Binky managed to get a stone lodged in his hoof, fortunately, the recently renamed Nova, half-Elf, has vet, and they managed to dislodge the stone, but Binky would need a day of two of rest. They found the town of Thistlewaite by the end of the day, with a happy inn and space to put the cart, hippogryph and dragraffe. Farmers and merchants from the surrounding area had come in, as that's what you do with the inn in more than a day's travel. While Crut and Hans managed to distract and steal a merchant's purse, the rest of the group ate good stew. Other than Granite, who ate a few rocks. A gargoyle never goes hungry if there are rocks about!
At this point we are using the Clockwork Tower adventure, one of five in a Kickstarter I backed for The Fantasy Trip. I won't spoil the adventure here, but it does slot in nicely with the overarching adventure we are on and makes for a good side trip.
One of my techniques when gaming is that if they spend too much time goofing off or not paying attention, something bad happens. Generally slimes drop from the ceiling, or a wandering monster comes by. This time it was one of the more deadly encounters in the adventure. In fact, the adventure itself calls out for this: if the adventurers are spending too much time in this very cavern they were in, send in the next couple of encounters! So I did.
Of course, Runt Gubbler was in the back of the room, in the only entrance, and he heard them coming up the corridor. A look of pure terror, and the need for new pants arose as he saw the pony-sized creature approaching him. Being a small Goblin, this thing was taller than he was! He immediately whimpers for help as well as casting a high-strength lightening bold at the thing! It gets hit hard but is still attacking him, with two attacks per turn. Fortunately he had recently purchased some enchanted cloth armor, depleting is silver but in this case, saving his life. Hans managed a stab at the beast but did little additional damage. Next round the Runt Gubbler disengages and Hans makes an attack. Somehow he missed, and then the beast lit into him and actually killed him. The most sad part about this was that there was only 1 hit point left: had he hit the thing, this tale would have ended a good bit differently. Eventually the rest of the group kills off the creatures (there were 2 more behind this big one).
I broke out my stamp of death (another Kickstarter, and hey, I got to use a stamp!) and we marked up poor Hans character sheet. And he was getting very interesting, what with that werewolf ring. The player has had a series of bad rolls: he kept rolling a 14 against a 13DX, making it even more poignant.
The player will play the NPCs along with me the next session - we should be able to finish that particular adventure and get back to Thistlewaite, where there may be a passing mercenary or whatever character he comes up with.
I'll have to remember to break out the adventure complete stamps for the survivors. If there are any...
Now, well I felt bad about a character dying, it does point out that this game (and Traveller) are actually pretty deadly. There are consequences to your actions. I don't think this group would be good for the Blackest of Deaths RPG where you are about guaranteed to die in gruesome fashion (my other group, why yes, that may be a great game for them!)
And alas, no notebook, nor for tomorrow's Traveller game.
4 comments:
The former werewolf player is a kid, correct? How did he handle the character death? I play annually with a mixed group of adults and kids, and I've always been a bit afraid of killing a kid's character (though I haven't fudged anything).
He took it well enough even though a fair amount of work had gone into the character. And we've yet to determine if anyone does anything with the body, and that ring. He'll play the NPC creatures the rest of this dungeon, and will have a new character in town when the group gets back.
It was sad, though, as they were all having fun. Hopefully this won't turn them too cautious. I thought about fudging it but decided that they were mature enough to handle it. If it had not been such a major death (he was at -4) I may have allowed the master physicker to get him to 0, then they had some healing potions. But the damage was too severe.
But there was some discussion and we all decided it was an okay, if sad, thing to do. I mean if you attack something with 2 attacks per round that does serious damage with each one, and has a pretty high DX, well, there will be issues unless you can get it from the rear and out of range of the attacks.
TFT does seem to be the perfect game for playing the monsters --- should be just as engaging as playing a PC, as far as the combat itself goes.
Pretty much, and they are more into the combat and fighting than role playing so far (it is easier to fight things with weapons than with words). I've got a follow-up post about the ring that he seems excited by, so he'll get to play an actual werewolf rather than one by accidental ring exposure.
And it turns out that the lizard men, if they catch the disease (and in TFT it is a disease) turn into dinosaurs!
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