Run Date: August 22, 2023
PCs
Sunbeam:
Lv2 Spellsword
Horus Lance: Lv1 Dunestrider
Hench
Lilith: Lv0
A Collision of Ideals
Another small session where everyone's busy; that's on top of a two week hiatus from me filling shifts. The player who continues to lose characters to disease and poison decided to jump in and start playtesting one of the race/classes I made in the two-week gap. Khana Dunestrider is a hybrid of the Explorer and Thief styles, a veritable Tuskan and Tomb Raider. It does, however, assume that the delayed acquisition of Thief skills matches the level of said Thief vs starting at Lv1: ie, Lv8 Sneaking isn't 18+. I've written my experiences with ACKS' customization elsewhere, but the long and short is that everything is a trade off and the more I hit the walls of limitations the more I love it. On to the session:
The players chat for a while and catch up on the missing weeks. They lean heavily into exploration and letting the random rolls fill in the session for most sessions, but decided to follow some rumours about a growing band of brigands. Before leaving, they spend a day trying to get a hold of a local hench that caught their eye. Lilith answered the call, a not-yet-bladedancer better suited for a brothel. The pair then suited up and hit the road.
The party focused their search on the road between Fayum and Sherbin with a simple MO: Patrol the road until they find their targets. This did not quite go as expected, but I'll explain more in the Afterword. Things were calm on the road for several days; the group only spotting a couple giant ant workers milling about. Another few days later, however, a band of Hobgoblins came strutting by while the party was camping. Their initial reaction was extremely positive (12+), and the players negotiated joining up with them as soldiers to take out some bandits (those bandits) that had holed up on a nice piece of property. After the deal was struck, the PCs learned just how outnumbered they were as the rest of a band of some 20+ came from the shadows. They packed up camp and headed westward.
A few hours later, as the sun was rising, the warband found the brigand encampment: a ruined watchtower surrounded by tents and cooking fires. The PCs were sent ahead as negotiators and spotted by the brigand guards. Snake Eyes. The alarm went out and the party quickly found themselves between two bands of chaos. As both warbands ran into battle, the party ran off. I rolled reaction rolls again to determine whether or not the bands considered the PCs on their sides. As the dice go, the brigands assumed the PC group were slaves/prisoners and focused their efforts on the Hobs. The Hobs, however, assumed the party were filthy traitors and sent a few to cut them down.
This is where I'd muse on abstractions, BR, or other "mass battle" things... IF I USED THEM. For real, I just split the groups into squads of 5 or so, tossed some dice, and let it go. closeenough.png. The PCs made quick work of the group that hit them, and the combat only lasted one, extremely bloody, round. By the end of it, all parties involved suffered a shattering of their morale. The Hobs fell back screaming curses about returning stronger while the Brigands barricaded themselves in the rubble of the watchtower. The PCs, being the cheeky folks they are, tried to get into the field and do a bit of corpse picking before realizing they were in range of the brigand archers. Seeing this, they called it quits and headed to Sherbin to rest up.
About a week of time had passed so far, and the group decided to take a breather and plan their next step and, you guessed it, "Let's go explore those hills." The ever-reliable fall-back is the reason I wish there was an official tool for generation. Most of my pre-rolls use the savannas. The players rarely go deep enough to hit the hills or mountains.
The trip into the hills proved to be quite a bit more interesting than the days spent hunting brigands on the road. They discovered a huge hole, like a miniature volcano, with sheer walls and nothing but blackness. A brave torch delved its depths to reveal an underground stream flowing at the bottom. The PCs tried to examine it further, but quickly realized they didn't have the necessary rope. After looking over the area a little while longer and finding no alternate entrances, they headed further east. Their goal was to see if the water fed into the nearby lake.
This new trek was cut short. As random encounters go, there are outliers that are so unbelievable, I have to "pause" the game to go over it step by step. I also pull back the curtain often as a means of showing the players how all the engines come together. So it was that they discovered Unique Terrain - Relic. Several rolls later and the relic was some 80k gp in value with 18 (still unspecified) spells. Yup, super awesome item is also magical. They damn near rolled the perfect relic. This is also where I made another mistake: the Relic should have been within a dungeon, shrine, or other similar landmark. I missed the opportunity to turn this epic item into something perfect for revealing the secrets of the world.
The party, coming around a rather rough and rocky path, discovered a strange stone jutting from the ground. Within it was a shimmering battle standard of unknown origin; clad in metal and glorious as the day it was created. Horus attempted to pull the piece from the stone to no avail, but Sunbeam's immense strength allowed her to slowly tear it from its home. Once free, the party realized just how tall and awesome it truly was.
The question now was... what to do with it? My players are not stupid. They knew that being spotted with this would put a target on their back. They were just lowly adventurers; it wouldn't take much for a Baron or Fang to demand they hand it over. Worse yet was the possibility of thieves or those brigands learning about it. To this end, they covered the top and wrapped as much as they could in cloth or sacks with the idea of playing it off as a polearm. They immediately headed back to Sherbin, then to Fayum, and began planning their trip to Kahalanan's capitol to find an appraiser and buyer. The capitol is quite a ways away, and through the desert. Only time will tell whether or not the Gold Standard survives the trip.
Rewards (Totals)
31500
XP per PC
15750 XP per HM
Unidentified Battle Standard
Afterword
I found myself clashing with whether or not the players should be guaranteed to find the brigands. I used the full encounter tables, deciding to let those decide whether or not they encountered any. There is a lot of space on the road, and the brigands could very well be hitting other parts of it where the players weren't. On a gaming level, it results in a lot of "here's what happens this day" as they traveled back and forth. It can dampen excitement. I probably should have narrowed down the list to 3-6 options and developed a mini-arc to tie a few together; which is more or less what I did with the Hob invasion/rivalry (AoW calls this Abduction).
That said, the encounter tables of the 2e playtest are continuously being updated, adjusted, and perfected with a focus on simulation. As of this writing, the system is Rarity based; meaning I could shift the number of "Brigand" encounters to reflect the shift in ratios for the road.
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