the campaign.

Fair Warning - there is a LOT of shopping in this one - prices, haggling, etc. 

We get to Verbobonc, and Jaric goes to his temple, and is pointed towards the Shop of Curiosities. Sir Kentor learns of the Street of Smiths for weapons, Sir Lantor has found the mercenaries guild. Braedon is looking to see if he can find some elves, but is failing quite legendarily. Xyzzifax goes to the Mages' Guild of Verbobonc and found a purveyor of wants named Waldorf. And, the group is staying at the Silver Lyre Inn, with rooms paid for out of party cash. Samson, to his credit wants to crash. Malice goes to learn what she can about the nobles of the city, one may be interested in purchasing the mirror.

The ruler of the city is Vicount Wilfrick, the Defender of the Faith, an adherent of St Cuthbert. The city also has significant representation of the Old Faith. The leaders of the town are interested in trade. Malice begins her letter writing campaign, trying to find a proper buyer for the orb.

Braedon is the first to make his way to the Street of the Smiths, joined by Sir Kentor, as Xyzzifax goes to talk to Waldorf. Waldorf’s shop is small, painted majority in blue. He is an older human, and he has lots of interesting wood for the creation of staves and wands. Xyzzifax starts with the request for a wand of fireballs, and Waldorf does have one available. But, he can make almost any staff or wand. Waldorf is completely uninterested in the orb of true seeing. Xyzzifax asks how long it would take to create a wand of the war mage – he could create a basic one in a month. He would want 5,000 for that.

One thing the players' account does not mention is Jaric's visit to the local temple of Trithereon, god of freedom, individuality, and revenge. He does not have a large presence in the city, but he does have one shrine tended by one priest - "Welcome to the Garden of Vengeance brother ..."

Jaric meets a man who seems quite laid back and rambles a bit but has bursts of intensity here and there during the conversation. Probably hard to travel with but also probably handy to have in a fight. He learns the greeting of the faithful (in this city anyway) is "righteous", a nod,  and a raised fist bump.

The Street of Smiths starts out with mundane goods on the south end, but as the road continues north it grows into high end, unique goods. Braedon and Sir Kentor are specifically looking for a great sword and a long bow, both enchanted, but they’re keeping an eye out for anything that is notable. With a bit of observation, they get an idea of several candidates. The bow work is going to be harder to find, but finding swordsmiths is easier. Braedon happens to find a gnomish smith who has crafted an enchanted greatsword. After a bit of haggling, they are willing to take 1050 gold worth of gems, and Sir Lantor is now going to be able to be equipped with a +1 greatsword.

They take some directions from the smith, and are directed to an area of the town where there would be some bowyers and fletchers who are skilled enough that they should be able to make an enchanted bow. After a bit of looking, Braedon finds the shop which appears to have the highest quality bows – a shop with a sign with a leaf with a star behind it. The proprietor is an elf, who is always carving as he talks. For 1200 gold, he will part with a beautiful elven +1 bow. Braedon asks where he might find an efficient quiver, as well. The elf does know where where could be obtained, but the owner would need some persuasion. It would likely cost on the order of 5,000 gold for one.

Jaric and Samson head to the curiosity shoppe, and on the way the halfling picks up a pair of goggles. The shoppe itself is an outlandish building. Samson starts off by asking for dancing lockpicks, and the shopkeeper is offended, but might just happen to have them for sale, but they’d probably cost something on the order of 1000 gold. Jaric asks about an amulet of health. And, the answer is seedy, and it could might even cost as much as 10,000 gold. Then, a bag of holding – clearly used by unsavory types. But, he could probably come up with one for 1000 gold. And then, an immovable rod, if one were to part with one, it would cost a mere 2000 gold. Actual magical lucky dice – that has to be illegal. As the shopkeep doesn’t want to contribute to criminal activity, one of those couldn’t be had for less than 1000 gold. Finally, Jarc asked a pendulous periapt. The shopkeep finds them just weird, finally a curiosity. And for just 500 gold he could own one himself. On Sir Kentor’s behalf, Jaric asks about a cloak of protection, and it seems that one could be found for 5000 gold.

The Curiousity Shoppe, besides being a reference to various things, is also a major front for the Thieves' Guild of Verbobonc. As I do not have anyone regularly playing a rogue in this campaign, it's a potentially fun angle that will go largely unexplored except as a shop that deals in unusual items.

There is more than a little bit of this guy in the "shopkeeper"

Sir Lantor asks around for where to get healing potions, and discovers that temples are the best place for that*. We reconvene at the inn, and and get dinner, relax throughout the evening, and prepare to make a day of it tomorrow. The viscount is very interested in the orb of true seeing. He arrives in force, with 75,000 gold pieces to purchase our palintir from us. We’re warned not to tell anybody else. To do so, it is decreed, would be a capital offense. So, of course, we agree that we will tell no one. Ahem. Xyzzifax takes the bag, and immediately walks to Waldorf’s shop. The unseen servant counts out 25000 gold, and purchases the wand of fireballs, and orders a wand of the war mage. It will be ready in a month.

* I promise this is not his first time ever to play D&D but damn, sometimes it feels like it.

I will admit to being a little disappointed in the party here opting to -sell- a crystal ball of true seeing! Seriously! That's a ridiculously potent item and I really thought the conniving wizard would be interested but no, no one in the party objected to sell it! Most of this group has over a decade of D&D experience (among other games) and some of them have been doing it since the 80's and 90's - they should know better! I gave them an "are you sure" check before they went to the city but they were unmoved. 

Of course once they decide to sell it, the question is who is going to be able to afford to buy it? This was one big reason they came to Verbobonc and it turned out the Viscount himself was willing to pay a lot and pay quickly. Ah well! At least it established a connection there. I'm sure he will only use it for good purposes.

As a party, we check out of the Silver Lyre, and as a party travel to the great temple of St Cuthbert. And, we go to talk to the temple clerk. The potions of healing are a fairly steady market, but the amulet of health is more rare. The temple can sell ten greater potions of healing – this costs us a full 1000 gold. Sir Lantor takes 3, Braedon takes 2, and the rest of us take a potion of greater healing. But, there’s no talking the temple out of the amulet of health.

This is not the last time this picture of St. Cuthbert will appear in the tale of this campaign. 

We head to a clothier’s, a very stylish store but one where the proprietor has had a throat wound, and talks with a gruff and gravelly voice. While they didn’t have a cloak of protection available, they do have a cloak of the manta ray. Sir Kentor haggles, and Samson purchases it himself for 1500 gold. Jaric asks about a belt of hill giant strength, and against odds, it is in stock. The party ends up paying for it, at an upcharge because Malice just made the proprietor mad, so it costs the party 20000. Braedon asks about bracers of archery, and the proprietor, still mad, shoos us away.

We return to ye olde curiosity shoppe and attempt to haggle over the amulet of health. Sir Kentor leans that the shopkeep is not willing to haggle, at all, so that costs us 10000 gold. We also pay 5000 for a cloak of protection for him. And for 500 we buy the perilous periapt. Jaric on his own he purchases the lucky dice. As we determine that we still have some unspent funds from the sale of the orb of true sight, Braedon asks about bracers of archery. He can find a set for 5000, and we quickly snatch that up. That leaves us 950 platinum left after the purchases there. Xyzzifax asks about a hat of disguise just before he heads out. The price is too rich for our blood, though, and we leave it. Malice, once again, is not the best at this – she was unaware of the longstanding fued between the thieves of Dyvers and Verbobonc.

Even a shopping trip can add some color to the world . I ran a campaign set in Dyvers back in 2E and one of my players was involved with the Thieves' Guild there so he appreciated the reference.

Xyzzifax goes to meet with a potential buyer of the mirror, Zagmar the purple mage, and while it turns out we’re not looking to sell any longer, we are interested in purchasing a scroll of stinking cloud. And finally back to the wizard’s guild, to check on potions of speed. There are a few gnomish wizards who are just the ones. The brewmaster gnomes are easy to find, and Sir Kentor asks about the potions of speed – and alas, Verbobonc does not have the necessary reagents. And, as we’re expecting to eventually go to the temple of fire, we ask about potions of fire resistance. They do have two, the party easily purchases them for a total of 20 gold. Malice and Xyzzifax take the potions of fire resistance. When asking about potions of giant strength, they don’t have any currently in stock. Sir Kentor begins carrying the Mace of Smiting, though we do intend to possibly sell it to Azin.

Verbobonc!

So ... lots of shopping. There was a fair amount of getting to know the city and some of its movers and shakers but it was still mostly centered around buying and selling. I am not a huge fan of the General Magic Items of All Kinds store so I do make them work for it but given the vast quantity of magic in a typical D&D game - yes, even an old-school game (go look at those old adventures again) - I feel there would be individuals looking to trade in the things - sort of like rare artworks, collector cars, and items of antiquity in the modern day. So you "have to find a guy" and start making some inquiries and they might have something on hand or it might take some time. Verbobonc, while not the biggest city in the world, is in a crossroads of sorts at the confluence of multiple major nations and areas rules by a variety of races, it makes sense for it to have some action in this area. Plus, it's the nearest big city to where this campaign is happening so I need it to be capable and so it is. 

Mechanically I try not to overdo it with the Persuasion checks. If you're really pushing the limits there will probably be a roll, possibly with modifiers based on amount of cash offered and things you have said to the person in question. Sometimes you can just money-whip them. Sometimes the answer is just "no". If I don't have something in mind ahead of time there is a roll based on the rarity of the item. Tales of the Valiant has a rarity level for all magic items which makes this easy enough.  About the only things you can buy "off the shelf" in some way are potions and scrolls, with "common" magic items being fairly easy to locate in any sizable city but not guaranteed to be available at any given time.

Next time: The party finishes shopping and we finally get some dragons to mix in with the dungeons ...

GURPS 4th Edition Revised Announced

 

Another unexpected RPG announcement - and another one I am happy to see even if I am not really doing anything with GURPS or planning to anytime soon. This edition of GURPS is 20 years old at this point which I suppose means it has lasted longer in its current form than the legendary Third Edition which truly put GURPS on the map in the late 80's and through the 90's. It's weird. GURPS was a standard reference in any wide-ranging RPG discussion back then, both for the universal mechanics and for the universal coverage (and high quality) of its supplements. Even if you didn't play it you knew about it and may have used some of its books to craft a campaign in something else. It was a significant part of the RPG landscape. 

These days, despite the longevity, I feel like GURPS is an obscure reference in most discussions I see online if it is mentioned at all. It is fairly crunchy and we know tastes have moved on from that over the past decade +. People who think 5th edition D&D is complicated might keel over at the site of a GURPS weapons table and spontaneously combust opening GURPS Vehicles for 3E. Sometimes though the complexity is worth it -whether you call it realism or verisimilitude or whatever. GURPS has definitely filled a niche but that seems to be a smaller niche now. The 3rd edition was a big deal, then 4th edition came out and it felt like GURPS just faded away within a few years. I bought all the hardcovers as they were published as I assumed we would get around to playing it at some point ... but we did not. SJG had a hard time keeping them in print, Munchkin became their main focus, and it felt like the line just dried up. Other places online, where GURPS was a normal part of the conversation, seemed to forget that it existed or only spoke of it in past tense. It's similar to the Hero System which was once a major player and has been continually in-print for decades but has largely faded from popular conversation within the hobby.

I was still surprised that this was an update and not a full new edition. It's been 20 years and that's a pretty good run for any edition of an RPG - is it not time to reboot? If you're going to go through this much work, that is? From the discussion in  the forums it sounds like they are doing a pretty extensive retouching of the two Basic Set books from art to text edits and even adding in some new material, all while bending over backwards to keep the page number references the same. That's going to put some significant limits on what you can or cannot do. It also sounds like money is a limiter here and I totally get that. I appreciate the goal of not making the books people own obsolete but I do have to ask - if the game isn't making you any money right now why make this partial, limited update? Why spend that money on meeting modern standards on layout, art, and language to go part way? Why not come out with a new edition and get some attention? Run a Kickstarter like everyone else is doing and emphasize the 20 years of buildup and support and say you're making an edition for the next twenty years? 

I ask this because doing an update now effectively closes that door for years if a major goal is to not anger your existing GURPS fanbase. I could see putting something out as a stalking horse to see if people want a new edition but a partial re-doing of the core rules might as well be a new edition in gamers' heads. Doing v4.5 in 2026 means you'd better not be doing v5.0 in 2027 or 2028 as "we just bought new rulebooks" is all you're going to hear at that point. I mean maybe there are no problems to solve with 4th edition. I haven't read it in years but I doubt that nothing has really come up in two decades of play. 

Also I'd say they need to call it the "core rulebook" if they are updating and consolidating it into one volume. That's what people are calling these things now. If it's an appeal to the younger generation then stop calling it the Basic Set, which is a total 80's throwback reference they mostly won't get, and for those of us older members of the crowd that term used to mean it came in a box, and GURPS did, for a while, but not for 30+ years now.

Always liked this cover

The other thing GURPS needs is a setting - a big, popular setting. Being the serious RPG nerds' toolkit is a fine enough niche but if you want to attract some attention you need a reason for people to get excited. 

• D&D has, well, "D&D" in the name, history, and a bunch of published settings some of which have novels and miniatures and video games built around them.
• Warhammer has a lot of the same attractions as D&D
• Basic Roleplaying has Runequest which has Glorantha
• Hero System has Champions as its flagship and is still probably what most people call it
• Savage Worlds has Deadlands

Most game systems have some kind of setting that plays into their strengths. GURPS major perceived strength in the past was world books which covered a lot of historical ground, some fantasy, and some science fiction but there was never one setting that was purely "GURPS" the way Champions defined the Hero system. It needs one, because settings are what really lock people into a game. You don't need to change the essence of GURPS like making it a dice pool or a d20 based game. You do need to get something out there in the world that gets people's attention and gets them interested in your game. I rambled on about these same issues 8 years ago and I don't think much of anything has really changed.

I hope this goes well for them - I'd like GURPS to survive at least. But I would really like to see it thrive again.