Large Chess

The people of Wetham appreciate board games - if they are played on very large boards. While Flaming Chess has been popular for hundreds of years, a variant known as Large Chess has become popular much more recently. Pieces are represented by people, and they move according to the regular chess rules but for one difference: moving on to an opponent's square does not indicate capture, merely combat - a fight to the death or surrender for the two pieces involved.

There are unarmed Large Chess leagues where teams compete regularly: pawns are boxers, rooks are wrestlers, knights fight according to the styles of faraway lands and so on. However, in recent years those with the means to organise such things have taken to invoking Large Chess to settle civil disputes and outstanding debts. Writs are served specifying dates and times for people to pay up or settle by the rules of the game, with both sides bound to abide by the result.

Most choose to pay.

Flaming Chess

In the last session in the city of Wetham, the party wanted to do some gambling or gaming, and found themselves at The Cup & Beaver - a gambling den where high-born nobles play Flaming Chess. Looking for money and information they agreed to play a game of doubles Flaming Chess with Tyrnus Von Vrogle and Nena Bleeve. At stake: the party's traitorous magic sword and Tyrnus' jewelled chainmail.

"But Nathan," I hear you say, "How does one play Flaming Chess?"

I'm so glad you asked...

Somewhere South: Wetham Days

GMing felt great last night - it had been far too long between games nights. Will have to think about that in the next few months, as there are still times when I'm going to be away. But anyway! On to the AP. I did a oneshot for Patrick a while back that started off in Tales of the Scarecrow and ended up in the city of Wetham. Last night continued the adventure...

Actual Play: Somewhere South

Last night Patrick and I were the only ones available for games night. After a quick discussion we decided to play something as a bit of a oneshot, and so I used Tales of the Scarecrow as a starting point for an evening's adventure...

Patrick quickly rolled up a party for himself; while he generated four sets of stats, I used Vornheim NPC tables to create some people to populate the world, and pulled some names out of the air ("Usher Beak, who is a herbalist, has asked you to take a chest to a friend of his in the nearby city of Wetham; you've been on the road a day..."). Patrick used Vornheim to name all of his characters - including pulling the detail that Vaskin, his fighter, was in fact two goblins standing on shoulders. Awesome.

PROBABLE SPOILERS FOR TALES OF THE SCARECROW BELOW!!!
But I'll try to keep as many details out as possible.

Actual Play: Somewhere North, session 6

Previously: Külk (Patrick) and his party (two fighters, a reformed bandit, a cleric and two halflings) flee the region around the town of Rovaniemi, having annoyed large numbers of people. After seeking guidance from a retired hero they head north and stop at the last village for a long time, Sirkka. There they thwart the schemes of a group of slavers, slaughtering them all.

The next morning: Külk has found a new ally in the form of Joonas (David W, rejoining the group after a seasonal absence!) - a fighter who was captured by the slavers. He agrees to join them on their journey north, and they connect up with a couple of academics from the northern city of Zelman. Safety in numbers. They leave the town with what supplies they can get (not many) and hope that they will reach one of the nomad families that live on the snowy, frozen plains.

Making a Dungeon

After recent fun experiences playing both noisms Yoon-Suin setting and Lamentations of the Flame Princess with Patrick DMing, I've been thinking about (eventually) running something a bit old school myself.

I'm trying to come up with my own homebrew dungeon and have some ideas for (hopefully) novel traps and situations; I'm wondering what people would recommend doing/thinking about when creating a dungeon. There are great resources out there of course:

• I got Vornheim a few months back and am really enjoying that.
• noisms linked to this guide to putting a mega-dungeon together, and that seems pretty cool.
• When I get it (maybe for Christmas), LotFP will help me put some numbers to things.

But nevermind those: what do you think is important to think about when designing a dungeon? Are there particular tropes that should be followed? And are there cliches that should now be avoided?

Games Night: BRING IT!

We couldn't get everyone together to play Dogs In The Vineyard last night, so once again Patrick offered to run a Lamentations of the Flame Princess session for me and David. As with our previous session we were playing with Charley (Specialist), Chastity (Fighter) and Aleph (Cleric of Namco, God of Idle Pursuits) but there were two big differences:

1. We decided very early on that we were going for treasure and XP rather than out and out exploration.
2. My characters had silver to spend and more levels than the last time they had met Aleph.

The first thing that we did - after meeting a crazy skeleton with roses for eyes - was to spend some money and really try to get some crazy weapons. We had a mission: to go and kill a vampire, who was by all accounts very old and powerful. We needed something to tip the balance in our favour, especially since we were going into a dungeon with rumours of undead creatures.

Games Night: Joining the Teens

I was able to squeeze in an extra gaming session this week, and decided to join up with Patrick's regular game that he runs with the Teens. One of the Teen's, Teen1 in Patrick's AP reports, is my nephew. In fact some months ago I introduced him and his friends to Patrick when they happened to be at our local games haunt, and as I was the only person who had turned up from the proposed group they joined in with us.

I played for a few weeks, but then couldn't keep up with two regular games nights each week; I've dipped in and out of playing LotFP with Patrick when we were available, and really enjoyed hearing about how they were getting on - or more often getting in to evermore insane situations (usually with some choice dialogue ensuing).

Games Night: Another Day in Asp

There's been a fair amount of rain in my part of the world over the last few days, which meant that one of the Dogs couldn't make it to continue sorting out the problems of the Hope Mission. Instead, Patrick volunteered to run a one-shot in the town of Asp for mine and David's characters using Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

I continued with two of my three LotFP characters that I used the last time Patrick ran a one-shot, and David had a character he had used previously. So the party was:

• Charley Shortbread: one-eyed Specialist, Level 2. Comes up with overly complicated plans that get shot down by everyone. He seems to be very much in favour of stabbing first and asking questions later. (me)
• Chastity Glean: first level Fighter. 19 years old, arms are full sleeves of tattoos and scars, short mohawk on top. Her stats are pretty much in the middle, except for STR 16 which gives her a distinct advantage in melee. 8HP don't hurt either. (me)
• Aleph: androgynous female Cleric of Namco. Level 4! David created a table during play to interpret the will of Namco (the God of Idle Pursuits).

In total we got about 150XP between us all night. And killed somewhere in the region of 20 men. We rolled high on a lot of early melee - it's easy to forget sometimes just how quickly combat runs. At one point Patrick had to remind us that we had killed six men in the span of about 18 seconds. We had taken a job of investigating a dungeon beneath an abandoned bakery for evidence of a conspiracy against the town.

We seemed to interpret this as: kill everything that moves. Patrick gives the option to describe what happens when we kill someone in combat. This lead to ever-increasing descriptions of gore and mayhem, that started with the first guy that we met in the dungeon. His beheading fountained us in blood, and the red that spilled from his comrades soon meant that we were three comrades at arms, running through the dungeon dripping blood everywhere we went.

Patrick: "7! OK, that's enough to kill him, what happens?"
Me: "I jump and force the blade down and right through his chest, skewering his heart!"
Patrick laughs.

Patrick: "6! He's a goner, what happens?"
Me: "I disembowel him, stabbing in and twisting the blade all the way across to the back his spine!"
Patrick laughs, uneasily.

Patrick: "So he hits you for 1, but simultaneously you hit him for 7, he's dead.....What happens?"
Me: "So, his morningstar glances off my armour... And then I move to slash him, but at the last second flick his morningstar up and it smacks him square in his face. It crushes his nose and embeds all the way back to his brain."
Patrick laughs, then stops. Then shakes his head.

We didn't find anything in terms of treasure - Patrick said it was there, XP all over the place in the form of treasure, but we were too busy running from one encounter to the next. We got eight silver pieces in total.

Namco only knows what will happen when I join him for his game with my nephew tomorrow...

The Vornheim Decision

Well... Looks like it is going to be a nice Friday afternoon...

(following on from Monday's question) (thanks again Kelvin!)

The Vornheim Question

Just a short post: I mentioned last week that I had a really great games night on Thursday with Patrick, who was DMing LotFP with the Vornheim book for part of the proceedings. In particular I know that the mission/quest for the evening was based around a character and location featured in Zak's book. Thursday was great.

So here's the problem: should I get and read Vornheim, given that I thought the details Patrick used were really cool and I want to see what the rest of the place is like, or as a player in a campaign that I dip my toe into occasionally, am I cheating Patrick - as DM - of the opportunity to run a session, given that I might pick things up that could provide me with "spoilers"?

#nerdworldproblem

Games Night: Nine Hours in Asp

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.