Re: Review of Play: The Saga of the Westmarch DF Game
 

New campaign session 1
http://westmarchsaga.wikia.com/wiki/WM/Treks/Log_1-1

The delvers head out for glory! adventure1 riches! ... and stop outside the Inn door to argue about the very important question of what to call themselves. Then they walk for a few hours, find a tavern, and half the band stops for a drink, while one of the others decides to supplement his rations by stealing a sheep. I'm not really sure what's up with that.

Overall, this session was an acceptable but somewhat rocky start, mostly due to the GM's inability to create balanced encounters. Both the "Ill Omens" and the "Rock Borer holes in the road" encounters were deemed slightly unfair. I was willing to modify them on the fly to make them more equitable, and most people seemed happy that their secondary and tertiary skills were going to useful. But the initial designs were a bit harsh.

Next week, I think I'm going to simply describe the situation, and ask the PCs for suggestions on appropriate skills. I ran an Action! game that way, and it worked much better.

The one combat encounter was pretty much a gimme, but I don't think anyone minded and it really was luck of the dice that it came out that way. Had there been more giant eagles... no one would have been in any real danger, but there might have been a bit more excitement.

Re: Review of Play: The Saga of the Westmarch DF Game
 

We got to establish early in the campaign and in a noncritical incident that two of the PCs are fuzzy bunny touchers with Sense of Duty: Nature (AKA "Druid wannabes" in the opinion of some of the other PCs). This can be just as important as killing stuff!

Re: Review of Play: The Saga of the Westmarch DF Game
 

And even earlier that several members of the campaign are goody-two-shoes with some level of Honest.

Re: Review of Play: The Saga of the Westmarch DF Game
 

New campaign session 2
http://westmarchsaga.wikia.com/wiki/WM/Treks/Log_1-2

Our band of intrepid delvers gets distracted from their plan to find Obsidian Lake by something shiny - I mean by a mysterious, concealed pathway in a cliff wall. So they go merrily traipsing into the wilderness.

They also found their first big mystery: a wagon, wrecked at the bottom of a cliff, even though the local mountains are completely impassable to wheeled vehicles. They figured some of it out, though.

This was entirely a non-combat session, but next session starts with a possible fight against a bunch of goblins, so that's something. The timing was convenient because having the encounter start to develop at the very end of the game gives me a week to prepare the map and everything.

Re: Review of Play: The Saga of the Westmarch DF Game
 

New campaign session 3
http://westmarchsaga.wikia.com/wiki/WM/Treks/Log_1-3

The band of delvers got into an engagement with a bunch of goblins supported by a pair of Shock Lizards and two disease ridden Giant Eagles. The lizards can throw lightning bolts with impressive accuracy.

The delvers spread out, waiting for the goblins to arrive. Wolfgang flew into the air to scout (and also because Wolfgang's player was absent and I didn't feel like running him myself) and got attacked by semi-visible Elder Things.

The goblins opened their assault with crossbow and lightning bolts at Ghazeb, wearing him down. He finally retreated into the woods to break line of sight and avoid their massive aiming bonuses. The other delvers also fell back, except for Marik who shot the goblin leader and then began playing lethal tag with 3 others.

The giant eagles came in as reinforcements. One grabbed Thasos, and the two wrestled for several seconds before Thasos managed a takedown and thus broke free. The other grabbed Firefly (the pixie), but she managed to break free (rolling a 4 on her ST check versus a failed check from the eagle!). Beltarne ran around, trying to decide who to reinforce.

At the end of the session, two goblins were fighting Ghazeb and holding their own. Thasos was still dealing with the giant eagle and diseased himself. Two goblin crossbowmen were advancing on Marik, and the Shock Lizards were closing on Beltarne and Firefly and throwing long-range bolts at Marik. Marik had killed two goblins and was running around, trying to avoid being axed by the other two.

Overall, this was a pretty smooth session. The goblins had a good ambush, but the delvers were pulling through due to skill and luck. There were rule questions, but nothing we couldn't figure out immediately.

Re: Review of Play: The Saga of the Westmarch DF Game
 

Things I Learned This Week:

Spell maintenance sucks.
Buy more Energy Reserve.

Re: Review of Play: The Saga of the Westmarch DF Game
 

Bruno is right: spell-casters are much more limited when every spell has a fatigue cost. I'm pretty pleased with it. (We have a house rule: no reduction in energy cost for high skill, but many spells have a lower energy cost than they do in standard GURPS).

The wildly varying mana levels make up for it somewhat, but they hurt as much as they help.

Re: Review of Play: The Saga of the Westmarch DF Game
 

New campaign session 3
http://westmarchsaga.wikia.com/wiki/WM/Treks/Log_1-4

The delvers continued their fight with the goblins to a painful victory.

Wolfgang the gargoyle returned, and quickly dispatched both crossbowmen. Thasos and Ghazeb spent a couple of seconds annihilating their enemies and then spent the rest of the combat running north. Firefly played tag with the shock lizards until Wolfgang reinforced her, while Beltarne ran north to support Marik. He took a lightning bolt in the back for his trouble but recovered.

The giant eagle that had been fighting Firefly flew off to help engage Marik. Marik killed another goblin but then took a ST17 axe to the chest and dropped. The giant eagle then started eating his face. Beltarne came up and distracted the goblin. In a moment of awesome, the goblin made a Committed (Determined) Rapid Strike, which Beltarne countered with a Commmad spell: "Drop it!". Instead of brutally carving the dwarf to pieces, the goblin swung his fist at Beltarne's nose twice. The giant eagle (actually an Divine Servitor of Disease) then released a disease cloud, doing 3 damage to Firefly (nearly killing her!) and just enough damage to drop the wounded goblin. Beltarne then carved up the eagle before it could flee.

The delvers found some general loot and a cryptic map:
http://westmarchsaga.wikia.com/wiki/File:GoblinMap.png
which they are trying to decipher.

All in all, this was a slightly longer fight than I would have liked, but a nicely tough one. Dropping 2 of the PCs into negatives demonstrated the potential lethality of the West March nicely. Both sides had pretty iffy tactics: the PCs were too spread out to reinforce each other properly, and too many of the goblins spent too much time making ineffectual ranged attacks against Firefly.

Huh. Looking over my notes, the shock lizards are supposed to a 1d lightning aura that might have affected Wolfgang. Not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, though.

Re: Review of Play: The Saga of the Westmarch DF Game
 

No update this week? I need my fix!

(I've very much been enjoying reading the session logs)

Re: Review of Play: The Saga of the Westmarch DF Game
 

This week's game was called on account of Canadian Thanksgiving.