Thursday, March 31, 2011

Blogging vs. YouTubing...

So, I think I need to figure out what to type out here, and what is better left for my rambling monologues on YouTube.  I've been trying to put more of my old school thoughts in the blog and I think that is what I should be doing.  Feel free to drop on by my YouTube channel for all things RPG however.

So my monthly game of Labyrinth Lord has been going well.  I have 5 devoted players, that all have good attendance, and good communication when they can't attend (which is awesome).  I can't tell you how many times people have "no called, no showed" games in other campaigns.  It is refreshing to have players like that.  :)

I am going to allow two floater players in to play in the April's game session, and we kind of figured that having two more players to absorb damage wouldn't be a bad thing.  FRESH MEAT!!!  I mean, new players...

Hopefully we will have a nice quiet place to record the session again.  Background noise from other games is not so good for an actual play podcast/video-thing.  While I still don't have access to a plug-in for my laptop, I figured out a way to use a lower power level, so it doesn't drain my battery as fast.

So, I'll still continue to do my videos, and try to keep this blog from gathering too much dust.

I need to do some more prep for April's game, as it seems they might actually break the surface of Darves Hill and do some real dungeon crawling.  What horrors await them beneath?  My dark muse and my shoddy prep work will decide...   

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

March 2011 Game Summary & YouTube Audio Recordings

They stayed the night on Darves Hill after last session. 

They encountered a poison snake with wings.  Cyr the Thief was bit in the neck and poisoned along with Metham the Cleric.  The poison of the snake reduced the strength of those that it bit (by a d6 roll).  We house ruled that if you hadn’t used your healing amulet that it would automatically go off if you were reduced to zero hit points.  This of course can only happen once a day, because it has a 1/day healing ability. 

Grunk set off a trap on another building that changed the sex of the person that set off the trap.  He was nicknamed Grunka, or Grunkette.  They found some emeralds, and also an emerald with a small human trapped inside of it.  There was some jokes around the table, "Collect them all!" 

The next building had a pit trap and Cyr the Thief avoided falling 60 feet to a spiky wet death.  They found some large rats, then Silverleaf used the Sleep spell, and they killed off the remaining rats.  Stinky the Quasit Demon slashed one up and then snorted its blood up its nose.

They found some more teleportation devices, and how they worked, but there was still one that has a questionable destination.  They also found the stairs to the 1st level of the dungeon below the surface of the hill, and it had some magical mirrors that weren’t investigated.

They took a 12’ x 2 ½’ tall door off of the hinges, and used it to cross a 10’ pit trap.  Later they figured out a way to take this door along with them...

They found a bunch of outhouses and Ordok the Dwarf decided to risk reaching into the wet dung to find any treasures buried within.  He found a 4’ x 4’ chain ring sack, which turned out to be a large Bag of Holding that was the final resting place for 4 human skeletons.  It was nicknamed the Shit Bag.  They then shoved a bunch of stuff into the Shit Bag, including the 12’ door that they used to cross the pit trap.

Silverleaf discussed the idea of waiting till he was of high enough level so that he could open a magic shop that specialized in selling Continual Light items.  Others had talked about buying a house in the town of Nahm to store their items.

Building 3’s door was knocked off the hinges, but they went to 4 & 5.  These buildings are part of the main Temple complex at the top of Darves Hill.  They encountered a talking lock that wasn’t happy to be picked, and it damned them.  They encountered a room that was converted to being a church to the god BaeNur, the Son of Shadows.  There was a wicked sacrificial dagger on the altar, and also another teleportation circle.  The room had a definite creepy malevolent feeling in the room.  Thimple grabbed hold of the sacrificial dagger, and was filled with dread, but also with a feeling in invulnerability and strength.  He put it down (at least for then). 

They released a girl and a baby, that looked they were going to be sacrificed.  Ordok almost lost a hand, from a nasty spell, when he opened the door.  The girl’s name was Summer, and her father is the Glassblower in the town of Nahm. She didn't know who the baby belonged to.  They plan to head back to town to return the kids. 

The Goblin that Thimple was supposed to meet, sold out the group to a Cleric that seemingly worshiped the god BaeNur.  They battled the Cleric, and the battle nearly killed Metham the Cleric, but they quickly used another Healing Amulet to keep him from the clutches of death.

The daggers that the Goblins where using opened up once inside a victim, with barbed edges extending into the soft guts of the target.  They are good 1-shot items in that once they hit, they have to be ripped out, doing more damage.  The party snatched up these swords, and hope to use them in the future to great effect.

Here are the YouTube audio recordings:

Part 8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHdldfmCb0k

Part 9

Part 10

Part 11

Part 12

Part 13

       


Saturday, March 12, 2011

Feb 2011 Game Summary

So, because of the audio recordings I noticed that I didn't take as many notes as I normally do.  I figured that I would have time to listen to the recordings and take notes later, but a month goes by pretty quickly if you aren't paying attention.  It is the morning before I head off to Pittsburgh to do some gaming, and I find myself trying to rush a summary that is half remembered, hehe.

The group stayed the night in the town of Nahm, and wanted to get back into the madness that is Darves Hill.  They left in the morning, and arrived in the evening.  They saw that the greenish dragon on the temple at the top of the hill was sleeping still.  Upon arriving, they started to explore the buildings on the surface of the massive hill.  They discovered the lair of what they thought was some sort of undead creature, because the holy warhammer had glowed a faint white the last time they were near the creature that lived there.  They saw the remains of its clawed hands, a half of a cow that they put out of its misery, and six upside down humans.

The six humans were hanging from chains, and their heads were buried in the dirt.  When they dug up the heads of the rotting humans, they discovered a moving bag in their mouths.  Upon opening the bag, they found worms with human faces that were starting to grow "roots" into the skulls.  They kept some of these strange worms, and destroyed the bodies and hopefully ruined what was happening in that room.

They explored many other buildings on the surface of the hill, until they heard some sounds coming from the South that seemed like a fog horn.  Four strange giants were intoning something in their howls.  They had huge red twisted horns, lots of hair, and long tendrils that extended from their arms and they dragged them behind them.  Some of the party members had heard of a strange race of Giants that are supposed to be a form of Mystic, with the ability to manipulate strange magics.

The dragon woke up and came down off the hill to investigate, and one by one as the ritual chanting and singing continued, the Giants met their end by being gobbled up by the dragon.  In the end, one Giant remained, and then the dragon laid on its side, and the Giant proceeded to cut a large chunk of its tongue from its mouth.  After the large chunk of tongue was removed, the strange Giant Mystic began singing once more and then walked away from the dragon at a slow pace.  The dragon after a short while shook its head (spraying tongue blood everywhere).  It then flew up to the top of Darves Hill once again, but it kept flapping its head from side to side, shaking blood all over the place.  They thought perhaps it was some spell component as a part of some ritual.  It then crawled all over the hill in the night, and they thought it was rather cranky because it was missing part of its tongue.  It fled halfway through the night, and the strange horrible noises on the hill returned once the predator had left.   

 In one of the buildings they found a strange idol that was discovered was one of the gods of the Goblins.  It was their "Mother."  They later traded this idol to the Gnomes of Mumbling Speech.  hehe.  They killed a monstrous centipede in another building that looked like it was being fed by someone.  They set up a wonderful ambush, and the planning helped them in the fight.  They wondered if they killed another one of Marnal the Dwarf's pets, but it was fairly far away from where he lives, so they weren't sure.  They managed to take one of the poison sacks from the centipede to use at a future time.  In the corner they found a bag of nasty barbed caltrops with magical writing on the side of them that said "Toe Biter".

In the morning (after resting in one of the buildings) they looked around on the hill.  They found small pool of dragon's blood, and they collected some of this.  The Quasit Demon started snorting the blood up its nose (because its mouth is sewn and melted shut).  The blood of dragons is supposed to either be a blessing or have a curse to it.  They saved some of the blood in vials, but they didn't do anything with it yet.

They found a strange magical room with a marble floor.  After some exploration and tapping on the walls, they found a secret lever that twisted and lowered the floor like a ramp down to the third level of the dungeon.  They explored a little and found an arena where lots of goblinoids and other strange races were cheering on the combatants.  One race of beings they discovered was a pink skinned creature with tusks and mucus all over it.  They learned that Lekorh (the Undead ruler of the Hill) takes taxes from the event.  They also talked with a goblin that wants to meet them the next day (that will be next session).  One of the strange customs of the event was that the fans threw chunks of meat onto the arena during the parts that were exciting for them.  Blorgoth seems to be one of the most popular combatants of the Arena.  There were a few adventuring humans present, but the event was decidedly anti human, because they sacrificed captured human slaves to start each fight...

They also encountered a lair of some Fungal Undead, and luckily for them they didn't inhale the spores from the abominations...  Fire and oil were used to turn them into a bunch of crispy mushrooms.  The Cleric was also able to defeat many of them with his Turn Ability by harnessing the power of AeBalt, the King of Light.

On the surface of the hill (after realizing that facing hundreds if not thousands of amped-up goblinoids might not be a good idea) they encountered some Stirges holding up in a building.  with some planning, and by containing most of them in the building by closing up the holes, they torched the inhabitants inside, proving that good planning can go a long way to keeping your group alive.  The Elf's Sleep spell was proven to be very successful against them.  One of the characters got a little proboscis action, and felt a little weaker.

I'm really looking forward to today's game.  :)

Monday, March 7, 2011

Yeah, I Haven't Posted Much

Sorry for the lack of posting.  I need to go through my audio recordings of the last LL Session of Darves Hill and type up a summary.  There hasn't been too much going on with the Domain LL PBEM game either, though I have formed an alliance with a nearby group of settlers in Nowhere, that should prove beneficial to both parties involved.

My Monday night group finished up a Firefly/Serenity game, and then we played some 1-shots of Witch Hunter which has proven to be quite enjoyable.  Witch Hunter uses a modified D10 dice pool mechanic, and it is fun to try to roleplay things out in the 16th/17th century period.

Tonight I'm running a Goodman Games module, but I'll be using the Novus RPG (a game I've been playtesting lately).  It is a fantasy game put out by the author of High Adventure Role Playing or H.A.R.P.  I now have my name in Barbarians of Lemuria and Novus now.  :)

http://www.firehawkgames.com/

Here is my video for Novus that I did the other day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzvCaCO6DFw

Anyway, have a good one out there guys and gals.