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

New Campaign Session 19
http://westmarchsaga.wikia.com/wiki/WM/Treks/Log_1-19

The delvers unlock the door in the goblin cave, and find an alchemist's lair complete with alchemical flamethrower. Sadly, they do not decide to test out the flamethrower right there and then. There are some abortive attempts to take some of the pricey, delicate glasswear back to Polisberg, but everyone realizes that it weighs a lot and is just asking to get broken.

So instead they just walk home, in a more or less straight line, covering all the distance in a long day's walk. There is some discussion about this, and everyone eventually agrees that trips go faster when everyone stays focused on the destination and doesn't decide to go mountain climbing.

Now everyone is busy updating their character sheets, collecting rumors, performing research, and selling large piles of loot. I have no idea where they'll go next.

One issue I'm struggling with is how to allow the delvers to do research on stuff they've found. They have maps, hints, and clues about all kinds of things that they might want to know about: what made those weird tracks in the forest? What are the Ebon Teeth? The normal 1 roll/week DF rules for Research might be a bit restrictive for this kind of thing.

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

New Campaign Session 20
http://westmarchsaga.wikia.com/wiki/WM/Treks/Log_2-1

I decided to let the delvers make, as a group, 3 research rolls per week for free and buy additional rolls at a rapidly increasing cost. The resulting wall of text can be seen here: http://westmarchsaga.wikia.com/wiki/Talk:WM/Clues. The players still haven't done much with that information, but hey, they have some and they did put some to use.

This session was a bit of a mess. The delvers restocked and recruited, adding Shelley the necromancer^H "necrotechnician" to the group. Then they headed out with her escort of animated skeletons and encountered religious pilgrims and Outrider patrols. This did not go as well as it could.

The entire session was one big travelogue, made somewhat confusing because the GM got east and west confused at a crucial point. On the plus side, I got an excuse to show off a bit of the GM's map of the West March, which is rather pretty if I do say so myself.

The session ended with the delvers entering a ruined and apparently haunted town. Next session, we'll find out if its easier to fight the undead with a necromancer in the party.

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

My big plan is still to be aggressively Canadian at folks. Nothing like good manners to confuse and confound people expecting you to eat their eyeballs.

And that licensing paperwork is PRICELESS.

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

Yeah, I liked the license paperwork bit and the interplay between Shelley and the Outrider Officer:

OO: "Give no orders to those skeletons, necromancer, or my hidden archers will kill you!"
Shelley: "Would it help if I had them sit down with their fingers in the earholes?"
OO: completely boggled "Well, yes, I suppose..."

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

It was the most innoffensive thing I could think of.

I had this mental picture of skeletons getting the finger bones stuck in the ear canal and being unable to get them back out again without help, and from there I figured I should stop brainstorming and say something.

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

New Campaign Session 20
http://westmarchsaga.wikia.com/wiki/WM/Treks/Log_2-2
http://westmarchsaga.wikia.com/wiki/WM/Treks/Log_2-3

The delvers entered a ruined town, got attacked by ghosts, drove them off with True Faith: Turning and Affect Spirit weapons, rested for a while, and went deeper into town. Where they got attacked by ghosts again, to the surprise of no one I think.

I was rather torn on whether to run what essentially the same fight twice, but the idea was that there were lots of ghosts in the town so it made sense. And the differences in the fights made them feel a lot different, at least I hoped. In the first fight, the PCs knew where the monsters were and could approach them on their own time. In the second fight, they were ambushed by the ghosts in an area much more favorable to the ghosts.

The key to the second fight was the despairing ghost's field of despair. Mechanically, it was simple: roll Will every round, apply MoF as a penalty on all DX or IQ rolls or skills and checks related to them. The penalty is reduced by 1 every round, but every round the PC needs to roll again... Ghazeb got fairly hosed by this effect, but was much less important to the ghosts than Beltarne, Marik, and Wolfgang, who could hurt them. The other PCs rolled well on their initial Will checks, and a successful Will check prevented the effect for MoS seconds. It was really meant to hose the low-IQ PCs, and it did okay but not as well as I would have hoped.

Now the PCs are trying to take their incomplete and often wrong information and integrate it with what they're learning on the scene. Should be interesting to see what they do next.

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

For the record, Marik's not really 'low-IQ'; with a 12 IQ/Will (and a 16 Per), he's easily as much of an intellectual as he is a warrior. Last night was also the only time I was seriously worried that my nonfocus on combat traits would get me killed; I need to learn to stay the heck out of melee.

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

New Campaign Session 23
http://westmarchsaga.wikia.com/wiki/WM/Treks/Log_2-4

The delvers pester the ghost for a while and then decide to go find the pixie village they hope is nearby. With a little luck, they manage to do so! Then they hang out with the pixies for a while and pump them for information.

The pixies played a few practical jokes, but nothing too awful, and even told them where another delve site might be: on the south shore on Obsidian Lake, 10 miles away across open water. I'm not sure how the delvers are going to get there.


This was an entirely non-combat session, and everyone was pretty quiet. There were hardly any rules calls, so there wasn't much to worry about. I did nicely establish the pixies as incessant pranksters, including a lovely opening sequence that seemed to put all the players on the edge of the seats, which will possibly be important for narrative related reasons later.

Now I need to go finish populating the random monster encounters for the southern forest areas.

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

These logs are great!

I'm not clear on exactly how the logs are ordered. What is the very first one? Is there a list of the logs in order somewhere?

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

Thanks, I have a great bunch of players.

The logs are ordered sequentially, first by trek/expedition, second by session within that expedition. They are collected on the Treks page:

http://westmarchsaga.wikia.com/wiki/WM/Treks

Hope that helps!