Summary 5/7/22
Table Talk:
I want to start formatting our game days a little bit. Opening with Table Talk where i can answer any questions from last time i had to look up, discuss any relevant info, figure out mapping and answer any new questions from the players. Then, to have a quote to ‘pull us in’ to the world. Play (broken up in 2 sections if needed), then a quote to pull us out of the world. And lastly, end off with a bit of Table Talk for Players to ask questions about the world, mechanics, or just discuss plot outside of character.
This week's table talk focused mainly on combat as a refresher/intro, because i want the Players to know there is more their character can do than just "uh I hit it again I guess?" Every player/creature in combat has 3 main parts of combat. The Non-combative action (movement, using an object, etc.), The main or combative action, (attack, push, use item, etc.), and a reaction (this does not happen on the character’s, it happens when someone does something involving a character). The list of actions in Combat are:
Attack / Cast - attack, or cast a spell
Dash - expend a turn to double move
Disengage - (tricky and kinda up to the DM)
Dodge - focus on defense for a buff against enemy attacks
Help - use you turn to assist a character and add a buff to their action
Hide - hide
Ready - prepare an action to that goes off when triggered by an event
Search - use a non-combat skill check
Use an Object - a potion or lever or something
I also corrected some things on the Character Sheets.
“There should have been toughs on the street. Cities were full of them. That was practically one of the bloody requirements for a city. A town hall, a few inns and a tavern, and several blunt-faced fellows whose only desire was to pound you into the mud and spend your coin on drink and women.”
- Matrim Cauthon -- Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson, "Towers of Midnight (Book 13 in The Wheel of Time): Chapter 22 The End of a Legend”
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Chapter 3: Overflow Blocks
🎲🗡️🔔✨ Chapter 3: Overflow Blocks
We open on the 7th morning of week (weeks are 10 days, just fyi) here in the capital city. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, some girl is harassing bakers by making them sing and dance in folksy musical numbers... and our band of heroes is in a dark musty hole about 16 feet below ground. They have no baker with his tray like always, they have no bread and rolls to sell. They have Miner Morning Pies a -um- utilitarian delicacy, half way between a croissant and a calzone. The pies are filled with a creamy porridge and berries.
After some less than helpful questioning of Bostra, our band sets off to continue their adventure in the sewers.
We’re all kinda getting used to this main mechanical room after spending a day down here going up it… then down… then up again. And in fact, we’re actually getting used to the musty sewer smells of algae and rust, too.
Sorin reminds everyone that yesterday they managed to open a large grate heading north.
We meet a feral cat as we march along, and while Ari and Sorin try hard to skirt the edges and stay friendly, Rae is tired and grumpy. So after the Cat scratches her leg, Rae kicks it until it goes away.
We walk north past the now-open grate and into a much longer hallway.
Ari leads the party of three up the hallway, and takes the first turn we come to. A moment later we see a drain in the floor, covered with a strange red rock. Ari goes to move it, and it will move, but make a lot of noise.
When she peers into the darkness in the drain below, Rae hears the skittering of many many legs on stone, and shivers, remembering a strange vision of Centipedes and Gricks that she kept to herself.
As we move down this hal,l we notice the walls getting more and more covered in cobwebs, until, oh no, there they are. The spiders have come out to play!
Thinking quickly Sorin slaps his hands together, now is his chance to impress his new friends and show them his true power "Fire Style jut-Magic! Burning Hands!" A wave of fire rushes down the tunnel clearing out half the Spiders in one go. Impressive Sorin, i mean the walls are on fire and your friends have to make Dexterity Saving Throws to avoid taking fire damage due to all the super flammable cobwebs everywhere, but still… impressive.
Rae remembers her training. Hearing the beating drums of the monastery, she plants one hand on the ground and spins her legs, kicking out. She kicks out and stomps the last few spiders against the walls and ceiling.
Sorin spends a while carefully cutting the poison sacks out of the intact spider carcasses, and Rae finds a big lump of salt while squishing some egg sacks.
Zevari is NOT touching any gross oozing spider corpses, thanks.
Seeing the dead end our team moves south this time to find another drain in the floor, covered with another mysterious red stone. Down this passage we see a light and we can faintly make it out to be the flickering glow of a lantern. We get closer and see a bed roll laid out in the hall next to it. Clearly one of the Thugs is down here, and close.
After some brief discussion on how to approach this, Ari hears something a couple passages ahead. It sounds like someone up there is moving some stones…
Our brave adventures creep forward around the corner.
The sounds are getting louder.
“Quick around the next corner.”
“I hear them.”
“Down this hall!”
"Who's there!?" alas our leader is spotted, the Thug lunges out striking Zevari.
Raelle can't have that. She attacks, kicking out and sweeping his legs out from under him, knocking him prone.
Sorin (first checking for any spider webs - are we good ?- all clear? - ok good) lets fly with his fearsome Firebolt.
"Good keep him distracted," Ari whispers to herself, using the melee as a cover for her retreat into darkness.
Sorin and Rae let forth another barrage, not letting the Thug gain an inch.
As Rea punches him back, she sees the glow of a familiar set of horns emerge from the darkness. Suddenly the Thugs eyes go wide as the point of a knife pokes out the front of his knee cap.
He looks down and mentally blue-screens before slumping over and passing out.
They say ‘there is no honor amongst thieves,’ so let’s all quickly loot his pockets while he's unconscious!
Ari finds an unknown bank note, better hang on to that someone might be looking for it after all!
Sorin finds some pages torn from a diary. How rude, he'll take those-to return to their rightful owner, only reading them a little i'm sure.
And Rae finds a leather mask in the shape of a skull. Badass, and she wants it, no clever excuses, she just wants it.
That's one baddie down, 8 more to go. He was moving these bricks out from the wall, it looks like there is some sort of hallway back here. Rae spends some time moving the bricks and widening the hole enough to get through. Oh and Sorin and Ari help, of course they do, look at that gooood helping, not just standing, but helping, helpity help help.
The walls in here are different, slim wood boards instead of cobble and brick, and the floor is just packed earth. I bet this is some sort of Thug hidey hole.
Fearless leader, Ari, turns the corner and -MAULED BY A GIANT SPIDER! A wild "holy-fck-what-the-sht-was-that" has appeared.
Sorin leaps into the room and once again uses his Burning Hands Jutsu-Magic (i don't know why i keep messing that up).
Ari slashes at the Spider, cutting though its thick crunchy exoskeleton.
The Spider strikes again, wounding Ari deep, and knocking her unconscious. Rae is quick to save her friend, pulling her into the hallway and splashing a health potion all over her face.
The Spider takes to the ceiling spraying gooey web balls down the hall at Ari and Rae.
But Ari is back in the fight! She leaps up, she throws! Direct hit! A knife lands deep in one of the eyes of the monstrosity, bursting it apart and dripping a thick viscous goo down onto Raellle.
The Spider slams back on the ground looking angry and oozing bright green blood from its many many joints. It lets out an inhuman, discordant screech.
And Sorin lets out another Firebolt.
The Spider raises up to lunge again.... and is still. The back legs CRACK, its eyes shrink like raisins in the heat, its body falls back, and at last, its legs pull in tight around the torso.
With the Giant Spider dead, we can finally look around and see where in the hells we are! After some mental fig'rin' we find out this was a store-room for the gang of Thugs. It looks like it’s mostly cleared out now, probably due to the Giant Spider taking up residence.
Our crew set to work on scavenging what they can. Rae uses Ari's empty health potion bottle to bottle up the creamy eye jelly of the Spider, for the worst keepsake ever. She also finds a sewing kit, and a new belt pouch that oddly smells very good!
Ari finds a very important scroll (i need to write that) and a +1 trap hidden in the leftovers.
And Sorin finds a Holy Symbol and a four leaf clover. Then he proves he’s a dirty boy and gets elbow deep in Spider orifices to retrieve its web sack (thanks, Sorin, now i have to pay for my keyboard to go to therapy).
On the way out we notice one more chest... sitting alone... in a cut out of the hall... in the dark... separated from everything else... and Rae decides to go for it.
A spider jumps out but Rae is getting used to that and smooooshes it against the wall. Inside the chest, she finds a new Short Bow and 3 arrows inside!
Weary and worn, our heroes slump back the way they came, careful to take the same hallways and turns as when they embarked out here, so as not to hit any unknown traps or Spiders.
After a brief planning discussion they decide to go back and rest before doing anything else or trying to sell things to Devin.
Back in Bostra's makeshift little camp-hole they tell him about the knocked out Thug and ask about Giant Spiders and Centipedes and the like.
A very, very helpful Bostra tells them he knows absolutely nothing about any of that, after all he is a member of the constabulary and they aren't allowed below ground. So, he wouldn’t know anything about rumors of Giant Spiders, and Crocodiles, and Giant Rats, and Centipedes and Giant Beetles and weeellll you know… all the things people come up with… and say they heard skittering and chirping in the darkness below the city.
“I thought the thieves were not out tonight. A city without cutpurses, well, that’s like a field without weeds. And if there were no weeds, what would you need a farmer for? Bloody inhospitable, I tell you.”
- Matrim Cauthon -- Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson, "Towers of Midnight" (Book 13 in The Wheel of Time): Chapter 22 The End of a Legend
Table talk:
Mostly just questions on the world, plans for getting Cypress/Diedrik into the game/world.
We also discussed levels, both of PCs and of challenge ratings for encounters, and I also expressed how everyone did!
