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

New Campaign Session 11
http://westmarchsaga.wikia.com/wiki/WM/Treks/Log_1-11

I did prep work for this game on Sunday night - rolling encounters on the delver's expected path, making sure I had monster stats, and stuff like that - and immediately sent out a message apologizing to the players.

The delvers finished off the last of the spiders, ransacked the bodies for raw giant spider silk, and camped over night. They had an uneventful night and started walking down the peninsula toward the harpies... when they were suddenly transported 5 miles due west by the random and erratic faerie gates that are endemic to the West March.

The delvers quickly surveyed their situation, and realized they were just above the druidic circle that they believed was Kalless' base. Not really feeling up to walking all the way around the lake again, they headed down to scout. They saw a mysterious glowing white dome and fortified lodgings for 30-50 goblins. There was an extended discussion about the virtues of curiosity, discretion, and valor, and then everyone turned due east and started walking around the lake again. Apparently tangling with goblins at 7:1 odds against was not part of the game plan!

On their way back around the lake, they spotted several snakes floating just above a swamp. Given that they were already avoiding that swamp, they just avoided in harder. They continued around the lake, made camp, and got attacked by floating snakes. It turns out these are some kind of weird faerie snakes, and they can make people levitate.

We only played the first 3 rounds of the battle, but things are not going well for the delvers. Everyone but Minnizig and Thasos has been hit by levitation spells. Wolfgang is mostly ignoring it, being a native flyer, but it's affecting his aim. Minnizig is desperately trying to keep Ghazeb on the ground, and Thasos has wrapped his chain around Beltarne in hopes of pulling everyone back to earth. He's also broken his vow of silence to shout a warning and a plan, with potentially dire consequences. Marik is now high enough that killing the snake levitating him would be painful, even with the weak and friendly DF falling damage table.


One question that came up and that I didn't have the time to look up the answer to is what happens to creatures that need to Concentrate to move something with a spell but not maintain it if they are attacked? How does the turn sequence work with that? If one of the snakes takes a Concentrate maneuver on its Turn 2, and is damaged before the start of Turn 3, does that mean it can't take a Concentrate maneuver on its Turn 3 without making the Will-3 roll?

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

I'd think their concentrate would work just like it does for a mage for a one second spell or for spells that can stay on but need a concentrate maneuver to change. They can only be interrupted by a wait since it's a one second concentrate and that would also be the only time they'd have to make will roll to successfully concentrate. They have to use their whole turn to move people, can't move much themselves but it doesn't hurt their defenses.

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

New Campaigns Session 12, 13
http://westmarchsaga.wikia.com/wiki/WM/Treks/Log_1-12
http://westmarchsaga.wikia.com/wiki/WM/Treks/Log_1-13

The Christmas holidays ate the game for a while, but we came roaring back last night.

Over two sessions, the delvers defeated the floating snakes, fed a bear, and finally made it to their current destination: the island of the harpies. They briefly negotiated with the harpies, before the hungry monsters ineffectually tried to betray them. Basically, about half of the harpies went after Marik, hoping to eat him while he was away from the others, but Wolfgang spotted them and intervened. Marik + Wolfgang seem to be capable of taking 5 harpies in a more or less fair fight, while the other four harpies are not quite a match for the remaining four delvers. Though it was certainly touch and go for a while and the harpies did a good job of delaying the fighting to get their Affliction spells off.

The delvers potentially picked up some useful information in these sessions, though as usual its cloaked in lies and confusion. Both sessions played out really well, without any head-scratchers as far as the rules went.

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

Lessons learned:

-Never use a knife when a bow will do.
-Never turn your back on an archer.
-Stop relying on 14s to succeed.

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

Singing and other such frivolities inevitably lead to battle?

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

Never! Singing and other such frivoloties win the day!

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

Maybe the lesson learned should have been "just because someone says they're Sidhe and can't lie is no reason to believe they're telling the truth."

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

And the other players wondered why I kept trying Detect Lies... I'm not very GOOD at it yet, so never rolled particularly well, but it's the principle of the thing.

No idea if they ARE Sidhe or not, but presuming they are, that actually REDUCES the likely hood that they're telling the truth about ANYTHING, IMO :D

Or perhaps I've been playing Changeling for too long.

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

If only someone other than Firefly had Faerie Lore and could answer questions like "are harpies Sidhe" and "can the Sidhe lie".

I'm really amazed at how useful a category Faerie is, given that there aren't any examples of Faeries in DF2.

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

New Campaign Session 14
http://westmarchsaga.wikia.com/wiki/WM/Treks/Log_1-14

The delvers finished off the harpies in good order. I almost managed to get Minnizig dropped from a great height (and almost as a bombing attack on Beltarne immediately after he'd taken an all-out action), but she managed to mind control the harpy into not dropping her. Too bad, it would have been funny as heck and actually might have been enough for the harpy to pull a Pyrrhic draw out of the situation. The harpies have musical influence skills, and while Wolfgang, Marik, Beltarne, and Minnizig generally combine to prevent those skills from coming into play by countersinging/spelling or chasing down singing harpies and beating them up, Ghazeb and Thasos have terrible ranged combat and bad mobility. Of course, Marik and Wolfgang would have shown up eventually and that would have been it for the last harpy.

The delvers also got their first taste of really good loot. No one made the Hidden Lore rolls necessary to know that harpy skins can be sold as Ornate Fine leather armor for $$$, but they did get the jewelry stash and a nice pair of holy dwarven traveling boots.

Later, they also came across a mysterious trail in the wood that they haven't identified. I expect there will be a lot of questions in town about what could make that, possibly people spending money to buy some useful books. This style of game is deliberately intended to make the hidden lore rolls more useful. It's ironic that Firefly got taken out so early, as she would have been quite helpful on some of this stuff.

We had another rules argument about whether Bloodlust allows a PC to partially disable an enemy and then move on to someone else. I'm being a mean dictatorial GM and saying that it requires lethal blows until the opponent falls over, and then bloody murder unless another threat is visibly more pressing. The PCs would prefer to be able to use better tactics, but then I'm not quite sure why its a Disadvantage in DF.