Showing posts with label Forgotten Realms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Forgotten Realms. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Session Report:: [Olostin's Hold] Bugbears and Body Bags
The party stood before the stone door to the bugbear lair. The mage was tired and a bit mentally fuzzy; Being up all night takes a toll.
The warriors Dhallon, Hagis and Reagan put their shoulders into the surprisingly well-crafted stone door, but to no avail despite their best efforts. This led to a discussion and a search for other entrances, while Hagis and Dhallon went back to the building with the tools to acquire some pick-axes.
Just as the two warriors arrived back, distracting everyone, a Bugbear opened the door and stuck its head out. Hagis raced up to jam the door with Dhallon right with him. Jastra and Reagan moved up behind but could do nothing with the Bugbear in the way.
The Bugbear tried to flee, and Jastra chased him down and skewered him, striking deep into the major artery in his leg and finishing him off as he tried to get through a door to a room full of his cohorts.
The fight was on! Three Bugbears hurled Javelins, swung morningstars, and grappled with Hagis, Dhallon and Jastra, with Murklane adding fire support. Reagan watched the party's rear with Sturv, only to find himself being overrun by another four Bugbears!
Sturv and Reagan fought a holding action against the four Bugbears, while Dhallon, Hagis and Jastra finished off those in the sitting room. Hagis joined the fight in the hallway, wrestling with the last of the Bugbears until it was put down by a bolt from Reagan's crossbow.
Exploring further, the party found various small bits of treasure including a nice table with a map of the Calling Horns area upon it as well as some small amounts of loot found on the individual foes.
Pushing on, the party discovered a cloak room with a few odds and ends and another passage, leading to a room with a Hill Giant!
Hagis talked his way past the Hill Giant, convincing him to let Hagis pass through to the secret door. When Dhallon went to follow, the Giant started to wind up for a swing and Jastra leapt upon him, blades flashing and slashing. The Giant howled and the fight was on.
A brutal battle was joined in the small space, with Reagan sinking multiple bolts into the angry Giant, and Hagis, Dhallon, and Jastra all swinging and dodging, trying to avoid the wrath of the lumbering creature. Soon, the giant was bloodied, but he would not go down quietly!
With one big swing, he connected solidly with Dhallon. Moments later, the backswing smashed Dhallon's ribs, cracking obsidian armour plate and knocking the warrior into the far wall of the room, lifeless - slain by the massive blunt trauma!
Hagis, in a fit of rage, hacked down the badly wounded Giant to avenge his comrade.
The party looked to aid their comrade, but quickly realized Dhallon was beyond any aid, slain outright. The party endured a period of shock and grief, then sought out a way to transport Dhallon's body for a twilight burial outside under the auspices of Lathander as soon as this was feasible. A wheelbarrow was fetched to help bear the body.
A somber group contemplated their next step - leave the current locale with the intent of burying Dhallon and returning or press on and finish cleaning out this den of brigands and monsters. The feeling was that Dhallon would have wanted the group to press on, to carry the fight to the foe, and to win a victory in his name.
Pushing on one room further, a huge store of high-quality spoils were found, although little of the collection easily portable - statues, saddles, armoires, carpets, and such like. A suit of magical full plate was discovered, complete with a skeleton. Magical everburning torches were discovered, handy if they don't start fires! And another door to a side passage was discovered...
Down the side passage, two more doors were found, one replete with sound of Bugbears chatting animatedly, the other as silent as death. The Hagis, Jastra and Murlane, healed by Sturv, prepare to take the Bugbears unaware, with Regan in support and Sturv holding the rear.
Jastra spent the moments following the tragedy by beginning working on an epic poem about the life and death of Dhallon Thores. Dhallon had been a good and true companion, if with a somewhat flexible idea of equitable division of spoils. Jastra had enjoyed Dhallon's pragmatic sensibilities and lovely knitted goods as well. Dhallon would be missed....
Thursday, August 6, 2009
The Forgotten Realms
I remember when I first got the boxed set of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons®.
I had never heard of Ed Greendwood (an Ontarian, surprisingly) or the Forgotten Realms. This was the 'new direction' the game appeared to be taking as the Old Gaurd at TSR drifted away - names like Gygax, Mentzer, Otus, Mohan, etc. fading away. With them was fading the Greyhawk setting. It was time for something new to open out some new frontiers and to generate some new income for TSR by allowing them to sell a new line of campaign-related products. Greyhawk was getting pretty long in the tooth by this point.
The Forgotten Realms was a place where you didn't just have hack and slash adventures and where the heroes weren't all knights and noblemen - common folk ended up becoming some of the greatest heroes. And wherever you looked, their was legacy of past civilizations, past races, past communities, and past disasters. There was a sense of age to the world and mystery. There was a sense that there would be lots to uncover and lots to discover in the games played in this world.
We are many years beyond this point now. Advanced Dungeones & Dragons® gave way to 2nd Edition, then Skills and Powers, then eventually 3rd Edition, D20, the revised 3.5 Edition and now very lately 4th Edition. Greyhawk is now a dead world as far as product goes. The Forgotten Realms has endured through the years, expanding to include a vast expanse of world space and diverse settings like the Horde (Mongol), Kara-Tur (Orienal), and Maztica (South American). It and the later Eberron campaign world are the current focus. Planescape and Spelljammer seem to have come and went in the intervening period.
But now, the Forgotten Realms has had so many parts of its geography and history filled in, it lacks some of what it had when the first grey boxed set came out: Possibility. The original set gave you a big chunk of the world, but it clued you in that there was a lot more of it. Even of what it did present, it presented chunks with tantalizing references never to be further developed, leaving the aspiring GM plenty of plot hooks he could exploit and create adventures for and the aspiring player many things to wish his GM would develop for his game.
Eventually, I migrated my gaming out of the Forgotten Realms. A few characters I had there were at retirement points, others were dead. Some crazy things had been introduced in the penchant of the publisher to fill every space with a campaign supplement (Ravensgate, it is at thee I am staring with contempt!) - Arch Magi giving rides to children at a fair, Spellfire, Gods rampaging around and impacting the game world directly and without subtlety. These things all seemed to eat away at the air of mystery and sensibility that the original boxed set seemed to present. Eberron was also coming on the scene and it had some pretty slick products and some very interesting and ground-breaking character options.
But now, these many years later, I find myself drawn back into a 3.5 Edition Forgotten Realms game: Olostin's Hold. My friend Doug had a lot invested in this world and has parleyed that into an ongoing game that gives me an excuse to see (or at least talk to) some of my oldest friends on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. Sometimes there is more chatting and side conversation than actual D&D gaming. But even so, the game itself is interesting.
Despite all the silly things they've thrown into corners of the world, despite all the stuff they've published, there are still a lot of opportunities unplumbed. The game world is huge and lots of the supplements have laid out adventure possibilities as rumours of no more than one or two lines of text. So there is still a lot for a GM to develop for his own game.
And of course, this has inpsired me to want to run an adventure or two in the Forgotten Realms. I have my own game world of 20 years which I'm very happy with. Many of the players would have characters for it too, but not all. But Doug's game has some momentum right now and I don't want to disrupt that and I don't want to try to distract by running my game interspersed. Instead, I think I could have my fun presenting adventures within Doug's game and allow it to keep up its momentum. Momentum is not a trivial matter in the sustainability of gaming over time and over distance.
So once again, the mysteries of the Forgotten Realms have sucked me in. My urge to get out the pen and start penning adventures from those short summary lines or even from collections of varied short references to places is high.
Until Swords Part....
I had never heard of Ed Greendwood (an Ontarian, surprisingly) or the Forgotten Realms. This was the 'new direction' the game appeared to be taking as the Old Gaurd at TSR drifted away - names like Gygax, Mentzer, Otus, Mohan, etc. fading away. With them was fading the Greyhawk setting. It was time for something new to open out some new frontiers and to generate some new income for TSR by allowing them to sell a new line of campaign-related products. Greyhawk was getting pretty long in the tooth by this point.
The Forgotten Realms was a place where you didn't just have hack and slash adventures and where the heroes weren't all knights and noblemen - common folk ended up becoming some of the greatest heroes. And wherever you looked, their was legacy of past civilizations, past races, past communities, and past disasters. There was a sense of age to the world and mystery. There was a sense that there would be lots to uncover and lots to discover in the games played in this world.
We are many years beyond this point now. Advanced Dungeones & Dragons® gave way to 2nd Edition, then Skills and Powers, then eventually 3rd Edition, D20, the revised 3.5 Edition and now very lately 4th Edition. Greyhawk is now a dead world as far as product goes. The Forgotten Realms has endured through the years, expanding to include a vast expanse of world space and diverse settings like the Horde (Mongol), Kara-Tur (Orienal), and Maztica (South American). It and the later Eberron campaign world are the current focus. Planescape and Spelljammer seem to have come and went in the intervening period.
But now, the Forgotten Realms has had so many parts of its geography and history filled in, it lacks some of what it had when the first grey boxed set came out: Possibility. The original set gave you a big chunk of the world, but it clued you in that there was a lot more of it. Even of what it did present, it presented chunks with tantalizing references never to be further developed, leaving the aspiring GM plenty of plot hooks he could exploit and create adventures for and the aspiring player many things to wish his GM would develop for his game.
Eventually, I migrated my gaming out of the Forgotten Realms. A few characters I had there were at retirement points, others were dead. Some crazy things had been introduced in the penchant of the publisher to fill every space with a campaign supplement (Ravensgate, it is at thee I am staring with contempt!) - Arch Magi giving rides to children at a fair, Spellfire, Gods rampaging around and impacting the game world directly and without subtlety. These things all seemed to eat away at the air of mystery and sensibility that the original boxed set seemed to present. Eberron was also coming on the scene and it had some pretty slick products and some very interesting and ground-breaking character options.
But now, these many years later, I find myself drawn back into a 3.5 Edition Forgotten Realms game: Olostin's Hold. My friend Doug had a lot invested in this world and has parleyed that into an ongoing game that gives me an excuse to see (or at least talk to) some of my oldest friends on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. Sometimes there is more chatting and side conversation than actual D&D gaming. But even so, the game itself is interesting.
Despite all the silly things they've thrown into corners of the world, despite all the stuff they've published, there are still a lot of opportunities unplumbed. The game world is huge and lots of the supplements have laid out adventure possibilities as rumours of no more than one or two lines of text. So there is still a lot for a GM to develop for his own game.
And of course, this has inpsired me to want to run an adventure or two in the Forgotten Realms. I have my own game world of 20 years which I'm very happy with. Many of the players would have characters for it too, but not all. But Doug's game has some momentum right now and I don't want to disrupt that and I don't want to try to distract by running my game interspersed. Instead, I think I could have my fun presenting adventures within Doug's game and allow it to keep up its momentum. Momentum is not a trivial matter in the sustainability of gaming over time and over distance.
So once again, the mysteries of the Forgotten Realms have sucked me in. My urge to get out the pen and start penning adventures from those short summary lines or even from collections of varied short references to places is high.
Until Swords Part....
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Session Report: [Olostin's Hold] Villagers Take Root at Calling Horn
Jastra's Journal:
We repaired the wagons after the ambush by the brigands. They were savvy enough to build swinging log traps to disable our wagons but not smart enough to recognize we weren't people to be trifled with. One nasty fight later, the road between Olostin's Hold and Calling Horn was safer.
Then, with newly repaired wagons, we proceeded to Calling Horn. Of course, even the most jaded among us was a bit surprised to find everyone in the village turned into a tree or a shrubbery... even inside buildings.
We found a couple of actual bodies in the Blacksmith's place and happened upon a heavily armoured Troll who seemed game for a go round. He was a tough foe, but we've dealt with Trolls before. Our heaviest fighters, Dhallon and Hagis, kept it busy while the real damage was done by Murklane the Troll Hunter, Reagan of the Sorching Ray, and your fine scribe, singing a ballad about hunting trolls on the moors as my most excellent keen magic rapier slashed off random facial features.
Eventually we put the foul beast down, though it did inflict some horrible wounds on Murklane and I. Nothing the power of Lathander, Morninglord and enemy of evil, couldn't resolve, by way of his servant Sturv Amblecrown.
The interrogation of the troll was short. They're not the brightest creatures. Sturv seemed to think we had to let the troll go. Murklane, a follower of Gwareon Windstorm, really had a serious problem with letting the troll go, but Sturv was adamant. He seemed to think that he was honour bound to let the creature go if it answered our questions.
That moment of tension was passed as Murklane reluctantly relented, threatening the troll with a slow and fiery death if he was ever see around human lands again. This outcome satisfied Sturv, but left Murklane rather put out.
We continued our search of the village, in the hopes of locating a clue to the oddity of a village full of greenery instead of people. At one house, Dhallon found a Dog. As is their wont, the Dog seemed to want to lead us to someone after we fed and watered it and freed it. Knowing Dogs know better than most, we elected to follow the Dog.
Off down to the woods, leaving Hendric and Sturv behind with the merchants, the remainder of our party travelled following the Dog's nose. Hagis, Dhallon, Murklane, myself and Reagan figured we could handle whatever the Dog was headed towards.
In the base of a tree, we discovered a strange passage to the underworld. We entered into a large underground cavern, complete with its own grove and at least one building. Now, despite being well travelled and educated, I had never heard of such a thing. Reagan too professed ignorance of any similar thing. A true wonder, but one tinged with the feel of the sinister.
We began to climb down, with Dhallon and I climbing down first to secure a safe zone so they others less talented at climbing could let themselves down. The building we could see seemed blocky and lacking in windows, which was odd and hinted at the need for a sturdy, defensible structure or at least at the mindset of the builders. The grove would, for the moment, remain a mystery.
We repaired the wagons after the ambush by the brigands. They were savvy enough to build swinging log traps to disable our wagons but not smart enough to recognize we weren't people to be trifled with. One nasty fight later, the road between Olostin's Hold and Calling Horn was safer.
Then, with newly repaired wagons, we proceeded to Calling Horn. Of course, even the most jaded among us was a bit surprised to find everyone in the village turned into a tree or a shrubbery... even inside buildings.
We found a couple of actual bodies in the Blacksmith's place and happened upon a heavily armoured Troll who seemed game for a go round. He was a tough foe, but we've dealt with Trolls before. Our heaviest fighters, Dhallon and Hagis, kept it busy while the real damage was done by Murklane the Troll Hunter, Reagan of the Sorching Ray, and your fine scribe, singing a ballad about hunting trolls on the moors as my most excellent keen magic rapier slashed off random facial features.
Eventually we put the foul beast down, though it did inflict some horrible wounds on Murklane and I. Nothing the power of Lathander, Morninglord and enemy of evil, couldn't resolve, by way of his servant Sturv Amblecrown.
The interrogation of the troll was short. They're not the brightest creatures. Sturv seemed to think we had to let the troll go. Murklane, a follower of Gwareon Windstorm, really had a serious problem with letting the troll go, but Sturv was adamant. He seemed to think that he was honour bound to let the creature go if it answered our questions.
That moment of tension was passed as Murklane reluctantly relented, threatening the troll with a slow and fiery death if he was ever see around human lands again. This outcome satisfied Sturv, but left Murklane rather put out.
We continued our search of the village, in the hopes of locating a clue to the oddity of a village full of greenery instead of people. At one house, Dhallon found a Dog. As is their wont, the Dog seemed to want to lead us to someone after we fed and watered it and freed it. Knowing Dogs know better than most, we elected to follow the Dog.
Off down to the woods, leaving Hendric and Sturv behind with the merchants, the remainder of our party travelled following the Dog's nose. Hagis, Dhallon, Murklane, myself and Reagan figured we could handle whatever the Dog was headed towards.
In the base of a tree, we discovered a strange passage to the underworld. We entered into a large underground cavern, complete with its own grove and at least one building. Now, despite being well travelled and educated, I had never heard of such a thing. Reagan too professed ignorance of any similar thing. A true wonder, but one tinged with the feel of the sinister.
We began to climb down, with Dhallon and I climbing down first to secure a safe zone so they others less talented at climbing could let themselves down. The building we could see seemed blocky and lacking in windows, which was odd and hinted at the need for a sturdy, defensible structure or at least at the mindset of the builders. The grove would, for the moment, remain a mystery.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
