Thought you might all enjoy a recap of a campaign I'm running using my Tensided system.

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 1. Played October 28, 2007.

You'll have to scroll down about halfway to get past the pregame chatter and character tweaking.

This was basically an intro session and not a lot happened. I was surprised by how quickly people seemed to be finding their characters, even if they were mostly reacting to what Sir Langard was telling them. The basic plot is that Langard believes recent hobgoblin attacks are due to subversive elements in the nobility who would like to go to war with neighboring Ramelob. Velkan's player showed himself to be the standout player in this session, and that hasn't changed in the sessions we've played since then. All in all, I was impressed with this group from the start.

Since the first session was so short, I'll post another one tonight.

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 2. Played November 4, 2007.

This was the first session to feature combat, and it had been a while since we had done a fantasy setting, so there were a lot of new and updated rules to test out. The characters' personalities started to become more distinct, Velkan as the young idealistic squire, Conrad as the grizzled and self-interested vet, and Hill as one hammer short of a toolbox. Cassie's personality is hard to determine in this session, and I still don't really know who she is as a character, but sometimes it just takes a while to hit one's stride RPing a character. Aside from some confusion about setting background, the players also didn't seem to grasp distance instinctively, not having a good idea how far 300 meters was, for instance.

The conversation with the merchant was done mostly with whispers between Hill and the merchant and can be found pasted at the very bottom of the chat log. There were a few missed opportunities on the players' parts in this conversation, as they took everything at face value and didn't ask questions that should have been asked. As a result, they were duped, and I'll save it until next session's summary to find out how.

The combat was a lot of fun, although it ran ridiculously long, mostly because we had a lot of new players who were unfamiliar with the mechanics and because I myself was a bit rusty, not having run the fantasy setting for some time. It was also caused by a problem that's unique to chat based sessions, which is that some players seemed to be browsing websites or otherwise not paying attention when it wasn't their turn, and then there would be a delay of several minutes each time it was their turn. I've had good experiences with OpenRPG, but this problem combined with the slowness of typing has made me more and more eager to try out a campaign run over voice chat. With most of the adversaries not wearing armor, this fight really showcased the brutality of Tensided's combat, with two decapitations and several other gruesome deaths. The chat log would be a lot better for fights if there were some way to see the battle map as a companion, as it stands there's no real record of movement and positioning. The characters took only minor injuries on this one.

I awarded 50 XP on this one because the session went 5 hours. Everyone has their own methods of rewarding XP, but I find the simplest and most equitable is just to give 10 XP per hour played. This gets rid of thoughts of bickering and unfairness and doesn't reward unnecessary combat or unnecessary skill use. It's a bit bland, and it doesn't allow for rewarding players, but a group like this one doesn't need to be rewarded to play their characters well, anyway. They do it because it's enjoyable.

I'll post the next session log tomorrow night.

Hi Arthur,

This is interesting stuff, and I have some questions for you. However, first, I'll do a tiny bit of moderation, one for you and one for everyone else.

1. Please remove the image from your signature. In general, images are discouraged at this site, although sometimes they're OK if you ask me first.

2. Everyone else, Tensided is a legitimately and fully published game, not in playtesting. Just in case anyone was a bit confused about that.

I'll be back for real discussion in a bit, and I hope others join in too. It is always a great day when someone brings their game to the Forge for everyone.

Best, Ron

Ron wrote:
Hi Arthur,

This is interesting stuff, and I have some questions for you. However, first, I'll do a tiny bit of moderation, one for you and one for everyone else.

1. Please remove the image from your signature. In general, images are discouraged at this site, although sometimes they're OK if you ask me first.

2. Everyone else, Tensided is a legitimately and fully published game, not in playtesting. Just in case anyone was a bit confused about that.

I'll be back for real discussion in a bit, and I hope others join in too. It is always a great day when someone brings their game to the Forge for everyone.

Best, Ron

Here's session three. The actual session doesn't start until about halfway down.

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 3. Played November 11, 2007.

This one picked up directly after the fight with the orcs. The group set about healing injuries, and one player asked whether there was a "Take Ten" option outside of combat like in d20. I decided not to include such a rule on the basis that a person can still make a mistake even if they have plenty of time, and success should not be a forgone conclusion. Then she asked about a teamwork bonus, which I decided is +2 per helper as long as they have at least half the number of skill ranks as the primary, on the basis that incompetents would be in the way as much as help.

In Tensided wounds are determined by Damage States, which are determined by comparing damage to HP. A healer can upgrade someone by one Damage State, but only within 10 minutes of the injury being sustained. After that the injury has set and only time can heal it. Since it takes 1d6 minutes for each injury, the healers needed to prioritize. The group decided to try and resuscitate the "dead" merchant's bodyguard (dead in this case meaning that life signs had ceased, but resuscitation was still possible). Since resuscitation is very difficult, they were not able to bring him back, and this ended up being a waste of time that could have been used to heal others.

After they had collected some items and performed some healing, the merchant showed up with a group of constables and had the party arrested for murder. It turned out that the merchant had tricked the group by telling them the orcs were bandits and then sending them to their shack. The orcs had been mining the river peacefully for quite some time, and received multiple threats from the merchant, who wanted to take their land and their gold. When the orcs saw a bunch of armed humans approaching with the merchant's bodyguards, who were known enemies, they assumed the worst and the battle ensued. This misunderstanding could have been avoided if the party had been more observant and asked more questions when they talked to the merchant instead of taking everything at face value. There were several party members who had enough Empathy to detect the merchant's lies, but you have to suspect a lie before you can make a roll to detect it.

When all was said and done, the group was able to convince the guards of the truth, the merchant was hanged for his crimes, and the players (hopefully) learned a lesson. After the ordeal another PC, a dwarf named Mebzuth, joined the group. By this time, everyone had pretty well settled into their characters. Velkan showed his idealism by sending the gold dust to the families of the slain orcs, Conrad continued to show his callous indifference, and Hill continued to show that he's lost the marbles he never had. We learned a bit more about Cassie's personality this session with her brief interplay with her dog Nova and her statement of sympathy toward the dead orcs.

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 4. Played November 18, 2007.
OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 5. Played November 25, 2007.

In these two sessions, the group was almost ambushed by a group of hobgoblin scouts, and the ensuing battle spilled over into the next session. The group rolled Ninjitsu and Spot and then I secretly rolled for the hobgoblins. I still don't have a finalized system of Ninj and Spot, so I winged the exact results, but basically whoever beats the other's Ninjitsu with their Spot by a higher MoS (Margin of Success) will spot the other group first. The hobgoblins won and so they set up an ambush, but the group spotted them before they sprung the trap. However, since the hobgoblin archers had been aiming the whole time the group approached unawares, they received the maximum aim bonus of +6. Mebzuth's player learned why the Unlucky flaw gives so much XP to those who take it. Anyone who takes Unlucky gets 60 XP, but they have no Action Points. AP's can be used once per session to reroll or to force an enemy to reroll. It's useful when someone gets a really lucky roll like the hobgoblin archer did against him. Conrad stepped in and used his AP, which forced the reroll but changed the target to the player who used the AP. The reroll was still a hit, and Conrad took the shot in the leg, which was a lot better than Mebzuth's shot to the jugular that would have killed him instantly. One of the players offered to try and resuscitate Mebzuth, but this would almost certainly have failed since the DF is 30 and Velkan's Healing Attribute is only 14. He would have to roll a 10 and then follow it with a 6 or better to pass.

The hobgoblins the group fought were pretty wimpy by hobgoblin soldier standards. In this setting, hobgoblins are not tribal brutes, but have sophisticated societies that produce warriors that are stronger, more skilled, and have better equipment than humans. They always lose wars to humans because they do not have the humans' ability to rally under a distant leader and therefore cannot form large nations, so they are always vastly outnumbered, but given equal numbers, a hobgoblin army will crush a human army every time. This group of hobgoblins was greatly toned down because the PC's were not good fighters, and hobs with standard stats would have butchered them. Even so, one PC would have died on the first round of combat if it weren't for the use of an AP, and several PC's were severely injured. The most amusing thing that happened during the battle was Conrad being thrown from the saddle of his panicking horse. Conrad's player has been playing Tensided longer than anyone, and like many longtime players, he doesn't read new rules with the same zeal that a newer player might. Since he only skimmed the new mounted combat rules, he didn't realize that his character's horse wasn't trained for combat and would immediately panick and buck him if he tried to ride it into combat.

I had to update the rules partway through the battle to include the possibility of making a galloping pass against one person while knocking over and trampling another. The rules previously did not mention one way or the other whether this would be possible. In the end, the group prevailed and took one prisoner, although one rider was able to ride away to warn the rest of his warband. The players were not nearly as concerned about this as they should have been, which made me think they never considered the possibility that the scouts might have been part of a larger group. They tended to their wounded and Hill subjected the prisoner to a slightly less than relevant 'interrogation'. The prisoner persuaded the group to leave the paralyzed hobgoblin for his companions to find, and Velkan agreed, speaking for everyone. Despite the invasion, the party never really bothered to interrogate the prisoner or see what useful knowledge he could tell them. They never even knew his name until he was taken over by a new player a few sessions later. The group set out for the town of Meadowgrass a few km away to rest and recover from their injuries, and faced new danger.

You'll have to scroll down about a quarter of the way to get to the session start.

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 6. Played December 02, 2007.

This session was pretty action packed. After gathering up the captured horses, the group set out for the town of Meadowgrass to rest. As they reached the gates, they noticed the hobgoblin warband the scouts were from approaching the town on their heels, but for some reason they didn't bother to let anyone from the town know. Failing to communicate vital information has been a recurring theme I've noticed with various groups of players, and this was no exception. In this case, I even reminded them with the line "The guards don't seem to have noticed the approaching figures," but they continued smilingly along their way without alerting anyone. They meet with the Lord of Meadowgrass, Kraylen, and discuss the fate of the hobgoblin prisoner. I had a bit of fun with the players' failure to ask the prisoner any information about the hobgoblin warband, but they managed to talk Lord Kraylen out of having the prisoner hanged once he had revealed the makeup of the warband, betraying his fellows.

At this point we were able to try out the new Large Scale Combat rules that I had just written a couple of weeks before as the forces of Meadowgrass squared off against the hobgoblin warband. I ran into some resistance as one of the players wanted to auto-resolve the battle, citing that she preferred character building to fighting, and didn't want to take the time on a fight that didn't involve her character.  Although a couple of players seemed to be persuaded at first, they eventually came back around and we had the battle. The first thing I noticed that was the casualty rules were set too low and that it would take too long, so I raised them before we even got started. I set the stats for the hobgoblins low again, this time not by design but because I didn't read what I had previously written before the session, so I set their Physique too low. On the human side there were 20 knights, 20 men-at-arms, 20 squires, 40 militia crossbowmen, and 60 militia spearmen. On the hob side, there were 20 elite cavalry, 40 cavalry, 40 archers, and 100 swordsmen. By all rights, the hobs should have walked away with this one, but because I set their Physique too low, they had a lot of trouble getting through the heavy armor of the knights and men-at-arms and once the knights had swept away the elite cavalry with a couched lance charge it was pretty much a forgone conclusion from that point. All the players said the battle was fun, so it seems that the Large Scale Combat rules were a success.

With the town safe from attack, it would be time for the group to try to talk a bloodthirsty Lord Kraylen out of mass executions, and time for the party to add a new member.

Hi Arthur,

Wow, that's alot of adventuring! Do you have any questions about it?

Callan wrote:
Hi Arthur,

Wow, that's alot of adventuring! Do you have any questions about it?

You'll have to scroll down about halfway to get to the session start.

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 7. Played December 09, 2007.

This was a fun session where I got to try a preliminary version of some ideas about conversation I've been mulling over in my head and posted about in the "Can Talking People's Heads Off Be As Fun As Slicing Them Off?" thread in First Thoughts. A new player joined and took over the role of the captured hobgoblin, who we named Kogan. The players kept getting Ramelobians mixed up with hobgoblins, but that's partly my fault for having such a convoluted plot, I guess. I made an error of my own when Kraylen commented about not being surprised "they never saw fit to make Sir Geoffery a Lord" when I clearly said in Session 1 that he was both a knight captain and a Lord, so I can't fault them too much. I had a lot of fun playing the bloodthirsty, boorish Lord Kraylen and particularly enjoyed the way he dismissed the group. In the end, the group was able to convince him to spare the prisoners on the grounds that they could be exchanged for Dunsburan soldiers.

Our new player struggled with the concept that his character had betrayed his own people to save his skin before he took over the character, and tried to come up with ways to rationalize it into something noble. He came up with a rather silly idea about his character being a secret "war prince" that would lead the hobgoblins to mighty victory and that the warband threw the battle just to get him close to the humans. This is what he was hinting at to Velkan at the end, but when he told me I suggested he come up with a different idea. I encourage creativity, but that's a bit much. It ended up not mattering next session, as you'll soon see...

arthurtuxedo wrote: Well, I posted about a couple of tendencies I noticed among players. One is that you'll tell one player or the whole group about some impending disaster, and they'll happily continue on their merry way and not bother to tell anyone. In this last session, they didn't feel it necessary to mention that there was a hobgoblin warband approaching. In a previous campaign, one player saw some hostile figures in the trees and just happily walked with the rest of the group right into the ambush without telling a soul. Have you noticed similar idiosyncrasies in your players?

That's an interesting take on it. I'll have to see how I can structure things differently to avoid that. I'm glad your method works for you, although I can't really see myself mandating that a player read a cue card I've given them.

Hi Arthur,

I'm enjoying the discussion of how specific rules interacted with the events of play. Here's my question for you: what sorts of magic do player-characters employ in the game? Let me be clear: I am not asking for you to describe every imaginable magical rule and roll in the whole rulebook. I'm asking about these player-characters in this game, as played so far.

The reason I'm asking is that I'm always interested in the distinction between (a) magic that is essentially just another sert of weapons and shields vs. (b) magic that re-writes or re-defines major aspects of a situation.

Best, Ron

Ron wrote:
Hi Arthur,

I'm enjoying the discussion of how specific rules interacted with the events of play. Here's my question for you: what sorts of magic do player-characters employ in the game? Let me be clear: I am not asking for you to describe every imaginable magical rule and roll in the whole rulebook. I'm asking about these player-characters in this game, as played so far.

The reason I'm asking is that I'm always interested in the distinction between (a) magic that is essentially just another sert of weapons and shields vs. (b) magic that re-writes or re-defines major aspects of a situation.

Best, Ron

Hey Arthur,

Just wanted to respond to this...

Well, I posted about a couple of tendencies I noticed among players. One is that you'll tell one player or the whole group about some impending disaster, and they'll happily continue on their merry way and not bother to tell anyone. In this last session, they didn't feel it necessary to mention that there was a hobgoblin warband approaching. In a previous campaign, one player saw some hostile figures in the trees and just happily walked with the rest of the group right into the ambush without telling a soul. Have you noticed similar idiosyncrasies in your players?

I prefer teaching players their lessons in-game. Finding out that they just butchered a bunch of innocent, hard-working orcs who were sending money to their wives and children back home will teach them dilligence in their dealings better than my saying "You shouldn't have taken that guy at face value so readily." I won't change the story or the situation just to punish a group of players, but I won't alter the situation to save them from a mess their own carelessness got them into, either. I'll show you guys what I mean when I get around to recapping the "Red Beams Over Broadway" campaign.

Hi Arthur,

Is there a distinction? Between A: changing a game mid session to teach players a lesson, and B: changing the games next session in order to teach them a lesson? It's just waiting longer before you alter the game (in order to teach them a lesson)? Same thing but taking longer to do it, surely?

Yeah, I totally get what you're saying, Arthur. When my group of high-level, high-powered "heroes" kidnapped the kings of the elves and killed the king of the dwarves, I didn't balk. I didn't raise an eye-brow. Okay, that's a lie - I totally raised an eye-brow. But I went with it, and they faced some unpleasant, guilt-inducing repercussions, and it was some great rp.

I guess I'm making a distinction between stupid-player-mistakes and stupid-character-mistakes. Sometimes a player misses the urgency of something. Just asking, "are you sure you wanna do that?" can get them to consider the situation for a second and possibly catch something they missed, something the character may not have.

In an early game with my wife, her first I think, her character was being pursued by goblins or some such, when she came upon a pool. She said her character wanted to take a bath.

"Are you sure?" I asked, not certain she caught the urgency of keeping away from the goblins.

She was sure, and she took that bath, and there were consequences. But she was clean.

Game log starts about a quarter of the way down.

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 8. Played December 16, 2007.

We started this game off minus three of six players. One had previously said he couldn't make it, and another has a habit of pulling disappearing acts for weeks or months and then coming back, so I wasn't about to wait. Three players is still enough to have a good game, although 4-6 is the ideal range in my experience. When someone doesn't show up, I try to come up with some kind of reason for their character to stay behind in whatever town they're in and then catch up later. With some player groups, I'd ask another player to take over the absent one's character, but I didn't get the feeling that anyone in this group (including me) really knew who the absent PC's were yet, so I had them stay behind. In past games, the guest player would often do a better job playing someone else's character than they did! I've been lucky enough to have many talented and versatile players who were capable of doing that. I try to avoid having the character stick around without a player. Unplayed PC's are dead weight that actively detract from the experience, IMO.

The first thing we did was reconcile the finances. Feeding horses is expensive, as a horse is a lot bigger than a person and eats a lot more, and the group had come into ownership of 4 of them. They also had to feed themselves, and this left most of them with almost no money. This hasn't been the sort of campaign where the characters collect loot, but they'll probably have to take and sell something soon just to continue feeding themselves and their horses. Even though a few almost went broke, no one had to borrow money from another.

In the hobgoblin lands, the group meets a raiding party from Dunsburough and travels with them. The plot is inched forward through dialogue with Sir Froderick, and Velkan's illusions about the inherent righteousness of Dunsburough are strained even further. The party breaks with the raiders and continues toward their destination, and Kogan (the captured hobgoblin)'s player shows up. Kogan catches up with the group on Conrad's old horse, but chooses to follow them hidden and not to reveal himself. He follows them until they come across a 5 meter long dragon on the hunt, searching the ground for prey. The group stays low and hidden until it passes, but Kogan makes the curious decision to start shouting and throwing rocks at it, then he starts hightailing it toward the rest of the party when it swoops toward him. He still doesn't have any weapons or equipment, mind you. As you might expect, the dragon swoops down and grabs Kogan, takes him to a hilltop and gobbles him up. I don't know what Kogan's player was thinking, but if he had survived the dragon, the rest of the group would have killed him instead.

One player later complained that the dragon was wimpy, at only 5 meters length and 600 kg weight. My philosophy on dragons is that the supermassive dragons you see in many fantasy settings are lame because realistically there's no way a party could ever kill one. So if they kill one it just means that the game system isn't realistic, so it's not really an accomplishment, since anything can kill anything in an unrealistic system. If the system's realistic then there's no reason for a party to ever fight such a large dragon, since the outcome is inevitable defeat. So for this setting I created dragons that I felt to be more realistic, large aerial hunters that use thermal currents to glide and hunt medium-large animals over a large territory. Basically like huge eagles.

Finally the group reached the fortress where they would be able to confirm or deny Sir Langard's theory of warmongering nobles manufacturing a causus belli against neighboring Ramelob.

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 9. Played December 23, 2007.

We were still effectively minus three players in this session because the one whose character was eaten last session hadn't rolled up a new one until a few minutes before game start and there were some issues with the sheet, as it was the first he had made himself. I was running the session in one window while talking to him about his character in the other, which was a challenge.

The characters came upon the "abandoned" fortress and found it bustling with activity, just as Sir Langard had predicted, but they couldn't get close enough to see whether it was inhabited by humans or hobgoblins without being spotted, so they took up hiding spots on the hill and waited. Soon they discovered they weren't the only ones watching from a distance when they saw a group of Ramelobians doing the same. To determine which group saw the other first, I rolled Spot and Ninjitsu for the Ramelobians and then had the group roll the same and whoever had higher MoS won. This session I wanted to try a new concept where instead of taking the best Spot roll vs the worst Ninjitsu roll, I averaged them both. The rationale for Ninjitsu is that the worst ones will bring the group down, but the best ones will bring it up by saying "Don't hide there you idiot, everyone can see you!" I don't think there's much rationale to treat Spot that way, however, so I doubt I'll average Spot in future sessions. I may or may not continue doing it with Ninjitsu and Stealth. I like it, but it's hard to average mid-session outside of OpenRPG, and I want the game to be just as playable around a real table as a virtual one.

The group was spotted by the Ramelobians when the party tried to move to a new hiding spot, and the two groups met and conversed. Finding their goals to be similar, they decided to ambush the next supply wagon together and make off with a prisoner each, who they could then interrogate later. The fight was 6 Ramelobian missile cavalry and the group vs 4 men-at-arms, 6 mercenaries with sword and shield, and 4 mercs with crossbows. However, since it was a surprise attack, the crossbows were unstrung and useless. The Ramelobians stayed back and hurled javelins while the party charged in on horses. This was a bad idea, as the men-at-arms they were charging toward were much better equipped and better fighters.

Conrad took a lance point through the clavicle, reducing his left arm to Destroyed, and this was after he had used an Action Point to make his opponent reroll. Velkan took a mace to the leg that reduced it to Crippled. Destroyed means that a limb can never be used again unless its condition is upgraded (something that has to be done within 10 minutes of sustaining the injury). Crippled means that it will heal, but it can never be above Hurt again unless upgraded before 10 minutes. The group dispatched the rest of the men-at-arms and forced a surrender, and they took the surviving man-at-arms and tied him up to his horse. After losing their pursuers they hurriedly attended to the wounds. They managed to upgrade both injuries, Velkan's leg to Useless, meaning that it can't be used but it will eventually heal fully. Even after the upgrade, Conrad's arm was still Crippled, however, so his character will always have a Hurt left arm for the rest of the game, giving him -1 penalties to all rolls using that arm.

While I was running the battle, I helped our other player with his character. He had calculated the XP cost of his Skills by hand instead of using the character sheet's built-in autocalc, and so he ended up still having more than half of his starting XP left to spend. But once that was fixed, he decided he wanted to have some followers, and took the Posse merit, something no one had ever taken before. Excited to see how this would play out, I encouraged him to take it. Posse allows someone to have 4 to 12 additional characters with 4 times his starting XP split between them. They all have to have the Posse merit, as well, and starting cash is split between them. They all have any wealth merits, as well. He originally wanted 12 additional characters, but after Posse and Wealthy there was no XP left for them to have any Skills, so I changed the description to 4 to 8 additional and he decided to go with 4, all with equal XP to him. Even with Wealthy, however, he would be at a serious disadvantage in terms of equipment, his characters only being able to afford simple spears and cheap armor. His characters will be introduced next session, so we'll see how it goes.

The retelling of this campaign is now current. The session after this one hasn't been played yet. Next session will be played on Sunday morning.

Session start is more than halfway down on this one.

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 10. Played December 30, 2007.

This had the makings of a pretty lame session. I woke up about 5 minutes before it started, I had connection issues, three players were nowhere to be seen, and a lot of time was spent on character sheet issues before we could get started. I also had only the vaguest of ideas where I was going with the whole thing. This is not strange in itself, since I haven't made detailed campaign plans in many years, but as this was going to be a session where a lot of plot is revealed, I was afraid to just wing it.

It turned out to be pretty good. The characters met with Sir Langard, who heaped praise on them for a job well done and rewarded them with keeping the loot they found, plus gave a nice suit of armor to Velkan and 100 gold to Conrad and Cassie. I kept going back and forth trying to decide how much gold to give. On the one hand, 100 gold really isn't that much to reward someone with after a job like that. It equates to roughly $2,000 in today's money, or enough to have modest food, drink, and shelter for 100 days. On the other, Sir Langard is very much in tune with class issues, and he probably wouldn't heap great riches on people from the lower classes. I decided to be true to Langard's character instead of going with my instinct to reward the players.

After a feast in their honor, the mood turns grimer as the group learns that the reason behind the plotting is to stage a coup for the throne, and the boorish and psychotic Lord Kraylen was in on it. The group must now take the prisoner across the kingdom to the capital in Kingsvale so that the king can hear the testimony and put down the plotters before it is too late. Along the way, they will travel with Sir Langard as he goes to a tournament to joust Lord Kraylen and hopefully capture him there. A man-at-arms would be a good enough prisoner to convince the king, but a high-ranking plotter like Kraylen would be able to implicate the man who Langard suspects to be behind it all, Archduke Linus Tallbrook. The group prepares to set out on the long journey with their sire.

Session start is about a quarter of the way down.

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 11. Played January 6, 2008.

This session was fun, even if most of it was not really related to the main quest much. I got a rude surprise when I logged on, namely that my favorite server, OpenRPG Veav I wasn't up, so we used the Blackstar Games server. It went without issue, but Veav's server is the only one I've found to be consistently reliable. The players were smart enough to read the forum so they found the game quickly.

The group started out waiting for Sir Langard to show up so they could start on their long journey to the capital in Kingsvale, accompanied by their liege as far as the faire where they would try to kidnap Lord Kraylen, a high ranking plotter who would be able to implicate Tallbrook. They met the new character (or rather, the new 5 characters) of the player that had previously controlled the ill-fated hobgoblin prisoner. This one had the "Posse" Merit, giving him 4 followers with starting XP equal to his. I think he considered this to be a Merit that would allow him to gain an unfair advantage. He didn't realize that 150 XP makes a big difference, and given the fact that starting gold is not multiplied by the number of characters, it's hard to make 5 characters that are any better than 1 without the merit. He also didn't have the advantage of all the XP the rest of the group had racked up over the course of the campaign. These characters were just as full of vitriol as Kogan was, which can sometimes add and sometimes subtract from a game, depending on circumstances.

Langard showed up and they traveled to the faire, where three of the characters participated in a swordfighting contest. This was with real swords and fought until first blood. Conrad lost the first round, finding it hard to do enough damage to get through his opponent's armor and draw blood, while his opponent found it easy to hit Conrad. Conrad is built for offense rather than defense, so he'll shred an agile opponent, but he's an easy target. Velkan defeated the new character Le Tharget handily, then beat another opponent, before losing to a knight in the final round. His odds of winning the last bout were terrible given the differences in stats, but if he had managed to pull it out, he would have won a very nice sword.

Then the important moment came when Sir Langard jousted Lord Kraylen. The plan was that Langard would beat Kraylen into a pulp, which would make it easy for the group to abduct Kraylen afterward. The reality turned out rather different, and it was Langard who ended up fit for intensive medical care thanks to a blunted lance to the forehead at galloping speed. Now the group has to come up with a Plan B, since they could never hope to defeat Kraylen and his bodyguards while Kraylen has only a minor leg injury. Kraylen is a better fighter than the whole group put together, after all. So far, they've come up with poisoning him and hiring prostitutes for him and his men and catching them with their pants down (literally).

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 12. Played January 13, 2008.

This was an enjoyable session, although it left the kidnapping of Kraylen for later. I was a half hour late for this one, since I got so caught up in my plans for afterward that I simply forgot about the game and slept in. This is the first time I've ever done that, or at least the first time in many years. Nobody seemed too put off, though, and we got started soon after I arrived.

The events of the session are a fairly brief retelling. Kraylen went on to win the jousting tournament and a magnificent destrier (the best and most expensive of knightly charger horses), and retired to his wagons to celebrate with his knights and subjects. With Sir Langard indisposed and Kraylen fully aware of the group's allegiances, if not the full extent of their plans, Kraylen sent some of his men to ambush the group. The ambushers struck when Velkan separated from the rest of the group to check on his sire. While the mercenary soldiers were skilled at keeping Velkan separated from the others, the difference in skill in equipment was large, and the group made short work of the mercenaries. I kept thinking about whether I should spice up the battle, but I couldn't come up with anything that would fit. It made sense for Kraylen to send some mercenary thugs to do the job, since even if they failed it wouldn't be obvious who had hired them and the players would at least be detained and questioned for bloodshed at the faire. It wouldn't have made much sense for Kraylen to send someone important, like knights, retainers, or squires, even though that would have made the battle more interesting. I had thought that having the players outnumbered and with Velkan cut off would make it at least somewhat difficult, but I hadn't really been keeping up with character sheet updates and didn't understand at first how much better at fighting the characters were than when the campaign started.

In the end, the group captured one of the men and is now trying to take him out of sight before witnesses can get close enough to positively identify them and before the guards show up to detain the survivors, which would ruin the group's plan. They hatched a tentative plan to use the prisoner to sneak into Kraylen's caravan party and kidnap him. Since Kraylen is a Lord accompanied to the faire by 3 knights, their retainers and squires, and his own retainers and soldiers and there are only 4 players, it could get really ugly next session if they're not stealthy enough. Whatever happens, it should be plenty interesting.

OpenRPG Chat Log for Session 13. Played January 20, 2008.

In this session, the group finally attempted their kidnapping of Lord Kraylen to make him squawk to the king about the coup plot and hopefully implicate Archduke Linus Tallbrook, the man who Sir Langard suspects is behind it all. Their plan was pretty harebrained, basically consisting of "sneak in, nab Kraylen, and fight our way out." They did dress it up with some good ideas about sowing confusion by shouting that their prisoner was the traitor, but it's still a pretty dangerous plan. Right now Cassie is alone with Kraylen, and although she's armed and he's not, he's a much better fighter. She had him at her mercy until she drew a knife and decided to start cutting him up for fun, at which point he decided to take his chances and fight. The outcome will be seen next session, and we'll find out whether they get themselves killed / capturing trying to get Kraylen out of his camp.

When I decided that the bodyguard had his helmet off, it made me think that there should be long-term fatigue rules regarding the wearing of armor for extended periods. If you've been marching all day fully armored in a hot environment, you're not exactly going to be in your best fighting condition, after all.