OK.....
Rule #1: Never, ever forget that, if the situation is in doubt, the cavalier will kill first and ask questions next week.
Rule #2: When Rule #1 might not apply, remember that it always does.
Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
OK... Kevin's been a bit ill for the last several days, and so we didn't game on New Year's Day like we were supposed to. But we did game yesterday....
Which really could have GONE BETTER.
Jeff was playing a ranger for the one session. And Rachel was playing my NPC ranger. Ah well, double bow power's not a bad thing. However, since Jeff was playing a new character, I had to "get him into the party." And as I wasn't feeling quite up to the "ho, you there, you look like a PC! Come, join the party!" line, I tried to be clever.
Never, ever be clever. It's not worth the aggravation.
When I was originally planning this game, I had decided that the "Flame" or, as Matt likes to call it, the McGuffin, was a highly sought after artifact, and, unfortunately for my players, more people know about it than they would like. This cleric/sage guy, for instance, knew about it, and has some shady connections and as soon as the Wagoneer who had the journal of the guy who originally found the Flame was murdered, this cleric/sage promptly bought the dead man's house (bribing several beaurocrats in the process).
Before Jeff decided he wanted to play, the plan was as follows:
The party members would troop over to the dead man's house (on orders from his sister) to find the journal. Instead they would find that the house had been hastily purchased. If they proceeded inside the house, they would find the cleric/sage in the process of ransacking the house looking for the journal. The sage, more interested in the academic field, doesn't want to quest after the item, and really, he's not interested in the Flame at all, he wants some of the historical data he believes to also be inside the Temple. So he would compromise with the characters, let them use the journal (after he made a copy) if they would journal their adventures and bring him back a book they might find within the temple.
With the addition of Jeff, I thought I would be clever (have I mentioned this problem with clever?) and have him be the agent of said Cleric/sage. The PCs would find him in the house and would talk with him, and then the Sage would have his agent go with them, to chronical the adventure.
Right.
It did (unfortunately) occur to me that in Waterdeep, there probably wouldn't be a For Sale: Sold sign in front of the house (why not, if Orcs can go on vacation?) so I had Matt (our party face-type) do a local history roll so he could find out about the sale.
He blew it, rolled a 20. Ack! Ok, I'll try subtle.
(Why why why do I try subtle with a cavalier in the party?)
(Because I'm an idiot, that's why!)
The party makes Perception checks. Matt and Rachel make it, and I tell them "the door is open".
Ok, perhaps in a normal universe, someone might actually sneak up on the house and look to see what's going on. In which case they would have seen Jeff (all alone and probably not particularly dangerous to an entire group of people) and someone would have, oh, I don't know, ASKED HIM A QUESTION or three! and we could have gotten started.
Oh, no... that would have been easy. Instead, Kevin kicks in the door and charges, yelling "Stop Thief" and swinging his sword around. Jeff attempts to shoot him in the hand, and Kevin bonks Jeff with his shield. Matt and Jeff and Kevin all end up yelling at each other (like as in, I was wondering when my neighbors might not knock on the door and ask us to keep it down). I almost packed it up right there and said "Ok, I was stupid, this is not working, let's quit now before someone is dead."
However, I managed to pull a Deus Ex out of my ass. Jeff's master, a Cleric/Sage, miraculously became a Wizard/Sage, was watching the whole thing via a clairvoyance spell, and showed up just in time to keep everyone from beating each other up.
On the plus side, it means that said Now-Wizard/Was-Cleric will be able to identify for them any items they get on their way back, but on the bad side, he didn't give them the healing potions I had intended him to give them.
You know, with the non-evil orcs and the not particularly nice wizards and sorcerresses I've had people running into, I'd have thought that someone might have drawn the conclusion that unless something starts out attacking you, you might want to THINK ABOUT IT before you jump on someone. Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh. Ah well. My fault. I forgot that Kevin was playing a kill-it-kill-it cavalier. And I also forgot that being clever is generally a very bad idea.
But, once we actually got going, things were good.
I discovered one interesting thing... party members are more intimidated by monsters that they don't know what they are then they are with "you see a party of bugbears." I described the monsters and let the party debate about it. "It's a pack of trolls" "god, I hope not, or we're all dead." "They could be gnolls." "I thought gnolls looked like weasels." "Dogs, not weasels." "Could we do a species identification after they're not throwing axes at us?" "Dear god! I have an ax in my head!" "You knew that was going to come in handy eventually, didn't you?"
Rachel, by the way, is very, very bloodthirsty. Matt cast his all time favorite spell (Sleep) and, for once, only knocked out one of them, which I think made him mildly nervous. After the battle was over, they tied up the remaining bad guy and Rachel's like "Why can't we just kill him?" "Because that's bad. You don't attack helpless creatures." And eventually the party dragged the snarling thing over to town.
Of course, for once, I had to let Kevin be right. Since he always insists that monsters and bandits and stuff get a trial before they're executed. And Rachel kept protesting dragging said monster along with them. "Are you sure we can't kill him?" Of course, she did take an ax to the face and was a little surly about it. They were shooting arrows at a bunch of Bugbears trapped in an Entanglement spell. The Bugbears, naturally, were not really happy about this and started throwing axes back at them. (rolls: 18 and 19, damage 6 and 4. OW!) However, when they got to town, the Captain of the Guards was pretty happy about getting the bugbear, since the bugbears had captured some of his men, and he really needed a prisoner to exchange to get his men back before they were eaten.
Since we spent the first half of the game yelling at each other, we didn't get as far as I had hoped... ah well.
Remember. No being clever.
Posted by tisfan at January 03, 2003 09:28 AM