Confessions of a Mad Gamer

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The Mysterious Oasis

So I said half jokingly to the player who always sits silently in the back, that he would be our fearless leader today (because honestly I'm a bit tired of taking the lead). To my surprise he popped out some maps (from the same smugglers that led us to the Temple of Blood) and showed us some Oasis on the map with the annotation "Bring booze, profit"

Being rotten to the core we procured the cheapest and most horrible booze we could (the kind of backyard moonshine that will make you go blind) and embarked on a journey to gold. Things went relatively well. There was an incident with Azi Dahaka (my Patron) demanding a sacrifice, but that was handled smoothly by putting a whole family to sleep, killing the wife and children and putting the bloody knife in the still sleeping man's hand. 

Ah yes the booze got sold, the people under some kind of curse became increasingly violent (one of them grew some Scarab like Antlers). The barman dissapeared, considering we wanted to rob the guy we followed suit, arrived in some caverns, found illusory walls and yet another hidden temple of the Mechanical Scarab. After some trap dismantling we stole a ridulously large golden statue, released the ancien evil that was trapped in the complex and headed back to Khalil to have the statue melted into some solid gold bars. Yeah the barkeep, turns out he didn't go to the cavern complex at all, but instead hid on the first floor of the tavern. No worries I want to go back eventually to see what horror we set loose exactly, we'll get him then. 

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Getting Fat on murder

Accepted a Hit on a Merchant-STOP- Unexpted Ogres-STOP-Got fat (+20kg) on corruption roll-Survived (barely) STOP

Clearly not the most inspired session

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The Temple of Blood (Sausage)

Found, well the title says it all actually. We managed to open the door to an old abandoned temple, whose walls and floor is covered in everflowing blood, the centre of all this gory madness being apparently an old man. Next to him a demonic looking altar. In the process of tinkering with all that: 

I lost a hand

My hand spawned a blood covered body from the altar, turned out to be a demon

the demon had some mental issues. It demanded a bowl of milk and tripped out on catnip

the hand got grown back, baby smooth

the old man died

there is no small profit: all that blood got turned into cursed blood sausages, we gave them to the hobo's.

we need a meatgrinder, a large one

we discovered the soul inside the demon was that of Felix, the catbody inhabited by our Demon-Cat

the latter was very much interested in getting his body back, he was very much annoyed at us for ending the torment he inflicted on the old man (apparently the wizard who operated the body swap in the first place). 

Since we make friends with the most horrible people around, we helped the demon get his body back, in exchange he leveled what was left of the Tanners Quarter, wich freed me from all my obligations towards Azi Dahaka. Yes there's a demon loose in Khalil now, no we don't care. We will dance while the world burns (more on that later). 

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The Day I met my Racist Neighbours

A relatively short DCC game. Now that they have their own little barony, they still have to stabilise it. Wich is not exactly easy since the Baron (the sole survivor since the very first game, a level 2 thief with 4hp) models his rulership on Berlusconi. Scandal and much hilarity ensues. 

Oh and as luck would have it, they do have a serial killer on the loose. So the session was some exploration/investigation, following the trail of the mysterious River Killer. On their journey they met large wolves considering Baron meat as a rare delicacy (he dropped under zero, but got lucky on his 50% odds), met some xenophobic farmers (and discovered to their horror - well the horror being, having to deal with this people on a regular basis - that they would have to annex this village to their barrony, since it's a very interesting hex to claim). 

At the end of the day it was a meh session. It becomes clearer everyday that I'm working with rather poor material (Kingmaker campaign). So I think I'll speed things up a little bit and works towards an end soon after Varnhold Vanishing. 

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The Elusive Mister Ali

Short session full of intrigue ! Anyway, each one of us tried a different way to contact the mysterious mister Ali. Personally I started plastering Magic Mouths all over the city to ask around, people interacting with the mouth would get my address.  The cleric, got in touch with the local assassins guild and learned that Ali was one of the major crime bosses in town. While certainly an interesting career choice for a free Djinn, we were no closer to finding him...Untill one of his representatives showed up at our doorstep, and asked to follow us so they could meet mister Ali. Our own (drunken) Genie decided this was an outrage to send a lackey and just send the man out. Since we knew better than to mess with the ego's of the djinn, we decided to look upon the strange maps of the sewers we found on some smugglers corpses. 

We had our first encounter with a strange tribe of underground hobo's. It went well, I think we fed them human flesh although I can't remember whose corpses it was exactly we grinded into saussages. Yeah we didn't exactly become more respectable overnight. 

Found what seems to be some temple ruins. The Demon Cat back seems interessted (wich is a very unusual change from his perma-sneer). 

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The Desert will provide

Met a merchant and his bodyguards on the way. We murderd hem (mainly because my poor impulse control), took their rations, water and large stock of Sheepskins.

Arrived into a Troglodyte village in the mountains and heard stories about their Cursed Hill. This sounded promising

We somehow managed to leave the locals alone for once and went looking for the Cursed Hill

Traps were disarmed, chickens got decaptitated in the process

Much vomiting was done and mysterious amphora found

Turns out there was a genie in there ...he was drunk, and not very pleased about all the vomiting in his amphora

We wished for our dungeon. Events were put in motion (we will get our dungeon, but it will have to be built, turns out the Genie can only manipulate events or take something from somewhere else and not create things out of the blue).

To facilitate the process we agree to head back to Khalil and look for a certain Ali, according the Amphora Genie, he's a Free Genie that will be able to help him get the dungeon built.

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I always wanted a son

Back in town, another calm session.

Managed to smelt our gold into nice ingots

Brought our money to the bank (thank the Gods of Chaos for Dwarven Bankers)

Bought a slave and adopted him like my son (new player), We treat him as well as could be expected from our merry band of sociopaths

After long deliberation it's decided that the city is no place to start a dungeon

We head for the desert, only remembering after a day of walking in the unforgiving sun, that noone brought rations or enough water to last the trip.

Where the fuck are we going ?

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Return to the Tomb of Al Fazhul

Our plans to build a dungeon and run our own little monster-based economy are coming nicely together. Unfortunately a fierce and murderous entrepreneur spirit is not enough to make it in Khalil, we need some starting funds. That's how we decided to go back to the first place that got us started: The Tomb of Al-Fazhul.

Last time we went there, we managed to barely escape the guards, enter the tomb, plunder and ravage what was there and survive (mainly thanks to some efficiënt use of Turn Unholy by our cleric). We cleared almost all of it except the main burial chamber. 

Long story short we survived the poison traps, the flesh-eating scarabs and got away with bags and bags of weird gold dust (wich we later on smelted back to ingots). We met a massive tribe of Desert Elves, learned about their horrible Dream-Eating ways, bartered some exotic drugs from them and went on our merry way

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Bored to tears, killed some sailors

I know it sounds bad, but the title says it all. The really cool thing is tho is that our little murder spree generated a way more interesting subplot later on. Like, why are the smugglers, smuggling such large quantities of weapons in the city and hey hey what's this old map the captain was hoarding. This get's really good some sessions later. Also a fairly short session (about 2 hours)

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Eternica 33

Not a bad larp, not a specially good one either. Nothing much to comment on really, except I'm probably stopping this one, when the actual storytelling-team stops. I think I moved on, I'm looking for something a bit more involved and immersive, I guess smaller murder-parties with pre-written characters are the way to go.

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Fathers of the Nation

Well, now was the time for the big surprise at the end of the first Kingmaker tome. They get their second charter and are now the proud new rulers of a small barony. We did as the book suggested and played out a whole year of admin. Wich I admit got a bit boring at the end. None the less some brilliant idea's

The Magister is also the Spymaster, since she speaks the language of crows, she uses them as a network to spy everywhere. It's a slightly creepy vibe wich fits the character perfectly

Unable to decide for a name, they take the first word out of the dictionary, it ended up as the Barony of Becs (beaks in french).

The Treasurer is also the Royal Assassin, the poor guy is overworked.

True to his Berlusconian rolemodel, Croquenot (the original charter holder, coward extraordinaire and now Baron) managed to get embroiled into a scandal that almost send his Nation spiralling into anarchy (i'll probably flesh out that scandal once i decide upon their neighbours and the most inappropriate woman to start an affair with :-).

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Cruising for Minotaurs

Short and rather uninspired sessions, but hey shit happens. Or in this case not much happens, but some information was revealed

We found a Minotaur trainer (a guy who breeds them for gladiatoral combat), checked out the goods and decided it was still too expensive (but give it time ...)

We started the construction of a second flour on our little cursed/haunted house. The Demon-cat objects to the noise.

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Staglord Surprise

Allright, I've been neglecting the blog for a while and now I can't remember half the sessions that I missed blogging about. So the next couple of post will be briefer than usual.

Anyway, Kingmaker. After the Gnome massacre the party decides to do a little trip back to Oleg's to resupply (and meet the player characters, who are present this session, but not the previous one). I vaguely remember some rucus about the little Kobold Squad Voris has been training. After the ressuply, they head directly to the Staglord Fort to end his threat once and for all.

<insert gratuitous scene of murder and torture as they stumble upon a farm on their way>

They arrive at the fort, the halfling decides to sneak through the field filled with undead, the others just barge in, they hit the lieutenants hard, but neglect the archers who end up killing them (or at least reducing them all to 0), by then, the player, playing the party wizard fell asleep (her presence might very well have turned the tide of battle, but alas). So the players take the role of the small unit of kobold commando's who have sworn to help Voris kill the Staglord (i treated them as simple 0-levels). That little squad of hireling ended up mopping up what was left of the enemy force and even to finish off ...the staglord himself.

After the battle, 2 out of the 3 are still breathing (with the usual -1 on con of course), Voris passed on. Session ends there the basement unexplored.

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Fecal Tsunami

Sabotaged the sewers in the Tanners Quarter. STOP. Shit everywhere. STOP. Found assassin cult.STOP. Almost murdered in the Hammam.STOP

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Real Estate and Demonic Cats

I have a tremendous backlog, so once again, I'll keep these posts fairly short

Good session, a bit quieter than the previous one. There was some more haggling to get that sweet loot to transform into hard cash (this was harder than expected, apparently the market for antique pet toys is very small, and the connoiseurs will know we desecrated one of the holiest tombs in the land for it, so ...yeah).

Since the hobolifestyle get's a bit old we decided to find ourselves some real-estate, were we could build or little base of operations. The goal would be, in time, to build our own dungeon, stock it with monsters and attract adventurers, so we can loot their corpses and reïnvest etc ...Well, that's the theory, in any case.

We found a nice little house. The good side: it was easy enough the persuade the owners to give it to use for free. The bad side: the whole neighbourhood stinks, since we're in the Tanners Quarter, the house is haunted and there's a huge demon cat living on the first floor, with another dozen of regular cats.

Yeah ...anyway long story short, we managed a peaceful cohabitation, invested some cash into building a second floor and made a pact with the demon to get rid of the Tanners.

That last bit resulted in a glorious mess of violence, arson and feeding little children to my pet Python. Good fun.

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Gnomicide

Note for the Kingmaker lovers out there : I modified the campaign quiet heavily to fit my homebrew setting, I'll try to put some notes in italics to clarify some of the changes. The first one of them is replaced the Mites by Gnomes, my gnomes are like Garden Gnomes on a heavy ether-sniffing brink, they are drooling maniacs with a natural knack for sadistic and complicated traps.

So, the exploration of the Lost Lands (not Stolen Lands, also for setting reasons) continues, this time they realised how large all those rivers actually are, the strategic importance of bridges and the fact that yes indeed, one could sail ships to get a booming trade going on in the region. Another (less glamorous) lesson was that killing wild cows is actually harder than it looks and dead by stampede is a very real problem. 

That said they managed to find the Kobold Mine, made (to my great surprise) a deal with the kobolds to get their little statue back. I still can't believe that the encounter with the kobolds didn't turn into a slaughter (to vent all that frustration from the bandits). With help from the kobolds they managed to find the gnomes and from there on the gnomicide began. The whole party managed to die at least once under that three (but with DCC rules, that leaves you 50% chance to still live with a -1 on stamina if the party manages to retrieve your corpse). Everbody managed to be heroic at least once by retrieving friendly corpses (and everybody was incredibly lucky on those 50% rolls). Those combats where some of the most epic i witnessed yet, the warrior really turning into an Unstoppable Juggernaut of Vengeance (even if he had 1hp left and was attacking enemies unarmed most of the time).

I did experiment a bit with the Gnomes, giving them DR/5 against metal. This made them pretty formidable, despite their 3hp. The players got really creative in finding non-metallic solutions to their little murder equation, so in the end (and after the loss of some points of stamina), all is well.

Game ended by some diplomacy (well, just bullying and intimidating the kobolds, really). Voris, the warrior even managed to negotiate his own little kobold henchmen for the coming battle against the Staglord.

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Anything is possible in Hotel Zeezicht

So I got suckered into running a DCC game, with maybe half a day of prior notice. So I grabbed my copy of Sailors on the Starless Sea and tried to make it work.  9 players showed up, the dungeon was cleared and great fun was had by all (how’s this for a concise report).

I definitely have mixed feelings about the module in itself, my main gripe is that it makes no sense whatsoever. But okay apparently that was not required in old school modules, but come on please at least try. Why the hell are there even magic items in 0-level module thing (agree, the chance of players actually finding them is very slim, but still …). Nonetheless by running it as a nice little gonzo adventure (the party was on a holiday trip and expected the Keep of the Chaos Lord to be resort hotel) everybody managed to have fun.

Leveling to 1 halfway in also allowed me to show the different kinds of class features wich was kinda cool too. In the end I got a couple of complaints about people losing their favorite character and some other not seeing how this kind of play could last for a campaign. In any case a fun evening.