Arcade Mode sessions 6--10

Session 6: Gliding through dark water, Lichway 1

Patrick and Fishbones. Patrick has a gift for character concepts. He pulled in a Knave necromancer with a hireling that had “big bones”, no doubt so he could reanimate the guy once he died. I asked if they wanted any hirelings and they took several, maybe 3 or 4.

My memory of this session is dim so I’ll skip a lot of it. I want to focus on a few key situations.
In the set-up, I had a really tough time explaining the geography of the situation. In part I blame the module, because the geography doesn’t really make sense. I also think I had some misleading word choices that caused a lot of confusion. There’s no concrete lesson in this. Describing things accurately is a skill, and needs a lot of practice.

The dungeon has a lot of water features, and the players followed an underground stream through it, avoiding a lot of potential violence. They found themselves in the east branch of a four-way intersection. North and south lead apparently to dead ends. North also had a rope ladder, fastened to the floor, just piled up — no “down” that anyone could see. West was a crawlspace, through water, into a dark room. They searched the north end and found a secret door opening 15 feet above a flooded room. They let the rope ladder down and one guy descended. They tossed a rock into the flooded room and disturbed something in the water — I rolled a random encounter with 2 lizardmen, who could only have emerged from that room. Their dispositions were neutral, but I decided that they interpreted the rock as a sign of aggression. The lizardmen swam towards the party, remaining underwater, though I told the players they could see large shapes moving through the water. The party retreated, but left the secret door open and the rope ladder unfurled. I decided that when the lizardmen reached the ladder, they would climb it stealthily. If the players didn’t leave a rearguard (and they didn’t) the lizardmen would have a chance of surprise against them.

Meanwhile one of the party wriggled through the crawlspace and found himself at the top of a mini-waterfall pouring out into a pool in a magician’s headquarters. The magician, Dark Odo, arose and ordered her minions (hidden in the pool below) to grab the adventurer. He retreated far back enough to break line of sight, but stayed on his knees in the crawlspace so he could poke anybody following him with a spear. (Of course no one would follow him into such a terrible position.)

While this was going on, the other player was doing some math on the size of the southern branch, and realized it too led to a secret door which must connect to Dark Odo’s room. He was right, and I told him so, but I decided that, even if someone knows there’s a secret door somewhere, one still must search for it in order to open it. But while it normally takes 10 minutes to search for a secret door, with a 1-in-6 chance of success, because he *knew* there was a door there, I’d give him the same chance of success in each round of melee spent searching. Their plan, I think, was to sortie from the secret door and take Odo by surprise. I would certainly have given them a chance at surprising her; I thought it was a very good plan.

dAt this time we did indeed switch to melee, because the lizardmen had succeeded in their surprise and got the jump on two of the retainers! They munched one of them and grabbed the other. As the players had an enemy to the north and west, and no immediate chance for sortie to the south, they opted to retreat. I think that was the best option for them. As I said, Odo’s forces wouldn’t follow them through the crawlspace, and the lizardmen were attacking opportunistically, and wouldn’t follow either.

They continued their delve, coming upon a long hallway lined with sarcophagi, hundreds of them. They correctly realized that all the sarcophagi contained skeletons, which would reanimate when the party solved some magical whatever in the place.

Two further points for that session. I played a giant spider as a genuine ambush predator, grabbing a hireling and killing it instantly after a successful poison attack, and then immediately retreating to its web above. The players decided they didn’t want to tackle it. Then they encountered a band of drunken Xvarts. I described them bumping into the Xvart’s sentry, but then I realized that the Xvarts had two entrances to their camp and only one sentry. In that case, why would the sentry magically occupy the entrance the players chose? Thus I flipped a coin to see which entry they guarded, and wound up retconning the exchange. (“Never mind that, the entry is unguarded. Here’s what you see…”.) I didn’t make my reasoning clear in the moment, and later one of the players asked me what the deal was there.

8: Big battle, Borshak 7

I got a lot of ideas from the RPG Theory about how the orcs of Borshak’s Lair would fortify their hideout after the last session, and I prepared a whole order of battle and fortifications and stuff. The orcs were really mad about the last incursion!

Adam and a new player, Aggie, whose brother is in our Reavers game. (Aggie also joined that game.) Aggie had never played with any GM other than their brother, and consciously opted to let Adam take the wheel in this session.

I offered to Adam that he could have his delve take place the next day or two after the previous delve (when he had killed Borshak) or wait a few weeks in-game to let the orcs cool off. If he chose the lattter, I told him, their defenses will have relaxed but they will have penetrated deeper into the tomb complex, removing some of the loot and getting new spells and stuff (but maybe also taking casualties). Adam chose to return immediately.

Adam grabbed a bunch of men-at-arms, wise for a siege, a mix of archers and heavy infantry. Two of the infantry had big two-handed shields, pavises. I don’t think much of this as a strategy; pavises are better used against ranged attacks than in melee, where you really want to be able to stick the other guy. Otherwise his setup was good.

I took out the (hilariously vulnerable) sentries from the dungeon and replaced them with a Magic Mouth spell that would holler whenever somebody other than an orc, goblin, or ogre passed through the entrance. I also added a barricade to the first large room, beyond which 10 guys would wait in ambush with ranged weapons. I set up a sleep-watch-raid schedule with the inhabitants, figuring out how many of them were at each position at any given time. (One quarter on guard, one quarter outside of the dungeon on a raid, one quarter sleeping, one quarter resting awake.) And I figured out what the orc magician would do with his spells, if he were engaged in combat again.

The session had two forays into the dungeon.

In the first foray, the orcs had piled up wreckage blocking most of the doorway. I thought this was a decent plan, because the players would have to take apart the barricade in order to pass through. By chance, the orc magician was on guard duty when the players arrived. They had a very clever idea, which helps to explain why real armies don’t totally barricade up doors like this: they would push out the very top of the barricade, and use it as cover while they sniped the enemies beyond. I decided that if the orcs got the chance to re-fortify, they would take apart the barricade and instead use it to make a whole field of “difficult terrain” which would prevent charges and slow attackers. They wouldn’t give up their line of sight again.

So Aggie, who had a bow, climbed to the top of the barricade to shoot at the orc magician. At the same time the orc magician began to cast an ice wall spell at the ceiling above the party. I left it to initiative to see whose action would go off first — the arrow naturally interrupting the spell. The orc won initiative and flattened Aggie and several hirelings with a sheet of ice from above, dealing some 3d10 damage to 150 square feet of dungeon.

The gang retreated after this, and Aggie rolled up a new character. Adam grabbed some new hirelings. I rolled for a new defense crew and found the magician was sleeping. Instead an ogre was helping man the defense. I also reworked the barricade into difficult terrain, as I discussed above.

Adam had his footmen advance with their pavises while taking shots from goblin and orc archers behind a barricade and up some stairs. They warded off the arrows thanks to the pavises, but then the ogre came out and started smashing the pavises. Then the goblins sent a runner to grab the quarter of the troops that were resting but not sleeping, and the players again retreated, confident that they couldn’t break through the lair’s defenses. They lost 6 or so retainers but neither PC was scratched, I think.

Adam wanted to lay seige to the lair, and I knew how the magician would respond to that. He would burn through his spell scrolls, tossing a fireball at the besieging force, and preparing a sally with mass invisibility, and summoning an invisible stalker to either carry him to safety or take out the leaders of the seige. Adam wasn’t interested in playing out the siege itself, I think because he was demoralized by the loss, and said he’d prefer to abstract it and pay 1k gold to hire forces. I decided that, given the quality of the wizard’s plan, any small seige would simply fail, and the money would be lost. It would take a big effort to crack this place.

9: Lichway II

Just Patrick this time, with a lot of retainers. He made it far into the dungeon and tried to befriend the bandits that lived there, eventually asking Dark Odo to become her apprentice. I had a tough time handling this, for two reasons: I didn’t know how Odo might respond to something like this, and I didn’t know what it would mean for our play. In the end I had Odo ask him for all the treasure he had, “to prove his worth”, and rolled a reaction check using the treasure as a bribe modifier. She didn’t accept him as an apprentice, but she was happy to let him go in peace, since (she thought) she’d relieved him of his valuables.

This session was mostly chill and fun. If I have to run a one-on-one game, I’m most comfortable running for Patrick or Adam. Patrick’s ideas can sometimes be more zany than I’d like, but they’re always fresh and exciting.

I was glad to avoid a serious roleplay challenge like figuring out what Odo would want from her apprentice, and how the apprenticeship might change Patrick’s character and adventuring opportunities. I’d be happy to revisit that kind of situation later, when I’m more experienced, but for now it seems like too much for me.

Patrick added up some incidental pieces of information about Odo’s band and realized that they were extremely hungry, starving even. They must not be very good bandits! As soon as he guessed this, I knew he was right. So he formed a plan to bring a cart of food back to the Lichway next session, and to try and seduce some of Odo’s men into his service.

Here’s Patrick’s take on the session:

We return to the Lichway with Amdor the Magnificent and a couple of hired help. We pull some levers in an early room and find out one opens the big floodgate and the other does … something else in the ceiling? We get out and move on. We find a bridge made of bones and Gargamel the Necromancer gathers a skeleton from the remnants to animate at his own discretion.

We find a large octaconal room with a big cage and a large creature in it that looks like a moving pile of holes in a honeycombed pattern, a big spongey texture but rigid in nature. We move past it and it charges us whenever it notices we’re near but the cage holds it back.

“Amdor the Magnificent” is asked what spell he prepared and he turns out to actually be Cackhand Amdor, a fraud that posed as a wizard to Dark Odo and that’s what made him seek revenge.

We find two of Odo’s men gnawing on rat bones, asking for food. We strike up a conversation and find out there are 11-ish bandits working for Dark Odo and she happens to be a terrible employer. Her people are dissatisfied. I ask to meet her and offer Amdor the Fraud as a guest’s gift. She isn’t interested in Amdor since he was cursed to seem as what anyone who meets him wants him to be and commands him to jump in a lake. We hold him back.

She refuses Gargamel’s offer of apprenticeship because the treasure he shows isn’t impressive enough. We go back out of “their” part of the dungeon.

On the way out we come past a door behind which kobolds are cornered by big dogs. They forgot their arrows and sit on top of a shelf. We attack the dogs and armor them which wins us the fight. I buy the kobolds’ uncertain loyalty with 100 coins and we continue. Gargamel remembers he knew the Kobold language all along and they talk. They were chased here by the Xvarts, blue anti-hobbit smurfs. We are united by a common enemy and leave the dungeon to return at a later point to take over Dark Odo’s faction and – perhaps – find the treasure. The kobolds will come with Gargamel.

The plan is to use a handcart full of fine food and bribe the starved and overworked bandits under Odo to switch sides, then hopefully find the treasure in the remaining few spots of the dungeon.

10: Lichway 3

Patrick and Nathan, Aggie’s older brother. They brought the cartload of food into the dungeon with a few retainers. Unfortunately, they made a tremendous tactical blunder, and were all defeated by Odo when they allowed her guard to sound the alarm. One sleep took out the whole party.

Here’s Patrick’s take:

We return to the Lichway with a small warband of heavy footmen, archers and kobolds as well as cart full of fine food and drink and a dead boar skeleton. The plan is to take over Dark Odo’s organisation and then find the treasure hidden in the dungeon.

We climb up all the towers and, unsurprisingly, they don’t hold anything interesting for us to find. We go in and find out that the floodgates didn’t close this time around – that’s probably what the lever does we pulled last session. We find a bunch of firebeetles in the lever room and are quick enough to chain the doors shut with them inside.

We go south and find a group of hobgoblin adventurers. Helios challenges one to a duel and wins. We likely cause a change of leadership and go further.

We arrive at the room with a bone bridge and pull the tongue of the fanged lady statue.

We follow the Lichway to the monster that looks like a void sponge and realize the sound all over the dungeon emanates from the monster.

We meet some rats and kill them, then we find a plate-armored skeleton hanging in iron wire and Helios defeats it one-to-one in a narrow passage. We find the area where we met Odo last time. There’s just a single person: a little gnome. It tries to warn others while we file into the room from a narrow passage. We manage to fill the room completely just in time for Odo to open a door and cast a sleep spell that catches everyone by surprise.

We wake up in Odo’s dungeon. Helios gets charmed into servitude and the rest of us aren’t heard of again.

And here’s Nathan’s:

This was my first pick up game. I played as Helios Boppopagon who had middling stats, but 8HP. His low funds meant who could only afford Leather armor, a shield, and a sword. Given that this was pure dungeon crawling, and given that I had no idea of the context, I prioritized spending my meagre monies on armaments.

For the first little bit I did not really know what was happening, and only had a vague idea of what the Lichway was. I generally deffered to Gargamel, who led the expedition and payed for the hirelings. My first actual decision came about when a Hobgoblin, leading a pack of Gobs, insulted my group. Helios took that personally, and challenged the Hobgoblin to a duel. I set the terms as First to Half HP and Canyon let me know about a handy OD&D rule used for non-lethal duels (The loser recovers with 75% HP). I will use that in the future!

Personality wise, Helios is pretty typical for the sort of character I like to play. Even while I run games (Which is what I mostly do) I tend to really enjoy running somewhat naive, bold, and forceful types who are generally morally upright. I find that in lots of OSR play there is a tendency toward caution which can sometimes be counterproductive toward both having fun and fulfilling game objectives.

After winning the duel the GobGroup fell into dissent. I figured that, later on, we could explore that way and route the remaining Goblins. We traversed for a while and I made sure to position the men we have strategically during each open door check. We stayed focused on Gargamel’s goal of finding Odo.

We ventured forth and found a sponge thing. I wanted to kill it with arrows, and it would’ve been pretty funny to do so given that it held the answers to the dungeon’s treasure! It also held a devious trap as this creature held all the undead of Lichway in stasis.

We advanced further toward the suspected location of Odo and came upon rats. We killed them easily.

In the rat room I found a swag baller gold anklet which I immediately wore.

We then found a hallway lined with spiked walls, with a skeleton wearing partial plate armour in the middle. I was very concerned that the walls would crush us. This was unfounded but, seeing as I recently used that very trap, I felt the need to investigate properly. Gargemel suggested we move around the Skeleton, but Helios wanted the armor so I approached and stabbed it through its visor. The Skeleton rose and I had a plan to fall back and fight with the footman we had hired. I failed to gain the opportunity to escape safely, due to Canyon’s maneuveur system. I felt that this system actually added a bit of texture without being as punishing as 5e’s Opportunity Attacks which have a tendency to root fights in one place. It may get fiddly in larger battles, however.

I defeated the skeleton in single combat and claimed its armor for myself. We then advanced up ahead and found a gnome. Instead of talking like reasonable people, we filled the room with men and I attempted to pin the Gnome to the ground. This was in part an error in interpretation. I had thought the Gnome was quite weak due to his diminuitive size and pathetic countenance (The latter was all in my head, haha), but it turned out he was a capable warrior. He ran away, calling for help. I called out “Don’t help him!”

Here is where I should have gone with my gut. Gargamel was intending to parley with the Gnome’s gang and, given that I was unfamiliar with the dungeon itself and this table’s culture in general I deferred to Gargamel in setting up an ambuscade in the room. What I had wanted to do was either: bar the door and take another route, or chase the gnome and enter bravely into a chaotic melee. Tactically, information is the most important thing so it really wasn’t sensible to give that up. This was, I think, the only actively poor decision we made, though this happens. At low levels, there is little margin for error.

As we waited in the room, the wizard we were looking for kicked open the door and cast sleep on us. We went to bed, despite Helios’s insomnia, and that was that. My only note on this conflict is such: when initiative is rolled, don’t both sides get an opportunity to move before actions are taken? I would have liked to give the order for the troops to scatter in the face of the wizard. Helios would’ve fallen asleep, but Gargamel likely could have moved out of the room, or at least some of the hirelings. It’s not a big deal, though, and likely wouldn’t have changed the outcome.

Overall I had a ton of fun. I provided some feedback at the end of the game. Other feedback is as follows:

I don’t really like side based initiative, though I totally understand how it helps expedite combat. I think it should be used for this sort of pick up game for sure. However, definitely make sure to seperate movement and attack. Without that, it becomes a little too easy for the initiative winner to dominate a battle by taking up a superior position.

The maneuver system works, though a little more nuance may be needed. Are there circumstantial bonuses (i.e, a small halfling running through the legs of a giant could perhaps get +5, or whatever)? I don’t think things like that need to be codified much, but I think a bit more may be needed. Also, for some maneuveurs I think some kind of Save may make more sense. For many maneuveurs though (Such as disarms) I think that the system here is good, and I’ll steal it because it’s really easy to use (Attack bonus vs. Attack bonus). Finally, while I don’t think RPGs should seek to replicate real combat I’m not entirely sure why retreating requires a maneuver roll. The “Fighting Retreat” of older D&D games which just cut your movement in half.

Being able to play a character form any system definitely shows how compatible these different OSR games are with each other, and how procedures/Ref style is ultimately more important than the system

I ran out of space lol, but basically I think the Fighting Retreat of older games works well enough. Penguin time