Just a glimpse, as advertised and focusing on the dungeon.
The trio of adventurers have to go up all the way to Level 100 of the Dragon Tower, which by the way is still very low on this oversized megadungeon.
A Glimpse of Tower Dungeon 2
Palantir Quest (1994) – players are actors (review part II)
Just to be clear, I’ve never ran this adventure (nor played in it).This is a 3 decades late, external look at it we might say.
At page 14, after having informed the Game Master of relevant background information, the adventure begins with… extremely long read-alouds.
Well-written mind you, interesting for a true Tolkien aficionado perhaps, but boy if my mind would drift away as a player if I was read all this by someone!
But notice, between two grey boxes, a first challenge for the player characters! On how to deal with a « ten-foot portion » of muddy road. Yeah, well, small beginnings and all that…
Railroading into Middle-Earth’s 4th Age
(Aside: There’s a big hint on how the adventure will present itself on chapter 1.0 Guidelines: « Fantasy role playing (FRP) is akin to a living novel where the players are the main characters. Everyone combines to create a story which is never short of adventure. They help forge a new land and strange new tales in which the characters are forever immortalized. » (bold emphasis is mine)
After their mission briefing by the Royal Seer, the Player Characters (PCs) are ready to leave Minas Tirith.
The utlimate goal is to retrieve the lost palantir but in order to do that they first have to reach the Royal Library in ruined Annuminas in the north, to find a tome of spells that will help pinpoint its location. First stop is in Rohan in a place called The Juggler’s Hall.
It takes 10 days of travel to get there and somewhere in the middle we get this fixed event: upon arriving at the Inn of Greys the PCs see that it’s being attacked by bandits and the adventure just assumes that the PCs will intervene (and to be fair, why wouldn’t they?). Upon defeating the bandits the PCs meet Turibor the minstrel who’ll ask if he can accompany them on their journey north. This guy is a key NPC, I mean key as in unlocking another scene kind of thing. He’s the one who will bring the PCs to the Juggler’s Hall and if you had players that were expecting to go to Edoras and meet rohirrim riders they’d better forget about it, aside from taking new horses nothing happens in Edoras. No, instead you get the Thespian Intrigue in the Juggler’s Hall, involving the PCs in a theatre play (about the kin-strife that happened in Gondor, again. not really a nice fit for Rohan). The leader of the Wandering Conscience Company will offer 10 silver pieces and a choice of nice clothes to each character, for participating (acting) and help guard against sabotage from a rival company.
I’ll add that the Juggler’s Hall is oddly, really in the middle of nowhere, but it’s also a base for smuggling operations so there’s that. Talking of smuggling, there’s a bit of foreshadowing in this chapter as it’s mandatory that the PCs witness two NPCs shaking hands in « business-like fashion ». One of these NPC « may draw attention to himself by way of his disturbing laugh ». BUT: « However the PCs should be given no grounds to become suspicious of him ». Well, good luck with that Game Master! Hey players, here’s this fixed scene involving two shady NPCs, one has this disturbing way of laughing, y’know like a cartoon villain would laugh just sayin’, but don’t be suspicious! No no no, no reason at all!
And then the Thespian Intrigue.
The play itself is nicely conceived I’ll say, with a nice plot as mentionned taken from the kin-strife period (a Cromwell-like usurper gets hold of power in Gondor) and plenty of stuff happening (including a real knife stab (instead of a fake one) that the PC victim should try its best to go along with so that the play isn’t disrupted!). Of course the whole thing is nonsensical and out of place (irrelevant to the mission) but I’m pretty sure it could be great fun for the players. The Game Master though, in true Rolemaster fashion, has the cumbersome job to evaluate which + and – to use in the provided chart and get the results for the « Audience Appreciation Level » (AAL): « Having totalled the appropriate modifiers, the actor should roll on the appropriate column. The result is the number to which the GM must roll equal or less than in order for the AAL to increase by 5. If the GM rolls over the number, the AAl decreases by 5. At any time, an AAL of 0 means that the audience boos the company off the stage and leaves, while an AAL of 100 means that the audience immediately rushes the stage in a frenzy of hero worship and adulation. If the play end naturally, then the AAL should be added to an open-ended roll on the Hard column of the maneuver table, and the result is the number which the GM needs to roll under in order for the critics to like the play. »
Phew. I wonder why Rolemaster isn’t a popular system anymore!
Anyway, the PCs can get a substantial bonus reward (or not) depending on how well the play went and also experience points based on what happened so far or « as we recommend, he or she may just award points in a subjective fashion corresponding to how well the players are able to cope with the stress of being onstage ». How well the players cope with the stress of being onstage. Wow, that’s a weird thing to say. I thought the players were like, around a table with pens & papers & dice, not onstage.
This concludes this chapter, a weird one for sure. Next the PCs will leave to continue their journey to Tharbad, en route to the ruined city of Annuminas where they will get to explore a dungeon! Yay!
A Most Devious Mussel
Brought to my attention by my wonderful wife.
What you see below isn’t a fish but in fact the freshwater plain pocketbook mussel (Lampsilis cardium) displaying her lure mimicking a fish. This sacrificial body part serves to attract a predatory fish and, when chewed upon, will rupture and release parasitic larvae inside said chewer. These larvae attached to the host’s gills will then feed and develop and y’know, live their life at the expense of somebody (just not their parents) until they’re ready to leave.
Okay, that’s not really rpg-related but c’mon! Baiting, camouflaging and parasitism all in one? It begs to be adapted into a monster!
Frosthaven – Frozen Treasure (90)
Satha, Math’s character has the personal quest of destroying a number of undead monsters whilst using the Axe of the Abyss to do so. The axe is a « spent » item, meaning that a long rest is necessary in order to use it again. So this is one of these funny situation where in order to achieve a game goal you have to completely forego verisimilitude (i.e. resting abnormally often) to be efficient about it…
Characters
- Zam Boni the Frozen Fist (David) lvl 5, big dude but very graceful on ice
- Satha the Mayor of Frosthaven (Math) lvl 4, taking matters into her own hands
- Hail the Irritable Enchanter (Guillaume) lvl 4, will she get irritated enough to care?
We’ll be fighting on 4 different icebergs that often join together (as determined by a random counter). Unfortunately for my character who gets all kinds of benefits from ice, there’s oddly no ice tiles on these icebergs.
This is a straighforward kill them all scenario, except that the frozen corpses are not mandatory to kill but give good money if we do.
Closing comments:
- Easy scenario, fun, a bit too constrained though (no shooting across or teleporting to another area). We’ve stretched it in order for Math to achieve his PQ. And he did, yet another new character next time!
- We could afford to kill all the frozen corpses and thus earned good money.
- Satha was a flexible and useful character, she’ll be missed.
Palantir Quest (1994) – tunnel vision (review part I)
I’ve been rummaging through my collection of (twenty-something) I.C.E. middle-earth books lately. I could get good money for them – last time I checked Palantir Quest in particular was on sale for 175 usd on ebay despite being in terrible condition (mine isn’t much better!). But y’know, I’m quite sentimental about these, they are the first rpgs books I’ve bought, some thirty years ago, at age fourteen-fifteen with my hard-earned money as a field hand at the time.
So, no selling.
Palantir Quest is in fact an unusual one among this collection as being one of the rare Adventures book along with Kin-Strife, as well as several much slimmer adventures compilations. All the others in the line are sourcebooks, as far as I know. Incredibly detailed and well-researched sourcebooks I must add in case you haven’t heard of them, something that doesn’t exist anymore in rpgs I think, that required an entire team of dedicated people to do. Something to be nostalgic about no doubt. Keep that in mind if you please, because I’ll be a bit harsh with this one: I.C.E’s sourcebooks were absolutely great.
But back to our current subject.
From the book’s back cover: « Strange portents in the great Seeing-stone of Minas Tirith give promise that one of the lost palantiri of the North has returned to the lands of Men. Can the adventurers find this legendary treasure and bring it to King Elessar? Rogues of the wilds, blizzards out of the Forodwaith, and the greed in Men’s hearts all conspire against them. »
Adventuring into Middle-Earth’s 4th Age
The premise is quite interesting, unlike most of what has been published by I.C.E. this adventure takes place some years AFTER the events of the Lord of the Rings. Sauron has been permanently defeated, what remains of his forces has been scattered away and Aragorn, as the ruler of both Gondor and Arnor is now known as King Elessar. This is the begininng of a new era, the 4th Age of Middle-Earth, and what better news to go with this time of triumphant joy than the resurfacing of a long-lost palantir that could help unite both halves, North and South, of this new victorious kingdom?
Yes, thank you Elon, very impressive.
But you need two palantiri to do that.
Aragorn/King Elessar has the one from Orthanc of course and the one that Sauron had has been destroyed (or is lost, buried under the ruins of Barad-Dur presumably) and Minas Tirith’s palantir (this book says) has been unfortunately imprinted by Denethor’s last moments of agony (a rather unpleasant sight to behold), this is why finding this other palantir would be incredibly useful.
Enter the PCs.
Suggested starting level is 4, the PCs are presumed to have some prior accomplishments.
They’ve been convoked to Minas Tirith by NPC Tarquillan, the venerable Royal Seer, to do the king’s bidding and find the lost palantir of the North. Or not exactly that way – they’re told that a spell from a tome called « A Treatise on Subtle Magika » has been discovered to exist and (much faith has been put into that it seems) it could be used to locate the palantir that has only been glimpsed at. (a written spell? a bit peculiar to me thematically speaking but okay, let’s get on with it). The most likely location of the tome is in the Royal Library of the ruined city of Annuminas.
Unbeknownst to the PCs and their employer, Taladhan, a powerful evil magician no one has ever heard of (he apparently hasn’t got the memo that evil has been defeated) who’s scheming from his hideout in faraway Greenwood, knows everything about the plan to recover the palantir because the Royal Seer’s assistant in fact spies for him. Very astute of him to have put a spy there I must say, just in case there would specifically be news from a resurfacing palantir. But anyway.
Thus begins one of the most Tangential Fetch Quest in the history of RPGs. Probably.
Check this out! (Scrapjacks re-posting)
I’ve been following Patrick Todoroff from Stalker7 for years now, be it rpgs, tactical wargaming or writing, what he does is always hugely interesting. And here is his new project: Scrapjacks, a game of « dungeon crawling in space »!
Frosthaven – The Lady in White (86)
Math, with his new character, has the personal quest of slaying a bunch of different undead monsters using his Axe of the Abyss. So here we are, with an optional scenario that got Ice Wraiths in it, among other things.
Characters
- Zam Boni the Frozen Fist (David) lvl 4, big dude but very graceful on ice
- Satha the Mayor of Frosthaven (Math) lvl 4, taking matters into her own hands
- Hail the Irritable Enchanter (Guillaume) lvl 4, will she get irritated enough to care?
We have to kill the Lady in White, an evil spirit that hides in the forest. This a simple destroy the objectives (three trees) scenario with a mini boss at the end. There’s one complication though – each time a tree is hit and not destroyed right away, they spawn a black imp.
Closing Comments:
- A real slog of a scenario, it took a long time to kill the monsters (not mandatory, to be fair), the trees and the mini boss one after the other.
- I coulnd’t do Brittle on the objectives/trees as per the rules, that cut a big part of my game right there. Annoying.
- Hail, as a low stamina character, has it relatively easy with two tanky companions to protect her at all time. She could even afford to exhaust near the end of the scenario.
My son’s dungeon, Dungeon of Kargen part II
I gladly accept that the most interesting thing I can put on this blog is being made by my son, so here’s another chunk of what is transpiring within Edmond’s own megadungeon:
Part 1 here.
- The adventurers (solo played by Isaac as usual) explore a bit more the City of the Imps, fight some Living Armors. They get inside a sumptuous room and fight Greater Imps and kill the King of the Imps who was getting annoyed of all the killing & stealing & stuff made all over his domain. The new king of the imps is more reasonable, this is what regime change is all about, and accept a truce with the adventurers.
- They go back in the Maze, find several libraries (the Minotaur is an avid reader?), they find a secret door and fight the Minotaur again. This time they manage to kill him, except that they he’s not really dead and changes into an upgraded version, again they kill him and again he gets back but the third time’s a charm – the Minotaur is finally vanquished! The adventurers liberate some prisoners, recruit some of them and loot the place.
- They explore more of the Mixtature. They flee after a round or two when they encounter an (non-trademarked) Evil Eye and find out that they’re obviously overmatched. In another section they find a golden sarcophagi, opening it they find a set of stairs going down and down…
- Level 2 has Trolls and Slimy Skeletons as wandering monsters, mostly.
- They are in the Crystal Grottoes, natural caves with large areas that are flooded. They dive into an underwater passage and get into a cave with several chests filled with gold, and with the walls adorned with valuable crystals. They take everything they can and get into another area with a locked chest that they couldn’t open but they do find a crystal armor. After that they get in front of a large door, locked but there’s instructions nearby explaining how to craft the key (!), which they manage to do, and thus gain access to a new area.
- While exploring they stumble into a lever that opens up a trapdoor, leading into secret passage and eventually, into a large room that has a desert environment (sand and cactus included) and get into a fight against poisonous snakes. Several characters get poisoned during the fight but fortunately they soon find an antidote when they search a corpse in the room. There’s also an arch, six pillars and six bowls which are there to receive offerings. Through trial and error they discover that placing 6 identical tokens, repeated for the six bowls, opens a magic portal inside the arch.
- They walk through the portal and get into a new area but they also find out that the portal is one way into Level 3!
- They arrive at an intersection with four passages, they get into one and find a room with a bassin & fountain with coins into it. Throwing a coin gives healing.
- Just as good as they get into a big fight against 10 trolls, including a chieftain, but the adventurers are victorious.
- Another intersection, signs indicate: Firengulph, Agony, Suffer in Suffering. Nothing quite tempting in all that and they finally choose the Suffer in Suffering direction.
- Apparently this section is full of traps and indeed, there’s really a lot of suffering involved… Notwithstanding all the pain, the adventurers make progess and after more exploration they find another portal room, with a similar arch but this one with only two bowls. One is engraved with a dragon and the other with a knight. They don’t find the solution at the moment so they continue to explore.
- There’s more flooded areas in this section. They evade a fight against a Crystal Octopus.
- And then they find a Potion Shop (the enterprising owners have put ads all over the dungeon I’m told, often giving tips (not always accurate) on monsters as a marketing ploy!)!
- After that, inside another room, they find some scrolls that offer some explanations on the magic portal. One has to offer something associated with good in one bowl and evil into the other. With that knowledge they go back to the portal and open it.
- This get them back into Level 2, into a new area, but they soon find their way to known territory and get back to town. A few more characters are hired to replace some that are dismissed for their lack of competence (adventuring is a fiercely competitive world!). One newly-hired, Roger, is a skilled craftsman, that will come into play very soon.
- They go back into Level 2. They find an area that is essentially a dormitory (for whom?). Later on they find a guy who’s doing an ad for the aforementionned Potion Shop and he recruits the adventurers for the ad, earning them one healing potion.
- They flee from a big fight with many Living Armors and a Colossal Living Armor. Not much later they find a weapon that does great work against these foes.
- Exploring a new area they fall into a pit trap. Directly into lava. They’re all dead…
- Unless… No! It was only water with the appearance of lava! There’s an extensive underwater system accessible from this pit trap.
- The adventurers get back in town and come back to this place with enough materials to craft… a submarine!
- There’s a whole new world down there in the water and they even find an impressive Submerged Castle and surrounding village.
TBC…
Frosthaven – Sunless Trench (42)
We’re advancing the lurker sub-campaign as we still have a character to unlock in this one. We’re now playing with two new characters from the newly-available mercenary packs: Satha and Hail, former NPCs and now the real deal!
Characters
- Zam Boni the Frozen Fist (David) lvl 4, big dude but very graceful on ice
- Satha the Mayor of Frosthaven (Math) lvl 4, taking matters into her own hands
- Hail the Irritable Enchanter (Guillaume) lvl 4, will she get irritated enough to care?
A subaquatic scenario (in theming) where we have to loot the five objectives, of course with a lot of baddies in the way within a big map.
Closing Comments:
- It seemed like everything went our way this time around. We have three great characters that work nicely together, that helps a lot.
- Math already unlocked one mastery, « granting » to his allies every single rounds. Very useful character and will be great under Math, a natural puppet master :P.
- Hail has probably the best theming of any haven characters imo, with cards names like « beneath me », « crazy antics », « can’t be bothered » and her irritation mechanics!
- The Deep Terrors were pretty ineffective all along, attacking in straight line with no targets and so on.
- The brittle-giving strategy is proving to be absolutely brutal, doing short work of otherwise hard opponents.
Gunderholfen – Repelled by the orcs, again (session 20)
Short session with one big fight taking a big chunk of it. Very dangerous situation that they got themselves into and the PCs had to flee again.
1h30
Gunderholfen by G. Hawkins: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/265629/gunderholfen
Player Characters (PCs) – The Battle Brothers:
- Aracyne, Elf Hunter, fearless Guild Leader, (Isaac)
- Jedri, Ratman Thief, he likes his rat-shape curse (Isaac)
- Grimoire, Goblin Mage, frail but smart (Isaac)
- Forka, Dogman Knight, fierce warrior (Edmond)
- Torch, Goblin Knight, not expendable anymore (Edmond)
This session’s main goal: finish the orcs
What the other adventuring guilds are doing at the moment:
- Green Imps: training in Longfelt
- The Protectors: adventuring, left Longfelt for Gunderholfen
- Black Axes: adventuring, try to find a tower in Ganfal swamp
- The Musers: adventuring, left Longfelt but kept quiet on their objective
Gunderholfen – Level 4A – Great Altar Cave
- The Battle Brothers have just killed the 10 orc archers that were guarding the entrance of the Great Altar Cave but now they hear many more orcs coming from around the corner to the north west. Two orcs with heavy crossbows come first, one shooting at Forka but the crossbow bolt bounces off his armor, and the other misses Torch. Two other crossbowmen run across the nearby rope-bridge in order to have a good shooting angle.
- Aracyne makes a risky leap to the eastern cliff and manages to climb up to get atop the promontory. He quickly takes his bow and kill one crossbowman with two arrows (twin shot). The other plunges to his death after Grimoire attacks him with a Mental Strike (telekinetic push).
- But more orcs move to attack the outnumbered adventurers, five brandishing falchions and five with spears attacking from behind, all wearing chainmail. Forka attacked one with his two-hands hammer, killing him with a massive blow but then the spearmen jab him several times and wound him badly. Jedri jumps into action with sword and light flail and kill an orc with two well-aimed blows.
- Fearing for his life, Forka shove the falchion-wielding orc in front of him, sending him crashing into the back rank, and he gets out of his near-encirclement. Torch takes care to guard Forka’s flank and stab an orc with his spear, hurting him lightly. Jedri manages to dodge several attacks coming his way.
- Aracyne does an headshot (crit) to an orc spearman, killing him instantly. A crossbowman aims at the goblin mage and hits him, inflicting a severe wound (1 hp remaining!), the other aims at Aracyne but the elf manages to dodge the incoming bolt. Forka kills another falchion-wielder. Grimoire avenges himself with another Mental Strike, pushing the two crossbowmen off the promontory to their deaths.
- The adventurers have now the upper hand as they manage to kill several other orcs but they can hear yet more orcs coming from the same direction and only Aracyne is unscathed among them. Torch is okayish but Grimoire and Forka are both severely wounded, Jedri only lightly but is exhausted (no more willpower pts, can’t fuel his heroic abilities anymore). Grimoire does a Levitate on Torch to bring him on his side of the cave, at the entrance beyond the cliff. Forka and Jedri jump over there. A bigger group of orcs is now in sight with its bardiche-armed chieftain in the middle. Several orcs throw spears at the retreating adventurers but none hit their targets.
- The Battle Brothers run to the west to go directly at their outpost. The orcs have no way to follow quickly and press their advantage.
- En route, Jedri is attacked by a Giant Cave Lizard coming from the south but he slays it efficiently with his two weapons.
- They reach their outpost and barricade themselves so they can rest safely. Not long after, they can hear some orcs looking for them close by, probably checking. the stairs to Level 3. The orcs still doesn’t seem to know that the PCs have taken over the Ogres’ den (and aren’t eager to inspect the place as they had been enemies).
- Five hours later they hear a knock on the door, its Bayard’s guild, the Protectors! Aracyne asks if the allied guild would be so kind as to offer healing and Bayard answers that it wouldn’t be free: how about 80 gp, the amount that Aracyne once asked to the at the moment hard-pressed Protectors? No deal. But still, the allies are glad to see each other.
Closing Comments:
- The PCs had decimated the orc archers with ease the previous session but now it was a very, very close fight, with character death looming just a step away. Aracyne and Grimoire were very efficient with arrows and telekinetic pushes respectively but the three melee fighters were in a perilous situation. Good armor and good evade ability have its limits when against 3:1 numerical superiority with a back rank able to reach.
- The orcs have once again repelled the adventurers but it’s clearly a pyrrhic victory for them, having lost 21 warriors between the two sessions and 6 more if we count the first assault. They still have a decent fighting force but they’ve been weakened for sure, probably enough to warrant a change on how they defend their territory.
Streets & Spores 