Saturday was B/X wavecrawl day. We played from about 1pm till after 10pm.
Phil Lewis (thief) and Jennifer Lewis (weather witch) hosted; attendees included Ara Winter (magic-user), Geoff McCool (cleric), Matt Bohnhoff (halfling), Nicholas Hopkins (fighter), and me (dwarf).
The game was set in Greyhawk, starting in Irongate in the Free State of Onnwal. We started with the Geoff's cleric bankrolling our sloop (at least I think it was a sloop) and us choosing a captain (my dwarf because he had the highest CHA at 12) and the navigator (Jenn's weather witch, because...weather witch). We shipped out to Hot Springs Island first (Phil running things) almost getting dashed against the coast by a maelstrom, racing some water elementals (the result of which was a strap of movement being gifted upon our win), and Matt's halfling using the strap to swim with and befriend a dolphin. The island excursion was fairly short. We made straight for the bathhouse, encountered some lizardmen who laughed at us but left us alone, tangled briefly with some shadows, and looted nereid paintings that were worth enough that we cut bait and sailed to Longbridge.
Time in port was covered by downtime activities - Trade, Carousing, Pious Service, Research, Thievery, Pit Fighting, or Gambling. After everyone chose and resolved their downtime the party decided to head back out, but to Stonehell so I took over running the game from there. The new captain was Phil's thief, and Nick's fighter joined the party as well.
Another maelstrom was braved and bested along the way to the island. The party searched the gatehouse, killed/captured some goblins, negotiated with more goblins, spent a VERY long time debating about how they could remove the brass hemisphere from the waterfall cave, and finally entered the dungeon. They ran into Snorri Broadshoulders and company pretty quickly, then had to fend off a mess of giant cave spiders that the treacherous goblins had sicced on them. They parted with the dwarfs on good terms and headed back to their ship to rest for the night, thinking they might ship back to Longbridge but discovering that their current loot would put them in the hole if they went back then. So back into Stonehell it was. This time they used the weather witch's sense strangeness to make a sort of speedrun down to level 4A, destroying some dwarf artifacts to loot some gems. The went back to 3A from that dead end and made their way to the shaft trying to get to level 5 somehow. From that point they ran from gargoyles, charmed a kobold, defeated a mess of ogres, and finally decided they had enough loot to make the excursion profitable. Another maelstrom and a sea serpent (lesser) were braved on the voyage back to Irongate, resulting in the loss of one crew member (poor ol' Craig) to the sea serpent. They made it back with one day of rations to spare.
It was a great day of gaming. And very meaningful since STRICT TIME RECORDS WERE KEPT.
(pic yoinked from Ara)
Two big thumbs up for the random charts!
ReplyDeleteI want to run a slot next year!
ReplyDeleteSo much fun! And yes, very strict time records were kept! But apparently we sailed during hurricane season or something. Brutal!
ReplyDeleteSo much fun! And yes, very strict time records were kept! But apparently we sailed during hurricane season or something. Brutal!
ReplyDeleteI definitely felt some serious fear when we hit those gargoyles.
ReplyDeleteNicholas Hopkins Yeah, I'd like to expand on those if we do this again. A d6 chart for ocean encounters (weather event, monster, other ship, etc.) followed by a d20 table to add some granularity. That and someone mentioned using a weather wheel and tracking weather change in a less swingy fashion.
ReplyDeletePhil Lewis Y'all might could have taken the gargoyles, but it def would have been a grind of a combat where only half the party could do damage.
ReplyDeleteI think I was more scared for the party when the second wave of cave spiders poured in.
We should come out with a B/X supplement called Strict Time Records and have lots of charts for upkeep events, downtime, and weather patterns. A little less swingy weather would be nice. It would have been funny to see the tension of getting either too stormy or too calm.
ReplyDeletePhil Lewis We can finally get some portage rules to the table!
ReplyDelete