noisms seems to have the actual play reports of Yoon-Suin fairly well in hand, and I don't think that there is much that I could add to his description this week. I had some free time last night, and Patrick invited me along to play Lamentations of the Flame Princess/Vornheim/Isle of the Unknown with the group of teens he DMs for. When we got there it turned out that none of them could make it, but since we were there anyway, Patrick offered to DM an escapade in the city of Asp with me playing as three PCs. I had a Specialist and a Cleric rolled up anyway, so just had to roll up a Fighter really quick and describe her. I'm reading Specials by Scott Westerfeld at the moment, so the image of a wiry-muscled 19 year old with arms covered with sleeves of alternating tattoos and scars came to mind quite vividly.
It was GREAT fun. After getting over the initial "how do I handle this?" moments, I was soon into playing the three different characters. In some ways I found it easier to handle Charley, Chastity and Priam and keep their personalities straight than to just manage one PC. Perhaps it is because I could use different characters to do different kinds of things? Maybe. In my mind it was also clearer that it was "right" for example to send Charley to do one thing (go about looking for rumours) while leaving the others to scout out an area; the narrative seemed to flow that way really well. The only real difficulty was brainstorming plans, but that was only a minor hindrance.
After some time of investigating, the only real snag that I hit was when it came to planning how to break into a house. We had learned that the sculptress whose house we were breaking into was a little more than human (I won't say too much as I don't want to spoil Vornheim for any one), so we needed a good cover. Since she lived in a rich area, and the area we had gone to plan was dirt poor, I hit on the idea of paying some "hate-the-rich hooligans" to cause a diversion by knocking at her door and then bricking every window in the front of her house, while we climbed up the back to the roof.
It worked. We had plenty of time to search her bedroom and a secret room, got the proof we needed, found evidence of even greater evil and then the artist arrived and attacked. As a five hit dice opponent against first level Fighter and Cleric and a barely level two Specialist it was not an easy fight, and she did have a special ability to ward us off. Still: we got a few hits in, the Cleric used Command to force her to her knees (she failed the save) and then we got some serious hits in. She tried to run, but a Sneak Attack with a short bow was enough to amp up the damage. BAM! One dead bad guy, XP galore.
Chased out by an undead house protector, Charley had to jump off the roof while the others climbed to safety. Very lucky that he got levelling HP earlier in the day. We returned to the office of the city factotum who gave us the mission and accidentally presented him with a magical item which put him in a state of kleptomania. With only minutes to go before the end of the session it seemed appropriate to put him to sleep in order to get our possessions back.
This is where I fell down. I pushed my luck too far with the Lords of the Roll and spectacularly failed my roll for the Command spell (Patrick's house rule for unmemorised magic) causing my Cleric's shadow to separate and try to kill him.
"And that's where we leave things for tonight..."
Awesome - and the first time I've had a character level up in LotFP/D&D. Great games night.
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