CotMA Recap - Session (I've lost track...) Part A

TLDR (I describe in detail the last two expeditions to CotMA -- Spoilers ahead!!)

Three weeks ago, we had our regular game night, but a few players couldn't make it.  As a way of thinning out the party and removing the characters/players that weren't there, I decided that the Mad Archmage was going to make an appearance.

The party was hanging out, refilling their waterskins, in the water basin room on level 4.  They had arrived via teleport from level 6 just a little bit earlier.

The Mad Archmage arrived, clad entirely in purple, and demanded "presents" from the party.

Wisely, the group started digging through their packs and made quite a number of kind donations to the Mad Archmage.

Shortly thereafter, he returned the gifts, saying "Thank you for your generosity," and then half the party vanished with no explanation.

He awarded a single "Get out of Death Free" card to the party members who remained, then he walked away and vanished.

The group diced for the card and Oryx ended up with it.  Appropriate, considering how often he puts his neck on the line...

The adventurers then began their explorations...

They scouted the area around the water basin room and discovered two corridors of interest.  One was much, much warmer than the surrounding corridors and had a faint heat glow.  The other was dimly lit with red illumination.

The adventurers opted to enter the redly-lit corridor.  Henri scouted ahead of the larger group.

At the end of the corridor, he found a group of six warriors sparring in a large pillared chamber illuminated with red light.  The group was made up of four orcs, two humans and two gnomes.

Henri decided that he would take advantage of their distraction and would pick one of them off with arrows.  He settled upon a large orc and he took aim and fired.

The confusion of combat and the dim light proved their worth and with several successful shots, the orc was felled.

The rest of the party seized the initiative and charged into the room.  Several foes were defeated before the gnomes could raise the alarm...

Soon thereafter, a minotaur, an ogre, and an impressively armored human fighter joined the fray...

The adventurers took advantage of their superior numbers and magic (Beata charmed an orc, Yuri, who proved a valuable asset...)  Soon all of the Red faction were defeated -- including the four humans who slept in a nearby bunkhouse.

Yuri, the charmed orc, was a valuable source of information as he explained the layout of the area to the party.  He didn't have detailed information, but he knew enough from random patrols to help the adventurers better grasp the area.

At one point he got very excited and offered to show off "the mascot."  He led the party to the warm corridor and around the corner to where a beautiful fire-nymph was imprisoned.

She seemed sad and genuinely distressed by her fate.  She brightened up (!) when she saw the adventurers, obviously hoping that they might release her, but communication was nearly impossible.

The party discovered that she spoke extremely broken draconic, but it wasn't enough to really comprehend how to release her -- if in fact she knew how!

The fire-nymph seemed to suggest that command words could be used to release her from the circles of runes imprisoning her.

At one point, Grunbar touched the whirling flames encircling her with an iron spike.  The spike glowed  white-hot almost instantly and Grunbar was forced to drop it and nurse his scorched fingers.

Scratching, marring or otherwise destroying the runes proved similarly impossible and dispel magic was determined to be impractical.

While the adventurers were attempting to free the nymph, the sounds of many hobnailed boots approached from nearby.  The adventurers hid in the room with the nymph and set up an ambush.

A group of six Red faction warriors approached and were soon defeated by the party.  One warrior tried to run, but was knocked flat with a blow from Grunbar's thrown training keg.  Oryx later used the power of persuasion (and threats of instant immolation within the fire-nymph's flames) to convince Boltoff (human warrior) to switch sides.  Recognizing the dwarf's toughness and resolve, Boltoff swore to join the group and was immediately put in charge of the remaining Red faction warriors -- himself and Yuri.

The party gathered itself and then asked Boltoff and Yuri to show them around.

The warrior and the orc explained that their area was north of the arena, somewhat isolated from the other factions.  The explained that the factions have a general non-agression pact when they meet in the corridors.  They try to save and disputes for the arena.  He further suggested that everyone in the party should put on Red faction colors.  The group complied.

They headed south.  They entered a chamber with a racially ambiguous warrior statue.  The walls were painted in murals of sporting events and other feats of strength.

"The greys [laughter] are over there," Boltoff explained.  He explained that they are trying to make a name for themselves, but they are outnumbered and out gunned.  "Mostly it's just embarrassing..."

Pointing in the other direction, Boltoff and Yuri both warned, "Don't go that way.  I've seen people go in and never come out..."

The party continued further south and eventually they entered Red faction's antechamber near the arena.  The party stepped out onto a crowded ledge to find organized chaos.

Around the outside of the arena, all the other factions had their chambers.  Members of Green, White and Blue factions could be seen.  Purple faction was noticeably absent.  Gnomes with strange hats bustled about taking bets and offering odds on the battle at hand...

...in the arena stood two hill giants fighting four manticores.  One manticore had been crushed under a thrown boulder.  The hill giants were thoroughly peppered with iron spikes and one had been partially blinded as a result.

Both hill giants wore red armbands and sashes...

(to be continued!)

OSR Dragonbone

Years and years ago, I saw this ad in The Dragon...

I always wanted one, but I never did buy one.  Too expensive for my high school student budget.  Of course, I could use my programmable calculator to generate random numbers as well, so...

This past weekend, I was at the Dollar Store and I saw this:

It's a large, plastic "take your pill" reminder case.  I had an idea...

You can put a set of dice in there just fine.  There's plenty of room to shake them around.

You can see the dice very easily through the clear bottom of the container.  I plan to make one with 7d20 (of different colors) in it to rapidly generate "to hit" and "saving throws" for multiple monsters at once -- or to roll multiple attacks at once.

I'll let you know how it turns out!

When A Session is Boring

I ran an episode of my CotMA game last night.  Six of my seven (or eight) players were present.

They decided to "go deep" -- they have goals on the seventh level -- and they decided to bring the whole crew.  We had 14 PCs and NPCs combined.

You see, back in the beginning, when the characters were exceptionally fragile and instant death was a real possibility, I let everyone play two characters.  Some of them died, but some of the players still have two characters.

In short, when the whole party is together, it is a huge, noisy, Continual Light toting, juggernaut of monster death.

Now, I'm not complaining.  I don't care if they kill my monsters...  I can always make more.  :)  I don't care if they kill my NPCs...  I have more of them too.  (Of course if you kill the bartender in town, that's a legal problem that your big muscles and magic spells might not get you out of...)  They didn't do that, so I digress...

Well, here's the rub.  When they have a big party, combat with monsters on the upper levels is too easy.  It's literally a roll of the dice and the monsters are dead.  I think one or two of the PCs can generate 10+ damage practically by default.

Once again, I'm not complaining about the instant death of my precious monsters -- let them die.

What I am worrying about is how boring or tiresome the upper levels have become.  I have no desire to scale the upper levels to meet the challenge of this überparty.  The upper levels just don't have very many powerful creatures.

It's not appropriate, in my mind, to throw powerful creatures at them on level 2 just because they can handle them.  THOSE KINDS OF MONSTERS AREN'T ON LEVEL 2.

I did try to make the encounters with the easier monsters a little less straight up die rolling contests --

• I had carnivorous apes jumping and leaping into combat so that the back ranks were vulnerable
• I had wereboars using a flanking maneuver and missile weapons to show tactics and knowledge of the area
• I threw a cockatrice at them for good measure

At any rate, the PCs took care of the combat challenges with relative ease.  

I did throw in some strangeness, a teleporter, some Mad Archmage magic and a talkative NPC ogre (poor Karn, we hardly knew ye!) to spice things up, but that only goes so far when combat is such a cakewalk.

I guess the bottom line to me is, the dungeon needs to have some kind of rules and if you come in alone or if you come in with an army of 14, those rules apply.

I don't want to scale encounters other than by the level you are on.  You're on level 3?  OK, here's what it can throw at you.  Level 5?  Here's a tougher set of challenges.  Level 10?  You'd better be ready.

Am I wrong?  I feel like the adventure dragged a bit for the players last night, but then again, they were on the third level most of the night.  Most of the PCs are 6th or better.  Hell, one of the NPCs is 5th and the donkey/mule is even 4th level...  

Shouldn't an adventure for higher level PCs be a bit boring on the upper levels or is there a DM trick that I've missed?

Design Features Dice

Back in May, Talysman over at 9and30kingdoms wrote up a series of posts about alternate design features for walls, ceilings and floors.  Check them out if you haven't seen them.

In each of those posts (as you know, cuz you've seen them) he made six little square pictures to represent his ideas.

I must be honest, six little square pictures SCREAMS to be made into a d6 and I have these wooden cubes, 3/4" on an edge, so what was stopping me?

Well, procrastination, I guess.  I printed out copies of each little pic back in May, but they've been sitting in a folder since then.  I made each set a different color --

• Black = ceiling features
• Red = floor features
• Blue = wall features

I just got around to making the dice yesterday.

I figure I'll leave them in among my DM stuff and from time to time, as dungeon dressing, I'll randomly grab 1 or 2 of them and I'll mix things up.

Thank you to Talysman for the great posts and the inspiration!

Merry Christmas!

Continuing in the tradition of my local campaign, here are this year's Krampus Coupons!

Attention MY PLAYERS!  I'll print you a copy for Thursday!!

You can download a PDF of the file here.  If you'd like an editable file, click here.

My Christmas Gift to You -- NPC Cards

It's no secret that I like using cards in my games.  I've blogged about godeckyourself.com before.

Here's a set of NPC cards you can use in your game.  All the fields are blank; you can write on them using a pen/pencil after you have printed them out.

I've been collecting images off the blogs/sites/posts I read.  If the image was interesting, I dropped it into a folder and cropped it to the correct size for cards.

The following two files are the results of this effort for the year.  100 NPC cards in two files.

As always, if I've used your art and you would like me to remove it, please let me know.  Please know that I'm not intending to violate copyright and my use is only as a fan and gamer.  I mean no offense.

Merry Christmas!!

NPC Cards 1
NPC Cards 2

Floating Cannonballs

I just had to post this, if only to share.  It isn't that often that you see an iron ball bobbing like a cork.



From a gaming perspective, I'm drawn back to the room of pools in B1.  As a DM, I shouldn't underplay the density of a magical liquid...