Fantasy Trip Game Recaps - Two for One Special!

I've started another post for Edge City, more world building similar to what I've done for Windemere Crossing. And that game is on the "down-time" mode: we're always text a lot, but sometimes we do in-game things. I've been accumulating those posts and will also share those here at some point as it is part of a game recap for the part of the game that is not really played but more talked about. I also plan on letting the characters level up one more level as the time period covers most of the winter. 

Anyway - I've got two game recaps to go over here. As this weekend I ran 2 games for 2 groups. We'll start with the Saturday group. To remind you, we meet every 2 weeks but at a different house, so this Fantasy Trip game only gets run once a month. We also gained a new player who has never played the Fantasy Trip but is a veteran RPG player. 

Pretty sure I've not done the introductions yet for the characters. 

• Dauwnaromanadvoratrelunar ("Dawn") an Elf, a bard with sex appeal (which is a talent) so she gets looked at and gets a positive DM on encounters. Along with her charisma skill, she can be quite irresistible.
• Violet Applewing, farmer Halfling. Who has also been trained by the thieves' guild. Small and dangerous with a sling. I do need to make sure we can utilize her skill set more. 
• Deimos, a half Orc/hale Elf magic user. With Noodles, the "staff to snake" snake she can summon. Always covered up head to toe, his is pretty big but Orcs, especially with the half-Elf, get an even more negative reaction. He has the same bear he keeps summoning and he keeps some dried fish handy to see about making friends with the bear. I may allow that if the player adds animal friendship, or I may start reading up on familiars in TFT. 
• Hexis, the Lizardman from the islands. A formidable fighter and often hires on as a bodyguard. His lived in the city off and on for a few years and has area knowledge. 
• Akz, the Goblin rat-catcher. Our newest recruit. He mostly stands back and makes snarky comments from what I can tell. 

From the first session, the group has returned from the sewers with Keg, the enchanted beer barrel. Reunited with Joseph, and some beet in his barrel, Keg comes back to life. "Third time this week those rats have managed to drag the poor thing to the sewers!" laments Joesph as he hands the adventurers their coin for rescuing his friend and server. Dawn bends down to ask if Keg would like to do anything else in life, but the little golem is quite happy serving beer. Just not happy that these rats of unusual size keep tipping him over and taking him to the sewers. 

The guards make a bit of a stink of Hexis's smell as he did wade through the sewers. He quickly doffs his kilt and belt and dives into the river, at least getting himself clean. A coupel children point at the Lizardman, saying "look Mommy - a naked lizard!". Hexis does not worry about what warmbloods think.

Heading into town to the market to pick up some supplies and soap, Violet does not realize she is getting pickpocketed, whereas Dawn and Deimos both do. Deimos tries to grab the hand but the little girl managed to escape, though not with his change purse. Dawn looks down, and starts talking in thieves cant to the surprise of Michael, the street urchin. Streetwise skill I suppose. Though in hindsight, Violet should have had 1 less die to roll to determine if she was getting pick pocketed as she has that skill. And I'd rule she is more likely to notice when it happens. Anyway, Dawn finds that George is Micheal's boss, and Micheal promises he'll let the local thieves know not to bother the group, and he'll get Violet's change purse back to her. 

At Hexis' modest above, they eat and rest up. Early in the morning there is a knock at the door, but no one there when they open it. However, Violet's pouch is there, intact with her money. Though she does not keep the bulk of her money in such an easy to find place, so it was only a few silvers. 

Deciding to return to the sewers to see about that sword, the find young Michael who finds them an opening closer to the crypt entrance. Also, they would not have to get back through the warehouse as that was an office in the back and the owners may not want a bunch of people thinking that was simply a front door to the sewers! Back in the sewers, they see a perplexed Goblin standing in front of the illusion of the wall covering the door. Diemos ends up walking through the illusion, shattering it, and they get back to the crypt with the soldier. Reading up on the scrolls, they find that Sir Briarstake was a paladin of a former age of the city, a hero who killed the undead. Seeing the sword, Hexis gets everyone else back out of the room and carefully lifts it up. The statues turn their heads to watch him, and he asks permission to use the sword. There is a slight nod, and the rest of the group comes through and down into the dungeon they go. Had they tried to take the sword out without fulfilling the quest, the same thing would have happened as per the other group: a fight with the caryatid (from the Old School Monster book): 

A one-hex creature (three hexes for giants). It is completely made of stone, and stops 4 hits per attack. A “caryatid” is a column carved in the form of a nymph. (If a column represents a male, it is called an “atlas.”) The caryatid column described here is an enchanted guardian of finely carved stone. The only way to tell a magical caryatid column from an ordinary carved stone is Analyze Magic. An Architect would get a hint by noticing that the “column” is not actually load-bearing. Caryatid columns will activate when certain conditions are  met – most usually, when holy precincts are invaded or when some item or person is threatened.

Heading down, the 1st thing the see is a wight. Holding a bag of coins in one hand and a silver sword in the other, he is outside a stout wooden door. The sword comes in handy as they fight this undead and come to realize that only that sword is having any effect on the creature. They find a scrap of parchment on Crim's Curse when they kill it. Taking the coins, they head into the crypt of Crim, a wizard who created this crypt and cursed all his treasure so none would take it out.

Moving forward, the pass through a room with 8 corpses propped up on opposite walls. Ignoring the lootable bodies, they head deeper into the crypt. A small put trap fails to hurt anyone as they explore more of the crypt. Sadly no one ever did search for secret doors as there were actually 2 they missed. Though with the curse, in the end it really did not matter. They find two odd rooms, one with a few inches of mud due to a leak from the rivers above, and the other with half an inch of olive oil. Down a long corridor they find Crim's sarcophagus. Surprising the sleeping mummy, Hexis sees it momentarily before it disappears. He does she the scimitar weaving to him as he tries to close the door on the invisible mummy. Sadly, the mummy is stronger and the door is getting pushed open, though the mummy is no longer invisible. [Note: the adventure was written for OSE and its magic is significantly different, so I added a small powerstone but Crim did now want to expand it all, so became visible again]. Holding back the mummy, with his shield extended Hexis keeps the rest of the group safe as he can. Dawn shot it with an arrow which had no effect on the undead creature. Deimos brought Noodles out, and having occult damage she could damage the mummy. However, that bastard sword wielded by the Island Lizardman managed to kill the mummy much faster than I anticipated. So there was no running around the dungeon, trying to track it by footsteps from the mud or oil. Deimos was happy to get an 8-point powerstone. 

Getting back out, they decide to go ahead & check the body. finding some gold, Violet managed to get sprayed by some acid in one of the booby-trapped corpses. Finally, they leave the dungeon. Deimos immediately is 2" shorter. Nothing appears to happen to Violet, the other character carrying out any of the treasures. . Figuring out the curse from the parchment, they toss the treasures back into the crypt. Deimos is back to his regular height, and Violet will no longer turn into an Orc in 30 days. 

Traipsing back up, the caryatids have a faint smile on their stone lips: the undead was killed, the +2-bastard sword is theirs to keep. Sir Briarstake named the sword Scourge, and it is engraved along the blade in an old script of Oggish, a language that died out centuries ago.

And that is where the Saturday ended.

Sunday Recap

The Sunday game was a bit shorter, and having only 2 people instead of 5, a bit less cross-talk. The characters in this games are:

• Tecton, a gargoyle fighter for the most part that cannot speak Common.
• Argon, a magic wielding gargoyle who can speak Common
• Billy Bass, a roguish healer with a sword
• Thanos, the Elf-turned-Vampire. And a weapons master with the dagger (which, if you take a -4DX and hit you do an extra 1d6+2 damage!. Which he has).

At the inn outside of town, they rest up a couple of days before heading down into the dungeon. The entrance is a rickety ladder (one I made from craft sticks years ago. and finally used!). Moving through the first chamber, Billy sees basilisk tracks through the mud and debris. Behind a pile of branches, they see the creature. Who manages to freeze Tecton who failed his 4D vs INT roll. Thanos and Billy ( I think and this was only a few hours ago!) do kill the beast, which frees Tecton from his paralysis. 

I am far behind in painting!

Skeletons from the early 80s. Badly painted with enamel paint

Fight!

Heading down the corridor, Argon managed to step into a pit trap but took no damage due to his stony skin. The next room had six columns. Finding nothing other than a fancy brass door, they attempt the batter it down. Touching the door, they hear the sounds of the columns opening up: 6 guardian skeletons emerge for a fight! Billy realizes that arrows go right through skeletons with his one and only shot. The gargoyles do a fair amount of damage, but it turns out that Thanos, using weapon mastery, manages to pulverize three of the skeletons and help with the last as the gargoyles take out some as well. He had to fly to the skeleton attacking Billy. While Billy knows of Thane's condition, the gargoyles do not yet.  Noticing that the one not destroyed (8+ damage in a single strike to a skeleton destroys it no matter how many HP/STR it has left) seem to be putting themselves back together. The stony and heavy feet of gargoyles soon remedies that situation!

Taking a brief break, they then attempt to open the door again. A flash of light blinds most of the group for the next 10 minutes, and a piercing whistle deafens most of them as well. They start moving back up the crypt. Argon's acute hearing, not damaged in the whistle, hears the door creak open but no other sound. Undead magic users make no noise apparently! Sight and hearing slowly returning, they attempt to fight this thing. Alas none have enchanted weapons and all the blows do no damage. Argon starts using magic fist, but sadly rolls really low and barely hurts it. Thane is using his weapon skill to dodge (meaning the creature uses 4D against its DX to hit. It never landed a blow with all the bobbing and weaving the Elf was doing). The others escape back up the well, and due to some lucky rolls, Thanos manages to escape as well as he can fly and has 2x the MA. The gargoyles were amazed that this Elf could run so fast you can't even see his feet moving!

Locking up the well once more, they make plans with the innkeeper. Using most of their gold they are getting some enchanted weapons to try again in a couple of days. The innkeeper wants them gone soon though as there these wanted posters for the murder getting put up.

Some final thoughts

Both adventures came from Delver and mixed in with one of my location and scenes book. Both were written with OSE in mind so some liberal translation was needed. I could have given Crim an invisibility pendant or something - keeping the magic spell going was too costly for him even though I had a 8-point powerstone added to his treasures. I think I am getting the hang of running pre-written adventures, though I do spend a fair amount of time reading them and trying to translate to the Fantasy Trip. I also have a few Fantasy Trip adventures so need to re-read those to see if we can use those. I think both groups had a good time but it makes these once-a-month weekends at my house busy. 

And I need to figure out how to organize the stuff I do have so I can find it easier. Not just the books (and I need to get back to my library!) but the props and everything. Running games outside the home helps me with this as I have to get everything ready ahead of time and pack it up. Thinking I can do something like that. So far all I have are two small boxes where I keep the 2 adventure party miniatures in between games so I can at elast find them! So that is progress!