Hiatus?

This blog is either going on hiatus or ending. I’m not sure yet. With the recent (relative) collapse of my life and the ensuing plans, I don’t see any more games on the near horizon, and while there’s a chance I’ll be struck by the mood to finish the write-up of the Castle Falkenstein, it is rather slight.

I think writing the summaries wasn’t a very good idea to begin with; it’s always something of a chore and it kept me from actually playing games. Maybe I would have done another game or two if I managed to keep them simple and short. But then, what’s the point of having the blog?

In any case, I feel this has been a partial success for me. Over the course of ten months we’ve played seven games, four of which I hadn’t played before and another two that I last played ten years ago. Not quite the one game per month I was hoping for but but not a lot less. I used some new systems, had a chance to read or re-read some of my books and had a bunch of fun roleplaying sessions.

I might pick this up when I go to the States. I don’t know what kind of group I’ll have there and I’m pretty certain not all these books will come with me, but maybe I’ll have the urge again. One never knows, though, so this might be the end of it.

Thanks to everyone who’s been reading.

 

The Great Game

The most surprising thing about re-reading Castle Falkenstein was the fact the game came out in 1994. I clearly remember Steampunk being all the rage on the internet and in roleplaying forums for a while – with its own GURPS book, a re-issue of Space: 1889, and a whole slew of d20 books that put some steam into your D&D game – but I’m almost ceratin that this was some time in the early aughties. Falkenstein is something of a forerunner, then, ahead of its time by six or seven years, though still not as ancient as the original Space: 1889. In a way, you can see the difference from the later wave of games, as Falkenstein focuses more on Victorian society and a fantastical version of 1800′s europe and less on the mechanical gadgets and giant steam robots. Those still exist, but they are just one element of the game along with magick and faerie creatures.

The real focus of CF, then, is what it dubs the Great Game. Borrowing the historical term, Falkenstein uses it to describe the politics, war and espionage of 19th-century Europe, with all its tiny kings, republics, dukes and princes. A little after the advent of instant communication and a little before the rise of the nation state, Falkenstein‘s back story casts Otto von Bismarck as the nefarious villain bent on world domination and the Mad King Ludwig along with his little kingdom of Bavaria as the only thing standing in its way. It’s all spiced up, of course with the Faerie rivalry of the Seelie and Unseelie court and a little bit of magic, steamtech and their inevitable combination.

That’s not what we did in our one-shot, though.

The other thing that Falkenstein does is let you play with all your favorite fictional characters. There’s some backstory to all of this, talking about how the reality of that world trickles into our world in the form of legends and make-belief, but the bottom line is that CF is the world where Captain Nemo, scourge of the high seas, can meet with Jules Verne, French minister of science, to discuss the latest theories on the aether, and they can both team up with Abraham van Helsing to hunt down dracula.

Which is what we did do in our one-shot, more or less.

I started working on the CF game perhaps two months ago, at about the same time I had rented Fury of Dracula from the local game shop, and the two kind of clicked in my mind. What better way to hunt down the count than with a horseless carriage and a stake-gun? I imagined a game session a little like the boardgame, with the heroes chasing Dracula from town to town, always one step behind, until they catch up with him on a dark and stormy night. I came up with a cast of characters – one of van Helsing’s cohorts, a consulting detective that wasn’t Sherlock Holmes, a 19th century version of Lois Lane and a faerie, a dwarf and a wizard to show off the CF world, and our game was born. This is the first one, I think, which I prepared from scratch.

So, we’ll join our diverse group at the gates of the Palais Luxemburg in the next post.

 

Murder Most Foul!

A scream! A crash! A bolt of lightning!

The Duc de Chesnay’s annual party for the high society of Paris comes to an abrupt halt when one of the radiant young ladies in attendance is found dead in a side room of the Palais de Luxemburg. Hushed murmurs throughout the party speak of a pale-white body, of dark sorcery and evil forces, and soon the whole of Paris is aghast with the tale.

Now it is up to an unlikely bunch – an analytic detective, a dashing young reporter, a vampire hunter, a faerie lady, a sorcerer and a dwarven steam-engineer – to chase down an ancient evil across New Europa and vanquish it by sword, sorcery and steam.

Castle Falkenstein is a game of rogue Wizards and Faerie Lords, of gigantic Landfortresses and fire-breathing dragons, of scheming Prussian nobles and insidious British steam-lords, of high adventure and romance in an alternate Victorian Universe. And it uses card instead of dice.

 

The Mysteries of Mindkeep (Redux)

On the way to Oskar, the world began to glow.

I’ve played Gamma World before on several occasions – always one shots, as I recall – but somehow I never wound up in a radiation field. When I came to the adventure this time I knew I wanted to have one. Like everything in Gamma World, radiation involves the ACT and random tables. A character rolls their Constitution on the ACT and the results determines if they mutate and how long the mutation lasts. Then they roll up the nature of the mutation on those tables from character creation.

As the party proceeded through the field, they couldn’t quite figure out what was going on. At first they thought the glow was coming from them; then they looked around to see its source; finally they just gave up and continued. It ended up giving each one of them an extra mutation lasting between a few hours and several days.

The most notable one was Johnny, who gained a defect called a Hostility Field, just in time for entering Oskar. Arriving at the gates of the little village, it was indeed the platypus who stepped up to address the guards. Standing on top of a turret were a couple of badders – mutated badgers – and a bof – mutated buffalo – who took very badly to him, almost to the point of aiming their large gun at the party.

Finally, by mentioning Mindkeep the party gained an audience with Timon, the mutant wolverine leader of the village. There is quite a bit of text devoted to Oskar in the module, detailing the expansionist tendencies of Timon, the social organization of his army and so on. The basis of an interesting campaign is there, although the module takes itself a bit too seriously with passages such as this one:

And the party members should make no mistake about it, Timon is gearing up for war and will most likely win if the other societies in the Flower Lands [...] are not warned [..]. Once Timon controls the Flower Lands he will keep expanding. Any analogy to Hitler and World War II is purely intentional and the Gm should keep this in mind.

Our heroes, in any case, received nothing but aid from the potential dictator, in the form of supplies and a grappling hook gun. They promised to return the gun to Oskar, at which point Timon would have interrogated them about Mindkeep.

Encouraged by the endless stream of assistance and worried by the red shade of their weather predictor, the party made haste early the next day, and by nightfall came to the edge of the Mindkeep Plateau. After setting up camp for the night, they began their climb towards the keep in the morning. I chose to forego any further random encounters.

In the morning they began their climb to the plateau. They had a short encounter with a chotslith hiding in a bush, skirted the small acidic lake around the keep and finally using their grappling hook to cross the broken bridge over it. Surveying the little island, they spotted the entry to the keep and headed straight towards it, overpassing a still-functioning infrared sensor.

Again, there was a gap between my goal-inclined players and the assumptions of the writers. The module goes to great detail about the surroundings of the keep, filled with wreckage, old artifacts, the local wildlife (always aggressive) and even a sort of  puzzle where the characters could obtain a working vehicle by combining fuel and parts from multiple sites in the vicinity.

Retrieving all of these would require a different mindset, centered around exploration and perhaps a desire to “fill in the map” and check out every corner of the site. It came to me that this is a notion still preserved in how I play computer RPGs. Somehow my tabletop gaming has become more plot oriented.

In any case, the party had moved across the infrared sensor, and across the island, on the other side of the keep, mechanisms began to whirr and electronics to flash as a security robot came to life. As they were standing at the entry pondering their next move, the party heard these noises behind them and rushed in.

The party began to frantically search the rooms of the first floor for something to help them, but found nothing better than a terl floating through one of the rooms. The sound of the robot approaching and ringing out calls of “INTRUDERS EXTERMINATE” pressing upon them, Jack pulled out their hi-tech gun and aimed it at the robot, only to find out both of its charges had been used up against the chotslith; the group then decided to tactically retreat into a nearby elevator.

With a Red (that’s color-chart speak for “particularly good”) Intelligence roll, Johnny recognized the elevator as a nuclear powered SA21-N, figured out that it’s not currently powered and gave the group a lecture on the history of elevators throughout the ages. Still the party could do nothing but hide. They stood in the dark of the elevator and heard the robot make some rounds of the facility and dispose of the terl. After a few moments of silence, they left the elevator to find that the robot had returned to its position outside the Keep.

Going through the first level, the group found themselves face to face with a sre’froth, some expanding mushrooms and a friendly omintar that they took as a pet. In one of the rooms they had found another bracelet similar to Ermon’s, which Johnny handled with the same expertise and grace that he had the first (another 3 or so on the Artifact Examination chart). In another there was a large batch of documents explaining some of Mindkeep’s goals, hinting of another complex to the south, and implying that the main computer would be on the 12th level. Find some handholds along the central shaft, the group set out towards the mysterious 12th level of Mindkeep.

They slowly climbed down, until finally around the 9th level shots were fired at them, and they had a small encounter with Jeremiah, Ermon the ‘Ermit’s insane brother. Jeremiah collapsed just after they got to him, finally beaten by the worm in his brain that had driven him insane. The friendly mutants continued down to the 12th level.

Having reached the bottom of Mindkeep, they found a level arranged differently than the others. Instead of the circular row of doors that characterized the upper floors, the 12th had but one massive, locked door, controlled by a panel. Examining the panel, Johnny the Pltaypus used his great expertise of ID bracelets to recognize that one would fit well into the panel. Unfortunately the panel was an early model that required the bracelet to be in one piece. The group looked around, and finally used an old Star Wars tactic and bashed the panel in. Unfortunately, the door failed to open.

Rising back by the ladder to the 9th and 10th levels, the group looked around and found Jeremiah’s quarters, a lavishly furnished floor including a small shrine to his forefathers and a safe. Upon cracking the safe they found within more documents and gladly, another bracelet. Oxford kept hold of this one.

At the 12th floor again the group found that the panel was now more suitable for one of the broken ID bracelets, and so they rose to the 11th floor, similarly shaped with a panel still whole. They inserted Jeremiah’s ID bracelet and enterred into the Alpha Factor Generator.

A large computer, still operational with lights blinking and magnetic drives softly spinning, filled out the majority of this floor. As the group enterred, the computer’s voice boomed,

“I AM AF1, THE ALPHA FACTOR GENERATOR. DO YOU WISH ACCESS?“

replying affirmatively, the computer continued,

“PLEASE PREPARE THE SUBJECT.”

and opened the doors of a small lab observable from without by a large glass panel. Further attempts at communication failed, as the computer repeated the phrase “PLEASE PREPARE THE SUBJECT”; finally, the brave Stormy Weather stepped forth and enterred into the lab. Immediately the doors closed, and a barrage of gizmos and contraptions began to whir around him. “ZOOLOGICAL SPECIMEN. RANDOM BOMBARDMENT” cried out the computer, and a few moments later light filled the room, washing Stormy Weather over with a purple glow. The squirrel cried out in pain, but the light quickly stopped, and as the doors opened he found himself capable of (*roll* 3; 26; 20 *roll*) Electrical Generation.

While Weather marvelled at his new powers, the rest of the group attempted to communicate with the computer further. Friendlier now that its task had been completed, it gave them some cryptic answers about Mindkeep and finally agreed to open the doors to level 12. As an encore, the group placed their friendly omnitar in the examination room. “MINERAL SPECIMEN. RANDOM BOMBARDMENT” announced the computer and began to bombard the crystal with radiation. Absorbing more than it could bear, the poor creature began to vibrate at a high pitch, and the group ducked out of the room just in time to avoid the rain of shards that flew out of the room.

Hurrying down, they entered another large computer room on that bottom floor. But where before there had been an experimental lab, stood a large cubic receptacle, just the size and shape to receive the flier’s soul. Jack stepped up, placed it inside, and with a flash of light, our adventure was concluded.

At this point I had actually planned to do the big reveal on Gamma World being the Starship Warden, a generation ship that suffered a great malfunction, but I hadn’t really built to it and it seemed like a hollow revelation. Still, I am hoping we’ll see Jack, Johnny, Oxford and Stormy Weather again when we return to Amazing Engine: Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega.

Conclusion!

How was the game? Not our best but pretty nice. Note to self: connect your dots ahead of the session next time.

How’s the setting? There’s not a lot of setting to speak of in the basic Gamma World game. Alpha Factor implies at all these events and the search to build a starship, but perhaps it’s better to talk of the implied mode of play: exploration, gathering of tech, raiding of ancient facilities. It’s basically D&D: Mutant Edition. It didn’t really grab me, perhaps because I already have a vision of what Gamma World should be about. I think a kind of Fallout meets Paranoia is the right tone for the genre, with a lot more society-after-the-fall and a lot less slaughtering-random-mutants, and with tongue firmly in cheek.

How were the rules? Outdated. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the ACT, it’s basically a way to get the probabilities you want without a fancy dice mechanic. But it requires constant lookup with every action, and that gets old fast. Aside from that, the system is missing modern amenities like skills, and suffers from the concept of character level that was shoehorned into it.

What would you take from the rules? Ah, that’s a tough one. Nothing truly jumped out at me, but I’ll go with the Artifact Examination Chart.I like this little minigame within the game that the players are playing, and I thought that it helped me narrate the process of working out the technology quite well. It needs to be more interesting and it needs more player input, but I could see making a chart like that for casting spells or hacking into computer systems.

Would you play it again? Probably not. The concept behind Gamma World is nice, but this particular execution of it is mediocre. I have an issue of Polyhedron with a short d20 game called Omega World, basically GW with the serial numbers filed off, including character and mutation generation and a bunch of critters (like badders). If I ever do another one-shot of GW (and I’m not likely to do much more) I’d probably use it.

That wraps it up for our triumphant return from the cold. It’s been a month since the game, and it’s high time for the next one. Swords, sorcery and steam all around next week with Castle Falkenstein.

 

Mutant Mountain

When I’m planning for a game in this project I usually have a dilemma about character creation. It’s an integral part of the game, and it lets the players connect to their characters, but it can be a lengthy process and creating pregens in advance leaves more time for playing. So far, I think I only went with pregens for Trinity, which has a rather complex character creation process, but I’ll probably use it for more system-heavy games in the future.

With Gamma World, though, there was no question. Half the fun of Gamma World and its successors are those funky random mutation tables. I still have fond memory of a friend’s tiger character who had rolled to have large gas bags.

No, no, they were used for flying. Like a zeppelin.

Our own party consisted of three mutated animals – a flying squirrel, a fox and a platypus, along with one mutated humanoid. Jack, the humanoid and clearly the leader of these lesser beings, was a man with mighty vocal chords (Physical Mutation, Humanoid 80: Sonic Blast) and a slight defect – an inability to recognize the existence of lizards (Defect, Humanoid 55: Mental Block). Unfortunately we hadn’t met any lizards in the adventure – I should have gone with robots.

Stormy Weather, a small flying squirrel, is nothing much to look at from the outside. But from within, he is teeming with mental mutations, some good, some bad. Aside from his heightened charisma (Mental Mut., Animal 25: Heightened Brain Talent) and physical capabilities (Phys. Mut, Animal 33: Heightened Physical Ability), he also has a phobia of loud noises (Defect, Animal 80: Phobia/Fear) and a slight retardation (Defect, Animal 57: Mental Weakness). The player rolled up three defects (negative mutations) for this one, so I let the last one be a positive mutation. I’m not even sure you’re allowed more than one defect by the rule.

Oxford the Fox was next, Oxford the Invisible (Phys., Animal 53), Dual-Brained (Phys., Animal 15), Exoskeletoned (Phys., Animal 09) Fox. This wonder of Evolution is the pride of the village, capable of infiltration and withstanding great damage.

The many shades of Johnny

And at the back went Johnny, the Platypus. None knew from whence he came. His mental powers (Mental, Animal 39: Mental Blast) were great, and so was his absolute, ninja-like control of his skin texture (Plant Mutation 86: Texture Change). From branch to branch he leaped, sharp eyed and weak bodied.

And so, characters in hand, our intrepid adventurers set out from the village of Haven. The village elder, Gene, had entrusted them with the task of finding out Mindkeep and returning the Flyer’s soul to his origin. He gave them two clues to being their search; the location of a hermit some hours to the south and the location of another village whose leader might know something of the Keep. Gene also gave the group three artifacts: a weather predicting device of sorts; a map of the area and the mysterious Needle of the North.

Reassured by the blue hue of their Weather Rock, the group headed south, along one of the highways of the ancients that passed through Haven. Not long after, they heard a buzzing of a sort. As Oxford invisibly approached, he saw two Arns, two-meter long dragonflies of sorts, who had built a sort of a nest into the road. Returning to the group, they decided to avoid contact and changed their heading.

I was going by the Gamma World adventure model here; I rolled up some critters on the random encounter table (Ancient Roads, 51: Arns), and presented them to the characters. They weren’t so interested; in retrospective, they hadn’t had much of an incentive to interact with them. But the players in the Example of Play in the book just charged ahead when they saw something!

Nep Eps (artist rendition)

The next creature I rolled up (Normal Woods, 74) was a Nep Eps. This is a kind of nefarious tree that shoots electricity at unsuspecting victims, so I had it ambush the characters. The third edition of GW has a unified mechanic called the Action Table (ACT). It’s a colored table where you you cross reference your character’s ability with a percentile roll to get a colored level of success. But the game is still limited by having no skills or measures of character beyond six attributes and the character Rank, i.e. level. So to set up the ambush, I assigned an arbitrary difficulty level (I believe it was “Green”, the second level) and had everyone roll their Mental Strength stat. Only Oxford passed, which meant the tree had taken the others by surprise.

Minding his business and walking down the road, then, it was Jack that caught the trees attention, and was immediately swept up by its roots. The group panicked, and surrounded the tree, trying to extricate their friend.

We rolle initiative – one roll per side, modified by the highest Dexterity on that side and then alternating, thank goodness. Our heroes won the roll, and then lunged forward – and flailed rather ineffectively at the tree.

The basic mechanic for combat is the same as for the rest of game, the ACT. Once again, the attacker must look up his attack value in the chart, roll up a d% and get his level of success. The problem is that the base lookup parameter during combat is the character’s Rank. After adding and substracting the appropriate modifiers it might be a little higher or lower, but beginning, first-Rank, characters end up having to roll 70+ to hit a tree.

Possibly, in some alternate universe (perhaps one called The Eighties) this works well. Nowadays, spending two thirds of our time rolling misses isn’t widely considered fun. I quickly bumped the levels up to Rank 5, making them 10% or so more likely to hit, and getting them closer to 50% with various modifiers.

We also had some confusion with the offensive mutations. Each mutation has its own rank, generally around 10. We weren’t sure whether to use this as the attacking number or the Character Rank again; I went with the latter.

After a few rounds of helplessly hitting the tree with sticks (possibly infuriating it further by this disrespect towards its dead relatives) his three companions managed to untangle Jack and get away from the tree. Lacking motor capabilities, it did not pursue.

Without any further encounters, the group had reached a large plateau where Ermon the Hermit was said to reside. There was some confusion at this point, because half the party was sure they were headed towards the village of Oskar. The blame seemed to lay at the feet of Johnny the Shifty Platypus who had led them there. But as they were already on Hermit Plateau, they decided to pay Ermon a visit.

After a short encounter with some friendly n’thlai, the group located Ermon. This seemingly senile old man who kept asking them for their purpose babbled about Mindkeep, its purpose, its dangers and its inhabitants. The group couldn’t quite get the location of the Keep out of him, though, only that some Bofs had been here to ask about it.

However, Ermon was quite friendly and decided to give the party some of his old loot from Mindkeep (I think i asked for a token Charisma roll to see how much he liked them). Telling them of a stash at the bottom of the hill, he prompted a frantic race to the bottom, where they found under a rock a hidden badge, a gray bracelet of some sort, and what was either a weapon or a phone.

We had fun with another bit of the system here, the Artifact Examination Chart. This lets the characters either figure out what a piece of technology does, destroy it, or shoot themselves in the process. The party had two pieces of technology to handle here, the bracelet and the gun. Jack had a first go at the gun, but after some unsuccessful rolls ended up baffled and distraught.

He gave it to Stormy Weather to try, and the squirrel had a bit more success with it. Unlikely as it was, requiring about five or six half-chance rolls, he managed to reach the point where he could tell this was a gun and where he needed to press to shoot it. I had fun with this, as each successful result gave the character another bit of knowledge (“you’re pretty sure you need to hold it the other way around”) and a failed roll caused something alarming to happen (“red indicator lights have now lit up along the rim of the gun”). Once Stormy Weather was done I offered another roll to determine how many shots were left in the device, but he chose not to stretch his luck.

Encouraged by the success of his fellows, Johnny took a look at the bracelet. His first conclusion, upon rolling a 2, was that the best way to examine it was by splitting it in two with his spear. This did not quite work out.

Done with these artifacts, the party moved on towards Oskar in hopes of learning the location of Mindkeep. I was tired of the random encounters so I decided to go with something else now – a high radiation field. Walking through the prairie, the air around the party soon began to glow.

What wondrous new mutations will they receive? We’ll see on my next post.

 

Into the Wild

No, no, we actually had a game this time. I’ve just been lazy with updates; my mind is still elsewhere.

We played Gamma World two weeks ago, as promised. We mutated some harmless animals, trekked through the wild, and encountered villainous robots. In the end, we returned to our village with many wondrous artifacts and  tools of the ancients.

I had gone over two Gamma World supplements in preparation for the game, both belonging to the 1986 Third Edition. I started with the basic box set, a strange creature that seems  to be a testament to low standards at TSR in the 1980s. The box is a mess of booklets and handouts in the grand tradition of the early days of roleplaying: there’s one “Rule Book” of 64 pages, detailing the rules, or most of them, with bits of setting here and there. There’s another “Reference Book” consisting of 14 pages of monster – ah, mutant – statistics, one page of medical equipment and one page of character talents.

The division does not seem to follow any particular logic. The Reference Book is basically a small manual of creatures – but why was the medical equipment appended to it? And the talents, basically a part of character creation? And why are robots in the main book rather than in the creature section?

Even more mysterious is the numbering of chapters. The Rule Book goes from Part I: Introduction through Part IX: Artifact Examination Chart to conclude with Part X: Robots. Then comes along the Reference book and begins the count again with a completely different Part IX, the large Part IX: Creatures. Then it has its own Part X, too (Medical Equipment) and goes up to Part XI: Talents. It was as if someone had updated the main rule book with two more sections but forgot to tell the Reference Book team about it.

There’s also an “Adventure Book” containing 32 pages of choose-your-own-adventure entries keyed to a small map in the player screen, available along with a GM screen, another general map poster (with maps of the post-nuclear US, of the Pitz Burke area and of Pitz Burke itself). There are also several d6s and two d10s. The rules inform me that when promted to roll a d20, I must roll a d10 and a d6, and if the latter comes up 4-6, I should add 10 to the result of the former.

And then, there is the Rule Supplement. 16 more pages of rules that seem to have, ah, gotten lost along the way. Things like vehicles, equipment and price lists, things like Cryptic Alliances, social organizations the character can belong to that are mentioned here and there in the main book but never explained.

Quality control wasn’t all that back in 1986, it seems.

The second book I read was the scenario we ran through, the first official adventure published for this edition, called Alpha Factor. This scenario, the first in a series of interlinked adventures (Beta Principle, Gamma Base, Delta Fragment and finally Epsilon Cyborgs after which the line was cancelled) revolves roughly around an ancient research station called Mindkeep. But in a manner reminiscient of our advntures at the Caves of Chaos, there’s a sort of an implied game described in the GW books that is rather alien to how we usually play.

Much like red box D&D, Gamma World revolves, at least in the mind of its creators, around exploration. Much of the main rule book is devoted to the subject: rules for movement, searching, and lots of rules for random encounters. The characters are expected to be on the lookout for adventure, or for artifacts. They should be moving along those large maps, hex by hex, making note of what they find, investigating lairs of creatures, confronting them, looking to bring back loot and information. There is no focused “mission” and there is no “plot” to follow. Only a large post-apocalyptic world to discover.

Alpha Factor is built around this concept as well. It provides a new map, a new area of the world to explore, describes one main location (Mindkeep) in this area and two secondary locations or encounters. But where today one would expect a hook to bring the characters to Mindkeep and arrows pointing there from both secondary locations, Alpha Factor is satisfied with a general mission to explore the area and some planted rumers about Mindkeep in the village of Oskar. Half of the scenario booklet is devoted, again, to new monsters, each with a name less pronounceable than the last.

We weren’t quite up to this aimless exploration (I got some blank stares from the players when I just introduced them to the Keep on the Borderlands with no mission or guidance) so I pointed the players at Mindkeep right away. And I was also trying for something else; a crossover with Metamorphosis Alpha.

Metamorphosis, if I have my histories correctly, is actually Gamma World‘s predecessor. The game is very similar in scope to GW, except that it takes place on a large generation ship that has suffered some malfunction exposing it to radiation. One of the games on the projects is a new edition of Metamorphosis, from the nineties, and I was aiming for a big reveal at the end of this adventure that would allow us to continue with these characters when we play that game.

So, taking a page from (SPOILER WARNING) the Book of the New Sun, I started the adventure off with a man crashing to the ground. This was one of the operators of the starship our heroes were on board, and he was scouting the area. The ship’s computer needed the information the scout had recorded, and so it sent visions to the village’s shaman. The visions pointed at Mindkeep, and told the shaman the the flying man’s soul, a small data crystal attached to his neck, must be brought there.

So I had a good beginning, and I had a good reveal at the end. Unforunately, they were only tied in my mind, so it wasn’t quite the finale I had hoped for.

Still, the middle was entertaining, with mutations and exploding artifacts. More on that early next week, in my next post.

(also next week – I hope – Castle Falkenstein)

 

…and, We’re Back, or: Of High Energy Photons

…I recall the first time I heard the tale of the Changing.

We students sat on the silkmoss-covered hillside; the graying dusk was lit by the golden glowing gorse and the new evening stars.

We had finished meditations to clear our minds for the lesson, when Master Laur silently began to instruct us.

One might almost mistake the goodly Laur for one of the True Children, the direct descendants of the Ancients, for the dim light masked the green hue to his skin and his four-fingered hands. But Laur was one of the few Changed who had managed to join the ranks of the Keepers. When he spoke, the wind hushed, and his soft voice carried to each of our ears like a private whipser.

“Learn now the lessons of the past and the great goal set for our live.

“Before the sky glowed red,before the seas of grass waved blue and deadly, there was a time when the world was a wonder! Mighty cities of metal rose toward the heavens, lying chariots sped across the plains, and man’s companions were creatures of steel. All this was the Ancients’ domain.

“Those Ancients, the forefathers of our world, were mighty beings and all the Earth was their to command. But this was not enough, and they sought greater challenges, new frontiers. And so, their shamans, the legendary Scientists, built vessels of power to explore the Great Void itself, and thus, their glory was spread among all the stars.

“Yet from these mighty achievements, a haighty pride grew and dissatisfaction took root in that rich soil.Man grew jealous of his brother and nation bickered with nation.

“What spark at last ignited the nations’ angers, we do not know. Some Keepers hold that man grew reckless or that some Cosmic Force sought to teach the world a lesson; others believe that outsiders feared the might of man’s nations and tried to eradicate them. Still others fear it was the result of a colossal accident or miscalculation.

“However it came about, a mighty conflict raged and man scoured the earth with awesome tools of destruction. Fire destroyed the cities of man and winds cleansed the debris. When the as settled, the Age of the Ancients was past.

“Then began the time of Long Dying, that we call the Shadow Years. From out of their shelters crawled the last of the Ancients to behold the destruction they had wrought. They were repentant and called into the Void for their brethren to return. But if any heard, none answered. They had sealed their own doom. In the years that followed, the glow-that-burned blanketed the land, and many of the survivors sickened and died. Yet some few survived to begin the long climb back to civilization.

“It was the Ancients’ greatest terror that proved to be their most precious gift to us. The very earth poison, whose deathglow slew thousands, was the key that unlocked the potential of all creatures. The gates on the stations of life were thrown wide and plant and animal learned to change their form and to survive in this changed world.

“These changes were as varied as ice crystals. Some changed their shape, color, or natural defenses. Some gained vastly improved minds, discovering new powers of life and death, while still others changed beyond the Ancients’ recognition.

“Thus from humble beginnings sprang out four races, the children of the Ancients. From the plants grew the Earth’s Children; from the lowly beasts evolved the intelligent Man Brothers; the Changed had transformed into the form of man and were able to use both man’s tools and the weapons of their bodies; and finally there are the True Children, the unchanged, the direct descendants of the Ancients.

“We are of many shapes, but we are all children and heirs of the Ancients. And to us has passed their legacy. We have a second chance, a chance to rebuild, to restore the old glory, and to prove ourselves worthy of our heritage. For only then will we at last escape the wilderness and be welcomed back into the Cities of Man!”

My memory of the rendition fades, and I admit to a distraction at that time, for I had recently passed the rites of manhood. Yet I recall that below the hill spread a panorama of the world that is so familiar to us. It was hard to a imagine a world where the plains were not wild blue waving grasses, where forests grew without the towering red watchwoods, where the night was dark and pale, where the violet glow of the Deathlands was absent.

My gaze traveled across the vale, to the Feather Forest whose giant cicadias and immense red roses offered shade to the monstrous mantraps and the darting drakeflies. Beyond lay the Muck Marsh, bubbling orange and acidic; only the metal storks and floating sweetpads date wade those waters. And there, lying at the foot of the ochre-mantled mountains, surrounded by the deathglow, nestled a silver-green ruin of the Ancients, a treasuty of hidden mysteries.

A winged drayfish, its mouth filled with myriad venomous barbs, soard through the red sky seeking prey.

The drayfish spotted its prey and dived towards a fluttering flock of flame moths. I chuckled, for in the beast’s hunger-driven haste it had made a fatal mistake! The moths scattered before the diving creature and beams of ruby light flashed from their eyes, lancing the beast. The diner had just become dinner.

Ah well! As the elders say, “Life is tough, and then you die!”

Estelroth Twilyght

Keeper of the Everlasting Light

Used to be, physics was the end-all, be-all of science. There were days when you didn’t need a “cellular biologist” to turn you into a superhero. Used to be, all you needed was a healthy dose of gamma radiation.

So, returning from our long hibernation we turn back to that gentle age. The year is 1986; the publisher is TSR, the very makers of D&D. And our subject matter are intelligent moths that shoot laser beams out their mutated eyes. The world has changed, and so have those who walked it; intelligent plants and animals, mutated humans and a scattering or pure-strained humans struggle to bring back civilization.

With a little color chart to determine success, a random table to determine your mutations and a 16-page errata for a 64-page rule book, this promises to be a lot of fun.

In the village of Ucsball, near the Feather Forest, a man is about to fall out of the sky. And when the village shaman determines his soul must be returned to the tribe of the True Children, that task is left to a rag-tag team of lions and tigers and sentient oaks.

So grab your laser gun, warm up your laser-eyes and fill up your natural helium bags; Welcome to Gamma World.

 

Showdown at 17 Wendenbahn

The rain poured on and on, turning the little yard back behind No. 17 into a mire. Still Hargen stood there, hammer raised, staring at that back door, waiting for any more villains to come out, muttering to himself about the “Circle of Death”.

After half an hour, he began to cough.

Sensing the coming pneumonia, Yuviel drew the dwarf back under the roof of the privy, and cautiously opened the door to the house. Entering a small kitchen he paused; from the living room he heard soft snoring. Slowly he made his way there to find two thugs fast asleep. He looked at his dagger and pondered the situation, finally finding his chances favorable. He moved to the first thug and dispatched him, as quickly and as quietly as he could.

Luck was with him, and with a percentile roll in the single digits he managed to kill off that thug without allowing him a squeak. It was then easy to be rid of the second one as well, and he returned to the kitchen, calling in Hargen and Theo.

In the kitchen was a large door leading down to a pantry or a basement. Listening at it, they could hear nothing, and so Theo decided to check out the second floor first. Sneaking again, he climbed the stairs in complete silence, keeping his ears wide open but not quite wide enough. He was almost off the stairs when he heard a low growl and then some barks. Adrenaline pumping, he now heard a human voice, calming the dog down. Turning around he reported back to his companions and they decided to head to the basemend.

Dwarf ahead, the troupe opened the doors and shuffled down the wooden stairs to see – the dashing man from Kugelschreiber’s house, standing ahead of a noisy, cumbersome piece of machinery. And to compound their troubles – a man in city guard uniform talking to him!

All this caught Theo and Hargen by complete surprise, but Yuviel was quick on his feet and managed to let off an arrow before I could even call for initiative. We quickly moved into combat mode when the blackmailer, Claudio, stepped forward to strike at Uri for a couple of points of damage. The guardsman, in the mean time, stood back and smugly warned the trio to stand down.

They weren’t quite ready to do that, though, so Hargen raised his axe and swung at Claudio. Two hard swings, because he was just that badass. One missed wildly while the other connected – with Claudio’s off-hand rapier, ready at the block. The two collided once and again, while Yuviel tried to fire off some arrows, having a hard time avoiding Hargen for as he aimed for Claudio.

Theo, in the meantime, jumped off the stairs into the basement proper, hoping to get a clear line of sight to sling at Claudio. But the guard would have none of that, and he menacingly bore down on the little halfling, while not quite attacking him yet.

The setting was quite cramped, with little room for movement, so Hargen and Claudio were free to devote their turns entirely to attacks. As they were both experienced fighters, that meant two attacks for each of them (similar to D&D‘s Full Attack). The critical difference was Claudio’s off-hand weapon. Every character, as we mentioned, gets a chance to dodge one attack each round. But if you’re holding a rapier or another suitable wepaon in your left hand, you also get to parry one attack. The rules here are quite similar – once an attack hits you get a chance to nullify it.

What this meant was that Hargen was having a hard time getting any blows past Claudio’s defenses. He did a little damage, but his opponent in the meantime attacked twice each round for each one dodge the dwarf got. Within three or four rounds, Hargen was down to his last wounds, and then Claudio hit him again with a killing blow.

So Uri, Hargen’s play, turns to me and tells me he wants to spend a Fate Point. Fate points are something WFRP characters have for just these kind of sticky situations. When they’re about to die or suffer some other nastiness, they can spend this (non-renewing) resource to get a plot twist.

I blinked a couple of times, and I thought of the storm outside and how it played out on the roof, and I told them a lightning bolt hit the house. And then someone asked if it came from the machine, so I said yes, let’s go with that.

And so by some twist of fate, a lightning hit a conduit in 17 Wendenbahn’s foundation at the same moment that the Kugelmaticsaurus was going through it Thermodynamic Phase B

- and everyone knows Phase B is the most crucial one -

and in a flash of blue light and a great sound of thunder two lightning bolts, from above and below connected and wham! the entire basement collapsed, burying Claudio, the guardsman and Theo as well.

Quickly, Yuviel pulled Hargen out of what rabble he was in and tried to use his outdoorsmanship to revive the dwarf. He rolled poorly, so it was to no avail. Suddenly he heard a dog barking, and out of some other piece of rabble that was once the upper floor he could see another bandit rising. Looking over his character sheet, he quickly pulled out his… Animal Trap. It’s one of the things a Hunter gets when he starts his career.

Working fast he set it ahead of him, so that a minute later when the dog ran forward, egged on by the remaining bandit, it snapped on his paw, provoking the most pitiful cry ever heard in Nuln. Luckily for Yuviel the last bandit loved his dog, and so was willing to walk away if his dog was set free.

On the other side of the heap of rocks that was the basement, Theo climbed out into the street. He could not see his friends, but Claudio was also getting up, so he began to pelt him with stones from his sling, keeping him from climbing out as well. Unfortunately for the halfling, the unnamed town guard awoke as well, and managed to climb up and swing his sword at him, drawing blood.

Rounding the house just then came Yuviel, dragging Hargen along. The guard assessed his odds and began to run, while the hunter and the halfling unleased a couple of arrows and bullets at him. As he ran into an alley, Theo chose to follow while Yuviel decided to take Hargen, tie him to the machine, and limp along towards Der Geflugelsalat.

In the ally, Theo hit the guard time after time, but finally saw him approaching a group of other guards. With a desperate sling of the sling he hit the man straight in the head (we were too tired to go through the Critical Hit Location process at that point) and dropped him. “Now he cannot tell them about us!” thought the halfling as he turned about to run away from the guards who had just now plainly saw him attacking one of theirs.

At Der Gefulgelsalat they all met up, seeking refuge inside the house. Bashing down the door, a large party of town guards assembled. Inside, things seemed dire, as Kugelschreiber and Smallnose ran from room to room gathering their belongings. They were taking the waterway out. To our trio, the inventor suggseted only “Ze air! You must take to ze air!”.

In the distance, a dwarf crashes

And so they climbed to the roof, where they had seen another one of his contraptions while fighting the burglar. Below they heard a muffled explosion, as the basement opened up to the river and let the Untervatership out. The guards stood small on the street, pointing, and an elf, dwarf and a halfling, never meant to fly, put on the Kugelmatic Flywing and set out to the realm of birds.

And then they were in the air. From below, arrows came, and rocks. Above, the clouds and the rain and the brightening predawn sky. It was then that the adventurer was measured – as Yuviel the elf soared, as Theo the halfling stalled but kept his altitude. As Hargen the dwarf -

Well, dwarves were never meant to fly.

Fast losing altitude, faster losing hope, the dwarf felt the ground approaching. And so, in the final act of self-sacrifice, he down down. Towards the guards, aiming his full wait he crashed into the crowd, scattering them all, causing mayhem and disaster that Nuln would tell of for weeks, and most of all allowing Yuviel and Theo to escape.

Gliding forwards, they flew beyond the Nuln city walls and into the sunrise.

How was the game? A great session. I had an easy time with the system and the ready-made adventures were well documented and suited us well.

How’s the setting? It’s fun. We mostly explored the lighter parts, really – mad inventions and funny accents – but I think the nature of the characters and the villains, along with the deadliness of combat, gave hint of the rest of it.

How were the rules? The easiest time we’ve had so far with a new system. Combat flowed (possibly thanks to the D&D-like action system) and was mostly interesting and fast. Skills were easy to handle, but a bit prone to failure. Beginning characters kind of suck. I know this is partly intentional, but it does demand some work on the side of the GM to still allow them to succeed.

What would you take from the rules? As mentioned two posts ago, I really like the carreer system of character advancement. But I’ll pick something else that we actually used and that’s much more portable – Fate Points. In any system with high lethality, you need something to guard characters against bad luck (and provide another buffer from their own stupidity). The idea of the fate (or drama or action) points buying a plot twist isn’t unique to WFRP, but usually it’s a little-used aspect. Here, it is their prime purpose and reason – it’s really the number of “lives” the character has.

Would you play it again? Certainly. This is a game I could see myself having a short campaign with, or possibly even taking up for a long period of time. I think it could be a good D&D-replacement.

That’s it for this yet-again-long-overdue game summary. Next week – I hope – we’ll have a rousing game of Gamma World, with mutants and tigers and plants – oh my!

 

Strangers in the Night

We return to the intrepid adventurers in der Geflugesalat, as they await evening to descend on Nuln. It is the fifth consecutive day of rain, so the sky grows dark long before sundown. Still, it is less than an hour after sunset that a decisive knock sounds at Wolfgang Kugelschreiber’s door and two hooded men, soaked to the bone and holding sharp swords barge into the house.

Right behind them, seemingly untouched by the rain, a well-dressed with a twirling mustache makes his way into the house. “So, Kugelschreiber, you have the money for us?” he intones, inspecting the odd company that fills the inventor’s hallway.

“Ya, ya,” replies the inventor, as he shoots a warning glance towards the frothing visage of Hargen the Crazy. “No fighting in da house!” he exclaims when the dwarf starts to chant about the Circle of Death. Kugelschreiber hands the dashing brigand a sack full of coins, and the trio leaves. “After them!” cries the inventor at the group, urging them to follow the bandits and find where they keep his machine.

And so they slink out into the rain, each on his own, passing between the drops. The halfling Theo, snuffing out his lamp, follows them closely for a while, but as he looks into a tavern one moment he realizes he has lost the gang. But the hunter Yuviel’s eyes are sharper and his ears more accustomed to the falling water, and he manages to keep them in sight until they arrive at a run-down three sotry house on 17 Wendenbahn. Inside there is light, and Theo on a Perception roll (no bonus for lamp) estimates several men – no more than ten.

Counting on his stealth, the Watchling goes around back through 19 Wendenbahn to check the back door. In the meantime, Yuviel crosses the street to Number 18 to inspect the house, seeing two lit bedrooms on the second floor. Hargen also arrives now.

Theo, skulking through Fau Koch’s back yard without making a sound, rounds the house to see the back door and the privy across the yard from it. The halfling waits a while, until finally a tall, muscled blonde man emerges to deal with his natural urges and enters the outhouse.

Like a U.S. Senator looking for some action, Theo runs into the outhouse as well. He hopes to knock the large man cold with a single blow (and he has the training to do so, some talent called Strike to Stun). However, he rolls very poorly and pretty much falls into the wrong end of the privy.

Trying to recover, the halfling attempts to bluff the large man into believing he has made some mistake, but rolls high up in the 90′s again. And so Axel draws out his dagger and Theo runs out drawing his own short blade, and they fall into battle stances, the halfling desperately trying to hold off the larger man.

By complete coincidence Yuviel and Hargen decide at this moment that Theo has been gone for quite a while, and make up their minds to check up on the halfling. The bumbling Hargen runs roughshod through Frau Koch’s backyard but she rolls 99 on her perception and keeps sleeping soundly.

In the mean time, a combination of bad luck for Axel and good luck for Theo, along with a forgetful GM gives the halfling the advantage. We were going one-on-one here in combat, using the most basic actions. This means that we each roll a single Weapons Skill (WS) roll and then don’t move away, because that would invite an attack (similar to D&D‘s attacks of opportunity, but much more limited in scope). In addition, each character gets to roll Dodge once per round, avoiding an attack that has already hit.

Together with relatively low WS numbers (in the 30′s and 40′s) this should make for a relatively slow moving combat – it’s hard to get a blow in. But Theo was showing extraordinary luck (probably rolling under 30 three times in a row) and I was showing some senility, neglecting to dodge for Axel when it was time. All in all, the big men was down to 0 wounds just as the cavalry came around, and decided to make a run for it just as Theo the Halfling was going to do the same.

Something else we noticed of the combat here is that though Theo had some options (Strike to Stun and also Disarm) he wasn’t very good at them. Basically the combination of random character creation with relatively little chance to succeed at the manuevers he knew. It’s possible that this is better if you know what to choose for your character after viewing her stats. And perhaps the idea is that you start out sucking at everything and work your way towards being good at some of the things. Still, it’s strange to have these talents on paper without the ability to use them effectively. Better that they come when they are relevant.

Still, just as the elf and dwarf arrived on the scene, Theo started running into the outhouse to hide, certain that he was losing the fight. Axel, in the meantime, desperately wanted in with his friends, so he ran up to the house and began to slam on the door. Hargen would have none of that – he ran ahead and smashed right through Axel’s arm, severing it half and landing a solid knock on the door.

We rolled the three-stage Critical Hit mechanism again here. Hargen killed the man – and the hit location was, once more, the right arm.

With hearts beating Hargen and Yuviel stood there, hammer ready and bow strung, prepared for the blonde man’s backup to emerge through the door. But the thugs inside had 20% Perception scores, and could not hear a single thing. After a few minutes, though, Bruno – another blond aryan – opened the door to check on Axel. Hargen, still standing there, surprised him with a 14 points of damage straight to – yes, his right arm. Bruno dropped dead and Hargen resumed his hammer position waiting for anyone else to come.

And so he stands there, dripping wet as the rain falls around him. We’ll join him in a few days for my last post on this.

I’ll also take the opportunity to mention the next game we’ll run – Gamma World. We’ve been out of it for a while, I hope to get the project started up again with some sneaky mutants. Might put me in the mood for Fallout 3, as well.

 

The Mean Streets of Nuln

Our actual session of Warhammer (a month behind us now) came together rather suddenly and unexpectedly. I was already in kind of a study mode, was back at work, and I wasn’t planning on a Project game. My regular-group-buddy-who’s-gone-abroad-Uri had come back for a short visit and asked me to set up a one-shot and I was going to go with some regular old D&D; I grabbed my Dungeon collection and singled out a couple of possible adventures.

But then Uri mentioned how he’d seen Dark Heresy, the science-fiction equivalent of WFRP, at a shop and quite liked it. At the same time, I noticed both Dungeon adventures I was looking at had this kind of gritty low-fantasy feel. And I realized I wouldn’t have time to run another game for a month. It all clicked together – this was the perfect opportunity to try out WFRP.

This decision came about two days or so before the session, so that’s all the time I had to prepare. One thing Warhammer has going for it is a wealth of fan material on the internet, and looking around I found several scenarios that I liked, and several that were recommended. I mixed and matched and finally set out to run the convolution of two such scenarios: Eureka!, a tale of invention, corruption and daring escape; and With a Little Help from My Friends, a scenario of breaking, entering and outrageous accents. As always, there will henceforth be spoilers for these.

We gathered up, four-fifths of the Regular group, at my house. After some catching up and a short explanation of the rules we set out to create characters. I’m usually not a big fan of randomized character creation, which WFRP employs, but there is something appropriate about having a lousy roll and ending up with a sickly grave-digger that’s oddly intune with the bleakness of the setting. One makes relatively few choices when creating a Warhammer character, the most significant of which is picking a race. Once you’ve done that, attributes are rolled, as is your starting career. You do get the option to roll twice and choose your preference, but you are forced  to use some creativity and possibly play something that’s different than what you had in mind.

In our case, having chosen to play a halfling, an elf and a dwarf, our trio of adventurers ended up being a Watchman (Theo, carries a large lamp-pole, +1% perception at night), a Hunter (Yuviel the slightly-effeminate) and a Troll Slayer (Hargen the Crazy; Troll Slayers are “dwarfs who have been disgraced [..] or otherwise humiliated, [..] and seek the sweet release of death” by challenging opponents who are too big for them. Hargen spent the session mumbling about the Circle of Death) respectively.

Our three heroes met while looking for work at the Reiksplatz in Nuln, where they had all noticed a note on a tree, direting them to the Misthaufen Tavern to inquire with Uwe the barman. From the bar and they sent to a house near the town walls called Der Geflugesalat. At the house they are greeted by a halfling who goes by the name Fatboy Smallnose who introduces them to his employer, the inventor Wolfgang Kugelschreiber. Kugelschreiber has a job for them, and he is willing to pay handsomely. Overwhelmed by the barrage of German names they still manage to haggle him and bring the price up, but do not quite figure what the job itself is.

Finally Kugelschreiber explains that he is being blackmailed by some men, who have stolen one of his inventions. They have it stashed away at a secret location and are demanding that he pays if he wants it back. He hopes the group can go after these people and get it back in one piece. The blackmailers are supposed to come and pick up some of their money the next day; until then the group is invited to stay at Der Geflugesalat and indeed they are shown the various inventions such as the Kugelmatic Fast Draw Scabbard, Kugelmatic Chicken Plucker and the Kugeldramatic Untervatership.

That night, while all are asleep, Theo finds that old habits die hard and wanders around the house holding up his lamp-pole. He spends some time sniffing about looking for anything interesting (or valuable) when a shout is heard from the basement – “Och! Ein burglar!” and a hooded man runs past him, knocking him down on his padded halfling bottom.

We rolled initiative, then. WFRP‘s initiative is blessedly simple like D&D 3e‘s, consisting of a single roll at the beginning of ocmbat and then cyclic rounds (although the roll is 1d10 and it is added to the Agility stat, on the order of 40-50, so unlike in D&D the same people usually went first).

In fact, the whole combat system has some significant similarities D&D‘s. People act in rounds, which are divided into two actions, only one of which can be an attack (and the other is often a move). Some people can attack more than once, but must spend their entire turn on attack to do that. This is very reminiscent of 3e’s Full Action-Standard Action-Move Action split, to the point that our D&D-centric group eased into it without a hitch. (this similarity has been noted by others and there was some outrage about it)

So on we went, the burglar climbing to the roof, Theo and his lamp fast after, Hargen roused from sleep and Yuviel quickly running outside with his bow. Out on the roof, the rain fell hard, making it had to keep balance and hard to see. As the burglar climbed about, the halfling and dwarf tried to follow until a stroke of lightning hit the lightning-rod and jolted the whole house, nearly sending Hargen three floors down.

As Theo paused to help the mad Slayer up, the elusive burglar took the opportunity to jump to the other side of the roof, beyond the reach of both little folks and that of Yuviel’s arrows. Unfortunately for him, he slipped and tumbled off the roof, plummeting down into the yard. Never one to care for personal safety, Hargen charged and jumped ahead and smote him with his great hammer, smashing his right hand to pulp and ending his life by massive blood loss.

While the economy of actions in the game is very similar to D&D’s, the economy of damage and hit points is quite different. The average character starts with about 10-14 Wounds, as they are called, and this rises by about 2-3 points over the length of each career. Damage is generally doled out in parcels of 1d10 plus 1-5, so barring armor, a man goes down in two or three hits, perhaps four for an experienced adventurer. A lucky hit (that d10 is an explosive one – roll a 10 and you get to add another) can take someone out in one shot.

One extra effect here is that someone at zero is not quite dead yet. At this point every hit done to them is a critical hit, and there is an overly complex procedure where you roll for damage, roll for a modifier based on this damage, and finally roll for a critical effect based on the modifier – checking by hit location determined by your to-hit roll. This is just as tedious as it sounds, although perhaps you get used to it or streamline it somehow. In any case, Hargen slew the burglar with a deadly smash of his right arm.

Dragging the body inside, the group searched it but found nothing but some small change. Kugelscheiber, too, claimed to have no knowledge of who this was or what he wanted. The only clue they found was a small tattoo in the shape of a Griffin, the symbol of the town of Nuln.

The next day passed uneventfully, and the group steeled themselves to face the villainous blackmailers, who promptly knocked on the doors a little after sun set. We’ll see who comes in the door in my next post.