From 40 floors away, I can still hear your labored heartbeat. The bleat of car horns, the shrill cry of workman’s hammers, the screaming drills; this is your sound. A powerful wind, strong enough to sway mighty foundation of steel and stone is not enough to quiet you. You are living, breathing life. There is no question of your power or your providence.
Hong Kong by day…
By the time this post goes live, I’ll have boarded a plane for Hong Kong. This is leg one of a month long, around the world trip I am taking with my wife. We’ve planned it for months now, saved and scrimped so we could afford it. And after all of that, we’ve earned the journey.
Not a lot happened in this session. The pcs had a lot of ‘accounting work’ to do (the only downside of ACKS; (B/X really) ruthless attention to detail when it comes to money). How much in the bank, what supplies do they need, etc. There was a lot of back and forth over what direction they should go in. They had the letter that pointed to a larger, dangerous conspiracy, but in a solo session, Rage Claw and Lilith discovered (by using Speak with Animals to talk to a giant rat) a goblin lair that needed to be cleaned out. It took a lot of debate before they finally settled on what to do.
This is what I see when they talk to animals…somehow they all end up becoming anthropomorphic. And bad ass.
As I previously mentioned, there are a plethora of ways to ‘fix’ thieves (beyond leaving them out of the game entirely). So I’ll show case a few, some from other versions of the game, and others from Bloggers or my own ideas.
Over on Jeff’s Gameblog, he had a cool idea for condensing the common player questions into a quick-fire, setting establishing post. I liked the idea and thought I would answer them for my setting.
Read the session report where they found the letter
Ranshin,
Your efforts in the north are proceeding nicely. None noticed us leave Threshold, they are so preoccupied with the cut off trade.
Their greed will ever be their downfall.
I have made contact with our men in Restwell. Their activities on the border are tying up what few forces remain here. Restwell is strong, but given time, it will fall. Their allies have contacted the wyrm and we may forge an alliance soon.
Those pretenders must remain preoccupied and their eyes elsewhere. The weapon is buried in Dalagar, just as we were told. The cultists provided me the last bit of evidence I needed to locate it’s final resting place. If only the weaklings in Dalagar had had the strength to activate the weapon when the time was right… well, things would have been different, wouldn’t they?
By the time you read this, I will hopefully have made north with an expedition to excavate the entrance. It will undoubtedly be trapped and protected, so it may well take me a few weeks to secure the location. Just a little while longer, you only need to hold out for a month, maybe two.
Then we can be together and return to His side.
By the will of the Undying,
Otho
Read the previous session report
This session we had almost a full house. Lucian’s player showed up and the only person we were missing was Arakhe. After dealing with the PCs gold from last game and everyone deciding what to do with it (in which Long Tom’s player made the joke, “I don’t fear monsters in the dungeon anymore, now what I’m really afraid of is my accountant!”).
They debated what to do next. Rage Claw and Lilith wanted to go after the bandit disrupting trade in the north as did Long Tom, but some of the others were reluctant. The main draw for RC and LT was the fact that the bandit’s reward had increased and the merchant’s guild was offering a free year of trade to whoever stopped him. Alfric was non-plussed, “We murder things and take their stuff, we don’t trade. If anything we murder traders and take their stuff.” This really didn’t go over well with the Lawful leaning members of the party. Finally they gave the ultimatum that it was what they were going to do and he could come along if he wished. Grumbling, the dwarf accepted, rebuked by the party for the first time.
I can’t believe I’m going to write this.
All my gaming history, I’ve hated level drain. The idea that you would take away a character’s hard earned experience just never sat well for me. First off, it was like you suddenly forgot how to do things you used to know how to do (this is especially worse in versions of D&D with skills or proficiencies). Why does getting hit by a vampire make you forget abilities you had learned how to do? Why did undead attacks make your memory worse? Why does an undead’s attack steal your closeness to your diety (in the case of divine casters). It didn’t make a lot of sense to me.
So why did I end up using it?
i DungeonCrawl brought up the radical idea that maybe it’s time for Fighters to go away as a class in D&D. Of course, as a sacred cow of Dungeons and Dragons, it’s hard to imagine the game without fighters (or imagine that WOTC would consider it). But then, when you look at the average party in a lot of groups, how many fighters are actually there?
The Dungeon Cops want to know…has anyone seen this PC? Or any PC like it? Last seen hanging out in adventuring parties, before the introduction of barbarians and rangers.
Read the previous session report
Alfric returned from whatever mercenary job he’d been doing and the party quickly took him back in. They were a bit tight lipped about the statue, though they talked freely about their previous job. I’m not sure if they were intentionally keeping him in the dark about their Lawful statue, or just not telling a player something they assumed he knew. Anyway, it was interesting that the dwarf hasn’t learned yet about the magic oracle they have locked up in a box in the bank vault.
M Blackburn: A Writer's Journey 