Today's adventure started at the outlet for the under-city sewage and water system. There is a bit of sewage that passes through the natural and man-made subterranean system the underlies most of Edge city. A city office, Sir Francis, instructed the men that there were vagabonds and criminal elements living and storing their ill-gotten loot under the city. In addition, Crut's Guild wants him to mark the locations where the unlicensed thieves hang out with the official Guild symbol (this is ret-conned - I did not think of that prior to the game). Edge City has a strong and singular Thief Guild: they pay off the right people, crime is actually pretty low, and few lives are lost over a few coins (the Assassin's Guild also exists in Edge City but is not connected to the Thief's Guild). Each character will be paid 5 gold for what should be maybe half a day of somewhat dangerous work. Crut is also getting paid an extra gold per thief he kills, unbeknownst to his companions. And a new adventurer has been added to the part: Hans Kraus (I think that is the character's name). Part of the current City Guard, he is to go along with the motley group, and when possible, actually arrest the thieves. As wit most adventuring parties, pretty sure he may not be able to successfully arrest anyone as it is quite cut-throat in the underbelly of the city. Or more apt, the bowels of the city. We managed to convince the older brother to play. He has a single character that is not as well statted as the others, but will probably get a bit more experience points as this makes the foes more deadly (and as you can see below in the first session, he is the one who took the brunt of the damage!)
The group enters the exit path of the system, a wide path next to the water streaming out that meets and mingles with the F'urth River (and yes, there probably is a F'irst, S'econd and T'hird River somewhere :) ). The occasional bit of sewage adds to the ambience of the docks: the smell of tar and wet wood, clang of rigging on ships, the shouts of the fish mongers and fishermen leaving to capture the catch of the day. Daylight barely penetrates the tunnel, and Crut leads with way with a torch. Deeper in, they come to some soggy ground that turns to marsh and mud flats where it meets the underground river. To their right are boards on pylons, along with wet footprints. Runt smells a dead body, and Crut leads the way over the boards to the chamber beyond. There is light in that cavern, and it turns out there is a bench table and three ruffians eating. Cheeli roars in delight and rushes in. Our Guard also rushes with the spear in hand (the advantage of a spear is that it gets 1st attack regardless of adjDX). Crut moves off to a corner of the room, and Threndir has his bow ready. The three ruffians we drew from the deck of cards from the Legacy edition, and placed their markers on the board.
The following is a rough approximation of the combat: Cheeli engaged the guy with the two handed sword, Hans the woman with a hammer, and Threndir was taking aim at the same woman. Across the table, the 3rd rogue, unable to attack anyone, jumped on the table to attack Cheeli from a height advantage. As a Dwarf is short already, he really had the advantage!
Our spearman managed to hit only twice during the combat: he would disengage and re-attack giving him the 1st blow each round, yet due to a low adjDX managed to hit just twice in about 8 rounds of combat. The last time he hit, he only needed to do 2 damage to kill her and rolled a 1, which her armor absorbed. It was not Hans' ideal moment! Threndir managed to get a couple of arrows in her, and Crut, with a newly enchanted +5 damage knife, managed to get a few wounds in as well. Meanwhile, Hans was getting hit by the screaming woman and took a fair amount of damage from her before she died. Runt was watching the walkway they came over, feeling he was not needed in the combat. Cheeli and his rogue went at it, while the one on the table, after a single hit realized he would not damage the stout Dwarf with his weapon, jumped down to attack Crut. Meanwhile, the ruckus had alerted two more rogues: fortunately Runt is short and the arrow went above his head. And at this point Runt added to the existing sewage in the dungeon. While a pretty smart Goblin Mage, he wears no armor preferring to have his full DX. He may be rethinking that after this adventure! At one point, Threndir was shooting at the foe attacking Crut, missed, but managed to hit the woman in the hex behind: I believe that was the killing shot for her.
The woman finally goes down with another arrow in her (a missed shot that hit her!), the crazy table-jumping rogue gets killed by Crut (ka-ching!) and Cheeli manages to splatter the sword wielder over the walls. Turning their attentions to the next group, Cheeli sprints as only a wide Dwarf in plate mail can run, but as it was only 3 hexes, he can still attack. Of course, he is blocking Threndir's shot. But Threndir is willing to take the risk, particularly as between Toughness 2 and plate, the Dwarf deflects 7 points of damage: he is the tank of the group!
In the end, the last two are readily taken care of, and the group rests a bit. The only one hurt, and he was hurt bad, was our Guard Hans. He downed my 'D4 in a jar' healing potion and recovered 3 points of damage. As he was down at least 7 or so, this was good. And, letting him roll on the random treasure chart, he rolled up 8 drafts of healing potion as well!
As a note, part of my general payments for quests so far have been a healing draught per character: those are somewhat expensive in-game magical elixirs, but I bump it up to 1d4 (sometimes the ingredients just don't hold up). So it gives the players a little bit of a safety net. Plus I just really like the sprinkle vial I am using - looks like it could be in a fantasy setting.
Overall, we had to play a shorter game - holiday outings. We played about 2 1/2 hours in the heated side of the warehouse this time, with a fancy desk for the gaming material and a table for the actual play. As I've off this week from work, we may manage another game prior to next Sunday, but we'll see what the holidays portend.
I have the Hex Writer mapping software - while I did not do that Kickstarter, I did do a Bundle of Holding. Hey - some of the money goes to charity! So I played with making a hex map / dungeon crawl from that. While more attuned for an overland sort of outing, it works for a dungeon dive as well. The city docks are on the top left, along with the water system emptying out into the F'urth River. The columns are the exit for the system, and grey gravel the walkway next to the underground river. Runt started smelling something dead (beyond the normal sewer of dead rats and things) in the brown area, which is the marshy mud flats that are adjacent to the river. The walkway lead to the room of their first combat. And that is as far as we managed in that quick session today. My guess is that it will be two more sessions or so to complete this actually pretty short map.
And if we want to let the new player have 2 characters, we can have a captured person in there somewhere the group can rescue. If we do add more players we will have to get to 1 person, 1 character. So far I know I am good with about 3-5 players, above that I tend to get confused. But that is also a good size for conversation between characters.
No comments:
Post a Comment