Here is a Dominion kingdom that I created, which my friends and I have enjoyed for a few sessions. I’m considering swapping Trader out for something else, because it appears to imbalance things a bit, but it is still pretty fun.
The Town of Last Chance (Intrigue and Hinterlands)
After the kerfuffle in Stonefall with Barnabas, the party had some down time. Wounds were healed, equipment was purchased, and Brithangel even made some potions of false life for his unappreciative fellows, who to a man had not volunteered their own blood for the admixtures. The goblin Bobbum was nowhere to be found, as was his way from time to time.
Kyrl, the party fighter, began hearing voices. This was some cause for concern. Turns out it was a sending spell, sent by one Landros, a wizard with whom Kyrl and Shade (the rogue) had dealt with in the past. Turns out the wizard was trapped behind some sort of impenetrable magical barrier through which he and his companion could not teleport, and needed rescuing.
“You have high-maintenance friends,” Brithangel told Kyrl. The elf was not one for tact. All the same, he agreed to offer his services in the rescue.
During our last Pathfinder session we wrapped up one of the party rogue’s dangling plot threads. In a nutshell: he had agreed to retrieve an artifact for a crime boss named Barnabas. He didn’t, and went missing for a while. Barnabas figured he took the money and ran, so he put out a hit on the rogue. The rogue, clearly having chosen Wisdom as a dump stat, decided to confront the kingpin in his lair. Barnabas ran a brewery as a front organization, so that’s where we went.
The rogue had a 100 gold bounty on his head. As it turned out, Brithangel had the exact item that Barnabas was searching for. We still didn’t know what it did, and I was curious about the crime boss’s interest in the thing. I made him an offer: 250 gold, you take the bounty off the rogue’s head, and you tell me what’s so great about this thing you’re looking for.
Deal!
Oh, wait…
Long story short, the rogue convinces Barnabas to give him three more days. So I keep my money. Almost immediately after leaving the brewery, he discusses how they need to get all the criminal elements of the city together and revolt against Barnabas. A little over the top, I feel, but it’s his plot line so cool.
Thing is, there were a number of times the entire thing could have gone south. There were several occasions I found myself wanting it to fail. Complications make things interesting, and the straight path to victory is not always the best one.
A particular moment came when one of the NPCs said, “You know, some of us are questioning if you’re doing this because you really want things back the way they were before Barnabus came to power, or if you’re just trying to save your own skin.” Part of me screamed YES! This is when we get ambushed by our former allies! Alas, despite the brief tension, nothing came from this incident. Even after we killed Baranabus and I bribed his hired tengu assassin to leave us alone, one of the leaders of the short rebellion had us alone for a few minutes and could have made any number of demands. Sadly, it was merely a happy ending.
None of this is to say that victory is a bad thing, per se. Yet in an ongoing campaign, stories need to fuel future adventures. Things like unexpected betrayal certainly add further motivations. It is enjoyable to wrap up a story in a tidy fashion like we did here, but it is still early in the campaign and I couldn’t help feeling there was so much more that could be done. Perhaps complications will arise in future sessions. We have a good GM, and it is easy to sit here after the sessions and say there was a lot that could have been done without being behind the screen. I know in my own games there are plenty of things I wish I would have done differently for my players. Nonetheless, it is good advice to follow: complicate things.
Next time, Brith makes out with a mind flayer.
Many a year ago I read at least half a million webcomics. Sadly those halcyon days are largely behind me. However, I do read Dungeon Grind, by British creator Steve Dismukes. I love it.
Dungeon Grind follows Vykus, a goblin who seeks employment at Castle Evilgrim, lair of the arch-lich Xyziax. Vykus attempts to revive his career in much the same way the rest of us do: filling out an application!
Hilarity, as they say, ensues. Steve is adept at playing with the general conventions of Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying games as seen from the other side, without crossing too far over the fourth wall into “we’re in a game” territory that is prevalent in many other comedic fantasy RPG comics.
The characters are heartwarming. Steve writes and draws another, more serious comic called Dark Places (which unfortunately appears to be on hiatus), and he brings a lot of that subtlety to the humor of Dungeon Grind. The kobold Jeek is really someone you’d want as your best friend. Also, between Dungeon Grind and Dark Places, the kobolds are the best-drawn I’ve ever seen.
Vykus and Jeek
So check out the website. You can also start from the first strip. There are only 60 or so at the moment; it’s a great time to catch up!
Dungeon Grind updates every Monday and Friday. If you enjoy it, please vote for it on TopWebcomics.com. That will help Steve get some much-deserved exposure for his work. You can vote every 24 hours!
Despite a few pointed efforts to the contrary, Brithangel Malraeneus survived to fight another day. The human he had cornered fled deeper into the mines, and the party decided to pursue. There they discovered strange machinery left behind by an older civilization. What at first blush appeared to be a frivolous attempt at increasing the rogue’s wealth had proved something else entirely.
Within the center of the mine, Brith and his companions found a large room containing six cylindrical chambers. A human woman was there, as well as a few guards and—naturally—another minotaur. They had prisoners who were bound. When they saw our heroes, the minotaur lifted up one of the prisoners, opened one of the middle chambers, tossed him inside, and slammed the door shut.
We rolled initiative, the party steeled themselves for battle, and on Brith’s turn he… ran right for the nearest chamber! Minotaurs, after all, had proven bad for the health of other party members, and the alchemist wasn’t sitting on a stack of hit points.
It’s important to me to play in games where combat happens in interesting environments. I do enjoy bashing some skulls in as much as the next person, but I’m always happier when there are other things going on. Decisions that need to be made, secondary objectives needing fulfillment, and so on. When I can put my character’s skills to use in a way other than bluffing to feint, tumbling to avoid attacks, and climbing to higher vantage points, I enjoy the game all the more.
Brithangel happens to be an incredibly intelligent alchemist, so his goal was to figure out what exactly the human and her entourage intended to do with these strange devices. Continue reading
I went to Labyrinth Games & Puzzles on Saturday the 14th to meet my friend Adam for an afternoon of board games with some of his friends. One of those games was Lords of Waterdeep, which neither of us had played. I commented that it reminded me of both Ticket to Ride and Agricola. Those are great games.
A little while later the owner came over, saw we were playing, and said: “Oh, I love that game! We call it ‘Ticket to Agricola’!” I was glad she and I saw eye to eye!
Death. It gets us all in the end.
There is a school of thought in Dungeons & Dragons that PCs live brutish Hobbesian lives and players must use every clever trick in their arsenal to keep their characters from shuffling off this mortal coil. I grew up in a different sort of environment, playing character-centric games in one-on-one sessions. I don’t think I’m alone when I say I grew attached to my fictional creations and didn’t want to see lasting harm befall them.
Over the years my attitude changed. Somewhere along the line I stopped viewing my characters as default extensions of myself and started seeing them as pieces in a story. Stories are bigger than any one character in them.
“The mightiest man may be slain by one arrow, and Boromir was pierced by many.” —Pippin, The Return of the King, by J.R.R Tolkien
Boromir dies. Ned Stark dies. Sean Bean plays them both in the screen adaptations, which we all know is no coincidence.
Recently I played a game of Pathfinder with some friends. My character is an elven alchemist named Brithangel (bri-THAN-gull). On a side quest of interest to the party rogue, the party travelled to a dig site in search of relics. There we encountered some unarmed minotaurs gambling, and a human man down in one of the holes. Naturally they were hostile. Brithangel knew he couldn’t go toe-to-toe with the minotaurs, and the human was secure far enough in the pit that he couldn’t hit him with an alchemical bomb. So he decided to climb down into the pit to get a better shot. The human had a bow and arrow, but Brithangel wasn’t made of paper and I knew this. If he were shot and fell off the ladder, he would be injured, but damn it he was an adventurer!
Fantasy Flight recently posted an article on the 11th briefly touching upon the ways the Android: Netrunner LCG will differ from its forerunner. They intend to keep the major amount of bluffing that is the central aspect of the game, which pleases me.
Most importantly, they spoil three new cards! I am thrilled. The new Identity cards—judging from Jinteki—show promise.
I stumbled upon this excellent article about TSR’s collectible card game Spellfire. I played a little bit back in my early teen years, since I had played D&D for longer than I’d played Magic and the game had some appeal to me for that reason. Sadly, it was just a lackluster game in comparison to other options available at the time.
Back in May, Fantasy Flight Games announced they are releasing the Netrunner card game as their latest Living Card Game. Since then, I have been on a non-stop binge of anticipation.
The year was 1996, and there was this curious little card game called Magic: The Gathering, which I had been playing since the Revised edition. Back then, CCGs were new and exciting territory, and while you might think there are a lot of them now, companies were releasing crazy ones left and right in the mid-90s. The king of the hill was still Richard Garfield’s now-defunct Deckmaster series, of which Magic: The Gathering was a part. Other games that held the Deckmaster brand were Jyhad (now Vampire: The Eternal Struggle) and Netrunner, the star of our show, originally based on R. Talsorian’s Cyberpunk role-playing game.
I was introduced to Netrunner at my local gaming store, where I often went to play Magic, BattleTech, and Warzone. One of the older guys there, Sean, was trying to get others to play. I volunteered.
