Into the Mountains - TLOD S07 E03

In Asdos' hovel, the party huddled around the tiny stove for warmth and pondered the plight of Tcho'eh and his species.  Those who were not stone hearted had already made up their minds, the creature was clearly not a deamon.  After he offered to pay them even Jan was swayed.

Asdos' Hovel in the Wood

The journey into the mountains to the Aarakocra nest of Tikka-Ti-Jarra would be arduous this time of year and so Ssikar and Sir Tarigoz agreed to return to Lurneslye to get provisions.

This Town is Coming Like a Ghost Town

They found the small village deserted and boarded up.  The villagers having taken Bernhardt the Chosen's orders to heart and returned to their farms to protect themselves and their families from the ravaging deamon who could strike at any time.

Their first stop was at the Ostlery, run by Olli Schmidt and his rotund and imposing wife, Grunhilde.  The timid man capitualated when Tarigoz ordered him to open up in the name of the King and they soon collected his charger, Rupert, and requisitioned 2 extra horses, a mule and tack.  As he signed the paperwork, Tarigoz knew that the canny ostler would inflate the animals worth, but time was against them.  The rampaging cloud giant could arrive at Tikka-Ti-Jarra any day now. 

Nyx and Styx also chose to return to the village in order to collect their meagre belongings hidden beneath the village stage.  In amongst their nest of straw and the two great fur coats which they brought with them were a motley collection of shiny jewgaws that they had liberated from the folk of Lurnesyle over the past few months. Given the disturbing scenes they witnessed at this morning's public examination, they surmised that this place had become a decidedly riskier place to live and it was only a matter of time before the cleric Bernhardt mistook them for deamons. 

At the General Store Tarigoz and Ssinkar found a kindred spirit.  The owner, Friedrich, had no love for Bernhardt and his temple and had enjoyed seeing the zealous cleric knocked down a peg or two.  However, he knew that with the Knight of Wulfschlossen gone Bernhardt would be emboldened in his control of the village folk.  He unquestioningly accepted Sir Tarigoz's orders and provided thick fur-lined cloaks and enough provisions for the team and animals for 14 days.

Once reunited at Asdos hovel, the party mounted up set off along the mountain pass.  Asdos' parting gift to each of the brave adventurers is a healing draft.

Dire Wolves and an Ambushed Caravan

Some 4 hours and 10 miles of travelling later, they found themselves traversing a winding and climbing pass road with steep snow spotted cliffs on both sides.  Up ahead lay the gruesome sight of an ambushed traders caravan.  The twisted and broken bodies of the traders had become an opportunistic meal for a snarling pack of 11 dire wolves who nervously encircled the grisly scene.

Dire Wolves Attack

An uneasy stand off ensued, finally broken by Tarigoz's mount Rupert, a trained war horse used to fighting men not wolves, panicking and throwing the Knight to the ground.  The mule follows suit and Ssinkar tries in vain to restrain it and with a whinny it bolts back down the pass towards Lurneslye carrying the bulk of their provisions in its saddlebags.

As the wolves seize their moment to strike, Laurel deftly turns her horse with her desert riding skills and unleashes a salvo of arrows from her bow.  Nyx and Styx unleash a flurry of furry fury attacking  in unison by throwing their daggers into the same wolf.

The wolves attack both horse and hero alike and a fluid combat develops in which 7 of the wolves are slain and the rest flee licking their wounds.  The skirmish comes at no small cost to the heroes either as Jan, Nyx and Tarigoz are left bruised and Wulf Brunson bloodied.

Examining the unfortunate corpses they discover 3 incongruous Aarakocra bodies literally dropped amidst the corpses.  The heroes determine that the attack occurred about 2 days ago and yet the aarakocra bodies show signs of dying at least a week before that.

In the wreckage of the caravan, they find more bodies, provisions and furs and a small chest containing 50gps worth of mixed coinage.

Tcho'eh explains that although the bodies are those of his species they are from a different nest.  Their wounds were made by tooth and claw like those of the traders.  He also asks that the heroes help him to build a pyre and join him in prayers to the uncaring Sky Gods so they may once again hear the plight of his people and respond to their suffering.

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Teaching D&D to Ten Year Olds

Out of the blue a work colleague (and former D&D player) told me that they had bought the 5e Basic Set for their 10 year old daughter and asked me for advice on how to run their first game.  The problem is twofold being as much about teaching dad to be the DM and daughter how to play.

Breaking it Down

All RPGs have the same basic elements:

• Character Generation -  Where players get to "roll up" their characterss and use their imagination and creative writing skills to put some background flesh on their barebones stats.
  
• Mechanics - The rules of the game which are there not to constrain creativity or storytelling but to add a little consistency to the experience.  In this way a fireball or a sword strike do a consistent amount of damage every time.
  
• Storytelling - The art of story writing, dungeon mastery and how to be a player.  This is not really contained in any rulebook and is a skill which you develop over time and exposure to roleplaying.

Character Generation

I remember my own experiences as a young roleplayer some 35 years ago when I unwrapped my christmas gift of a 2nd Edition Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide.  Hundreds of hours were spend pouring through the pages and generating character after character who would never see a moment of play.  However, I know now that this was probably the wrong way of going about things.

Looking at the Lost Mine of Phandelver there are no pre-generated characters designed specifically for the adventure but there are some starter characters in the box set which is a good place to start. 
There are also a couple of great web resources if this is too limited a selection.

• 1,000 Basic Pregens - has a huge array of different characters presented as short form stat blocks.  These take a bit of deciphering for the beginner but there is a key on page one to help you.
  
  
• Digital Dungeonmaster Pregens - 1060 different pregens by class and level but strangely not by race so you have to go hunting round to find the right combination of race and class.

Once your players have played a few sessions they will understand how the game works and will be able to use something like the ORCPUB D&D 5e Character Builder to generate their own.

Mechanics

Every D&D game involves a mix of combat (melee / missile) magic and skill or attribute checks.

Melee and Missile combat boils down to finding the AC (Armour class of the target) and the player trying to beat it on a d20.  There are lots of modifiers (numbers which are added to the dice roll or subtracted from the AC) which as you grow as a DM and player you will learn to remember.  Once a successful hit is determined then the appropriate weapon damage is rolled and applied to the target.

Spells in D&D when any type of magic is cast, it always works unless the spell says that a target gets a Save.  This usually negates or reduces the spells damage and can be cumbersome and tedious to implement, so for first games I would always leave this sort of thing out.  Mages are low powered at low level and the important thing is that the ten year old magic user gets to do a bit of damage now and then so make sure that they have magic missile in their arsenal of spells.

Skill and Attribute Checks are used whenever a PC tries to do something which is not combat or magic related.  Searching for things, disabling or setting traps, scaling a cliff, these are all skill and attribute checks.  The D&D skills and attributes give bonuses to doing specific tasks, but they all require a roll (once again using the d20) to beat a target number.  For example climbing needs a dexterity check, so any DEX modifiers need to be added to the dice roll, but if a character has climb skill they will get additional modifiers.  The target number which needs to be beaten represents the difficulty of the task and starts at 15, a particularly easy task would be 10 and a difficult task 20.  

Storytelling

Visualisation is one of the toughest challenges when trying to get a group of people sitting round the table to all imagine the same thing.  A key tool is the Battle Map which represents a top down view of a location and has been a standard for decades.  This can be as simple as a sheet of paper on which you draw what the characters can see and interact with.

Key Text / Player Descriptions are contained in most pre-written modules and highlight a piece of text to be read out to the players when they enter a new location describing what they first see.  Supplementary text will describe to the DM only what the room may contain (for example monsters, hidden doors, treasure etc).

Feed the Players Excitement by putting them on the spot, adding tension when they are being cautious, make it theatrical, do voices, encourage them to do voices, make grandiose gestures and gory descriptions of monster death.  I always like to make my players to stand on the precipice throughout my games, they should never feel cosy and comfortable.

Let Players Explore - The joy of roleplaying is about being able to explore.  In some cases it might be a dungeon, in others it might be your options, but whenever you play, you are always exploring your character.  There is no right or wrong thing to do, if a player chooses a path which will bring about conflict or adversity, warn them, but let them do it anyway.  When the situation turns bad they will have to deal with the consequences.

Don't Be Scared to Fudge it, the rules are there to be ignore and modified as you see fit.  If a rule might prevent something heroic or cinematic happening just ignore it.  If a monster's die roll might inadvertently kill a PC then change it.  Need a new rule to get you out of a situation then make it up but always try to consistently apply the new rule when the situation reappears.

Keep it Simple, Stupid is a good mantra and the The KISS Principle should always be in the forefront of your mind when DMing for a young group.  They will want to be at the heart of the action quickly and they won't be too concerned with deep complex storylines.  Define the Good and the Bad monsters early on as clearly black and white and they be able to quickly react to any challenges they face.

Start Small by choosing a simple combat encounter for your first session.  Ambush your heroes in the woods with a small band of kobolds or goblins.  If the PCs kill half of them, the monsters will run away.  This immediately presents the players a plethora of choices, do they run after them? Do they run to town alert the authorities?  Do they loot the bodies? Do they track the fleeing monsters back to their hideout?  All have possibilities for the next installment.

Guage your Success as a DM

If all goes well your players should look like this:

Stranger Things - D&D Success!!

Exit Stage Left - TLOD S07 E02

The 500 strong mob bayed for blood, and Jan the Sell Sword complied by slashing the magically restrained Murdoch cleanly across the face.  The spell wore off and clasping at his ragged throat in an attempt to stem the flow of blood, Murdoch slumped face down in the dirt gurgling "Mercy Sir, Mercy!"

An Aarakocra

On the stage, Bernhardt the Chosen of The Temple, screamed at his two acolytes "For the Gods sake help him you idiots".  Sir Tarigoz closed in on the nearest cleric, Grunb, and at sword point told him to stop.  Grunb responded swiftly, casting a sound blast spell right in Tarigoz's face.  The Knight of the 5th Legion was not phased by this but the sheer intensity of the spell made him step backwards, lose his footing on the edge of the stage and tumble off.  The other acolyte Penryk hurried across to the stairs at the right hand side of the stage to get to Murdoch. 

Having released the winged Deamon from the cross, Nyx, Styx, Laurel and the creature hid behind the stage contemplating their next move.  Escape.

Watching the trial by combat from the edge of the circle, Wulf Brundson, seethed with fury at this clerical interference in a lawful trial by combat.  The Euborean Barbarian could not let this religious interloper change the outcome of the battle with a healing spell and so proceeded to block Penryk's progress down the stairs.  The mob shoved him into the circle and screamed "another challenger".   As Grunb leered over the edge of the stage laughing at the fallen Knight, Sir Tarigoz jumped to his feet and plunged his bastard sword into the clerics belly.  Grunb tumbled off the stage impaling himself up to the hilt on Tarigoz's outstretched sword.  It took all of the Knight's strength not to crumble under the weight of the cleric and he briefly held him aloft before unceremoniously dumping him to the dirt.  The crowd recoiled in shock and horror at the sight of one of the God's chosen being righteously put down by the Kingsman.  This day would go down in village history and the God's would surely wreak a vengeance upon the Kingsman for such a bold act.

The spell holding Ssinkar wore off and he immediately moved towards the fallen Murdoch.  The Salamankari was a cleric not a fighter and he had no intention of letting the poor man die at his hand.  Grasping at this throat with his scaly hands, he stopped the flow of blood with a healing spell.  Murdoch immediately cried out in pain as the opportunist Jan the Sell Sword stabbed him in the arm.  Murdoch scrabbled through the dirt towards the foot of the stage.


Hoping that they could find bandages and supplies in one of the empty village buildings, the Phylus sisters Nyx and Styx and Laurel, carried the winged daemon to the nearest one.  Once inside the Absent Badger tavern, they found that it was was empty save for one odd looking old man face down in his own puddle of mead.

Trying not to disturb the fellow, the sisters hauled the daemon onto one of the tables at the back of the bar and tended to his wounds.  The old man immediately awoke from his slumber and asked "Has he finished torturing that poor Aarakocra yet?"  The near sighted old man introduced himself as Asdos and with a wave of his hands and a mumbling of words cast a spell.  Laurel went to the bar to fetch a bottle of strong spirits to staunch the Aarakocra's many small cuts and bruises.  When looking at the rest of the party she noticed that they had disappeared, she could still hear them but could not hear them.  Moving over to the table she passed through some form of illusory barrier which hid that end of the room from view.


Tarigoz mounted the stage and as he passed the now empty cross he confronted Bernhardt telling him that he had lost a fair fight and he should stop this travesty.  Bernhardt, unaware of the deamon's escape, addressed the crowd and flamboyantly pointing at the empty cross screamed "The kingsman is in league with the demon"


The crowd, enthralled by the red faced cleric noticed the empty cross and retorted in unison

"The Deamon has fucked off!"

Bernhardt's face dropped as the realisation that he had lost dawned on him.  He screamed at the crowd "Halt the combat! Halt the combat! Return to your homes and defend your babies! The Deamon is loose!.
As the mob disbursed in all directions, Bernhard gathered his injured men and taunted the Knight of Wulfschlossen defiantly cursing

"This isn't the last you've heard of this Kingsman.  I will be writing a report of your treasonous conduct to your superiors."

They clambered into a cart and drove off in the direction of the Temple.
Some of the villagers decided to quench their thirst in the tavern before they went home to their farms.  Inside The Absent Badger, the mage Asdos declared that it was "Time to go" and opened the window behind him and ushered everyone out.  They headed across the fields to the hovel in the woods he called home.
Jan, Ssinkar, Wulf and Sir Tarigoz found themselves alone in the village square, they decided to band together to search for the Deamon and get to the bottom of what it was and why it was here.  Wulf's tracking skills soon revealed that a party of three had dragged the creature in the direction of the village tavern.  On entering the bar the locals immediately stopped their raucous conversations and glared at the strangers.  Ssinkar plonked 10 gold on the bar and declared "A drink for all".  The barkeep bit into one of the coins and exclaimed "The red devil's money is good".  This immediately broke the awkward impasse with shouts of "he has  scales on the outside but a kind heart on the inside".  As the illusory wall spell wore off, Jan noticed the suddenly gaping window with blood and feathers coating the window ledge. 

The posse of PCs swiftly downed their drinks and began following the tracks from the window, which had now become 5, across the fields towards the woods which Tarigoz knew was the home of the mage Asdos.  He contemplated that Fate was a strange mistress and was hard at work weaving together a strange band of folk to do her mysterious bidding.

In the mage's hovel, the assembled group crowded around his small stove, the Aarakocra told them that he was a messenger sent to find help.  His people were being systematically wiped out by an angry vicious Cloud Giant.  He was moving his cloud castle around the mountains destroying the AaraKocran nests and slaughtering their chicks.  The shaman of his tribe had consulted the Sky Gods who had flatly  refused to aid them, but for one renegade who said that he would send his daughter, Laurel.  The Sky Gods promptly moved their crystal castle higher into the sky than any Aarakocra could fly.

Sensing that the group were not entirely convinced that preventing the genocide of his people was a worthy and heroic enough deed he declared "I have money!!"

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Why Who Plays Who? Doesn't Matter

So Peter Capaldi has thrown in the towel, been fired, resigned (delete as applicable) and will regenerate at the end of series.  The search for the 11th doctor will inevitably consume the nation (if you listen to the pundits), but not this little corner of geekdom. 

To be honest, I don't care.

I have every faith that whichever actor gets the job, be they young, old, black, white, male or female, dog or cat, they will do a bang up job.  IMHO it is not the actor which makes a great Doctor, rather it tends to be the other way around.  The role maketh the actor.

What concerns me more is that the BBC gives whoever takes on the mantle the proper tools for the job.

Falling Ratings?

Some of the gutterpress have accused the BBC of ditching Capaldi, claiming he is unpopular and that ratings have suffered.  I disagree. 

Nu Who By The Numbers

Looking at the ratings of each Doctor across their time in office, their relative popularity doesn't hint at anything terribly wrong with Capaldi's stewardship of the TARDIS.

In fact he has racked up a creditable episode count over his 855 days and still has season 10 yet to air.

 
However, the big fat elephant in the room is the increase in "Days Without Who".

Put simply there has been too much time between seasons/episodes.

In a Newsweek interview back in March 2016, Capaldi himself criticised the BBC's "erratic scheduling".  Helmsman Stephen Moffat also moves on at the end of the year which signals a sea change at the BBC.  Perhaps they are scaling back on expensive shows such as Who and replacing them with cheap as chips reality TV which they can regurgitate out at pennies on the dollar.  Who knows?

What I know is that I'm fed up with mid season breaks and long hiatuses.

No More Love interests... Please

Whilst I enjoyed the Rose, Amy and Clara characters I found their on/off relationships with the Doctor nauseating.

Can we not go back to the condescending alien superiority of old Who?.  It's not a feminist backlash, I don't care if the companion is male or female.  Let's face it everyone is a complete idiot compared to the Doctor's supragenius mind.  One of my favourite male companions was Harry Sullivan who on many levels was a complete berk, but he knew his place, acting as both a plot device or a plot explainer whenever the story needed it.

My favourite female Doctor / Companion relationship was that of the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) and Leela (Louise Jameson).  The Doctor's frequent frustration and anger at her savage common sense, naivete and independent nature were a joy to behold.  She held her own on many occasions and even reversed the damsel in distress trope a few times saving the Doctor from his own curiosity.

How Do You Fix Who?

I don't want to sound like an old fogey, but the golden years of Who had a plot template and it's one which I have used in my own storytelling.  It goes like this:

1.  Episode begins with a short segment to show the episodes location and shows two factions violently trying to co-exist with each other.  The two antagonistic factions have been in impasse for many years / decades / centuries / millenia.

2.  The TARDIS crashlands in a new location and is somehow trapped or disabled (removing its use as a powerful Deus Ex Machina from the plot solution).  The Doctor and companion narrowly escape with their lives and must now use their wits and ingenuity to survive.

3.  The Doctor and Companion are soon seperated, one each to each faction.  The story of each faction emerges (as told from their perspective) through their interactions with the Doctor and the companion respectively.

4.  An Attack is launched by one faction against the other.  There is much running around and confusion during which the Doctor and companion are reunited and seperated again.  They swap sides and, armed with the facts about the other faction, a true picture emerges of which faction is Good and which is Evil.

5.  The Doctor and companion are finally reunited and the Doctor saves the day by either resolving their differences, helping one side defeat the other or fails to save the Evil faction from their own demise.  

Simples.

Let's hope that the BBC take the opportunity to go back to basics and give us some good old fashioned scarey thought provoking tense sci-fi like they used to be able to make.

Oh and if Toby Jones or Rory Kinnear get the job I will be a happy man. 

 

A Public Examination of the Deamon - TLOD S07 E01

As promised, I have begun DMing a new adventure in my campaign world The Lands of Dual and will be making regular session reports from now on.

Introducing the Heroes 

• Ai-Nyx - (Tara) - Female Phylus (demi-human cat) Thief from Xix
• Ai-Styx - (Zoe) - Female Phylus Rogue from Xix
• Jan the Sell Sword - (Craig Tanner) - Human Fighter from Newhon
• Laurel - (Carol Cunningham) - A female Half-Elf (Aeroimm) Ranger from the Great Desert of Sankahar. 
• Sir Tarigoz Purplenderise - (Mark Cunningham) - A Human Knight of the 5th legion of the Wulfschlossen Army
• Ssinkar - (Steve Tasso) - A male Salamankari Cleric from the deserts of Sankahar.

Lurneslye in Wulfschlossen

Our heroes find themselves in the farming village of Lurneslye in the foothills of the mountains which form the spine of the great nation of Wulfschlossen.

A public meeting has been called to examine a creature which was caught skulking around the outskirts of the village by Bernhardt the Chosen of the Temple of Lurneslye.  The villagers, a mob of some 500 or so folk have assembled around the large wooden stage in the centre of the village.  They bear makeshift arms, in order to defend themselves from the abomination and to ensure that it receives the appropriate justice should it be convicted or try to escape. 

The creature, a winged bird like humaoid, is being torturtured, plucked and interrogated on the stage by Bernhardt and his two acolytes whilst the imposing figure of Murdoch, their Bodyguard, stands beside them preventing anyone from mounting the stage.

Laurel, deciding that she has had enough of this cruel treatment of what is clearly not a daemon, attempts to mount the stage.  After casting a Detect Evil spell, Ssinkhar determines that no-one on the stage is Evil and proceeds to addresses Bernhardt directly claiming that as a fellow cleric he has the power to do the same.  Bernhardt dismisses the Salamankari as a foreign devil in league with the deamon. 

Sir Tarigoz, tasked with upholding law in this frontier village, storms the stage demanding that Bernhardt hear Laurel's evidence as it is written in the law.  A war of words ensues between Bernhardt and Sir Tarigoz which ends when the villagers call for a trial by combat.  Ssinkhar accepts the trial on behalf of the creature and Bernhardt orders Murdoch to fight on behalf of the temple.

The villagers immediately step back to create a circle of combat and the two acolytes cast detect magic spells to ensure that Ssinkar does not cheat by using a magic weapon.  Murdoch and Sinkar engage in a battle to the death.

Meanwhile under the stage the two Phylus, Ai-Nyx and Ai-Styx, are hiding in fear.  They have been living in the village for a few months and have witnessed Bernhardt addressing the crowd every holyday.  He has never been this zealous and the crowd have never been so animated, they decide to wait out the events until they can make a break for it.

On the edge of the combat circle, Jan the sellsword is eating an apple and watching the events in anticipation of learning a few things about Murdoch's fighting style.

After a good dealing of pacing around Murdoch closes the gap by lunging at Ssinkar but misses with his broadsword.  The wily Salamankar takes advantage of the closesness of the encounter and surreptisiously casts a command spell on Murdoch but fails.

Ai-Styx slinks out from below the stage to get a better look at the creature followed by her sister.  They both feel great pity for it and decide to release it by picking the manacles whilst the mob are pre-occupied by the fight.  Laurel spots the pair and stands between the clerics and the creature to block anyone's view of their actions.

Murdoch stabs Ssinkhar.  The crowd cheer and the Salamankari responds by casting a hold person on his opponent.  Murdoch is frozen in place, but the obvious use of magic angers the two acolytes and they both cast hold person on Ssinkar.  Bernhardt demands that Sir Tarigoz arrest the now paralysed Ssinkar as he has clearly broken the rule of law and must face the same punishment as the creature, death by fire.  The enraged mob demand immediate satisfaction in blood and someone shoves Jan into the circle. 

As it is written in the law if another enters the circle he must take up the challenge.  Jan, an opportunistic sort of fellow, knows that he cannot possibly beat Murdoch in a fair fight.  He takes immediate advantage of the fact he is currently paralysed by Ssinkar's spell and slashes the unfortunate man's throat.

The two Phylus successfully release the creature and, aided by Laurel, lower it down out of sight behind the stage.

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