A New Level of Play

I've been away from the blog for a few weeks. I got involved in another group of players for a different adventure. This one is being played online using the Roll20 website. Roll20 provides players with a virtual tabletop (VTT) on which the GM can draw his/her maps and populate the world with creatures and foes that the adventurers will have to face.

The great advantage of all this is that you can pull together a party from many different cities (and countries) into a play session. The hardest part is dealing with several time zones. The last time we played the GM was from, I believe, New Jersey, one player from Florida, another from Missouri, one from California, and me from Virginia.

Membership on the Roll20 site is free, but if you want to add the bells and whistles you can pay a monthly fee. I got the basic membership, but that allows me not only to play in other game maps, but I can create my own. So far I have created an outdoor map with roads, fields, a campsite, a stone circle and a small cottage. I've populated it with a couple of gangs of bandits, a giant, and some wandering animals like wolves and bears. There is also an entrance to a cave that will lead to a dungeon map, which I've sketched out, and I am now drawing on the VTT. Once I get it completed, I'll try my hand at being a GM.

Here's a small view of the outdoor map. I started out with a hex grid on a green (grass) background. Then I added roads, rocks, trees, bushes, and water. I've been working on this for several days. The tokens are all downloaded from Pinterest.

Monster of the Week

We fought an AHNKEG this week. Not being a D&D fan, I was not familiar with it. For those of you who are also unfamiliar:

The ankheg (pronounced: /ˈæŋkɛg/ ÆNK-eg was a huge insectoid monster with many slender limbs and large antennae. It burrowed underground and hunted from below.

The ankheg was an ambush predator that waited around 5–10 feet underground for prey to wander into position. The attack was quick, as the prey was crushed and ground in its mandibles and assaulted with acidic digestive enzymes. If a foe proved too difficult, the ankheg could also squirt acid to take it down. (Ankheg)

Our party was chasing a pack of wolves led by two werewolves that had kidnapped a baby. The trail circled a hole in the ground which we decided to investigate. Archie lit a lantern and approached the hole. Krupke with his fine broadsword (2d+1) and Petra with crossbow ready right behind her. As Archie's light peered into the depths, this monstrous insect lunged out. Archie threw her lantern, hoping to set the beast on fire. Petra's bolt flew true and pierced its chitinous armor doing some damage.

Krupke rolled a 4 on his attack and then a 12 on the 2d+1 fine broadsword which produced 26 damage, slicing the monster's head clean from the body. It was glorious!

The rest of the evening was almost anti-climatic even though we still had to fight a werewolf and its wolf pack, and eventually save the baby.

Our GM has played so many RPGs that he tends to pull from all of them for ideas. This tends to keep us on our toes since we never know what kind of monsters we are going to face.

Igor - Rest In Peace

Igor, the goblin bard and fire mage was a member of our party. He was full of life and always prepared to lift our spirits or light our grenades, and drink our wine.

He died the other day at the hands (claws? pincers?) of a giant beetle that attacked the party while searching for dragonet eggs in the nearby forest. Our Physicker was not with us so we poured all the healing potions we had into him in an effort to revive him. That was not enough and his companions, Petra and Krupke, picked up his body and raced through the forest in an attempt to get him back to the village in time for the physicker to save him. Alas we were too late.

The Lord High Mayor Rumford declared the funeral day a day of mourning for this hero of East Riding. Goblins from the Moon Wolf clan came to honor him and the goblin shaman, Moon Dawg led the services. There was much crying and knashing of teeth. Igor will be long remembered.

He is survived by his cat, Pudding.

Circular Firing Squad

This came up in a poll question in the Steve Jackson Games Forum:  Re: YOU'RE the GM: the circular firing squad

Here is the setup:
Brandt has a long bow and DX13.
Mad Oly has a throwing ax and DX12.
Edulf has a crossbow and DX12.

Each fighter is attacking into the side hex of another. Brandt attacks Mad Oly. Mad Oly attacks Edulf, and Edulf attacks Brandt.

What order will the attacks take place?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

First I think it would be improbable, but not impossible, to have the fighters in this situation. After initiative is rolled, at least one of the fighters would be able to adjust their facing to avoid being attacked from a side hex.

But let's assume that these three don't like each other and that for some unknown reason they fail to use common sense when it comes to facing an opponent. And while we are at it, let's overlook the idiocy of two of them closing to point blank range to use their missile weapons. Who shoots first?

Brandt (long bow) and Edulf (cross bow) get no DX adjustment for shooting into a side hex. They are so close to their targets that there is no negative adjustment for range either. So Brandt's adjusted DX is 13, and Eduff's is 12.

On the other hand, Mad Oly is using a throwing ax. If he throws it he gets +2 to his DX for the side hex and -1 DX for range for an adjusted DX of 13. But the range adjustment is not figured in when determining action order so for that the DX is 14.

What if Mad Oly just strikes with the ax rather than throw it? If he strikes with the ax he gets the +2 for the side hex and NO range penalty which means his adjusted DX is 14.

So Mad Oly would strike first. Then Brandt goes second, and Edulf would be third.

Is your head hurting from all this? Mine is.

Relatively Easy Night

Monday night was already going to be different. Our handling/merchant/mechanician/physicker was going to be out of town, and then my son got called in to work on short notice, so we were going to be two men down. Then we all arrive and our halfling was there. He got home early from his trip, but our elven wizard was sick so we still were a little short-handed.

From our previous session my character had wounds to heal (yes, again.) so while Krupke rested, Jack and Igor spent a week at their jobs (physicker, and bard) and made a little money. Archie and John (our missing players) were given dysentery and put to bed.

After a week had passed we traveled the now familiar road to the wizard Imago's Vanishing Tower and waited for it to appear in the light of the first quarter moon. Imago, you may remember, had been locked in battle with a demon for over one hundred years until our party climbed the many levels of his tower and found him. He and the demon were in separate bubbles of ethereal energy. After John carefully drew a pentagram around the demon's bubble we released them both. Imago was pleased to be released and has been a source of information and small quests ever since. We have acted as postmen for him as he and the alchemist Grizbane exchange letters containing the moves of a chess game they have been playing for centuries. While talking to him on this occasion we learn about the general locations of two rival clans of goblins and a dragon in the area around the tower.

We decide to explore a little on the way back to our base in East Riding. The map shows the area of the island that we have more or less explored, plus information about a couple of places we have not been, but our GM has identified for us.

We come upon a stone door built into a hillside. It has been forced open in the past. The runes on the lintel are in an unrecognized ancient language. The party enters and we encounter six skeletons in tattered clothes and carrying ancient iron long swords. They mindlessly attack us. We fight and defeat them, but not without taken wounds ourselves. (Yes, Krupke is nearly killed again and needs another week of rest.) We find the body of a dead wizard and evidence that there may be more dangers if we go deeper into the buried structure that we believe is a crypt. We decide to put that off for another day and return to town.

The Campaign Continues

I haven't written much lately about our current campaign. To summarize and bring everyone up to date five adventurers from different places stepped or fell through gates and found themselves on the isle of Bridonia in the town of Gromly. They banded together and started exploring the town. They soon learned that the local government appeared to be an Ogre Lord in the castle. All taxes were paid to him and once a month a lottery is held to sacrifice someone to his taste for human flesh.

Various small adventures took us to the other towns of the island and to the Vanishing Tower of Imago the wizard. We lost one of our players along the way, but we found another player to join the game. Our current adventurers are:

• Archie - a female roguish thief who is very good with a bow,
• Igor - a goblin wizard/bard who entertains with a flute and fire-breathing,
• Jack - our halfling physicker, merchants and mechanician,
• John - an elvish wizard whose favorite option is to run or burn it down, and
• Krupke - your basic tank with a fine broadsword.

Originally we had a human wizard and another dwarfish tank, but we tried our hand at hunting giant frogs one week and Holokka Zolukka was fighting a frog with the help of two illusions. The wizard Serrato tried casting a fireball and went unconscious with fatigue. That caused the illusions to fade and the frogs overwhelmed the dwarf. Serrato was so despondent he became a hermit.

Since then we have settled ourselves in the town of East Riding where we were rewarded with titles and property after ridding their apple orchard of giant spiders and the demonic spider queen. Our most recent quest has been to rid the area of a demonic cult of black hobbits. Their lair was deep in the forest Northeast of town. It took us several tries to enter the cave and kill all the demented hobbits in it.

We've visited the city of Weasel Port that is ruled by a wizard who is dead, but may be a Lich. Everyone in the city seems strangely depressed and unconcerned about life in general, There is a large hoard of treasure there for the taking, but we're not ready to take on a Lich.

Once a month we travel to the grimy little town of Grizbane. Multicolored smogs cover the town from the tower of the alchemist that lives there. The smog makes everyone sick and the run-off from the laboratory has polluted the nearby swamp and created strange mutations. The serfs are bound to the alchemist or they would leave. We want to help, but right now we have a comfortable relationship with the alchemist.

So there we are. We have three potential and deadly quests ahead of us.

1. Kill an ogre and his henchmen, and free the people.
2. Kill a Lich and gain great treasure.
3. Kill a alchemist who is polluting the countryside.

Which will we do next?

Okay. I'm a Fanboy

I keep reminding myself that I'm a seventy year old man who has accomplished a lot over the years, but still I get excited when I meet someone famous and important. Recently I "talked" to Steve Jackson on the TFT Discord server. I was excited.

Anyhow I was really excited this morning when I got an alert in my mailbox that he had written to me. As you can see he was replying to something I had said 3 hours earlier. Cool!