Paths through the Holidays

by on December 31, 2010 at 2:58 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming, Life

As usual, the household went up to Smudge’s parents for Christmas this year. It was a pretty good gathering, and the first time we’ve gotten to see her sister and her husband in years. Everyone is doing pretty well, and Smudge’s allergies are to the point where an overnight stay was possible again.

With money being very tight in the household (though it looks like things will steadily improve over the next year), it wasn’t much of a Christmas from a personal gift-giving or -getting perspective. Smudge’s parents tried, they got me the Halo Interactive Strategy Game. They know I like boardgames, and I give them full credit for the effort, but the reviews are atrocious (and from what I see, they’re right on), there were obviously meant to be expansions to it, and those have been canceled, and the ‘base set’ has been relegated to bargain bins across the country. It does have some nice plastic miniatures and modular terrain. I’ll let the guys in the group who are into miniatures argue over who gets those; it’ll find a good home at least.

And on Monday, my copy of Barbarossa: Crimea arrived (now there’s a study in contrasts). I’m still poking my way through the rules, but it does look pretty promising. I hope to play my way through the introductory scenario soon.

As usual, I have the week between Christmas and New Year’s off. I’ve wasted a fair chunk of it playing Plants vs. Zombies. And by being under the weather. Not full-out sick, though if I’d tried going into work on Monday, it could have happened.

Anyway, Jason is free for the next month or so, so he came up on Wednesday, and we gave Paths of Glory a test run. He could stay ’til 7, and we already know the general system from Pursuit of Glory so we got about halfway through. He decided to take the Central Powers when he showed up, and lead off with the standard Guns of August.

The earliest game-shaping event was probably when I hit him with Moltke right after he discarded Falkenhayn for Ops. This left operations on the Western Front relatively expensive, and the action there stalled for quite a while. I was also able to keep his attention divided between the fronts by various actions, including an ill-fated British attempt to re-occupy Liege, and doing what I could to shore up Serbia. I spent a 4/4 card on RPs on turn 2 to partially rebuild them, and to get the Russians back into shape. The Germans drove into Warsaw pretty early, but I kept threatening the southern flank and picking on the Austro-Hungarian army.

The two main (caught) rules errors were the siege roll penalty on the first two turns, and the fact that British, French and German MOs have to be on the Western Front. The former potentially affected several sieges, but most notably, the Russian siege of Konigsburg. The Russian army got cut off and lost due to Attrition anyway (note to self, not a good idea, no matter how tempting it looks).

I used Salonika to SR a BR and two FR corps to the Balkans, and Yudenitch put out the only NE army our game saw in play. For a while it seemed like the east as a whole was going well for me. I got Romainia out a turn before Bulgaria. And I made a decent stab at taking Sofia (which I was thinking would put him out of supply; it wouldn’t, thanks to Constantinople, but it would certainly keep him from rebuilding BU units. That scheme collapsed, and things were starting to look grim in the Balkans at the end of the day. However, I had SRed the AN corps into the Near East and destroyed Beersheeba, opening the route into Syria, while the Caucasian Army slowly moved around causing problems in the north side of the NE map. I really needed to remember to transfer an extra RU corps into there to allow me to expand the perimeter.

The Western Front heated up towards the end of the day. Jason finally played Falkenhayn, we found our mistake on the MOs, and I remembered to start building better trenches (neither of us remembered to do much with them), and pushed him back out of France.

At the end of the day, it was the end of turn 9, the VPs were at 7, I was entering about my fourth turn of Total War, and Jason had yet to get to it. (Distracted by the high value of the war status cards, like I was the first time I played PuG.) I think I would have gone on to win, but there was a long road to go yet.

It’s a good game, and I certainly want to give it another go. Whether it’s as good as PuG I can’t say yet.

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Stalin’s Victory

by on December 1, 2010 at 8:54 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Well, I’m on my usual week+ vacation to see my parents. I should probably talk a little about it at some point, though it’s mostly pretty routine.

Of course, part of the point is that I get some time to play wargames with my Dad. I had a serious case of indecision, and some new stuff to show, and brought three bags worth of games (at about three boxes per bag). The initial talk was over whether to play Stalin’s War or Paths of Glory, both games I’ve gotten on preorder this year. Stalin’s War had the advantage of a familiar subject, though my Dad was hesitant after looking at the rules, as it was fairly obvious that it would take some work to play well.

But we ended up with that anyway, partially following the script of the sample game to begin with (our own card draws, and die rolls, but using that game to generate advice on what to do next). My Dad took the Germans, and only had a three OPS card to use for the June ’41 attack, but it went fairly well. He kept the panzer corps under control, and there was not a lot of Blitzing, mostly because I kept out of Blitzable terrain as much as possible.

We were under the misapprehension that towns were not Blitzable, like cities, for quite a while before we noticed the mistake, I’m not sure when we started making that mistake however. It may have affected the advance in the north, which eventually halted a couple hexes from Leningrad. (I pulled back into the city, but the Germans did not want to get involved).

In the south, I quickly fell back to the Don River, but only had minimal defenses in the Caucasus. Since most of the German drive was in the center, this took a while to become any sort of problem. During the fall, the Germans played Taifun only accentuating the focus in the center. I played Industrial Evacuation and shortly after evacuated Stalin to the Urals. This was good thing, as Moscow fell shortly thereafter. During the next year, the line wavered back and forth. I retook Moscow, and moved Stalin back in during Spring 1942, in time for the play of Lend Lease, the line south ran through Tula, which was in constant danger of being out of supply, and I tried to hold at Tambov, but kept getting forced to pull back to Saratov and the Volga River.

Keeping a line on the Volga was also a challenge. he couldn’t attack across it, and Stalingrad was relatively safe, but keeping up zones of control so he couldn’t move across it was a challenge. I was doing a similar thing in the Caucasus, but I didn’t properly think through just what a lack of ZOC on a unit meant, and he moved into the Caucuses.

To the north of Moscow, not much was going on. I had a gap in my line, but there is no rail that doesn’t go through Moscow or Leningrad, so the Germans couldn’t get far. Outflanking Moscow was an invitation to be outflanked in turn, as I usually tried to keep some sort of reserve in Gorki.

Most of 1942 saw the tense see-saw continue as I tried to keep up with losses with replacements, and start refitting the army as the Total War Reinforcement cards started coming in. One lesson I learned on the fly is to try and keep a good number of the 2-3 one-step infantry armies on the board as they are needed to create the 4-4 mechanized armies. Also, keeping a good number of the Fronts flipped to 2-3 is fine, as the replacement fronts will come in full strength without having to spend replacement points on them.

I was generally busy enough that I only used the Soviet ability to take two replacement cards in a turn, once or twice in the entire game. There were two Reinforcement cards I never played (27 & 28) and one that I only played very late (31).

I hesitated over starting any major Soviet offensives. I was afraid that I’d hesitated too long. The main problem was that the main area for offensives was the clear area between the Don and the Volga, which would put me into Blitzable terrain, and I was worried about getting units cut off, and chewed up, and having the even more fatal delay of having to build up again.

In the end, I managed to launch three thrusts at once, which I think did a lot towards getting the Germans solidly onto the defensive. The trouble started in the Caucuses, where we were still maneuvering for slight edges in position. The Romanians were holding much of that part of the line, with the Italian 8th Army moving into the area as back up. I attacked with the Front that I had in the area, and used Maskirovka to bring enough troops into the combat to destroy the German mountain corps operating in there. A further attack drained the Romanian forces, and the Italians came up. I then played The Duce Falls, removing the Italians from the game, and leaving him with no large units on that flank.

Meanwhile, I launched an attack on the Germans entrenched in Voronezh, backed up with troops to hold the line, if things should go bad. North of Moscow, I finally had built up enough troops to start attacking the German units holding the flank, and started driving at the soft part of his line, hoping to drive him away from Leningrad and the outskirts of Moscow.

Of course, with the amount of pressure I was applying at that point, there was no choice to fall back, especially when, after a couple of poor rolls, I finally had a round where everything went well for me. PQ-17 had been played right after Lend Lease and it finally ran out as this was starting, and the three Banked OPS per turn really make a difference in getting and keeping momentum going. At the very least, it allows an extra 0 OPS round, with combat fueled by the Banked OPS.

In Spring 1944, as the offensive tried to gain momentum, I played Hitler Opposes Defensive Works, more or less taking German trenches out of the game. The next turn, my Dad played Festung, which gave him a whole new way to stymie the defense. In the end, he relied on them too heavily, tying up the German army in immobile positions. I saw this from the beginning, but progress was slow enough, and there was always another position with more units, and more time tied up in several attacks to reduce them. I was seriously worried about running out of time.

The main offensive was in the north all along, from the initial drive between Moscow and Leningrad to the north of the Pripiet Marshes and the Baltic States. It was in there that I hoped to break the line and finally make it through.

I had also kept up pressure in the extreme south, and it was there that the initial break came. The Romanians had still had the bulk of holding the line down there, and finally ran out of strength. I had pushed up through the Crimea to the Dniepr, and finally broke through, sneaking around the end of the line, and into Odessa in late Winter 1945.

As the final action before the raputitsa set in, I finally achieved the breakthrough in the north, clearing the way free into Germany. There was nothing left in the German army to stop me, and Berlin fell in the fourth round of Spring 1945, the last of the Soviet victory cities (Konigsburg fell when the next festung to the north, guarding it fell the previous round).

Aside from a final Reinforcements play, the last event I played was Overlord in Fall 1944. I skipped Battle of the Bulge, wanting the ops more than the ability to choke off the panzers (though it was very tempting, and I had held the card for a couple turns hoping to play it). The final German event was The Bunker near the very end, and a few starred CC cards; the last non-new unit, non-CC even was Festung.

So a Soviet victory, slightly ahead of schedule, in large part due to a tough, but brittle, German defense. It was hard fought all the way, and I had to constantly worry about losing too much strength to keep mounting the powerful attacks to clear the way. A very good, and very tense game.

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The Many Origins of WWII

by on November 23, 2010 at 3:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Had a day of Origins of WWII on Saturday. There was a certain amount of flip-flopping on attendance (Mark, sadly, couldn’t make it due to a business trip getting extended), and the weather tried to interfere with Zjonni biking through rain in the morning, but it came off to a pretty good day. With multiple playings in the same day, my memory gets a little fuzzy as to when what happened, but at least we wrote down the scores.

Zjonni ran a bit late, showing up just in time to see the last turn or so of the first round between me, Patch, Jason, and Dave. I drew the USSR, and did decent with it, but got locked out of Poland and Romania early, leaving the bulk of my 12 points for late-game understandings with the other major powers. Germany got a decently strong start before the team of France and Britain started reigning Dave in, and getting Patch a 16-point victory as France. (Dave almost won with 15 points, but couldn’t quite shave a last two points off of Patch.)

The second round stuck with the historical scenario and I drew Britain for a 12-point loss. The addition of the USA (Dave) had a more profound impact than we expected, with Poland becoming a hotbed of political activity, and never coming under anyone’s control. Dave still only got 5 points, and Patch won with 18 points as Germany after a late game collapse in Austria and Czechoslovakia lead to them both falling under Germany’s control.

After a break for lunch, we came back and tried the Aggressive British-French policy variant. This caused some head scratching. Among other things, the USA uniformly gets points for ‘NU’, or ‘No Understanding’ in that version, and there’s the technical question of whether a country that is Controlled counts for that or not. In general, it seems like ‘control’ is worse than ‘understanding’, but that’s not what the short note on the reference card says, and that makes it really difficult for the USA to get points at all in that variant. In fact, Zjonni scored 0 as the USA unless a ‘controlled’ country is worth points for ‘NU’, in which case he got 12. I had France for 7 points and Patch won (again!) as the USSR for 15 points. I can’t say I remember much of the action in this game.

In the fourth game, we tried the Aggressive French Policy variant, where France starts out normal, but gets massive amounts of Political Factors in the later parts of the game. France also has to spread out to score many points, so its still a challenge to score well. One of the more unusual features is that France gets points for Controlling Germany (which they’d certainly like to do…) and the end of the game saw a large struggle over that, led by Dave as the USSR, who wanted the massive points boost of an Understanding with Germany. There was also some wonder about the exact rules implications of one player country Controlling another…. I drew the USA for that game, and felt even more sidelined than normal, as the US contribution feels excessively puny with the swelled commitment of France. I certainly have no idea how to be effective with the US’s role as spoiler in the game, and got 5 points. Meanwhile Britain (Patch), Germany (Jason) and France (Zjonni) all tied at 14 points, with Dave’s USSR coming in one behind at 13. An amazingly tight game.

Everyone is still very happy with the game, and Dave will probably borrow it from his dad again for this coming year. Just what we’re going to do for next time is up in the air, however.

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A Game of Heartbreaking Fantasy

by on October 26, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Posted In: RPGs

Ron Edwards, along with his work on GNS theory, at one point defined the term ‘fantasy heartbreaker’. In many ways the term was so obvious that I needed no definition to have a pretty good idea of exactly what he meant when I first encountered it.

Going back and reading his essays put a lot of my thoughts upon encountering Undiscovered: The Quest For Adventure into better perspective.

When Dungeons & Dragons first came out, it was something new. It barely touched upon many of possible things games like it could do. The next several years were spent in flurry of creativity exploring the more obvious permutations of the basic ideas. Some branched out further, but many early games were pure reactions to the underlying assumptions of D&D.

I had not realized that there were people who were still effectively stuck in this last mode twenty years later. These are the fantasy heartbreakers: later games that boil down to highly evolved versions of early D&D written by people with little to no knowledge of what happened in the rest of the industry.

Undiscovered was published in 2001, and the PDF form was part of the recent Gamers Helping Pakistan charity drive at RPGNow. I’ve gone through the book, but this is just my initial thoughts of the system.

So, what’s it like already?

The first thing that I like is that this is a done-in-one system. One book of 370 pages, has everything, including a setting. As a fairly standard fantasy system, it should not need a setting, but as some of the races are unusual, it is for the best.

This is basically a percentile system, though d4, d6, d8, d10 and d12 are also used. There are eight main attributes, and scores can range from 1-150 in each, though beginning character scores will be from 5 to 90. There’s both a random and a point-spend system for determining these scores, though I’ll note that the random system will average higher than the point-spend (500 vs 400). Also, the point-spend system has you roll a d10 on each attribute for a -5 to +5 random adjustment, so you’ll never have exactly what you paid for. In fact, as there is no “+0” on the adjustment chart, you’ll never have the exact score you paid for. Since most of the effects on the attribute bonus tables shift every 5 points, this does have good chance of affecting your exact bonuses.

The legal ranges (or the base values of the random system) of each attribute is affected by which race you choose to play. Undiscovered has seven races, including the standard elves (Alfar) and dwarves, and adding Dusters (were-snakes), Seraphs (angels), Muklag (kind of minotaur-like, with ram’s horns), and Dracomensc (draconians). Each of these (including humans) are split into at least two sub-groups with slightly different abilities.

The general thrust of the rules is as a skill-based system. As such, the skill system is extensive and well-developed. Combat-related skills, in particular, have a two-tier system of ‘levels’ and… ‘ranks’ (they don’t actually seem to have a collective name in the system) ranging from Initiate to Master (it is also 5 level system). You spend skill points to get to a particular combination of level and rank. There is something of a choice, as the same number of points will allow you to take a lower level in a higher rank, which will cause a lower skill bonus, but get you other abilities, such as more attacks or more damage. Each skill has its own table and description of the exact bonuses and costs, so while the structure is always the same, there’s lots of lookup of particulars.

In addition to the more normal types of skills, psionic, clerical and spell magic follow this system. Clerical magic requires picking a patron god, who will restrict the types of spells that can be learned. Each type of ability has its own pool of points to power them (the pool is generated from the amount of skill, multiple skills inside each type add the points together).

There are no classes, but there are levels. Levels allow gains of Life (hit) Points, and skill points. Oddly, while the cost of each level goes up, so do the experience awards. For example, a character gets 10 times his level in experience for helping out in a combat. There are some nice bonuses for avoiding combat, but these too are multiplied. There is also flat XP for doing damage, or casting spells, but as levels go up, there should be tougher monsters needing more damage to kill… also boosting XP from those sources. As it takes 1000 XP to go from level 1 to 2, and 1000 more to go from 2 to 3, I would expect characters to ‘zoom’ through level 2. After that, increases in XP needed start correcting the problem, but level 1 is still about the ‘slowest’ level to go through. There is no limit on levels, and the main chart goes through level 50.

The equipment section is extremely familiar, down to banded mail. Armor makes you harder to hit, providing bonuses to Defense Rating (DR). Combat uses percentile roll-low system. Your Attack Rating (AR) is figured by a combination of skill and stat bonus, and equals your chance to hit something with no defense (Defense Rating 0), so your AR minus your roll is the best DR you hit. Despite the finer granularity of d%, there is a flat 5% chance of criticals, and 5% chance of a fumble (equivalent to the odds of a ‘1’ and ’20’ on a d20). (I generally don’t mind ‘auto hit/auto miss’ systems, but I don’t care for flat critical/fumble systems tacked onto otherwise binary success/failure systems.)

The World of Arkas section in the back suddenly drops a point size or two on the font, really cramming in the information. It is fairly typical, with creation from a small set of gods, a cataclysm caused by war amongst the gods, and then newer gods with lesser powers ruling over the current cosmos. The setting is confined to a single empire and its neighbors, though a rough map of the entire world is given. By and large, it is a lot of dense text, and while not written poorly, it is not a joy to go through either. Actual societal/role-play hooks seem sparse at best.

The monsters section after that is reasonably extensive, if typical, and is split into a ‘wildlife’ section and an actual ‘monster’ section. Most of these latter have multiple statistic boxes so that dragons (for example) grow larger and more powerful as they age. Centaurs, Goblins, Merfolk, Ogres, and Trolls are presented as optional character races. I find ‘static’ monster stats for intelligent creatures artificial when player races can grow with experience, so I really like that touch.

Final Thoughts:

I think if this had come out in 1981, instead of 2001, it would still be a recognized name today. It is very much in the ‘old school’ realm. However assertions that skill-based systems are rare, and that being able to buy the exact skill level you want is an ‘innovation’ are annoying, and display a very weak understanding of RPGs as a whole.

There are a small number of supplements that were done, including a four issue magazine, Undiscovered Q&A. The last of these carries a Summer 2004 date, while the publisher’s website carries a 2008 date. It looks to be another RPG that never stood out from the pack and has fallen by the wayside.

It does look to be a fairly solid, unified system, though it suffers from a high degree of fiddlyness in the details. In general, if you want an old-school fantasy feel, I have to recommend sticking with something simpler, or already familiar. However, much of it seems to have root in the same thoughts that shaped the Rolemaster Fantasy family (whether this is because they were familiar with RoleMaster is something I’d like to know), and if you felt that game had a good direction, but is not quite what you want, you should give Undiscovered a look.

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O2 Blade of Vengeance: Session 3: Act 2—Turpin

by on October 7, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: O2 Blade of Vengeance

[Previous chapter: Act 2 – Hermit]

Had another Saturday night session after missing two weeks. I came down sick the next week, and was somewhat recovered on Sat, but Smudge had come down with it by then, and was still recovering (complicated by allergies) the week after.

[Warning! Many spoilers ahead! See the end to skip.]

Erystelle solved the problem of keeping the noise of fighting one group of hobgoblins from attracting the others by simply casting a sleep spell. [Got just enough on the roll for all of them too.] He quickly improvised bonds for the four of them out of their gear, and then woke one up. The hobgoblin, obviously terrified for his life was not as informative as could be hoped. He got his orders from “Karg”, the ogre. He wasn’t sure where the ogre was getting his orders. Right now, they were desperately trying to find the hermit. (A little closer questioning would have gotten that he had been captured, but had escaped.) There wasn’t much more to get out of him, and there was noise of one of the other search parties approaching, so Erystelle left before things could get complicated.

Thankfully, the hobgoblins were spread out all over the place in groups, so not only was it easy to get away, it also wasn’t to hard to get back to the hermit’s place and recover the books found earlier. After that, Erystelle headed back south to Oakendale to recheck on doings there. Mid-afternoon the next day, there was a sudden clatter of hooves on the trail, and a burly-looking centaur came around the bend. He immediately challenged Erystelle, saying, “I am Turpin the centaur, ruler of the roads. None may pass without first battling me in single combat. Er, without spells that is, only weapons to be used.”

Erystelle was not happy. (Why are the loonies finding me…?) But at Turpin’s insistence, he jousted with him, neither one getting a clean hit on the first try. Erystelle, impatient with the entire deal, immediately turned for a second pass, where Erystelle got a solid hit, doing a lot of damage (charge with lance = 1d10x2 = 20!) Turpin was impressed, but insisted he was fine to continue, so Erystelle immediately charged again, and managed an other solid hit (9 x 2 = 18), which promptly felled Turpin.

Killing him not really being the plan, Erystelle checked him, and found him alive, if barely. He grudgingly shelved his plans and tried to dress Turpin’s wounds, and gave him his last healing potion. Turpin eventually came to, and Erystelle had him stay still and tried to wrap him for some warmth, while he went on to Oakendale for help. It was a measure of how badly wounded Turpin was that he did not object to this.

At Oakendale, Erystelle was glad to see that there was militia guarding all the routes into town. He visited the temple in town (which had been mentioned, but not visited on his first stop), and got some healing for his wardog Tarcil, who was still wounded from the first day, and paid for healing for Turpin. After checking with the mayor, he escorted the priests to find the centaur. He left them to help him to shelter, and continued back north.

I figured from the various people he’d talked to, that he really should know about where the destroyed human and dwarven settlements were, and located them on the map. This focused attention on the north, which probably was not wise. Anyway, Erystelle went north again, and checked up on the hermit’s cave and the hobgoblin encampment again. He noted the latter was still occupied, but only about half as many hobgoblins as previously. Continuing north, he found Granitgape, the dwarven town was actually an underground entrance (of course), but the doors had been ripped asunder, and there was a cave-in a short way in.

Turning west, he visited Scrubton, the human town, which was indeed burned to the ground. Both places showed signs of a red dragon being present again.

From there, he continued north, and as the trail came closer to the Greenflow again, Erystelle spotted a pair of stone ‘fingers’ poking up out of the forest on the far bank.

Getting to them was some work, and involved swimming the horse across the river (I figure by this point it’s small enough to be not too hard to cross). Closer examination showed that they were a pair of moss and vine-covered pillars, surrounded by thick brambles, which seemed to get thicker when he tried to cut his way into them.

After giving up on that, he headed north along the banks of the Greenflow, which eventually turned toward the west. I had to start hinting strongly that this was going nowhere fast. He turned around and re-crossed the Greenflow, eventually turning north on the trail again. This quickly left the forest and started climbing into mist-shrouded hills. Smudge got the hint again, and turned around to the south (I also had to point out that the map was scaled appropriately, and going off the north end was unlikely to lead to much…. ~_^)

At something of a loss, Erystelle headed south again, and a couple days later took a second, more westerly, route crossing a tributary of the Greenflow near where it joins the main river. Some miles further on, he came to where the trail he was following ended at another east-west trail.

And there was another classic encounter. A black knight. Black horse, black armor, you get the idea. He immediately lowered his lance and charged for Erystelle. This proved a poor choice for him, as after a couple passes, Erystelle’s lance connected for decent damage. As the fight degenerated into a sword-on-sword duel on horseback, the knight was unable to get through Erystelle’s defense (chain mail +1, ring of protection +1, shield (magical), and Dex 16 adds up to an impressively low AC), while Erystelle slowly wore him down.

As things were looking bad for our villain, hoof beats were heard coming up the trail. Not knowing what was coming, both sides nervously tried to finish off the fight, when Turpin appeared. “I say, Erystelle, a fine little fight, what!”

Well, at least he was friendly. And looking much better. With Erystelle obviously having the better of it, he watched with interest while the fight ended, and congratulated Erystelle on his victory. He expressed disappointment that he hadn’t had a chance to have a try at him. Erystelle told him, “It’s a black knight. They’re all over the place, like locusts.”

A search of the knight’s possessions came up with two lengths of rope (always handy!), two healing potions, and a rough map. [I halted things to prepare it in a hurry. I’m pretty happy with how it came out.] Erystelle was able to translate the landmarks he knew fairly easily, and decided to see just what was up with the ‘X’ marked on the map.

Turpin had apparently felt recovered enough to return to his wandering ways, and had just happened to go head west along the trail that Erystelle had just met. (One can only imagine that he’d been driving all of Oakendale to distraction.) Heading west early the next day, the pair of them encountered a tribe of pixies shortly after crossing the Greenflow.

Their leader invited them to a (small) feast, and explained that he’d heard about Erystelle’s journey, and thinks he has some information that could help. But first, they’ve been plagued by a troll that recently moved in nearby….

“Trolls, great. Fire. Turpin, can you handle torches?”

“Just watch me juggle them!”

It was still a little early, but we called it there, so I could have a chance to read up some. Smudge started feeling really tired shortly afterwards, so the timing was actually pretty good.

[End spoilerific section.]

GM’s notes: Turpin is a fun character, and I certainly couldn’t pass him up. He’s supposed to be a bit more abrasive, and prone to causing trouble than I’ve been playing him, but then, Erystelle is handling that all on his own. Smudge likened him to Armstrong at one point, and I’m going to go with that. (He’s probably about that buff with 30 HP on 4 hit dice; that’s 7.5 per die on what should be d8s…!)

I went with Dark Dungeons‘ assessment of wounding and dying, where HP loss stops a 0, where you fall unconscious, and must start making saving rolls to avoid dying until either given first aid or healed. I just ruled that Turpin wouldn’t die unless left to bleed to death. Smudge’s new dice are very friendly, with the d20 consistently rolling 18+ (though there’s also been a ‘1’; good thing I don’t care for fumble rules).

A fair amount of time passed in all the wanderings, and the events that start pressing the plot forward in absence of a lucky or inspired player are starting to hit. This is part of one of my concerns with the adventure. The initial direction is obvious, but it’s a small sandbox for the lack of direction given after the hermit.

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