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Stoneheart Valley Session 2: The Blacksmith’s Daughter

So, my Thursday group is playing through Stoneheart Valley by Frog God Games in Pathfinder. A couple weeks ago we played through the short introductory adventure, The Wizard’s Amulet, and this week we moved on to the first big adventure, The Crucible of Freya. (Hence this being session 2.) Part of the reason I didn’t cover The Wizard’s Amulet is because it used pregenerated characters; a number of the players wanted to adjust or replace those pregenerated characters for The Crucible of Freya, when things open up.

Our cast is:

Corian, the human sorcerer. He carries the Wizard’s Amulet, which is supposed to unlock the tower of the dead mage Eralion. Corian is played by @geniopopuliromani.

Galdar, the human cleric of Vanitthu, the god of vengeance. Vanitthu sent Galdar to follow Corian for an unknown purpose. Galdar is played by @commiemaybe.

Phelps, the human rogue. Phelps is the party’s jack of all trades and trap monkey. Phelps is played by @glitterqueefwonderkitten.

Carla VonCarla, the human soulknife. Carla is a famous adventurer and amazing hero!

Elayawen Aeldiar, the half-elf arcanist. Elayawen is a hanger-on who wants to see what magics can be found in Eralion’s tower.

We began with the party heading towards the town of Fairhill, where Eralion’s tower is supposed to be. Corian’s showdown with his nemesis, Vortigern, at the end of The Wizard’s Amulet had significantly worn them down, so they were very happy to reach civilization again.

Unfortunately, they weren’t quite so lucky. They were suddenly fired on by an orc patrol passing south of Fairhill. Phelps, with her amazing Perception, was the only one to avoid the ambush, running behind a tree for cover. The simple fight versus three orcs was surprisingly chippy, with a lot of tree cover and the large distance complicating lines of sight and making it hard to be effective. Corian fired from range with magic missiles, Galdar blessed the party and moved up slowly. Carla manifested entangling debris on top of the orcs, pinning them down and stopping them from running away (contrary to my notes!) The orcs struggled to get out of the entangling power to little effect, wasting their actions. Still, they weren’t down even as Phelps peppered them with arrows and Elayawen shot wildly with her crossbow - the orcs’ innate ferocity kept them fighting even at negative hit points. One orc held on the longest, and Carla used her flaming whip soul weapon to kill it from 10 or 15 feet away. It wasn’t a very dangerous encounter, but it did wake people up at least.

Heading into Fairhill, the PCs met the town guards, who were suspicious of any travelers. The guards relented when they saw Galdar’s holy symbol, telling the characters to pay respects at Fairhill’s Temple of Freya, and that they could find stables for the three cows (!) they picked up during The Wizard’s Amulet at the Tavern of the Three Kegs. The Tavern doesn’t have beds, they could find those at the Drunken Cockatrice or the Cask and Flagon.

The party went to the Temple of Freya to pay their respects first, noting from the entrance that a beautiful elven priestess was performing a holy rite, dipping a bowl filled with holy water into a flaming brazier. Galdar interrupted her, starting a bitter conversation about their respective gods. The party didn’t make friends with her, eventually degenerating into Vanitthu becoming the God of Sick Burns. After promising to give the temple some cows to make up for their disrespect, they bowed to the altar of Freya (or didn’t bow in Galdar’s case, or fell outright asleep in Phelps’) and headed off to the Three Kegs.

The proprietor there wasn’t much friendlier, cursing them out for interrupting his meal and telling them to stable the cows themselves when the party said they were donations for the temple. There was quite the bustling business going on inside the Three Kegs, but the party decided to go somewhere else, not wanting to deal with the crabby owner. (From the Three Kegs’ owner, they at least learned that the priestess of Freya was named Shandril.)

So they ended up at the Drunken Cockatrice, the best place in town. They met Fendrin, a commoner who had just lost his wife and son to manticore attacks, drinking away his pain. After some discussion, the party agreed to slay the manticores if they ever came across them, and tried to back away from the sobbing, crying quest hook.

They ended up talking to a group of townsfolk sitting at a table nearby. “You’re adventurers? Hope you do better than the last lot, they all disappeared north of town! Arialle, the blacksmith’s daughter, was one of them, and the smith’s been lost for a week without her!” The townsfolk also told the party that the nearby town of Crimmor was being attacked by swarms of stirges at all times, and that one of the stirges was apparently the size of a dragon! Furthermore, Galdar quizzed them if they’d ever heard about Eralion: “Yeah, his old ruined keep is home to a vampire now! What else could it be skulking around there at night? You’d better stay away for your own good.”

After that Lannet the halfling rogue entered the Drunken Cockatrice, saying hello to the party as he sat at the bar. Lannet made quick friends with the party - he was interested in each and every one of Carla’s stories about the seven dragons she’d slain, admitting he’d never done anything as interesting himself. Lannet filled the PCs in on the details of Fairhill - that it was lead by Magistrate Arlen, although everyone listens to Shandril, and that they’d met the one-armed guard captain Baran on their way in. The guards are on high alert due to orc attacks on the outlying farms around Fairhill and travelers, culminating in the murder of a family just a few days ago. Lannet even pulled back an inn curtain to show the party the large watch fires being lit around Fairhill as night darkened. Between the manticores, the missing blacksmith’s daughter, and the orcs, Fairhill seemed to be under no end of trouble.

Even adventurers have to sleep, and soon they asked the innkeeper, Glarian, for rooms. “Two gold pieces each,” she said, a high cost for new characters! “I’ve the best beds and food this side of Bard’s Gate, and if you don’t like it the Cask and Flagon is out the door.” Carla was struck by inspiration: “Hey Lannet, would you like to be in one of my stories?” Lannet was stunned, gulped, and threw two gold at Glarian before taking Carla upstairs. “Hey, it’s not every day a halfling like me gets asked by a pretty adventurer! Sure!” After that, the rest of the party had no choice but to pay for their rooms.

In the morning Lannet was gone, and Carla was just fine with that. Breakfast was similarly expensive (2 sp each), but worth the cost for fresh-baked loaves of bread, honey ham, and hot tea. Best until Bard’s Gate indeed! (Phelps lived up to her instincts by stealing half of Corian’s food.)

The party headed to the smithy, where they met grieving father Voril. Voril wasn’t working much, too worried for his daughter, although he was able to tell the party that she was heading out somewhere into the foothills of the Stoneheart Mountains. They’d know her by the beautiful harp she carried, if nothing else. The party debated what to do, and decided to look for Arialle, instead of chasing down orcs today.

They made their way up the Stoneheart Valley to where Arialle was heading, a three-day long trip. Luckily they didn’t meet any monsters, just a patrol of knights warning them to go back to the main roads.

The party eventually reached a steep-sided hill surrounded by forests, with a broken stone path leading up it. Somewhere atop the hill was a woman singing beautifully, with some terrible harp playing accompanying her. Creeping up the hill, they could see the ruins of an old tower. Sitting on one of the stones was Arialle, chained and unable to escape. In front of her was a dancing ettin, ten feet tall and almost as big as the tower itself. The ettin was playing the harp badly - hence the difference in musical quality. The party discussed what they could possibly do against such a fearsome creature, with Elayawen noting that her colour spray spell could stun the creature for a round if it didn’t save. They decided to try and be stealthy - maybe Phelps could sneak up and free Arialle without the ettin noticing. Galdar cast bless in case of a failure, Phelps circled around and...

completely failed her Stealth check. Everyone playing suddenly inhaled, knowing she was about to be pounded into nothingness by the ettin. The ettin which turned around at the noise and said “Oh hi! You here for music? Dance!” and proceeded to keep playing happily, dancing all along. Stunned and shocked, Phelps continued to dance along with the ettin, who made no moves to threaten her.

But Arialle was still there, and she looked terrified. Phelps began to question the ettin, whose name turned out to be Girbolg. Girbolg explained that he had two heads. One, the head wearing a battered old helmet, was his dancing head that liked friends and music and dancing. The other was his eating head, which liked killing and breaking things and eating tasty good things. The eating head had killed the rest of Arialle’s adventuring band, but the dancing head wanted to keep her safe because she made pretty music! So now Arialle was singing to keep herself alive and not be eaten. Unsure what to do, but knowing that the eating head seemed peaceful, the rest of the party joined the dance. (Except for Elayawen, who stayed hidden behind the trees.)

They couldn’t just run away and leave Arialle behind, and they couldn’t kill the ettin, especially now that they were all so close. Girbolg would notice if they tried to unlock Arialle’s chains, and that would presumably make both heads very angry. So they needed a distraction! Phelps asked Girbolg if Arialle could get up and join the dance, and he nodded yes, undoing one of her locks and letting her go free. Phelps danced next to Arialle and Galdar opened up with a dirty joke, distracting Girbolg long enough for Phelps to begin working on the locks. She needed more time though, so Corian picked up the slack, using silent image to conjure amazing fireworks in the air. The first silent image wasn’t enough, and Phelps quickly had to step back as Girbolg’s eating head peered down at her. With more fireworks, Phelps had the locks undone. Arialle immediately bolted, terrified, causing Girbolg to turn around and shout “Oh no!”

That was Elayawen’s cue to strike, and she leapt out of the trees, blasting Girbolg with a colour spray. Girbolg’s Will save would decide the party’s fate - either someone was not going home except in a bag, or the ettin would be stunned and vulnerable. A tense moment followed as the die rolled across the virtual tabletop - and Girbolg failed. Phelps jumped up with a yell, skewering her rapier through both of Girbolg’s heads, slaying the ettin in a single blow. The party was safe, and had rescued Arialle! It turned out Girbolg had quite a bit of loot, too - his helmet was a helmet of comprehend languages and read magic, and hidden in the rubble of the tower was an amazing prize. A ring of wizardry I! (Don’t forget the significant experience for defeating a CR 6 creature at character level 1, about a quarter of the way to 2nd level.)

The party returned to Fairhill heroes for their duties, and Voril promised them a custom (masterwork) suit of light or medium armour of their choice, that he would make for them immediately. And then we ended the session! Pretty fun, I’d have to say.

#pathfinder #dungeons and dragons #tabletop rpg #rpg #campaign log

Compelling Hero Points

The underlying argument for the rules of an RPG is narrative control. That’s what differentiates an RPG from “freeform” roleplaying - we have rules that govern what we can say about our characters, other characters, and the setting, and we mutually agree to those rules because we think they will make the roleplaying better. We have all seen children playing make-believe and falling into the trap of “I win forever!” “Nuh-uh!” Rules in an RPG go towards stopping that dilemma.

From that basis, a lot of RPGs have Game Masters or similar roles, who arbitrate the rules and decide exactly who “wins forever.” That GM also often comes up with the central plotline or setting of the game, and is supposed to be creating an experience that’s enjoyable for everyone. Far more than a change of name, the biggest difference between the GM role of two different games is the amount of narrative control that role is given. In Pathfinder, the GM has control over everything that isn’t the player characters themselves. They set the stage, and play all the other parts. In those kinds of games, the GM is often referred to as “running” the game, akin to running a program. The GM sets up a situation, the players make choices inside that situation, and the GM resolves those choices.

Other games don’t work quite so neatly. Dungeon World makes the GM a synthesizer —she’s supposed to ask the players to determine or describe parts of the game world and then to bring those parts together in response to the players’ actions. FATE has aspects, statements about any part of the narrative that both the players and the GM change control over. Control, in other words, isn’t an essential part of the GM’s role - it’s a design choice that games make in order to create specific play.

In Pathfinder, we’re familiar with how different rules can affect the game. Include the combat stamina rules from Pathfinder Unchained, and fighters become significantly better at fighting in a lot of ways. One of the more common optional rules is the hero point system, from the Advanced Player’s Guide, page 322. Hero points are limited resources the players can spend to change the outcome of a die roll. The APG describes this as the innate greatness of a hero, the quality to find a way and succeed no matter the odds.

Hero points do serve this role well. They give you significant bonuses when used, allowing you to turn a miss into a hit, or to avoid certain death from a savage blow. From the perspective of affecting the game, hero points do what they say on the tin. They allow the PCs to fight just that bit harder and do that much more, to succeed no matter the odds. In a game where many events are decided by random dice roll, accruing bonuses to that role is how the players affect the game. Whether it’s a feat or a magic weapon, you think about what it’s important for your character to do and build towards that end. Conversely, because of that heroic flavour, hero points might not be appropriate for all games. Most Pathfinder material assumes the players as heroes, doing great and legendary things. All of the Paizo Adventure Paths are built around this model, for example. Hero points work well for that - they allow the players to be heroes that much easier, and make for more memorable gaming moments.

I didn’t use hero points for my hexcrawl exploration game in the River Kingdoms though. I wanted an old-school feel, where the players had to survive by their wits and their planning. The players should be thinking through what they do, taking on fights they feel they can win, and the dice fall where they may. Accruing bonuses as I noted above was their way of affecting the game. Hero points gave them a cushion of safety. They didn’t have to plan or think fast if they got over their heads, and they could change the results of dice rolls that didn’t favour them. I wanted a world that was unyielding and harsh, and I got that.

The underlying idea of the above reason for not using hero points is narrative control again. I had a particular narrative (exploring hexes) that I wanted the players to follow, and I wanted them to use specific tools to affect that narrative. Even more than just dice, hero points represent significant ability to control the narrative. Players can use hero points to act at just the right moment (act out of turn), push themselves to do more when necessary (extra action), gain a stroke of genius (inspiration), bend magic to their will (recall), do nearly anything almost impossible (special) and even cheat death. Those aren’t abilities player characters normally have in Pathfinder. Those are significant ways to change the story to that player’s will. Hero points, then, represent one of the strongest ways for players to take control over the narrative.

I think that’s a good thing! We spend a lot of time talking about the agency of players, and how they can upset the GM’s plans in Pathfinder. There’s no end of discussing things as railroads, and discussing the virtues of an adventure path versus a sandbox. Whatever your opinion is, the basic idea remains intact that more player agency and more player action usually strengthens the game. After all, if the players aren’t getting to make their own choices, it’s not really fun is it? If the GM’s deciding everything, they’re really just doing their own self-serving version of “win forever.”

But. But but but. A lot of adventures, a lot of ideas have a particular thing the PCs need to do. Once you’re in the Stolen Lands you can sandbox it to hell at the beginning of Kingmaker, but the PCs need to make it there first. The PCs literally fall together at the beginning of Wrath of the Righteous, pressed into companionship when they fall into the ruined undercity of Kenabres. Maybe for a GM’s plot to start off the PCs need to be captured by orcs, or sold into slavery, or whatever. If the players don’t choose that, everything falls apart. And if the GM forces them to do it, it feels really arbitrary. It’s narrative control grinding against narrative control at a pressure point. How do you resolve that?

The problem here is that both types of players (the players and the GM) want to control the narrative at the same time and do different things with it. How do you fix that? Take turns. If the players go along with what the GM wants or needs to have happen right now, they instead receive narrative control later. And what’s a big tool for player narrative control? Hero points. So in exchange for doing what the GM wants, the PCs receive a bonus hero point. (Note that the PCs may turn down the GM, in which case they’re basically saying they don’t want to do that adventure. You might want to stop play and discuss why among the group; in any case, the GM needs to come up with something else to do.)

This idea is taken from FATE’s idea of compels. In FATE, you compel an aspect, an aspect being a statement about something in the narrative. A compel is when that statement would make things more dramatically complicated or interesting in the current context. (An example in FATE Core is that a kleptomaniac would of course help herself to something shiny in the haunted museum.) A FATE GM can hand out a Fate point (that game’s equivalent to a hero point) if the player goes along with the complication the GM has identified and wants.

Pathfinder doesn’t have a system for aspects, but that’s okay. It has different tools it uses to talk about a character’s qualities, like alignment and class. (FATE has aspects and compels for everything in the narrative, but hero points only apply to PCs and some NPCs.) A paladin just couldn’t leave an orphan in the middle of nowhere; a druid must protect that stand of trees against the dragon burning its way across the countryside. Ultimately, the goal is the same, to identify and reward players for following what the established narrative (including the established identities of their characters) says will happen in that situation.

FATE has a very freewheeling system of aspects and compels. Everyone has Fate points, everyone uses them for everything, so you gain and use them all the time. Hero points are much stronger and much rarer in Pathfinder. If you’ve ever played in a game using hero points, you know something important is going down when someone spends one. It’s an exciting moment. If you’re going to add to hero points, you want to keep that flavour and feel that moment of heroism. How do we use something akin to FATE’s compels while still keeping that sense of a special moment intact then?

Let’s go back to the original identification of the problem. We want the GM to be able to entice the PCs to do something important to the plot when they don’t want to. That dovetails with FATE telling us that compels should make things more dramatically interesting or complicated. Therefore, the GM should be able to compel (offer a hero point) whenever they want, but the GM should make sure that the compel is dramatically interesting and complicating. (As a rule of thumb, you get 1 hero point per level as written. You should only give out a compelled hero point once per level, or to serve something that will likely lead to about a level’s worth of play.)

Additionally, if the GM is doing big, sweeping narrative-effecting compels, everyone that compel touches on should be rewarded. As an example, think about an adventuring party surrounded by guards and told to surrender. Three of the players are willing to go along, but two aren’t. They want to fight. Because it’s essential to his adventure plot, the GM compels them, offering a hero point if the PCs surrender. They accept the compel, noting the hero point and being taken into custody by the guards. All of the player characters are taken into custody, therefore they all receive a hero point for the compel.

Conversely, some compels may only affect some or one of the PCs. A player might know that it’s definitely best not to sleep with a succubi, but a GM can compel them. You can’t resist her demonic charms, especially since you already have a reputation as a ladies’ man. No matter what the compel, the narrative is the most important thing to keep in mind. Compel to serve the narrative and grow it, not just because. Similarly, the compel should make sense for the player characters themselves. The captured adventuring party above might contain an outlaw rogue who would never bow down to the law, and that’s fine. But even a rogue can see that maybe he can’t fight his way out of seven polearms aimed right at this neck, and as he gets chained up he can start shouting his revenge and making plans for how he’s going to break out all the other prisoners and make some new friends…

One last thing. The hero points system already includes ways to gain additional hero points. Two of those - the faith and heroic deed options - give PCs an additional hero point for living up to the ideals of their character. That’s essentially the mechanism of a compel already, so a PC compelled to do something that would fit those options doesn’t get a second hero point for fulfilling those conditions. You don’t get to double-dip for the same act. If you could, it might lead to a degenerate play style where PCs identify necessary heroic acts that must be done and then wait for their GM to compel them, therefore receiving two hero points. All of these options for gaining hero points reward players for playing their characters according to their background; they just come from different players.

Here’s the rules text I’m going to use for compels in my game, written to slot right into the “Awarding Hero Points” part of the Advanced Player’s Guide:

Compel: The GM may offer characters a hero point if the characters perform an action the GM asks them to perform, and if that action will make the story of the game more interesting or complicated. If the players accept, the GM and the players agree on a way to narrate this action, and then narrate it to its completion. The players always have the choice to decline the hero point and its accompanying action. Additional hero points should not be provided for faithful or heroic acts done as compelled. This award should only be used roughly once a level for each character.

Have you ever used compels in your game (from FATE or another system?) How did they go? What do you think about this suggested house rule, and would you try it in your own games?

#pathfinder #fate #roleplaying games #rpgs #rules #house rules

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amazonchique

Cactus leshy. A late birthday present for the goddess of leshies, Linda Zayas-Palmer

dailycharacteroption

Adorable! The world truly needs more Leshies. Are there stats for it yet, though?

icequeensthrone

Leshies are the best!

#pathfinder

Why The Forgotten Realms Are Cool

Seriously! I want to talk about why the Realms are awesome and cool and amazing. You can have your favourite campaign setting, and I’m sure it’s great - but the Realms have plenty of their own cool things to celebrate. I get this question a lot, and I think anyone interested in tabletop RPGs can learn a lot from its answer. https://twitter.com/StickmanSouza asked me it this time, and he’s cool. You should go check him out.

Note that my discussion of the Realms and how to approach it applies to any edition and any time of the Realms. The Forgotten Realms have been lucky to have a fairly consistent production team, continued involvement by its creator, and well-done products and releases overall. You can apply what I say here to the 1st edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Set, or the 5th edition Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide.

So let’s go back to 1987, and the release of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Set. TSR, the publishers of D&D had done two kinds of D&D products at this point, broadly speaking. The first was Gary Gygax’s model of a sandbox - there’s a tentpole megadungeon, and there’s some wilderness around it. Players enter the dungeon, explore, and stuff in the dungeon facilitates other play. The classic example is that there was a portal on the lowest level of Castle Greyhawk that sent you to China on the other side of the world, and you had to find your way back. (The model of using your dungeon loot to go build a castle and become a lord also deserves mention under this, I think.)

The other was the classic Dragonlance DL# series of adventures. These were the first to set up a grand, epic plotline that the players could experience throughout play. There were dungeons, there were dragons, but you explored dungeons and fought dragons with a goal informed by the larger plotline in mind.

The Forgotten Realms Campaign Set doesn’t follow either of those models. It instead goes “here’s a world. And by a world, we mean an entire world, full of people with their own wants and needs and desires, and they fight and they get by and they do things differently. Here and here and here and here are dungeons and mysteries and all these curious things for you to explore or be interested in.” Gary Gygax’s World of Greyhawk setting products were very cursory, and focused on specific elements about the here and now. The Realms had history, and intrigue, and lots and lots of detailed differences to sink your teeth into.

It’s worth noting that all of this detail in the Campaign Set was player-focused. A good example is the section on merchant companies. It talks about how they inform the economies of the Realms, how they work, and then talks about specific ones. Those specific companies, in turn, tell us about how they hire mercenaries (adventurers) as protection, how they protect trade routes and change the wildernesses around them, and how the companies affect the Realms they travel through. This isn’t just a single dungeon or storyline, this tells us about what adventurers do in the Realms, what they might find wherever they go, and explains how people live their lives in general. It’s helpful in setting up locations, factions, monster groups, and just the general feel of the campaign. And all in one and a half pages.

Most every entry in the Campaign Set works like this. You see, Ed Greenwood (the guy who created the Realms, and wrote the vast majority of what’s in the campaign set) was already running two popular, long campaigns set in the Forgotten Realms. He’d already fit the Realms (which he originally made to write fantasy stories in) to Dungeons and Dragons. Ed knows what’s helpful at the table; what helps set the scene and create stories, and he works that into his writing. Most of the Campaign Set is informed by his play experiences, like how there’s no actual history section. Instead, there’s a “Current Clack” section, referring to the current goings on and news around the Realms. Better yet, Clack is done chronologically, broken down into significant events, and is a mixture of plotlines that run throughout two years and unique single adventure hooks. The plotlines, being broken down, tell the tales of things that happen in the Realms during those two years, and are specifically positioned as events for players to involve themselves in. To go back to my previous example, the Iron Throne merchant company announces plans to control all trade of iron across the Heartlands. What happens? Well, other merchants won’t stand for this, so they organize caravans to break the Iron Throne’s blockades, and here’s what the Iron Throne does to stop those caravans. Of course, your players can sign up to protect the caravans and fight the Iron Throne, or maybe they’ll man the blockades themselves, or try to assassinate the Iron Throne’s leaders... It’s like DM catnip, there’s so many ideas in there.

It’s worth mentioning that all of this revolves around people. The Forgotten Realms is a story of people, in so many ways. Greyhawk and Dragonlance had non-player characters, sure; but they were mighty, plot-integral characters like the mad wizard Zagyg, Kitiara, or Lord Soth. The Forgotten Realms Campaign Set has a good number of those too (I’m sure you’ve heard of Elminster) but it also breaks down organizations and focuses on individual people and their own lives. Shadowdale is a town given an entire census, breaking down each citizen, their temperaments, and what they do for the community. The effect is that in the Realms, everyone has stories, and those stories all matter. Secrets and plots and wars all begin with one or a few, and it enriches games and worlds to pay attention to everyone.

That’s really the crux of what makes the Realms an enjoyable place for me (and so many others) it’s a world that you can live in, and that feels lived in. There’s people and places and always new stories to tell, and that’s really exciting! The Realms is built to reward more attention and more study - there’s a wealth of wonders on every page of every book, little ideas that stir the mind and make things sing. But Ed was also cognizant that this was a tall task for a lot of people, and he points out in the Campaign Set that playing in the Realms makes it yours, not his. Change it to fit you and your players and your game, use what you’d like and discard the rest. Make the Realms sing - it began in Ed’s home D&D campaigns, and it is no more alive than when it is shared by good friends again.

#gm advice #d&d #pathfinder #forgotten realms #ed greenwood #campaign settings