PotTS II

9:56 am by Dennis | Campaign, Pen and Paper, PotTS, True201 Comment »
Riggght?
Riggght?
Our intrepid crew had retreated back to the tavern to replan their mission to steal the mysterious case back for the mysterious stranger.  They this time decided to go the back way, time the guard patrols and go in through the roof.  This worked as far as it went so that’s a step in the right direction.

Once on the roof Sitting Bull went to the front to watch the exterior guards while Little Reggie dropped William down on a rope through a skylight while Sarah kept a lookout the other way. Â  Tomboktu was scouting the town trying to find the Gunnery Seargent or a possible ship to go after.

William dropped down into the auction house storage area which took up easily half the space of the large building.  His excellent night vision made him the most obvious choice to scout around.  Inside he spotted a humanoid creature with layers and folds of skin, long arms that ended in some serious talons and a face only a blind mother could love.  He snuck around and eluded the creature’s sight.  As far as he knew.

William, with discretion and valor and all that tied to escape back up the rope and signaled Reggie to hoist him up.  That’s when a massive weight slammed into him and started ripping him up with those serious talons aforementioned. Â  Reggie, although surprised at the greatly increased weight kept hauling and pulled William upwards.  The creature dropped down with a thud.  Things went from bad to worse as the creature opened a portal and it’s twin brother stepped through into the warehouse.

At this point Sitting Bull shot the guard out front after taking careful aim from above and blew the guards head off.

Oddly enough this woked everyone up.

Our brave crew ran for it and it was only after they heard sounds of combat from below as the they were about to jump off the building that they pulled up short. Â  They crept back to look through the skylight to see warehouse guards fighting with the two creatures.  They decided to sit and watch and see who won.

The guards lost one, then another, then a creature went down.  Another guard and a dwarf guard tossed something to the floor which flashed with a brilliant purple flash of light.  As the fight continued our crew continued to watch.

Reggie saw a pillar of blue energy sparkles from the front of the auction house and Sitting Bull went to investigate.

William and Reggied dropped down below with a rope tied to Reggie’s boarding pike.  Sadly William managed to break the pike as he descended leaving them stranded below.

A man came running down the front hall toward the storage space covered in a glowing nimbus of light.

Willaim and Reggied dove behind pallets of goods waiting for auction. Â 

Reggie decided that wasn’t good and dove after the mage, grappling with him and bringing him down to the ground. Â  William was hot on his heels and tried to kebab the mage but missed narrowly avoiding giving Reggie an impromptu surgery.

The mage’s eyes narrowed and a ripple blasted through the air around him and everyone nearby except the dwarf dropped unconcious.  As the dwarf kept the creature occupied the mage stood and then clapped his hands together with a thunderclap of noise and bands of white light sprang into being around the creature and bound it to the floor.

Meanwhile during all this Sitting Bull has clambered down and has been searching the front room looking for the chest. 

Sarah decided to shoot the mage only to fall back as her musket ball reflected from the mage’s shielding and put a crease through her shoulder.

The mage grimaced up at her through the skylight and even as she dove out of the way the entire sklight was blasted to pieces as a blast of energy blazed up at her.  She sprinted toward the front of the auction house and climbed down and inside to meet Sitting Bull as he was sneaking around inside. 

Spotted by the mage they retreated back outside and yet one more time up the wall and over the roof.  Assuming that they’d side tracked the mage Bull lowered Sarah on a rope to go try and wake up Reggie and William.  She’d just gotten to Reggie when she heard the mage speak, “Nighty night.” and she slumped to the ground unconcious with the rest.

Up above Sitting Bull spotted torches and lights and the sounds of many men in armour moving toward the auction house and he slithered down and over the back wall as a large contingent of the Watch showed up.

Sitting Bull went back to the tavern and starting working on gathering information on how to get people out of jail while the three sleeping beauties woke up deep in the dungeons of the city.

With Reggie’s bulk and intimidating manner he was able to carve out a space for the three of them that left them unbothered.  Guards eventually came for them and seperated them where they were questioned by a man in white with his own glowing shields.  they gave their story for the most part about what they were doing and the man in white told them that he too was after the case and that he’d give them a choice, find the case or die.  They chose to find the case.

The party went out and began their search.  Over the course of the day they gained a lot of information, that the person who hired them was named Beedle, that he was a backstabbing drug addict who flunked out of wizard school and tried to kill his aunt.  They found that the case held a dagger that everyone wanted for some reason.  After a trip to a race supremist bar they found out where Beedle stayed and Reggie was hired to help teach some of the ‘lesser folk’ a lesson, a mortal one. 

They searched his aunts house and a busybody neighbor and found a case sized cavity beneath the flooring, already opened and empty, and that Beedle had tried to steal something from the wagons that was hauling off his aunt’s goods.  A case it was.

They went to Beedle’s flophouse where they bought his goods from the proprietor and discovered a drug dealer’s token. Â  They learned who Beedle’s dealer was and then caught the guy after a chase through the streets.  Slick told them he’d actually had the case, having stolen it from the wagon that was hauling off Beedle’s aunt’s goods who’d died a few weeks earlier to the auction house. Â 

But then he was hit with a fireball and knocked out and when he came to the dagger was gone.  He described it as worthless.

With Reggie intimdating him they forced him to take them back to the site of the attack where they found evidence that his story was true.  They took his gold and more importantly his drugs and told him to find Beedle for them and he’d get his goods back and even a little something more.

They split up to canvas the area and found someone who’d seen the attack and described the attacker as rat faced which is how most people describe Beedle.

They went back to the tavern where Slick showed up after some time and sold them news they were wanted for murder.  They assumed as first it was the auction house guard.

They split since they were fairly distinctive and went back to the flophouse where they were told to get lost because the owner didn’t want them bringing their troubles down on him.  In talking with him they found out they’d supposdely killed a prostitute, a member of the Watch and an adventureer newly come to the city.  All three had been stabbed many many times.

Staying one step ahead of the Watch they worked on gathering more information and eventually found someone who’d heard one of the attacks and mentioned that they’d heard a voice mutter something about “Now tasovar is the last and vengenace for my children shall be done.”

After a little checking they discovered that Tasovar had turned out to be the nosy neighbor they’d talked to earlier.

They headed back that way and were ambushed by a group of the Watch.  A bit of what are we doing and then the fight was on.  It took all their remaining Conviction but they defeated the Watch and then escaped into the night and made it back to the aunt’s house to rest and keep an eye on the neighbor.

At this point they all gained their third level with everyone sticking with their orignal roles except for William who after having been exposed to so much magic has discovered a talent for it himself and can now Shape Fire after taking a level of Adept.

And that’s where we left off.

Pirates of the Tepid Seas

3:25 pm by Dennis | Campaign, Pen and Paper, PotTS, True201 Comment »
I heart pirates
I heart pirates
My Pirates of the Tepid Seas got off to a boisterous start last night. Â  We’re using the True 20 system which is a streamlined version of D20 and is one that can cover pretty much any genre from classic Dungeons and Dragons to Modern Apocalyptic and everything in between.

In my case I’m using it for a Pirates campaign with a bit of supernatural flair, see previous posts for details.

We started off with the usual suspects in attendence, Laura, Temple, Brandon, me, Greg, Scott going clockwise around the table.  My gaming table has been just a great success overall.  I recommend one to everyone.

Laura, Brandon, Temple started with Expert based characters while Greg and Scott both started with Warrior for their first level.  Laura is playing a female pirate from England, Temple a French pirate, Scott a African pirate, Greg a Native American and Brandon is from Australia or England I forget.   We started on board the Wavestrider, the ship upon which our mighty folk are smple crewman.  Their ship pulled into a secret pirate port on an uncharted isle where the officers went ashore and returned with a small cask holding some unknown item.  Afterwards the crew were restricted to the top decks and not allowed below decks.

Three days later during a particularily dark night the ship is swarmed with what appeared to be undead, the corpses of drowned sailors in fact and some kind of lobstrosity.  In the first two rounds our Frenchman died.  He failed to make a notice skill to wake up and one of the undead fell upon him and ripped his throat out.  Jacque tried to use his Conviction to reduce the damage but to no avail.  His dying state moved to dead after he failed to stabilize his condition. Â  Except for Plot Devices that’s the fastest that a character has ever died for me. :)

WhileTemple worked on a new character the party and the rest of the crew fought the undead with the end result that the undead were slain, Sarah (Laura’s character) was disabled.  A giant crustacean based creature crawled onto the ship, doing major damage to the hull doing so and then ripped it’s way through the stern deck to get into the captain’s cabin.  The first mate came flying out the doorway cut in two with the gunner’s mate running for his life.  The captain stopped in the doorway trying to hold back the lobstrosity but was neatly snipped into two bloody parts by the things claws.  It burst the wood around the doorway to get out onto deck where it faced Standing Bear, Tomboktu and William.  One look at the thing and they quickly decided to Combine their attacks and all three managed to hit it in the same area where they did a total of 27 damage.  The creature failed its Toughness save badly and collapsed to the deck dying.

The ship lurched and began to wallow in the waves and our party, now reinforced by Little Reggie from the crow’s nest where he’d been cowering and Tom the gunner’s mate, abandoned ship.   Little Reggie is Temple’s new character, a warrior of little intelligence and wisdom (the equivalent of an 7 int under D20′s 3-18 range).

Adrift at sea in two longboats, Reggie didnt’ notice everyone had left at first and by the time he’d figured it out they were already pretty far off.  He jumped into the second longboat and proceeded after them.   Neglecting to take pretty much anything that would enable him to survive.  (-2 wisdom)

With William Willams trying to Navigate and Standing Bear trying to pilot they set off on a course they plotted using charts they’d recovered from the shambles of the captain’s cabin.

After a few days they were picked up by a merchant ship where the first thing that happened is Reggie got the others thrown into the brig by mentioning they were pirates.  He snuck down later and released them though. Riiawwwgghttt?

Through his cunning stupidity they lured two of the night watch downstairs where they managed to wake up the entire crew.  Tom (NPC) was forced to create an inferno in the lower hold to block the crew from getting to them and they raced upstairs again where they finished off the other crew including the officers.

With the wood and pitch boat swiftly exploding into flames they were forced to abandonship with nothing more than some weapons although the Tom did retrieve the cask from where the merchent’s had stored it.

They eventually made shore, alive thanks to the Survival skills of Sarah and William, and reached Baytown.  While adrift they made a pact to go after Tom shared the information, it was intimidated out of him actually, that the cask was rumored to hold Kreech’s Eye which could lead them to the fabled treasure of the old Pirate Lord.  They separated from Tom, mainly to allow me to get it out of the party than for any ulterior reason so they could try the Fury in Freeport module.

Selling some of their weapons they earned a few gold which was enough to keep them in grog for awhile.

They were approached by a seedy young man who talked them into stealing a box from the Auction House.  They have two days to get it before it goes on sail.  Given that none of them have any gold they don’t have the ability to just buy the thing.

They sent Sarah and Tomboktu to go case the joint where they found that perhaps it wasn’t only guarded by one sole guard.

They returned and got the others and proceeded back to the place after evening was well advanced.  With four of them climbing the walls they used Tomboktu to attempt to lure the guard closer.  But our guard being of reasonable skill and very good rolls on his notice skill heard one of the wall climbers and was on alert.  He kicked on the door into the warehouse and was talking to someone through a sliding panel in it when Standing Bear tried to snipe him from the wall but missed and the guard yelled something about summoning the mage’s guild.  The door was opened from the inside and the guard darted through the opening and slammed the door shut again as the party went “Well that didn’t work.”  A brilliant purple flash flickered through the edges of the doorway and discretion was decided upon and the party retreated back to the tavern to rethink their ‘plan’.

Everyone leveled to 2 with everyone taking another level of their chosen roles I believe.  There was also some rearranging of character builds as people are still learning the system.

So far I think everyone’s doing okay with the system. The lethality is perhaps a bit of a surprise and Conviction has played heavily to trying to keep players alive.   Standing Bear has perhaps been the best at using the new options to their fullest by suggesting the Combine option and using Conviction to Surge and gain extra attacks and re-roll attacks for instance.  But he did pump up his Charisma so that he has 6 Conviction points where the others have 1 or 2 so he has a lot more leeway in this regard.

I’m still iffy on the regaining of Conviction points given some of the vice/virtues that were chosen.  How does an Impulsive Gregarious regain conviction for instance?  Give impromptu speeches in the town square?  I need to Forumize that a bit and see how other people are handling it

And that was the first night of the Tepid Sea…

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