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Shadowrun

Hooray, we’re back to roleplaying! Dan is running a Shadowrun-ish game for us. At least, the word “shadowrun” has been mentioned in the world, I don’t know if that is really the system or not.

There was once an Alliance in the galaxy, rather idealistic, that was destroyed by alien invaders. The aliens were driven off, but the Alliance was totally smashed up. In it’s place are Corporations, behind the scenes on every planet and local government.

There’s a diverse range of species – our crew has a female human chemist (a bit of a pusher…), an Ogre soldier, a Dwarf engineer and an Orc medic. We are on a largely-lawless pleasure planet, where almost anything goes. On our way to a local restaurateur (Fat Jeff) to look for make-work, we were followed by a shady character. Trying to lose this miscreant we ended up in the robot red-light district, in which another shady character jumped out in front of us and threw a datapad at us. It had instructions for a meeting.

This meeting occurred in an abandoned warehouse, and we were offered substantial rewards for assisting in the resurrection of the Alliance, and the subsequent throttling of Corporation power. We were given free rein to choose what equipment we liked. The mission was to destroy a device involved in time-travel and/or inter-dimensional travel – dangerous stuff.

After a quick trial of combat against some holographic practice dummies, we were ready to leave the planet and head to our destination in the SS Shagnasty IV – an Orc garbage scow.

The spaceport was surrounded by an angry mob… we didn’t see any need to worry, so we snuck onto our ship and set course. Arriving, we found a forest planet with very little traffic and almost no buildings at all – the facility that we wanted was out of the way, and had a landing pad. We radioed in, told them we were in trouble (pushing smoke out of the engines and wiggling the steering wheel to make it believable) and that we needed to land to make repairs. We were allowed, and met by a human woman who said her job was receptionist (good to see some old-school sexism in the fantastic future).

We managed to get a tour of the facility, which stood up to it’s claim of being a pharmaceutical research centre (not the advanced physics danger we had been told about) until we got to the room with a strange device – our guide couldn’t explain the “difficult science bits” but it was a way to get drugs to emergency zones faster than anyone else – the very instant they are required, in fact – and have enough of them produced to deal with the emergency. Sounds like something time-travel-ish for sure.

Just then, the facility was attacked! Our guide ran off to the bunker, we stayed behind to destroy the machine and download the plans for ourselves. We met some of the attackers (who didn’t stand a chance…) and made it through to the bunker. Opening the door, we found lots of dead people and a big creature who had clearly made a nest in there. We closed the door and left.

On the way out, we encountered one of the attackers carrying a big box who asked us who we were before saying “Oh, you must be the distraction.” This rankled us, so we killed him and headed to the ship. As we left, we saw the other ship being loaded with crates and loot so we destroyed it (hooray for hand-held nuke launchers!) and made it into orbit where we were congratulated for a successful job and informed that payment was in our accounts.

A few troubling things here – the technology stolen/destroyed doesn’t appear to be what we assumed it was, the facility was set up and we were part of it, and whoever organised the whole thing either doesn’t know that we screwed the other part of the plan, or are not working directly with the other team (and have no problem with their failure). I’m very interested to see where we go next…

Serenity RPG – Part One

Our group is taking a break from the Four Islands RuneQuest game, and a new GM is trying out a new system – the Firefly RPG. The other players had created characters the previous week, and the ones that turned up on the first ‘real’ session were: Dave Cocknocker, a fightin’ sort; Hammy, a slightly weird type; Bacon, a decent pilot (good friends with Hammy – both grew up on Persephone); and a cleric whose name escapes me.

I rushed through my character creation since I’d been warned it can take a while. I asked what characters they had and what they needed – we had a medic and engineer on top of the ones above, but those players weren’t there. The one thing that no-one had taken was the leader, the captain. So I slipped into that one and grabbed a quick but focussed build – I’m fair with guns (specialising in the exotic energy weapons), but not a fighter. I put many points into Influence – both Leadership and Persuasion, with high Intelligence and Willpower.

As my Assets, I chose Leadership (I can give people a bonus if they are working towards my stated goal) and Steady Calm (should come in handy to maintain control in a panic situation) – both minor. I was given two minor complications – Traumatic Flashes (I may lose control while I relive a terrifying memory) and Greedy (mo’ money, yo).

Since I was greedy, I put a few points into Gambling – if I ever get the chance to play Poker, then a high Persuasion (for bluffing) and a good Gambling should give me a fair shake.

So without further ado (or the time to think up a decent name – I’ve gone with ‘Not Mal’ and the nickname ‘Sir’), we began our first session!

Our crew was meeting for the first time on Persephone. They had met on a Cortex hub (OKCrewpid) and some of us had bought shares in a ship – a Firefly class vessel with nice sensors and a full tank o’ fuel. There’s enough fuel for 16 days flying and food for a month. A box had been delivered to the ship – inside was a lady cleric. Dave and Hammy had no immediately obvious skills, so I expect them to pay their way at some point and in the meantime to do the heavy lifting tasks.

Introductions out of the way, we checked the local Cortex for available jobs. There’s only one worth our time – a chap called Randall Lee wants a box delivered to Londinium (an Alliance world near the core), for 50K credits. Bacon stayed with the ship while Dave and I headed to meet Mr Lee and try to find out more about the job.

The box is 6ftx4ftx4ft, approximately 90kg, wooden, no special transport requirements, and a ‘no-open’ clause (payment is reduced to 25% if it’s opened). Sounds very much like it contains a small human.

Being a jolly persuasive fellow, and Mr Lee having extremely low Willpower, the terms of the job were renegotiated. 56K for delivery, 50% if it’s opened, and 30K bonus if we make it in 5 days (Bacon had plotted a course that would take 4 days).

When the ‘negotiators’ got back to the ship, they found that the Alliance had sent some ‘blue-hands’ over to inspect it and to advise the crew that there were pirates operating between Persephone and Londinium. They left without incident when the crate arrived, along with all the papers that we’d need for passage and landing and so on.

Despite dire warnings, we actually made it to Londinium without meeting any pirates. We did salvage a small crate of high-grade protein foods which should be good for some cash out on the rim worlds. We also landed on time without any problems, delivered the crate to the Alliance Security centre and got paid. We were not allowed back to the ship though, and everyone had to follow the guards and goons (of which there were dozens and dozens!) to a small office. After a short while, we were released back to the ship.

As we approached the ship, we spotted a guard leaving our ship on his own. Since there were no other guards around, we ‘coerced’ him back onto the ship once Hammy had told us that he wasn’t really a guard, and was trying to rob us (though just opportunistically, not targeting us specifically). And so we had a prisoner! Stripped naked and interrogated, we intended to turn him in for a meagre bounty when we got back to Persephone. However, he suggested we decided to keep him on board (tied up in the airlock) when he tipped us off that we’d been double-crossed and our payment had vanished!

We immediately suspected Randall Lee of doing something dodgy, so devised a plan to get our money back. He was well known as a gambler and mule-racer (the little quad-bike, not the donkey thing) so we challenged him anonymously to a race. While preparing for the race we realised that he was unguarded in the shed with his winning Mule, so we dropped a Stun grenade through the window and kidnapped him, and stole the Mule.

As is our standard procedure when interrogating prisoners, we stripped him naked and put him in the airlock (our other prisoner was cuffed to a table in a shuttle, out of the way) and interrogated him while Bacon put us in orbit around Persephone.

It turns out that even though we robbed the poor sod blind (I have a new hat and laser pistol, as well as the contents of his wallet) he had also been double-crossed by Ton Ting, the Pirate King, who had given him the job (that he farmed out to us) in the first place. We had to take on the Pirate King to get our cash back.

Ton Ting’s base (or lair, if you will) is on an abandoned asteroid mining station between Persephone and Londinium (hence all the pirate raids). We took the ship in close (but hidden), and flew a shuttle off to the asteroid. We landed in secret, thanks to our cleric’s covert operations training, and undetected by the guards nearby.

And so we wait for the next session to assault the Pirate king base…

The Four Islands: Part Four

When last we met, the party were sailing away from Ogre-land to rescue the captive boy-king Uther of the Bretons from Drow/Drannei.

Shortly after setting off, Captain Rengrave changed our course away from the Drannei ships towards the island of Sanctuary to get some help from the wise man there (who may or may not be a wizard, magic being illegal nudge-nudge wink-wink). He couldn’t join us as he sort of stole a sword from the wise man; we discovered later that this sword belongs to the King of the Bretons and that Rengrave had given it to Uther. So it’s not completely stealing.

The Island of Sanctuary is full of hippies who don’t enforce rules as stringently as other nations and this makes it a prime location for pirates (like our dwarf Ungrud) to visit and trade. That being said, it’s not a thriving metropolis or a bustling port or any other cliché, instead it’s a rather sleepy little village.

The wise man told us that the Drow had probably taken the boy because the Island of Lost Time can only be entered by a prince or king of virtue and that being only 12, Uther was probably virtuous enough. First, he would be taken to the Drow capital in order for them to ascertain his virtue. What they want with the Island of Lost Time is a complete mystery, and we were referred to the one person who claimed to have been there – an ex-associate of Ungrud, to whom Ungrud owed about two ships-worth of gold. Ungrud declined to join us in our interrogations. We were also left with a couple of zen statements – “when there is no time, there is always time” and the like.

In the pub, we found our adventuring dwarf who was only too happy to give up information. Apparently, the island appeared frozen in movement. Clouds moved overhead but no wind was felt, branches on trees did not shift and nothing moved on it’s own. No sounds. At night, the dead moved and watched him, with lips sewn shut, accompanied by faceless beings. He believes that they didn’t attack because of an amulet that he had, and freely gave to us (mentioning that wearing it felt like it took part of his essence). We left the amulet in our bags and headed back to the ships.

The only place to land on the Drow island was a place called Safe Landing. It had a temple on stilts that looked like a boat, dedicated (so a plaque said) to “The Only God”. Not a good sign to people with as varied a pantheon as us. We followed the river to the capital, and en-route were ambushed by ten camel riders. We hunkered behind our horses, and defended ourselves well (while trying to retrieve my war boomerang, I ended up leading two riders on a jolly chase where one fumbled and threw themselves to the ground to be trampled later) while the dwarfs and single human cut down the remainder.

As we looted the bodies, the sun set rapidly. We set a watch and a camp, and used looted blankets to keep warm in the cold desert night. During the night, we were awoken by a crowd of people who could apparently see in the darkness. We were invited to their camp for the night, guided by a “skrillfex” – a fox that they call their “day guide”. After a nice sleep in a comfortable yurt we did some investigating. The yurt was being guarded by two blindfolded men, and we learned about this tribe from a foreign mercenary called Tankred. He explained that these are the night people, and they never take their blindfolds off in the day. They are not fans of the Drannei, but would not help us recover the boy. Instead he directed us South, over the river, to a temple where we might find help.

The temple was a large, magnificent structure with domes and minarets, and many pillars all made of marble. Inside, the floor was covered in sand and as we walked across it, a small dervish whirled up in front of us and formed into a Djinn, who attacked. We defeated the Djinn and were greeted by the priestess of the temple who informed us that we had “passed the test”.

We were given a guide to aid us, who had taken a vow of silence – but seemed to have a pad of paper, so that wasn’t too bad. On our way through an abandoned and partially buried village, we took shelter from a sandstorm for the night. During that night, I had an odd dream… I woke up in the room as it would have appeared long before, when it was populated. I looked in a mirror, but the reflection was gone. Out of the window, I saw a beautiful city filled with life. A woman came into the room and started pouring water, and said “Find us” – but did not interact with me, or show any sign that she knew I was there.

Outside of the building, I tried to get breakfast from a market seller but my hands went through everything and he didn’t seem to know I was there. I headed to the nearest baths, and there saw Neptune. As a devout worshipper of the sea god (makes sense for a sailor), I genuflected and kneeled before him. He told me to bring time back to this place – time was taken, and time has to be brought back. It appears to be a spear with an hourglass scribed on the point.

Waking up, I explained the whole thing and am filled with a holy purpose. It’s not every day that one’s god gives them a mission personally! Our guide showed us an underground cavern filled with granite statues that looked exactly like the people I had seen in the dream. There were also hundreds of soldiers, all in granite. Our guide asked us (through passed notes) if we felt older (apparently, we did), and that we should leave immediately.

Resuming our journey to the capital to get the boy (who can go to the Island of Lost Time, being a prince of virtue, where we think we can find the spear), we are ambushed by desert warriors. Ungrud wandered off towards a mirage, I was trapped by bolas, the Ogre merchant fell into a ditch and our rigger was almost attacked by a bandit… who fumbled, and stayed underground, apparently. It took us a while to take them all out, one even continuing to fight after losing a leg (completely chopped off, fell on the floor, bleeding heavily, etc etc).

I’ll finish this off with a guest recap from one of our party, an elf (not me) that has unfortunately missed most of our sessions – may not have turned up since before we got to the Ogre capital!

Here we go!

Our intrepid heroes wandered the desert for many days, looking for a way out. They were tired and hungry and more than a little bit mad when they came across a strange sight indeed.
Sat before them, atop a small mound of rock, topped with the symbol of th e god of time, was a fat, bald man, who looked to be in his twenties. Around him were similar mounds of rock, each with a different holy symbol above it. In front of the man were bowls containing assorted nibbles. Some of the nibbles had been nibbled.
“Who are you?” Asked an adventurer.
The bald man replied; “I am… actually, I can’t remember my name.”
“Deckard Cain… that’s a name…” Mused one of the adventurers.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing…”
The heroes turned back to the bald man. “Why are you here?” Asked one, curious.
“In my youth, I murdered a man for sleeping with my wife, and then I murdered my wife for being unfaithful. Now I seek atonement from my god.” Answered the bald man.
“How long have you been here?” Asked a third adventurer.
“Enough with the questions! If you must know, it’s been 100 years, 10 months and 11 days… do you want the minutes?”
“No, no..! 100 years? Bloody hell, mate, you look good for your age.”
“Yeah, well, my people are immortal, you see, on account of them worshipping time and all that.”
“That’s pretty cool. From whence do you hail, oh bald man?” Asked a forth adventurer.
The bald man looked at him wearily, clearly tired of this incessant questioning. “I’m from Niceass. It’s a lovely city in the desert.” His eyes glazed over as he recall ed his home town with longing.
The adventurers looked at each-other, in uncertainty. One piped up, “Er… bald man..?”
“What is it?” Snapped the bald man, “I’m not used to visitors, y’know. I do hope you’ll all bugger off soon, so I can enjoy the afterno on sun in peace.”
“Well it’s just… You see…”
“Out with it, man! I don’t have all day, you know! This atonement business is busy work!”
“You might as well just tell him,” said another adventurer.
“Look. Your town’s dead. Everyone is dead. Niceass is a dead town. It’s been dead for ages. Dead.”
The bald man sat in shocked silence for a few minutes.
“Way to break it to him gently…” One of the adventurers muttered.
There was some shifting of feet.
“Right. Well… Bugger.”
[Later that day, the group stands once again before the bald man with no name.]
“Well he clearly gets his food from somewhere…”
“Yeah, a bunch of dark elves drop it off every week.” Chipped in the bald man, munching a mushy banaramitz.
“Right, so we j ust wait here for a bit. Follow the elves back… get the girl and hightail it out of there.”
“Boy,” came a voice from the back.
“What?”
“Boy. Get the boy and hightail it out of there.”
“Since when has any story been about rescuing a boy?”
“Look, I don’t write them, okay? I’m just here, in the desert, with a pocket full of mouldy bananaramitz and sunburn, just like the rest of you.”
“Mouldy banan… you’ve still got your bananaramitz??”
“Yeah..!”
“Damn… I wondered what that stink was…”
Most of the group of adventurers, as one, step away from one of their members, who looked a bit redder.
[Later still, a small band of dark elves appears on the horizon…]
“They’re here, look busy!”
The adventurers scurry around. One of them tries to hid e behind a small pebble, before following the others to sit atop one of the remaining piles of stones.
[The dark elves come…
The dark elves leave…
The group follows the dark elves… ]
As they thought, the dark elves travelled back to their city in the desert. It was a monstrous place, with high walls and a closed gate. In the shadow of the wall sat a slum – a ramshackle place of lean-to houses and mud. As the group entered, they were assessed and the two elves were inked with a ‘B’ for ‘Breeding Stock’. There was much jesting, and the human was much put out at the fact the ugly elf was marked for breeding, yet he was not.
During the night, it was established that breeding might not necessarily be a good thing… The group hatched a plan that involved sneaking out of the cam p and through a secret entrance in the wall. Their guide had got them this far and was sure he could get them into the city.
Sadly, the best laid plans sometimes fail, and this one wasn’t one of the best. As the group snuck out of the camp, one of their members tripped over and was spotted by a lookout. Before he could try and talk his way out of trouble , one of the other heroes tried to slit the throat of the lookout, but only scratched his neck. The lookout screamed out in pain and woke several others. With the camp heating up, the group ran for it, almost leaving behind the unfortunate adventurer with the blunt knife.
And so we leave our adventurers, having entered the city and headed towards the temple in the centre. Will they find the boy they seek there? What of all the female elves in the city – perhaps our men wish not to leave after all (*wink wink*) ? Will they meet the queen of the dark elves herself?
Find out next episode… maybe…

The Four Islands – Part Three

Having finished off some guards last time outside the bandit cave, we cautiously entered. We were met just outside the cave by some Ogres sent by King Rulf to assist us – two players who can’t attend as often as they’d like to. They’re brothers, twins, and very strong (even if one is a little short). One is a merchant, the other a priest, who supports the general Ogre religion and was clearly sent to us by Rulf because he didn’t want to be told he wasn’t warlike enough.

We just loved the view of Ogre merchants and priests. “You will buy this for 10!” and “REPENT!” being repeated while the target is lifted and shaken until they give up and do as they’re told!

Investigating the caves, we found a very small shieldwall in a narrow corridor, big enough for only three to stand abreast. It was hard to break them since our missile shooting was poor (and mostly rocks) – even though I gave my bow to someone with twice the skill I had. We charged in, such as we could and then smash. Slowly. Their shields were good. When we finally broke a gap in the line, our Ogre merchant took advantage of the gap by tossing our rigger (a Dwarf) into it to cause surprise and smash heads. Thankfully, he got a special roll on the throw and the Dwarf landed perfectly.

Then out of the melee the bandit leader came out and shouted to us, asking if anyone would challenge him on-on-one. Since even with his clan around him we outnumbered them, I thought “why bother? it only benefits him!” and that was the majority view until one of our party chose to sacrifice himself (the player wanted a new character). We didn’t want to throw his life away though, so he cast Strength on himself, and we cast Demoralise on the bandit chief. He lasted a few rounds, and at some point I thought we’d all best sneak around and kill off the chief anyway – one-on-one honour for a thief? Pah! Then a good hit took him out, and the clan surrendered. We have stripped them, looted every nook and cranny of the cave and got some good gear for our new recruits (and some of us still wearing animal furs) and intend to take them back to King Rulf for a bounty.

I missed the next week, but the party made it back to the King’s camp, managed to sell the loot and buy some nice full suits of armour (the problems of missing a week, you miss the good gear), and got a new boat to take us to the capital – the SS Sea Otter Foreplay. It’s like an Ogre yacht, and I think it’s fair to say that we were all thinking of the Lonely Island video “I’m on a boat”.

Our Ogre merchant almost lost an arm to a shark (gaining in return a crippling fear of water and finding himself the religion of the Earth god), and the party stole a farm. They were told that they found some good grazing land, and as I understand it they forged some ownership documents to prove that they owned it?

When I rejoined the party, we were sailing to the capital. We found a couple of uninteresting islands (no more vulnerable farms, armour merchants or deadly sharks) and then came upon the capital just in time to see a bunch of nasty looking, sleek and rapid ships leaving the harbour. They were recognised as the Drannai, the evil Elves that use magic who live on the central island. We pretty much guessed what they had just stolen.

The party were told that ‘slaves’ – non-Ogres – could not wear armour or be armed, even when we offered to help against the Drannai. I successfully claimed that my stiff leathers weren’t armour, just ordinary (tough) clothes. Good thing too, as we made our way to the shipyards to find Captain Rengrave, we saw a Dwarf helping them who used to be the first mate of the SS Shagnasty. He called the guards, who didn’t actually care too much about him, even when he claimed that we wanted revenge for his betrayal and defection to the Ogres.

We challenged him to a duel – a rather simple affair, we were given weapons at random by the Ogres. He dodged my scythe, he missed with his flail, then I critical-kicked his leg and almost killed him. We claimed the Dwarf as our slave and took him back to the boat to interrogate, but not before another member of the party was dragged into another, unrelated duel. Both sides rolled poorly, neither landing a blow on the other, till the slave he was fighting fumbled with a kick and broke his own leg.

After interrogating the Dwarf traitor, we found out that the captain was being held at the castle. We used the captive to trick our way into the castle, and found Rengrave lying on a hospital bed. He told us that he was the Ogre King now – the King must accept a challenge every year, and lost to Rengrave somehow. Which made the next request easier. We got the best ship that the Ogres have, and made ready to go rescue the boy that the Drannai, surprise surprise, had kidnapped.

We set off into the shiny blue ocean, to track down the boy.

"I said ham hock! Ham HOCK!"

We’ve had a couple more sessions of our Four Islands Runequest game. After making a safe camp last time, we carried on looking for the rebel city.

On the way, we discovered a field of sheep which my elf companion decided to butcher. No XP earned. While butchering, he fell down a hole in the ground, and met a hermit in a cave who gave us directions to the rebel city, as we had gotten lost (again).

Leaving (some of) the sheep alone, we made our way along a cliff edge to the city. Dangling off the edge of the cliff were two iron cages, occupied. One contained a thief who’d been caught by the ogres and the other contained the rigger on the SS Shagnasty (our ship). The rigger is played by a new member of our group (fresh blood…). We (and by we I mean mostly the Dwarf) managed to pull the cages up, smash them open with a rock, and rescue the prisoners. Any enemy of the ogres is an ally, we say. We also salvaged some of the iron to take to the city with us.

Arriving in the city clad in furs, carrying savage weapons, we made our way to the guy in charge. We were shown to the regent who gave us a brief overview of the situation – these are the rebels, the rebel king is away on the frontier fighting against the ogres, and we were pointed to a blacksmith who can give us some better equipment. The Ogres had captured Captain Rengrave and the young king of the Bretons and although no-one knew where the boy was, the captain (my character’s father) was being forced to help build ships for the Ogres. We were also given a guide (human, a returning player) to help us get to the ogre capital and find our way around there.

The blacksmith was almost entirely incompetent, and managed to flub a lot of the iron that we gave him to fashion into better weapons. For this reason, I had to a work for a day in the fields to try and pay off the longsword I requested but the first attempts gave me a war boomerang instead. The other guys got similarly rotten luck producing simple weapons and arrowheads.

While I worked, the other guys went to a pub, where they started (inadvertently) a brawl. The Dwarf took the part of Vin Diesel, kicking arse and not spilling a drop. Our elf ended up more like Benny Hill, being slid across the bar, hitting his head at the end and upsetting an Ogre eating a ham hock. Which we misheard to tragically comical effect. Our GM is the greatest, and this became a part of the story now and battered pig penis is apparently an Ogre delicacy. The Ogre and his wife attacked the elf, while our rigger was distracted trying to pick up a barstool as an improvised weapon (it was bolted to the floor) and the guide picked up a table and threw it across the room. Thinking that it might get out of hand (fighting is one thing but murder is another), I figured out that my day in the fields must be almost over and started my way back. When I finally got there, I passed a few lucky Orate rolls and got everything moved on (with the help of the new, slightly greenish longsword I picked up on the way home).

A quick pint and a rest, then back to the Regent to secure a boat to go and see the rebel king on our way to the Ogre capital. We were given a serviceable yacht, and ended the session having safely landed near the rebel encampment.

When we rejoined the game after Christmas, we were met at the camp by Lord Jubrox – a Breton regent who advised us of the current political situation. The ‘rebel’ king, King Rulf, was an Ogre and the rightful king of the Ogres. He’s not very Ogrish, however – too short, too weak, not a martial person at all. And he’s quite sensitive about it. It was decided by the ruling court to pass over him for succession and instead crown his younger brother, who exemplified the physical properties and attitudes of the Ogres. Hence, the rebel king and the war. We were then allowed to see the King. We were also told about the rebel Ogre General Gabrax.

We explained the situation – we want to recover my father and the Breton boy king. During this audience, we noted that Lord Jubrox doesn’t appear to be happy about the Breton king being a boy. We asked the king for any supplies to try and accomplish our goals, since freeing the captain would deprive the enemy of shipbuilding skills and freeing the boy would get some goodwill with the Bretons. He was unable to spare anything; most of the fighters we saw were human, not Ogre, and they were a raised militia rather than trained soldiers. The King indicated that we can keep anything that we find in a cave nearby being used by bandits, who both the ruling king and the rebel king were too busy to deal with. He also had a plan for us to get into the capital, possibly assassinate his brother and rescue the prisoners.

We struck out for the bandit camp, and I attempted to snipe them from afar with my long bow. I kept missing, and missing, and missing, and when they came closer to find me they were jumped by the rigger and the Dwarf (the only others who could attend this session). We finished them off easily, and I learned that the ‘greenish tinge’ on my long sword was an acid effect which grants disruption – a Runequest term for immediately and permanently destroying armour. If I don’t get through it the first time, it’ll be easier to get through the second time.

Time pressures meant that we had to leave it there for the evening. Next time, we’ll be attempting to assault the cave and hopefully have more players to help!

Back to Roleplaying – The Four Islands, week one

This summer our weekly roleplay became more of a monthly roleplay, at best. Most weeks, there weren’t enough people to get it going. That and our GM was getting a little tired of Dungeon World, we don’t think it was right for our group. After asking our questions on Google Plus, the designer told us that we were ruining the game. I don’t know about the other guys, but I see that as a sort of rebellious badge of honour.

Anyway, I finally got along to one – we’ve dropped the Dungeon World campaign and the GM has passed the mantle over to a more experienced GM. His chosen system is Runequest. We generated our characters and got introduced to the setting.

Basically, there are four islands – in the north are the Nord, a race of warrior Ogres. In the south are beasts, nature things that do not like people on their island. In the West are Elves, who experiment with magic. Arcane magic is forbidden in this world, so those Elves are seen as evil by everyone else. In the East are Dwarfs, who are experts at metallurgy. To the West and East of the four islands are two large continents with many separate human tribes and some non-magical (non-evil) Elves, Dwarfs, etc.

Our group are two Elves (non-magical) and a Dwarf. I have no combat skills, but the Dwarf has loads, so that should be alright.

The King of the Bretons (a human tribe) died, leaving his 12 year old son as ruler of the kingdom. We were on a boat transporting him to safety when the boat had trouble and sank. The three of us, and very little else, washed up on the shore of a cold island, covered in fir trees and snow. We succeeded in finding some driftwood and a turtle shell, started a small fire, and attracted a white wolf with our singing. We killed the wolf with flaming brands from the fire, completely failed at butchering it and creating warm clothes. As the one who killed it, I was able to keep the “shitty looking slightly scorched fur hat” which provides one armour point to the head and loses one appearance (taking it down to the practically fatal 4 – I am so fugly). We got some meat off the bones and created a stew (using the turtle shell as a pot).

The Dwarf managed to get us some flint, which we have fashioned into a couple of knives and a spearhead. There’s apparently some smoke elsewhere on the island, so next time we might be heading towards that. I think we’ve done pretty well, we’ve found shelter, made fire, eaten and have a goal.

In our second session, we debated whether to investigate the smoke we saw or follow the horse tracks (roughly a dozen horses) that our elf discovered when taking a jog around the beach. We elected to go for the horses, but before long we saw a person. This turned out to be a Nordish fisherman, singing a simple song, who told us we didn’t want to go to the capital. Instead we should head towards “Grunchen”, a free human town, where we might be received better.

We promptly got extremely lost, inland and near a river, when we were attacked by a sabre-toothed tiger. It was going to be a crocodile (ah, random encounter tables…) but we are surrounded by snow. Our Dwarf used his divine spell Mind Blast in the first round, which we discovered was an instant kill against anything without a magic characteristic. Butchering the body gave us a few cloaks, a nicer hat than the one I had, and two knives made from it’s front teeth. As we stood around wondering quite what to do, three Ogres approached us with logs and an axe. We chatted, cautiously and friendly enough, then were asked to come with them to the capital. Then asked again a bit stronger, because Grunchen is a town of the rebel king, full of traitors. We stood our ground while his mates threw logs at us for sport, and when one of them fumbled the throw and he killed them out of warrior pride we realised we had to run or fight.

I voted to run, but we’ve never run in a roleplay before.

Instead, I fast-talked him while we got closer, the Dwarf distracted him so we could hit him from behind in a surprise round. We dropped both of the ogres before they knew what hit them. We stole their bank book (???), their donkey and their cart and we’ve found what we think is Grunchen. We’ve snuck past the guard towers and made a safe camp for the night. Let’s see how we do next time…

"I take off my sock" and they all ran in fear

A few months back, my fellow adventurers in 15^th century France punched the planet by destroying a caravan of gunpowder pulled by the French and daemon allied army with a divinely gifted Sunspear spell. Since then, we came across the French army (slightly diminished) where they scored a major victory over the English army. In our defence, they had daemons on their side. During the battle, we were trying to infiltrate the French camp to find and kill their commanders. We found what was allegedly the Duke of Arras’ tent, surrounded by a wall of lethal darkness. Then turned around to find the Duke de Compsey, one of Arras’ lieutenants and a few of his vampire minions. They obviously tried to kill us.

The fight lasted over a session, so we lost a number of our group to other commitments. Our priest (one of the best fighters in the party) was levitated by de Compsey and was being thrown into us as a living missile. As he was being thrown however, he lashed out with his hammer at the vampires and managed to knock a vampire’s head off. Levitating priest polo, anyone?

I attempted to stab a vampire in the back (I am not an honourable chap), he incapacitated his opponents then turned to face me. As he swung, he critically fumbled and threw his sword; it critically hit the Duke de Compsey in the head, killing him. Until this point we weren’t sure how we would survive the battle – we were totally outmatched by the vampires. After the battle, I renamed my character to ‘Lucky’ Hob Davies.

In between the 15^th century games, we’ve been playing a feudal Japanese roleplay based on the Runescape rules. We’d avoided a battle with a giant sea octopus, because that sounds dangerous, but circumstances conspired to bring us back to it. Circumstances in the form of a cursed Viking and his ship of zombies, summoned by a scroll to ferry us around. He took us to a patch of sea, told us we had to defeat the monster and it would be here soon, then locked us on deck. The build-up was immense, we knew this would be tough. We’d been led to this moment for ages. We’d been warned by several people about the monster. As the tentacles rose from the sea, our Mongolian guide attacked with his sling. It had strike rank 1, so went before anyone else (including the monster). He scored a critical. And laughed, and laughed, and laughed, and told us he had a special ability on his ammunition called ‘death blow on critical’. So the monster died. And we continued on our quest.

If a battle cry is something you say before battle, then his battle cry that day was “I take off my sock…”

Back on the Wagon

My gaming has been suffering recently. I’ve definitely been on target with “spend less” – although the temptation to grab a new rulebook or two has been pretty strong, I’ve managed to avoid it. Unfortunately, real life has been getting in the way of getting any actual gaming done – I’m busy, my gaming group is busy, no-one ever lines up a day together. I have, however, used a few days off of work to get ahead on my Dark Elf painting.

The particular style of batch-painting that I favour is ‘do every model at once’, meaning that my current batch is about 60 Corsairs. The downside to this is that until you pick up a model and examine it, as I did this week, it becomes difficult to work out how far away you are from completing. I’m just about entering the final detail stage, which for me means that I’ll be dividing models up into groups of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ for particular things. The first will probably be gemstones – every model with a gemstone goes in one group, which becomes a small batch for painting. When that’s finished, I’ll go through the batch checking out models to see if they need anything else done – belts, buckles, whatever. If they don’t, then I can actually call that model finished! So for me, entering this ending stage is very exciting, because the psychological obstacle of having sixty scowling warriors staring at you on a painting table makes the sense of achievement that much greater. And the increased sense of achievement will make me want to play more, meaning it’ll be more likely that I manage to organise a game!

Another thing I was doing with my free time was planning a role-play campaign. I’ve got a rough skeleton story sketched out, I just need to flesh and structure it a bit more and see what it becomes. My gaming group also have a role-play campaign going that was geographically inaccessible to me, but has fortunately moved closer, that I’m now invited to. That’s a weekly affair that will score many many points on the ‘play more’ part of the deal, and possibly save me the trouble of buying new rulebooks – role-play groups are great for borrowing and sharing books, or buying second-hand. That should also help nip the temptation to spend in the bud.

I think role-playing games are one of the best kinds of games for a frugal and/or social gamer – you might well buy a few expensive rulebooks, but you can bet that someone else in the group has done the same and that becomes a pooled resource. To get started, all you need is to borrow some dice (or still rather frugally, buy your own set for a few pounds) and there you go! I’d heard somewhere that they first took off in popularity around the time of a recession, where people were watching their spending and to have a game based almost solely in imagination was a very frugal way of enjoying yourself – it may not be true, but it sounds plausible!

So to recap, I’ve had a lousy time of not playing enough games. Real life has been interfering, preventing the planning of games nights (for my board games fix) and regular wargaming opponents. But it looks like regular gaming is getting back on the agenda, and if there’s one thing that I’ve learned from my new year’s resolution experiment, it’s that having a real plan of action (not just a hopeful goal) will make all the difference. So you can expect next year’s plans to be much more solid!