After-Action Report: Grave of the Pirate Queen [SPOILERS]

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1. Introduction

There are spoilers below, obviously. I know I put that in the post and it should be self-evident, but still.

I'm going to make this several separate replies and such, this being

1. Introduction.

What follows will be:

2. Explorers
3. After-Action Report
4. Comments
5. Experience Points
6. Screenshots/Photos (a few)

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2. Explorers

Andrew Jamieson, aka Skunkbeard, 246-point Human Buccaneer*
Father Guido Sarducci III, 248-point Human Holy Warrior
Harlan Thykola, 249-point Human Wizard
Veldran Highworth, 246-point Human Knight

Father Seamus O’Grady, 125-point Human Initiate**
Martin Fletcher, 125-point Human Archer***

* The Buccaneer Template is from GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Swashbucklers.
** The Initiate Template is from GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 15: Henchmen.
*** The Archer Template is from GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 15: Henchmen.

The group was fairly diverse and well equipped.

Andrew Jamieson fights with both a Fine Cutlass and a Long Knife, as he’s got Weapon Master with both—and both use the Shortsword skill. With Enhanced Parry 3 (Shortsword), Ambidexterity, and a Weapon Bond on his Cutlass, he’s quite formidable on offense and defense: Net 20 skill with his cutlass, and with Combat Reflexes, his parries with both his cutlass and long knife at 17 and 16, respectively. He also has the Thrown Weapon: Sword skill, which is why he carries two long knives. But he wears only cloth armor, so only has DR 1. Notable disadvantages include Impulsiveness, Overconfidence (bad combination) and Greed.

Father Guido Sarducci III is an Axe and Shield-wielding undead slayer. A fine axe it is—Balanced, Dwarven, Fine and Silver-Coated ($1000). He’s more warrior than anything else, with both Combat Reflexes and High Pain Threshold, but he also has Heroic Grace and Heroic Might. Notably, he is Chivalrous, and has Sense of Duty to all Co-Religionists (as well as his adventuring companions), in addition to being completely intolerant of evil religions.

Harlan Thykola is a skinny, curious and very studious mage. He’s got Magery 5 and Energy Reserve 7, as well as a decent power item for his staff. Although he’s quite good at throwing Stone Missiles, his preference is Acid Ball (from GURPS Magic). In addition to various water and earth spells (to get him acid spells), he knows a fair number of utility/buffing spells (Levitate, Flight, Great Haste, Infravision, Darkvision, among others).

Veldran Highworth is a sturdy hedge-knight, one whose stature has fallen as he is no longer part of a noble house. He’s a weapon master in both Longsword and Shield, and while very good offensively, he is a stout defender: He has 20 HP, Armor Mastery, Enhanced Block, Hard to Subdue, Sacrificial Block, Sacrificial Parry, and Shield Wall Training. As such, he walks around with medium encumbrance, because he wears Light Cloth Armor with Light Segmented Plate on top, and carries a large shield. While he’s dedicated to protecting his adventuring companions, and somewhat follows a Code of Honor (not quite knightly), he’s also Greedy, often loses himself in Bloodlust, and is Overconfident.

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3a. After Action Report, Part One:

The group heard rumors that brought them to Krayhold and Kraken’s Bluff. While there, they talked to local villagers and got information about three missing young fishermen who went exploring a newly revealed cave on the beach at Kraken’s Bluff. They also heard rumors about ancient cults who inbred with sea monsters, Morag the Sea Reaver, missing fisherman, and mermaids. That was enough to get them going to the Cave, taking along a local priest (who looks exactly like Brendan Gleeson from Cavalry) and the only non-fisherman in the village (who is a fine archer). Anticipating that the caves would be dark, Harlan made some magical lightstones using Continual Light, while Father Seamus did the same with seashells, using the holy version of the same spell.

They entered the cave and Veldran spotted graffiti on the wall about a “Red-Eyed Dragon” that rules the waves, as well as a crude sketch of a horrid skull with bat wings. As they advanced, they heard some chittering to their right, and within moments, a Giant Crab rushed up to them! It was, however, no match for the group. Within the first or second seconds when it was in melee range, the various warriors in the group crippled one of its legs, then one of its claws, and then fairly quickly finished it off. Andrew immediately wished to harvest some crab-meat and eat it (I adjudged that Survival: Island/Beach helped), and did so. They discovered bones, two half-eaten bodies (which they suspected might be two of the three missing fisherman), as well as a pouch with 17 gold pieces. They were then faced with a choice: proceed to their right, or go back to the entrance and explore the caves to the left of the entrance. They chose the latter.

Not much longer after they started going down a tunnel, they heard what appeared to be a scuffle and/or a cry. Moving up, they saw a faint light and came upon three Fish-Folk who were hauling a Mermaid in a net coming from a tunnel up ahead. This combat, too, was fairly quick, but mostly because Andrew dodged a large net thrown at him that would have most likely taken him out of the fight. They freed the mermaid, Lizret, who thanked them for freeing her. She explained that she had been captured by the fish-folk, who intended to sacrifice her to a god named Tentacle Beard. They escorted her the room from whence she came—a room up ahead that had a pool with an underwater tunnel leading outside. The group also found that the faint light was coming from a lantern that one of the fish-folk put down—one that was filled with water and a small angler-fish. In exchange for their help, Lizret gave them a ring—Steelbane. Harlan was the only one who could really safely wear it, so he put it on. Having freed the mermaid, they faced another decision point—go towards the larger cave that loomed ahead, or going back to the entrance and exploring beyond where they fought the crab. Oddly, they chose the latter—which was probably a good choice, in the end.

Moving as quietly as they could down the halls (complicated by Veldran, so…not that quietly), they came to a room where they found, to their surprise, two Octopus-Folk who were dimly lit by garlands of bioluminescent seaweed they wore around what might be considered their “neck” area. As they advanced, one of them squirted a cloud of ink directly at Veldran, who couldn’t see anything. Although the octopus-folk had some good chances and multiple attacks, they didn’t really have a chance against a group that had them outnumbered as badly as they were. It wasn’t long before they were quickly cut down with minimal (if any) damage (the GM should have used their Ink Cloud ability more often, but forgot). The party explored the room but didn’t fully loot it, figuring they might come back to it later. Andrew was delighted to find the three-cornered hat with a griffin plume, and promptly donned it.

From there they advanced to the point where they found a door. Opening it up, they found a peculiar sight—skeletons eating, drinking, and playing cards at a large table, but not moving as they slowly and carefully moved in the room. As the group tried to position themselves for what they suspected would be a fight, Andrew decided, before anyone else could act, that he would sit down on the throne-like chair with what he felt were skeletons of fellow buccaneers. At that, the skeletons rose to attack, grabbing their weapons and shields. Andrew jumped onto the table, and the group moved in to attack. They were never seriously threatened by the skeletons, although their positioning (very spread out) led to some skeletons getting back shots against Veldran. But since he has DR 6, the skeleton’s broadsword clanked off his armor. It was the longest fight they had, but it wasn’t terribly hard. After fighting the skeletons, they chose to go to the door to their left, and found the former chamber of Morag the Sea Reaver. Finding the hand-drawn map was key: they used that to decide where to go next after resting. And they chose to go to the large cavern on the bottom of the map, deciding that was most likely where a boat could be (having heard rumors that Morag was buried with her boat and with treasure).

Continued in next post...

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3b. After-Action Report, Part Two:

They went through a door and found exactly what they suspected: a longboat that had a dragon-shaped prow. They carefully boarded the ship using a nearby gangplank, and as they did so, Morag rose and demanded to know if they brought her the head of Bloody Jack. Although they tried to fast-talk it and say they were in the process of finding Bloody Jack, she didn’t believe them and told these “landlubbers” that they would all die (Andrew took great offense to being called a “landlubber”). This battle ended up being fairly long, and had the potential for significant casualties or even a TPK, but it ended up working out quite well for them due to really good defenses, fairly good tactics, and timely spellcasting. Andrew threw one of his long knives at Morag, who parried it with ease. She also dodged a throwing axe from Father Guido. The warriors advanced to challenge Morag, who attacked Veldran. He was able to parry it, but immediately realized that she was immensely strong. Father Guido activated both Heroic Grace (+3 DX) and Heroic Might (sadly, only +1 ST) before moving in. Faced with three targets, the fates decided (a die roll) who Morag would attack, and it was Father Guido. She went to stab him with her broadsword and rolled a 4—a critical hit! She rolled “normal damage” on the Critical Hit table, and didn’t do a ton of damage—but 8 damage penetrated Father Guido’s heavy leather, meaning 16 injury, bringing him down to -1. He fell to the ground, stunned, dropping his weapon and shield. Around this time, approximately three seconds into combat, Harlan finished his first spell: Great Haste on himself. Andrew began taunting Morag, and even though he and Veldran were rapid striking against Morag, she kept making some amazing parry and dodge rolls (it seemed like all she did on defense was roll an 8 or less for quite some time). As Father Guido recovered from stun, he therafter managed to fast-draw a healing potion (without passing out) and got himself to positive HP while Father Seamus maneuvered around to heal him. Around this time, Harlan finished casting his second spell: Great Haste on Andrew. He and Veldran continued to pound away at Morag, but she defended well. Ultimately, though Andrew landed a timely critical hit aiming for her right hand, and rolled a 5 on the critical hit table—double damage! That was enough to sever her hand, even through her good armor. It was a decisive blow, because it meant that Morag had one less parry. And then one of Veldran’s attacks got through her defenses against her left arm, and he did enough damage to cripple it—something like 18 or 19 injury. From that point forward, it was really just putting enough damage into Morag to bring her down (one of those attacks being from Father Guido from the ground against her leg). She had to resort to kicking at the group (which, if she scored a critical, could have easily taken Andrew into negative HP in one shot). But it wasn’t much longer before they defeated her, and both Veldran and Father Guido put in final shots to make sure she was dead. They scored an immense amount of loot there, and boxed it up. One of our players had to leave, but given that the map showed that they only had one area left, another player agreed to run Veldran and they went to the upper-right most chamber on the map.

As they approached, they came upon two fish-folk guards who were fairly inattentive (bad Per rolls), who nevertheless saw them approaching as soon as they got within about 7-10 yards. One of the guards banged on the door behind him as they got ready for battle. As the group advanced quickly toward the guards, the door opened, revealing four more fish-folk guards, and, from what they could see, two other notable things: a red-haired man hanging from chains above a pool, and another fish-folk (Haz’Rool the Elder) wielding a spear in one hand, a glowing ball of Lightning in the other, and wearing glistening cloak. The combat was not terribly difficult, on the account that Haz’Rool had a hard time hitting them with his Lightning balls. Andrew and Veldran made relatively short work of the fish-folk, even though many of them made rolls to avoid stunning and knockdown on various major wounds, and also managed to roll well enough to avoid death and knockout even when at -1x HP. Eventually, Andrew threw one of his long knives into Haz’Rool. Once the party broke through into the room (with some shield slams into remaining fighters, and acrobatic leaping over downed foes), Haz’Rool ran towards the pulleys to try to drop Rory into the water, and hopefully complete the sacrifice in time to get assistance from Tentacle Beard. But it was not to happen. Andrew threw his long knife right into Haz’Rool’s back, killing him. They rescued Rory, who was appreciative (Harlan Levitated him down while someone loosened the chains, and then they unchained him). Once that was settled, they checked out the Statute of Tentacle Beard.

Harlan had built up a 3d stone missile, which he never got to throw at Haz’Rool (this happened to him twice against Morag as well). He suggested throwing it at the statue, which Father Guido really wanted to destroy. But Andrew saw those glittering black pearl eyes…do you think that with Greed, Impulsiveness, and Overconfidence, he waited? Hell no! He scampered up the statue and began to pry out an eye. And as he did that, the area started to spark, and the Guardian appeared—an Electric Jelly! Andrew backflipped off the altar and fast drew his weapons. The fight was not terribly bad, but it started off with the Jelly trying to stun the four people near it—Andrew, Veldran, Martin, and Father Guido. Amazingly, it only hit Martin and Father Guido, and it rolled terribly on Father Guido for damage—1! He had 1 DR, so nothing penetrating. Martin got zapped to the tune of three penetrating burning damage, but made his health roll. Harlan threw his 3d stone missile but missed. Father Guido got a throwing axe in, and Martin got a few shots in, but the impaling damage didn’t do a lot. Andrew decided to attack the feeding tentacle, and got two shots in on it. He took damage both times but managed to resist a stun, and succeeded in crippling (actually severing) the tentacle on his first shot. Harlan started building up a 15d stone missile, and as he rolled a four—free! Eventually he got stunned, but the Jelly ended up losing consciousness immediately thereafter from the damage it took from various injuries and a failed HT roll. Harlan was disappointed with his inability to use a missile spell yet again, so he threw the stone missile into it anyway as it lay on the ground. That officially killed it (I believe the roll was around 61 damage or so). Harlan recognized that he could get paut from it, and with a successful Alchemy roll, got enough for four vials of paut. After that, Father Guido figured that he should try to exorcise the statute. He did so (with Father Seamus helping), and then they got the pearls.

From that point on, since they had literally killed everything in the complex, they began to loot everything from the caverns. Having played for a long time, I determined that they could easily do so by effectively going back to Krayhold and getting one or more wagons to borrow. They took anything and everything of value out of the caverns (Andrew was disappointed he couldn’t take the ship, but he found a tattered flag that used to fly on the Red Dragon, and figures he’ll get it Repaired and/or fashioned into a cloak (or a duster to replace the one he wears). The amount of loot was tremendous. They ended up giving a fairly high sum (over $1,000 each) to Father Seamus and Martin, who had agreed to come along for $100 each, so that was nice.

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4. Comments:

This was an introduction to DFRPG for two players running Veldran and Father Guido; they chose the characters they wanted to play, and I helped them make choices to build them. They’ve played D&D, and have experience there, but not DFRPG or GURPS. They really liked it. The other two are experienced DFRPG players, so they were fine. Andrew’s player was originally going to run a cleric, but thought it would be too boring. In the end, I’m glad he chose to run Andrew Jamieson…he was fun, very effective, and the player role-played him very well and with gusto (demanding the three-cornered hat, jumping onto the table to fight the skeletons, taunting Morag, not waiting to pry out the pearls from the statue). The cleric would not have been anywhere near as interesting, and it was easy to NPC Father Seamus, who did little other than an occasional (largely ineffective) Sunbolt and some healing. What’s next? My players shouldn't read the Spoiler section below, but anyone else certainly can!

Spoiler:  

I’ll have to check out David L. Pulver's Hydra Island (I haven’t read it yet), but might look at running the DFRPG adventures (I Smell a Rat and Against the Rat-Men), or perhaps Mirror of the Fire Demon or Douglas Cole’s Hall of Judgment.

So, about the Adventure. First, it was a very fun adventure. There was pretty much nothing that my players didn’t like, except perhaps the bunny slippers in Morag’s chamber. Other than that, they loved it.

Second, the loot was…really, really high. The four delvers, after paying about $1,000 each to their retainers, got $13,000 each between coins and loot sold! And that doesn’t include the things they didn’t sell, which were: the three-cornered hat (Andrew); the Morag’s Crimson Dragonhide Leather boots (undecided, probably Andrew); the rest of Morag’s Mail Armor (Father Guido), a medium shield (Father Guido), the Steelbane ring (Harlan), the Cloak of Lightning (Harlan), the Mountain Dwarf Whiskey (probably Andrew); and the Red Flying Skull Tattered Flag from the Red Dragon (Harlan). Part of it was partially due to the apparent interchangeability of the terms “coin” and “piece” for gold and silver. I ruled that the 2,710 silver coins, were not, in fact, silver coins worth $20 each (which would have equaled over $54,000!) but silver pieces worth $4 each (still $10,840). Morag’s hoard also listed 19 gold coins ($400 each)—I gave that to them instead of calling those gold pieces ($80 each). I suspected that perhaps since GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 2: Dungeons used coinage that was 250/lb., which had 1/5 the value of coins in Dungeon Fantasy Role Playing Game (which are 50/lb), perhaps that was it. Or perhaps David L. Pulver is really generous. In any event, it’s fine. Let them spend it on cool equipment. For now, I'm going to assume that both silver coins and gold coins are frequently broken up into 1/5 pieces for smaller transactions. So be it.

Third, there was a slight issue with neither the fish-folk, octopus-folk, or Skeletons having darkvision. That led to some great suggestions in another post, which I used for the fish-folk and octopus-folk. The players loved those details. I just house-ruled that skeletons have darkvision. That was fine.

Fourth, Roll20: It was pretty great, for the most part, having done the work to figure out the dynamic lighting beforehand. Every now and then I accidentally moved one of their characters into a hex that was half-wall, and they could see beyond, but it was no big deal (since it was just the rock beyond). What I thought was a lot of fun was how they advanced and things revealed themselves only when their light extended far enough. We had it displayed on a big-screen TV, but perhaps zoomed in too much (a lot of panning for the player running that part). I found it helpful to be logged in as a secondary account who could see and had control of all the creatures (logged in on an iPad). That allowed me to see when the players’ light came into view of the creatures, which was helpful. The layout is a bit odd in that the caverns were close, and I felt like noise would have traveled a lot, but it was fine. I just assumed it’s a dripping cavern, not terribly echo-prone, and it wasn’t a major issue (especially since the Lizret encounter happened much farther away than the room with the other fish-folk). We were all present in person (but I wanted to get people familiar with Roll20 in case we have one or more people unable to be physically present, which is likely with one player living three plus hours away). One person ran Roll20 to display on the TV. That was a lot of work for that player, and for me, but it was OK. My players love minis, so that was a negative, but it was good. It will probably be easier the more we become familiar with Roll20.

All in all, a really fun time.

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5. Experience

I used the CP awards sample on page 92 of Dungeon Fantasy Role Playing Game: Exploits, and gave them all 10 cp: (2 for defeating Morag, 1 for defeating the Electric Jelly, and none for the other fights, which were all easy, for a total of 3 session awards; 5 for meeting their loot threshold; 1 for clearing the dungeon; and 1 for recovering a quest item (Rory) requested by their sponsor (his mother, Olga). Andrew got the “MVP” cp bonus for his various role playing and combat effectiveness. That’s a LOT for one session (albeit one that ran for almost 10-11 hours, some of that was interrupted by general distractedness of the players, and some by food, but a fair amount of playtime). But it’s OK. They’ll soon be getting harder adventures.

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Reserved for part 6, as soon as I can figure out how to upload photos (probably tomorrow).

EDIT: Ah, never mind. I see from this post that we cannot upload images. Too bad about that.

[Dalin]

Thanks for this awesome write-up! It sounds like it was a great game with a fun group. Loved the character write-ups and bits of flair (e.g., sitting on the throne). I'm glad the angler lanterns were a hit. :)

I couldn't believe how much your group accomplished in one session until I saw the bit about the 10+ hours. I haven't run a whopper of a game like that in more than a decade. Our sessions are usually 3 hours long and we rarely get through more than one or two good encounters. (And at least one major battle stretched across more than two sessions.)

[Tom H.]

Originally Posted by Dalin

I couldn't believe how much your group accomplished in one session until I saw the bit about the 10+ hours. I haven't run a whopper of a game like that in more than a decade. Our sessions are usually 3 hours long and we rarely get through more than one or two good encounters. (And at least one major battle stretched across more than two sessions.)

Thanks for those activity metrics. There definitely can be a lot of detail to track, so it's good to get a feel for others' experiences.

Spartan506:
Thank you for posting this. I skimmed a bunch but definitely am saving a link to come back to read more when time permits.

[Tom H.]

Originally Posted by Spartan506

EDIT: Ah, never mind. I see from this post that we cannot upload images. Too bad about that.

There shouldn't be anything stopping you from posting a link to photos in a blog or Google Drive for example.