dungeons & dragons – Page 2

Saying bye to a long-time student

I had a bit of a sad moment today. A girl who has been doing my Outschool “Critical & Ethical Thinking” class for close to 2 years has unenrolled. A parent wrote to explain that they’re moving to the UK (from Korea) and the time zones don’t work out so well, so she can’t continue the class any more. But the parent was very pleased with the class and thanked me for my work in teaching their daughter. I remember this girl at the beginning was very reluctant to speak, and took a lot of time thinking of answers, but she’s improved enormously and is much more confident and outgoing now.

In another less-than-good thing, one of my Dungeons & Dragons players was exposed to whooping cough. He’s being tested, but said no matter what he wants to skip D&D this Friday to avoid any possibility of infecting people. he said he still wanted to play and asked if we could include him remotely. We’ve done this before with another player, but this one is our mapper, and I feel like interacting with him remotely while describing the adventure locations and having him try to draw them will be too clumsy. So I suggested we postpone the game a fortnight, and convene on 23 February. Everyone agreed to this, so I made an invitation:

Invitation graphic to D&D game

The weather was a bit warm today, but the real problem will come tonight as the forecast is that the temperature won’t drop below 25°C overnight, before heading into a scorcher tomorrow. That’s definitely too warm to be comfortable for sleeping, so we’re blasting the air conditioner to cool things down before bed time and hoping we’ll survive and not wake up too hot.

New content today:

Thinking about the future of sports (and D&D)

I spent most of my time today writing a class plan for this week’s new ethics/critical thinking topic: The Future of Sports. Some example text:

People have been playing sports for thousands of years. The Ancient Greeks held the first Olympic Games, which were originally competitions to see who could run fastest. Over time more events were added, such as discus throwing, wrestling, and chariot races. Chariot racing is an example of an ancient sport where technology is used. In modern times, sports have evolved into many different forms.

• What are some examples of how technology changed the way sports are played?
• How has technology changed the way sports are watched and managed?
• Has technology made sports better or worse? How?

Robotic technology is advancing rapidly. Soon we might have robots capable of playing sports as well as or better than humans.

• Would it make sense to have robots play sports against each other? Would humans watch it?

If robots could play sports as well as humans, we could have robot teams playing against human teams. Or teams with some human and some robot players.

• Could it be good if a human sports league has some robot players?
• What problems might robot athletes cause?

There’s more in between, about tech such as video replays, and modern equipment made of high-tech materials that may give athletes advantages, and so on. This is really much more a critical thinking topic than an ethics topic.

I spent a lot of the day writing this because I didn’t concentrate solidly on it, with a lot of interruptions for minor things. Lunch, walking Scully, goofing off browsing the Internet, pausing to read an Asterix book for the library, etc.

Something I realised today too: remember the new active defence combat system I was working on for D&D? I was thinking that it’d be easier to use the Armour Class as a score to roll under in order to successfully defend. But I realised today that if we use this system, then Armour Class has no other uses… it’s not necessary to record a character’s Armour Class at all. It can be completely replaced with defence scores for Block, Parry, and Evade. So why not turn them into a target to roll equal to or higher than? Then every roll in the game is the same – roll equal to or higher than a target number. So I think I’ll just do that.

(Bob P. commented on my original post that there might also be rolling low for saves, but no, I’m using the old fashioned Basic Rules saving throws, which are equal or beat a target number. So it’s all consistent.)

And switching topics again, for dinner tonight I did a “clear out the fridge of old ingredients”. Half a left-over pack of potato gnocchi, fried up with onion, celery, a chopped zucchini, some mushrooms, and a handful of cherry tomatoes. Add a bit of salt and pepper and garlic, and it turned out to be a delicious meal.

New content today:

Working on a new combat system for D&D

Today while doing my daily Italian practice, I learnt that in Italian you don’t walk in the rain (nella pioggia). The proper expression is that you walk under the rain (sotto la pioggia).

It was a busy day with ethics classes. Thursdays are still my busiest with 5. At lunch I walked with Scully up to the shops, though I had lunch at home and didn’t buy anything other than restocking some medication from the pharmacy. It was very windy and when I got into the area near the shops where there are London plane trees my hay fever went berserk. I didn’t stop sneezing until we walked halfway back home into an area with different types of trees.

This afternoon I worked on a new combat system for my Dungeons & Dragons game. I’ve been thinking for some time about making all combat dice rolls player-facing. This is a term meaning that the players make dice rolls instead of the Dungeon Master. To explain:

Normally in the D&D rules (specifically the Basic/Expert Set rules that we are using, from 1981), during combat the action proceeds as follows:

There is an initiative roll to determine which side acts first, the adventurers (played by the players) or the monsters (played by the DM). (I’m not messing with this bit; I mention it only for completeness.)
Let’s say the heroes go first. Each one chooses a monster to attack and makes a die roll to see if they hit it with their weapon. This die roll uses the armour class of the monster as a target number to roll. Roll equal to or higher than the number and you hit the monster. (Note: this is a variant “ascending armour class” system that differs from the canonical rulebook version in what numbers are used, but the result is statistically identical. Many modern players use this variant as the bookkeeping is somewhat easier.)
Now the monsters get their attack. The DM chooses which hero each monster attacks, and rolls dice for the monsters, trying to hit the target armour class number of the defending heroes. Note that this is essentially identical to what the players do when they are attacking, except now it’s the DM rolling dice.

The system I’m working on is identical in the first two points, but modifies the third one, the monster attack. Instead of the DM rolling dice for the monster attack, I want to change it so that instead it’s the player of the defending hero who rolls to defend themselves against the attack. This way, the players get to roll more dice (which is fun for them) and the DM doesn’t need to roll for the attack. The DM will still roll for damage if the player fails the defence roll.

I ran the numbers, and it works out statistically identical if a defending player needs to roll under their own armour class to defend successfully. I also converted it to a roll-equal-to-or-higher system, but this requires recording a “defence target” number for each hero (which is equal to 22 minus their armour class), so it adds another complication. Overall I prefer the simplicity of just using the armour class, even if it means for attacking requires rolling high while defending requires rolling low.

Now I have the basic system, I want to break up the defence into different types:

Block – you block the attack with a shield.
Parry – you parry the attack with a weapon.
Evade – you evade the attack by moving out of the way, or in such a way that the blow lands harmlessly on your armour.

I’m modifying these ideas from GURPS, with the intention that they will separate into different tactical choices. The base die roll chances will be the same, but may be modified – for example a dwarf character might get a bonus to blocking with a shield, and a penalty to parrying, while elves get the opposite. Some weapons might be better at parrying, but cause less damage (a rapier) or worse at parrying but inflict more damage (a 2-handed sword).

It’s still work in progress at this point, but I think I have the essentials of a workable system. I’ve discussed it with my players and I think we’ll try it in our next session, to see how it works in actual play. And then we’ll decide if it’s more fun than the old system.

New content today:

The Wyrm of Brandonstead, session 3

Friday night I ran the third and final session of our Wyrm of Brandonstead D&D adventure. The first two sessions are here and here for your recapping pleasure.

Return to Brandonstead

After retrieving Sir Brandon’s magical dragon-slaying sword from his tomb, the heroes returned to Brandonstead. Here they reunited with Brigette, who had travelled from Neensford after completing her training. The rest of the group filled her in on their adventures around Brandonstead so far.

Nogge experimented with the warning stones discovered in Sir Brandon’s tomb, to determine if they vibrate only when living creatures cross the perimeter or whenever something is within the area. He determined that anything inside the convex hull of the stones would set them off.

Notgandalf wanted to find someone to construct a grasping device that could hold his solidified eyeball at the end of his 10-foot pole when he uses his magical ring to pop it out of the socket. This would allow him to poke the eye around corners to spy out the terrain, without needing to roll it around unconstrained. Quinn at the Golden Egg Tavern suggested he go see Warwick the town smith.

Warwick and the Fairy

Warwick turned out to be a burly man, but rather simple-minded and superstitious. His workshop was covered with lucky charms: horseshoes, rabbits feet, clovers, which he’d nailed to all the walls. He said he could make Notgandalf an eyeball holder but it would take a couple of days and cost 20 silver coins. But he’d had problems sourcing metal for working, since the dwarves who traded with him hadn’t visited for a few weeks. He also said that a “fairy” has been harassing him, spying through his window at night. The charms are to keep it away, but he’s not sure they’re working. Sometimes the fairy leaves flowers on his windowsill.

The heroes decided to stake out the smithy overnight and see if they could catch the fairy visitor. Nogge wanted some sleep to heal minor wounds, but was interrupted around midnight by the warning stones he’d set up near Warwick’s window. Brigette spotted a human-sized shape in a cloak approaching the smithy, but the figure bolted into the trees when the warning stones went off. Brigette chased and the figure, who stopped and removed her hood to reveal Ingrid, the town’s alchemist who they’d met before. Brigette and Nogge questioned her about why she’s spying on Warwick.

Nogge: “I’m not going to be surprised by anything you say about Warwick.”
Ingrid: “I’m in love with him.”
Nogge: “Okay, I’m a bit surprised.”

Given Warwick’s simple-minded obliviousness, and Ingrid’s nervous shyness, it’s clear any potential romance is doomed to be awkwardly difficult. The heroes suggested Ingrid write Warwick a note rather than spy on him, but she pointed out he can’t read. They said they would talk to Warwick and told Ingrid to go home. The next morning they talked with Warwick and asked what he thought about Ingrid. He said he thought she might be a witch, but the heroes assured him she wasn’t, and suggested he go talk to her.

Seeking the Dragon

That morning the heroes set out to try to find the dragon, now they had Sir Brandon’s sword. Brother Leonardo decided he had chores to do in the village, so stayed behind. The retainers Tarlan (cleric) and Fingers (thief) and a few others followed the heroes.

Following the path north along the river, they caught up to two men also heading north, a short fat one carrying a pitchfork and a tall one carrying a net and with a dead pig slung over his shoulder. The heroes caught up to the men and chatted with them. They were Tad (short, fat, only 4 teeth) and Zach (tall, big Adam’s apple). They explained in simple yokel language that they were going to use the pig to lure the dragon out, then toss the net over it to catch it.

Nogge: “They could make decent bait themselves…”

After some aside discussion, the group decided to let Tad and Zach try their plan, while they followed from a discreet distance and observed. And if the dragon really appeared, they could decide what to do then. After all, the dragon might have some trouble dealing with them.

Drashi: “I don’t think it’s going to have much trouble with a dead pig.”

Tad and Zach stopped at a spot close to the foothills of the mountains and staked the pig out near the eastern river bank, then took cover in the bushes nearby to watch. The heroes stayed about 100 metres south, hidden in the trees. A breeze was blowing south out of the mountains, so they were downwind of the dead pig, which they thought was sensible as the dragon would not smell them. Nogge decided to try to get some sleep while the rest watched throughout the day.

Mid-afternoon there was a commotion across the river, and the watchers spotted four goblins emerging towards the river, chatting, singing, and generally acting half drunk. They had short swords and ill-fitting armour. The group roused Nogge, who again failed to get a solid healing sleep. One of the goblins spotted the pig on the other river bank and they began wading across the river. Garamond loosed an arrow, which found its mark in the lead goblin’s chest. As it slumped dead in the river, the other goblins panicked and fled back into the western forest. Notgandalf tossed a dagger as well, but it splashed into the river.

Tad and Zach confronted the heroes, accusing them of wanting to steal their dragon. They calmed the brothers down and decided to head to the northern side of their stake-out. Once out of view, they resumed their surveillance from a distance. Now they were upwind of the dead pig.

The Dragon

No more events occurred until after sunset. Nogge tried again to get a full sleep, but was roused around midnight when a slithering, slobbering, snuffling sound carried across to them from the western forest. Emerging from the trees was a large crocodile-shaped creature, 10 metres long, low slung and heavy on the ground. Its mouth glowed with a sickly yellow light and tendrils of smoke drifted from its nostrils and slavering jaws.

The Dragon crossed the river and went for the dead pig. Garamond began sneaking up through the cover of the trees. Tad and Zach rushed out brandishing pitchfork and net, but the dragon breathed a cloud of yellowish smoke at them and they began choking. Zach fell where he stood, while Tad raced to the river to wash away the noxious fumes and rinse out his throat.

Garamond charged the dragon with the Sword of Sir Brandon! The magic sword found its mark, puncturing the dragon’s side. Drashi also hit and Notgandalf loosed a magic missile. The dragon clawed at Garamond, raking its talons down his side, and lashed with its jaws at Drashi. Brigette joined combat and Notgandalf hit it with another magic missile. Nogge got a hit in, before Garamond skewered Sir Brandon’s sword through its mouth and up into its skull, vanquishing the fell beast.

Tarlan raced over to provide magical healing to Zach, saving his life. As everyone watched, the dragon’s scales fell off and its body dissolved into pools of acidic slime. Amidst the ooze were not dragon bones, but the skeleton of a dwarf! The heroes collected the bones, and then discussed with Tad and Zach, reinforcing the narrative that they had, in fact, slain a dragon, even without the ability to bring the dragon’s head back to town.

Confirmation and reward

The party, with Tad and Zach, returned to Brandonstead. They went to the Clumsy Fox Tavern to seek out Eric the village Reeve, who was relaxing there. They related their story, including that the dragon dissolved when dead. They suggested that Eric accompany them north the next morning to see the dragon-stained grass by the river to confirm their story. Bentley, owner of the Clumsy Fox, complained that he’d been having trouble with someone stealing his best booze from his cellar.

Next morning, they set out with Eric the Reeve and Lady Hilda, the captain of the village guard. They reached the spot where the dragon had died, seeing the large area of grass burnt by the acidic slime. Eric accepted this as evidence and promised the heroes their reward when they returned to town.

But the party wanted to search for the missing dwarves, and so parted ways with Eric and Hilda, who returned to the village. The party crossed the river and followed the dissolved vegetation of the dragon trail through the forest, coming across a collapsed log cabin near a hillside with a mine entrance. Digging through the ruins of the cabin, they found a mining pick with the name Grimni carved on the blade, and a silver dwarven beard comb. They then found the body of a dwarf, wearing a ring.

Investigating the mine entrance revealed a collapsed cave-in just inside the entrance. Brigette and Drashi used their dwarven skills to shore up the roof and excavate a bit, finding another dwarven body. This one was holding a pick engraved with the name Kedri.

The party decided to follow the dragon tracks further west, leading them to a cave in the base of the mountains, surrounded by blackened and dead vegetation. Investigating, they found the cave to be a simple chamber containing the dragon’s hoard! Around 2000 gold coins, 6 golden rings, most still on severed fingers and hands. Garnet earrings, still attached to a rotting human head. A carved stone skull with red gemstone eyes. And a magnificent cutlass decorated with gems of different shades of blue. The group collected the treasure and began hauling it back to Brandonstead.

Character moments

Brigette – Chasing down Ingrid the alchemist through the midnight forest outside Warwick’s smithy.
Drashi – .
Garamond – Slaying the dragon with Sir Brandon’s magical sword.
Nogge – Playing with warning stones. Suggesting Tad and Zach would make good dragon bait.
Notgandalf – Commissioning an eyeball holder for his 10-foot pole. Two magic missiles on the dragon.

Loot

Ring from dead dwarf – magical.
2000 gold coins
6 golden rings – estimated value 10gp each.
Garnet earrings – estimated value 140gp.
Stone skull with red gemstone eyes – estimated value 250gp.
Blue gem decorated cutlass – magical, Drashi.

This pretty much wraps up this adventure, so I’m planning the next one now! There are a few loose threads, but nothing major, and I think we’ll address those pretty quickly at the start of the next session before launching into a new adventure.

At the game, we had a feast on Greek chicken and lamb with pita bread, because my wife’s work had a lunch function which was – as is always the case at these things – heavily over-catered, and so she brought home two big boxes of food.

Today (Saturday) was hot again, 35°C. Scully had her pre-Christmas groom, and my wife had the groomer cut her har a lot shorter than we normally do, because of the hot weather. I spent some time shuttling them both around in the car to avoid walking around in the heat of the day. But we all went for a walk together in the evening as the sun was setting, which was much nicer.

New content yesterday:

New content today:

Early morning birding

I forgot to mention yesterday: In the morning I usually take Scully on a walk and yesterday I took her on a longer one to avoid doing a big walk in the heat of the middle of the day. We went by the harbour shore, and for the first time in a while I did a bird count using eBird. Normally when I do this around this area, I can accumulate about 10 species observed. But yesterday I managed to find 18 different species, which is notably high. Sometimes I get 14 or 15, but 18 is close to a record for a single observation near my home. I won’t reproduce the list, because you can see it on eBird here. Looking for birds early in the morning definitely helps, as they are harder to find in the heat of the day. And summer means the Pacific koels are around (they migrate north for the winter). There are also channel-billed cuckoos, which have been around lately, but I didn’t happen to see any yesterday.

Today I dropped Scully at doggie daycare in the morning, and then I went to my dentist for a regular cleaning and dental hygiene appointment. The hygienist was pretty happy with my teeth and there were no concerns, so that’s good. Afterwards I celebrated with a roasted vegetable pie for lunch from the nearby pie shop.

Being out without walking Scully, I took the chance to drop into the brand new library that opened up not long ago in a new development nearby. It’s a branch of another library that I’m a member of, but when I showed them my card they said it had expired. I wasn’t on their system at all! I guess this goes to show what the Internet has done. I used to borrow books frequently, but of course that dropped off some years back. And… this isn’t the first time that my card has expired through lack of use! Some years ago I went into the library and tried to borrow some books only to be told my card had expired. I feel kind of embarrassed that this has happened to me twice now!

I’m also getting ready for the next Dungeons & Dragons game, which I’ll be running for my friends on Friday evening. It should be the climax of the current adventure (which started with rumours of the return of a dragon and continued with the party recovering a legendary dragon-slaying sword…), so hopefully lots of drama and fun!

New content today:

The Wyrm of Brandonstead, session 2

On Friday night I ran the second session of the Wyrm of Brandonstead D&D adventure with my friends. I’ll paste the session log in here, but a few other things first.

On Friday I had a busy day, with 4 ethics classes. I had a 4-hour break in between after the first morning class, but I needed to use this time to travel out to Macquarie University to a medical clinic there to get a nerve conduction scan done. I’ve had some loss of sensation in my left leg for several years, just a very slight numbness, like 80-90% normal sensation, just enough to be noticeably not normal. I had some scans done years ago when I first noticed it, but nothing conclusive came up. It doesn’t really bother me, but recently I noticed the numbness spreading, and so my doctor referred me to back to the neurologist, who ordered another set of scans.

For this one, they place electrodes on the skin of the leg, and then use an electric probe to send small currents through the nerves. It’s not painful but it causes a jolting sensation and the leg muscles twitch quite strongly. After doing a few of those, there’s a needle test, where they stick a needle into the various leg muscles and again pulse electric current through them to measure the conduction of the nerves. This is all to measure if the nerves are conducting electric signals at the normal strength or not. On Monday I also have an MRI scan scheduled to check if there’s some sort of pinching of the nerves at the base of the spine.

At the university I also found this beautiful flame tree:

Anyway, that done I returned home and immediately went out to the doggy daycare place to pick up Scully, who I’d dropped off earlier, first thing in the morning. Then I had three more ethics classes, and that led right up to the D&D evening. So it was a pretty full day. There were six players who had said they’d show up for D&D, but one called in sick with a cold, and another said he was very tired so elected not to drive over, but he did join in by telepresence. I set up my wife’s laptop on the table so he could join in!

We added the gloves for amusement.

Today I did a 5k run in the morning, which was tough because it was close to 100% humidity. Then I spend time writing up the adventure log from last night. In the middle of the day my wife and I went for a drive out to the beach and the pie shop there for lunch, then dropped in on her mother for a visit on the way back. While near the beach, we passed a park where some people were playing cricket. And since everyone knows that a cricket field needs a picket fence around it, with a gate so the players can get in and out, they had set up a picket fence gate:

This evening we walked up the street, intending to get dinner at a cheap Asian place, but they didn’t have any unreserved tables available. So we wandered up the main street looking for somewhere else to eat. The trouble is Saturday night is very popular and busy, so most places didn’t have tables free. We finally found a table at a restaurant which is pretty fancy and expensive. We like this place, but don’t go there often because of the expense, but we decided to just splurge for no particular reason.

With that out of the way, here’s the log of last night’s D&D session:

Regathering

As the party contemplated what to do, footsteps and the familiar voice of Brother Leonardo approached. He had completed his penance for overly beseeching his god and travelled to Brandonstead to seek out the rest of the group. There, the innkeeper Bentley had told Leonardo that the group had set out for Sir Brandon’s tomb this morning. Leonardo followed their footsteps and found the retainers waiting outside the tomb. They told him to go in and turn right and he might find the rest of the party.

Rats!

The party decided messing with the antlered clay statue and its encircling stones was too risky and explored the passage to the west. Here they found a 4-foot deep circular pool of water, scummed with algae and slime, but beneath it a faint glitter of gold from the bottom. This also struck them as risky, so they retreated back to the main corridor and advanced west towards the chittering sound.

A long corridor led west and turned south into a room where they found 8 giant rats, the size of large dogs, squabbling over half-rotten food that had spilled from large broken clay amphorae. The amphorae looked like they’d been tipped over and smashed on the stone floor.

Drashi tossed a ration of food over the rats towards the far opening in the southern wall, causing them to race over and fight over the fresher food. Garamond rigged his lantern full of oil and threw it hard at the rats, attempting to spread oil over them and set them on fire, but his throw was poor and the lantern smashed short of the its target, creating a pool of fire between the heroes and the rats. The party took this chance to move into the eastern exit while the rats were busy and partly blocked by fire.

In the eastern room they found nine amphorae, intact and standing upright, with an odour of dust and lavender. Someone knocked one over and it smashed on the floor, spilling cloudy old lavender oil all over the floor. Garamond and Nogge worked together to carry an amphora into the rat room and smashed it on the floor, creating a large pool of fire. Three of the rats died in the conflagration, screeching horribly, while the remaining five scurried away to the south.

Undead!

With the way blocked by fire, the party retreated back to the earlier oom the the antlered statue. Here Drashi tried breaching the circle of small black stones to approach the statue, intending to toss a coin into the offering bowls. But as he stepped into the circle of stones, they began jumping and clattering on the floor, making a loud sound. Nogge collected the stones, and they quietened down as they came together. Drashi tossed a gold coin into an offering bowl, but nothing happened.

They went into the room with the slimy pool of water and Nogge tossed in one of the black stones. Then they noticed that as someone stepped between Nogge and the pool, the stones began rattling in Nogge’s hands. They figured if someone was between the stones they would jostle and make noise.

They were interrupted by an approaching sound, clanking and the scraping of metal on stone. Attracted to the noise they’d been making was a large skeleton, 7 feet tall, wearing rusty armour and a silver death mask with a bushy moustache on it. The skeleton wielded a large two-handed sword. The heroes attacked, with Notgandalf striking with another well-aimed thrown dagger. After a a few rounds of fighting, they prevailed over the skeleton and Nogge claimed the two-handed sword.

Now they decided they had to retrieve the one in the pool in order to make the best use of the stones. But they also realised that in the chaos, the goblins they had captured had snuck away and fled, nowhere to be seen.

Nogge: “Can I carry the others stones around the pool and see when they vibrate, to determine if there’s anything alive in the pool?”
DM: “We’re just one step away from you wanting to do computed tomography on the pool”.

Nogge waded into the pool and got covered in green slime, which began eating away at his armour and skin. He jumped out of the pool and grabbed a torch from Tarlan the cleric, and burnt the slime off, taking a bit of damage from the fire himself. Nogge then waded back into the pool with bare feet, searching the bottom with his feet to find the black stone. He also found a human skeleton, which had two gold teeth in its skull, and an ornate silver dagger. Notgandalf took the dagger to use.

The party went back to the rat room. The lavender oil fire had died out, but the remaining five rats had returned to get more of the food. The group decided to just attack and kill the rats the old-fashioned way this time, making swift work of them with weapons.

But the noise appeared to have attracted more attention! Maniacal laughter approached from the south. Quickly, the heroes hatched a plan: spill another amphora of lavender oil across the southern entrance and set it on fire, to prevent whatever it was from approaching them. Fire set, the party girded themselves and waited to see what new foe appeared. A floating skull with big yellow eyes swivelling in its sockets approached, flying right over the slick of fire! It cackled as it approached. Notgandalf wasted no time and cast Magic Missile at it. Nogge then swung his new two-handed sword at the skull, cleaving it in twain, and revealing the sword to be magically empowered.

The ghost!

The next room to the south was an old armoury, with shattered weapons and shields strewn about, covered in thick spider webs. Notgandalf cast Detect Magic to see if any of the equipment was magical. Finding none, he then ran back to the room with the antlered statue to see if there was any magic there. He found a small golden amulet, hidden behind one of the offering bowls, which had a folded up piece of paper inside, inscribed with a Protection from Evil spell.

After he returned, the group headed east into a lounge area with carved stone armchairs and a table with an empty bronze pitcher on it. The next room to the east held nine 5-foot tall stone statues of warriors, each armed with a real wooden, metal-tipped spear. While deciding what to do, a ghostly apparition of a bearded priest appeared and drifted towards them! It screamed that the party was trespassing on hallowed ground and ordered one of the stone statues to attack. The statue charged at Nogge, who took a spear hit, before the statue froze again.

Severely wounded and not willing to risk fighting all of the statues, Nogge suggested a retreat. The party fell back, but Garamond and Notgandalf loosed Magic Missiles at the ghost. They hit it with three Missiles, which caused the ghost to dissipate.

Safe for now, but wounded and out of Leonardo’s healing spells, the party decided to retreat and return to Brandonstead for a day of rest.

The upper chapel

After resting for a full day to recover and make use of Leonardo’s healing spells, the party felt strong enough to return to Sir Brandon’s barrow.

First they tried exploring the western passage from the entry chamber on the upper level, which they had ignored until now. The first room contained four 8-foot tall statues of knights in different poses, with words carved on the plinths: “Valour” gripping sword and shield; “Piety” praying, with a staff resting on one arm; “Wisdom” reading a book; “Duty” bent over carrying a load.

This led to another chamber west, a chapel with stone pews facing a stone statue of St Arthur, patron of hunters. Water dripped from a root-penetrated hole in the ceiling, onto the states face, which was partly covered in mould. Brother Leonardo decided to clean the mould off with his robes, which released as cloud of spires that he managed to avoid. After cleaning the statue to look respectable again, Leonardo felt blessed by the good grace of St Arthur.

The crypts

Returning to the lower level, the party returned to the armoury room and headed south, finding a priest’s work room with a desk, and a footlocker full of rocks. One the desk was a magnificent illuminated book with velum pages, titled Lives of the Saints. Leonardo said it told the stories of several of the local saints venerated in the region. In the desk drawers were a small hammer, chisel, quills, and dried bottles of ink.

A room to the east was a crypt, containing a sarcophagus, the lid carved to show a human with a long beard. Next to the sarcophagus was a small table with three dusty bottles, containing greenish, purple, and yellowish liquids respectively. They took these then opened the sarcophagus, revealing a headless skeleton which attacked with a great silver-bladed axe. The heroes defeated the skeleton and Drashi claimed the axe.

Nogge: “Can I put one of the black stones on either side of a sarcophagus to see if theres anything alive inside?”

The next room east was another crypt, with the sarcophagus lid broken on the floor. Inside was the desiccated corpse of the priest, with platinum coins over the eyes. It held a carved stone tablet in its crossed arms, which Leonardo determined was a clerical spell of Bless.

The next room along was a third crypt, this one with the sarcophagus lid shattered on the floor, as if pushed violently off from inside. The sarcophagus was empty except for rotting shrouds exuding a musty smell.

From here a passage headed north to the room of the nine stone statues again. Brother Leonardo used the Blessing spell from the stone tablet on everyone, before they tried prodding the statue carefully in case they animated. But they remained solid, and they tipped them over to smash them on the floor.

Progressing east they found an antechamber with great stone double doors leading south, shut and blocked by a statue of a noble woman wearing a crown, holding a stone sword out horizontally in front of her. Brother Leonardo decided to kneel beneath the sword. He heard a woman’s voice in his head: “What makes a true knight?” Leonardo answered with the inscriptions from the statues in the upper level: “Valour, piety, wisdom, duty”. The statue moved slightly to dub Leonardo on the shoulder with the sword, and the double doors slowly swung open.

Revealed inside was the crypt of Sir Brandon. His sarcophagus was in a small ship, the lid carved in Brandon’s likeness. The group removed the lid carefully, finding Sir Brandon’s body resting peacefully within, clad in plate armour, with a shield, magnificent sword, and jewelled chalice.

The group took these items before letting Sir Brandon be, reasoning that they had need of dragon-slaying gear in their present adventure. On the way out of the barrow they also grabbed the coins and five small rubies from the offering bowls in the antlered state room.

Character moments

Brother Leonardo – Cleaning the statue of St Arthur and getting spore clouded in his face. Kneeling before the sword-wielding queen statue.
Drashi – Tossing rations to giant rats. Breaching the circle of rattling stones to toss a coin into the offering bowls.
Garamond – Making a molotov cocktail out of an oil lantern. Failing to hit rats with it and creating a flaming pool in front of them.
Nogge – Wading into the slimy pool and immediately getting covered in green slime. Obsessing over magical rattling stones. Cleaving the floating skull in twain.
Notgandalf – Hitting with daggers again! Casting Detect Magic and then running back through the tomb alone to check other rooms.

Loot

10 small black “warning” stones – magical, Nogge
Two-handed Sword of Sir Alfred – magical +1 sword, Nogge
2 gold teeth – estimated value 20gp
Ornate silver dagger – Notgandalf using
Golden amulet – value: ?
Scroll: Protection from Evil – Notgandalf
Illuminated book: Lives of the Saints: value: ?
Silver Axe of Sir Wyllt – Drashi
Stone tablet: Bless scroll – used
2 platinum coins
Sword of Sir Brandon – magical, Garamond
Plate mail of Sir Brandon – Garamond
45sp and 20 gp – from offering bowls
5 small rubies – from offering bowls

New content today:

Referendum and D&D

A quick one tonight because I’m home late after running Dungeons & Dragons up at the local science toy shop this evening. I ran a one-shot adventure using a puzzle dungeon themed around eyesight, and had a total of four players, with a teenage brother and sister and their mother playing, along with the guy who was in the game last time I DMed there. They had a blast figuring out the clues and working out clever ways to defeat the monsters and avoid the dangers.

The other main thing today was gong to vote in the referendum on the proposal to amend the Australian Constitution to establish an indigenous committee to advise Parliament on matters of importance to indigenous Australians. Unfortunately the proposal has been soundly defeated. But at least voting was east – we walked up to the nearest polling station and there was literally no queue at all. We were in and out in about 3 minutes. But alas that polling station had no democracy sausage barbecue going, so I didn’t get my sausage for voting.

New content today:

Serpent Kings one-shot at the science shop

This morning I did another 5k run. It felt tougher than yesterday, since the day was warming up soon after sunrise. The city centre reached 31.6°C, and outer suburbs up to 34°C. It’s supposed to be even hotter tomorrow.

After that I picked up the groceries that I should have picked up yesterday, if not for the system failure at the supermarket.

Then I spent some time in the afternoon preparing for tonight’s Dungeons & Dragons game, which I was running at the science toy shop at the local shopping area. I printed out a series of maps showing successive rooms of the Tomb of the Serpent Kings adventure, so the players could see the shapes and sizes of the rooms and corridors.

But I wanted to encourage them to make a map, as I would be taking away the rooms after they left them. I thought there would be kids playing the game, but it turned out that two of their regular kid players were on vacation this week, so the only two players we had were a university aged guy and the regular DM, who is a woman about late 20s. Oh well, I figured it would still be fun, so I handed out the character sheets and we started playing. The guy took a thief and the woman a fighter. I had a magic-user and a cleric accompany them as NPCs, and also said there were a few slightly younger hangers-on, who were minding their pony outside the dungeon entrance (who I could call in as backups in case anyone died).

As they progressed through the Tomb they dealt with the traps and initial monsters in clever ways. People came into the shop to browse around and a few people watched us plating the game for a few minutes before moving on. At one point a young girl about 9 years old, accompanied by her father, stopped to watch us play for several minutes. We said the girl could join in, but the father said they were going somewhere soon.

A bit later she and her father came back. She continued watching us play, obviously very interested. The players found a hole in the floor leading to a room below. They dropped a flaming torch in and saw the floor below wasn’t too far down, so decided to tie a rope around a statue in the upper room and lower the end down so they could climb down (and importantly back up later). I said, “As you lower the rope, the torch sets the lower end on fire, and the fire races up and burns the rope.” And the girl blurted out, “I knew that was going to happen!”

At this point we invited her to sit down and join in again, and she did. I gave her a wizard character sheet, and the DM woman gave her some advice on the basics and encouraged her to help them decide what to do. The girl (her name was Alice) ended up playing with us for maybe 20-30 minutes before her parents came back to take her away again. It turned out the father also knew a bit about D&D, and was telling Alice maybe they could get the rulebooks and play together. This was probably the best part of the night, with Alice joining in and contributing to the game.

I shortened the overall adventure so they could reach and deal with the basilisk in one session, so we skipped a lot of the later rooms. We finished up about 9:40pm, after starting at 6. Overall it was really good, and the players were careful and clever enough that nobody died, despite most of the characters being wounded at various points. A great adventure and night!

New content today:

Busy week, Saturday

Well, not as busy as during the work-week, but I still did a few things. After breakfast I did a 5k run. First run in 8 days.

After showering and also cleaning the bathroom, I went on a walk with my wife to a kitchen supplies shop to get a new saucepan and a couple of frying pans to replace old ones that didn’t work with our new induction cooker. I took some time going through the store to choose ones, because they have quite a range. We had a small frying pan, 16cm, diameter, the right size for making just a couple of fried eggs which we used a lot – but it was aluminium. So I wanted one that size that would work on our new cooker. They didn’t have one exactly that size, but there was a slightly smaller one at 14cm, so I got that.

When we got home we tested all the new cookware to make sure it worked… and the small frying pan didn’t, despite the labelling saying that it was suitable for induction cookers. It was quite a walk there and back, so I decided to drive over again to exchange the pan for another one. But that was the only small pan they had – the next size up was 20cm. But I got one of those instead, and it worked fine when I got home. I guess the fried eggs will spread out a bit more, but it should be fine.

This afternoon I finally got to finishing off that Darths & Droids strip that I really wanted to do on Thursday. I’ll need to do another one tomorrow to catch up a bit.

And this evening I went up to the science toy shop where they do Dungeons & Dragons events on Saturday nights, to meet up with the organiser and have a chat about the possibility of me hosting a game there some time. It was a youngish woman and she was setting up a table with a battle map when I arrived. I was a little worried that she would want to run strictly 5th Edition rules, which is not really what I want to do, so I mentioned early on that I preferred to run a more rules-light style of game, with more roleplaying and less dice rolling. She said she agreed that 5e was too rules-heavy, and sounded happy for me to run something a lot lighter. I said if I was running a game for new kids, I’d just hand them a character sheet each, say they’re at the entrance of a cave dungeon, and say, “What do you do?” – and she said that sounded great! So that was cool. She said they basically attracted enough people, mostly kids, to run one table, and it would be good if I could take over once every few weeks to give her a week off.

So it all sounds pretty good! I won’t have time to do it next Saturday, but maybe in two weeks.

Tonight I used the new large saucepan to cook pasta on the induction cooker, and made a tomato mushroom sauce in a smaller pot. It took a bit of juggling with the heat settings, but I found the right ones with a little trial and error, and overall it was pretty fun and easy. So yeah, it’s good so far!

New content today:

The Wyrm of Brandonstead, session 1

Not much to report about today, so I’ll take the chance to post the log of last week’s Dungeons & Dragons session, which I finished typing up the other day.

Before that, I’ll mention that my wife and I did our tax returns today, for the 2022-2023 financial year. Last year we didn’t do them until October, so we’re nice and early this year. It’s actually a real breeze now that the Australian Tax Office has streamlined things with their online lodgement system as of two or three years ago.

Now, D&D. This is the first session of a new adventure, which I’m calling The Wyrm of Brandonstead. It follows directly from the last session of Tomb of the Serpent Kings.

Neensford

Brigette, Drashi, Garamond, Leonardo, Nogge, and Notgandalf had collected enough gold in the last outing to pay for training from their local mentors, so spent a few weeks doing this. During this time, a travelling merchant passed through town, on his way south from the village of Brandonstead. He relayed news about mysterious attacks in livestock taking place there, which rumours put down to either goblin raids or perhaps some sort of monster come down to forage from the northern mountains. The Reeve of Brandonstead has offered a reward to any brave souls who can find out what is happening and put a stop to it.

Brandonstead lies three days travel north along the river that runs through Neensford, nestled near the foothills of the mountains, which mark the end of civilised lands and the beginning of untamed wilderness. Brigette, Leonardo, and Ratter were still busy with training, so Drashi, Garamond, Nogge, and Notgandalf decided to head north to check things out, leaving the others to follow later. They resupplied with provisions, camping supplies, and consumables like torches, oil, and arrows before setting out.

The now seasoned party took with them a group of retainers for help with things such as setting up camp, standing watch, guarding supplies while the heroes venture into dungeons, and perhaps tagging along to hold torches and so on. This group of keen young followers was made up of:

Tarlan, a male cleric.
Kenrick, a male fighter.
Oletha, a female fighter.
Narelle, a female magic-user.
Ledwyle, a male thief.
Gazzuk, a male dwarf.
Woodlow, a male halfling.

The party agreed to pay Tarlan and Ledwyle 5sp a day, and the others 2sp a day.

Brandonstead

The group arrived at Brandonstead after three days of eventless travel north along the river. Brandonstead is a tight cluster of about 50 old stone cottages with thatched roofs, plus two double-storey wood and plaster inns, encircled by an ancient stone wall about the height of a person. The only opening faces the road south. There is no gate, but a scrawny young guardsman leaning on a spear greeted the travellers at the gap. He was excited to meet a band of adventurers and recommended they go to the Clumsy Fox Tavern to find the village Reeve.

As they entered the Clumsy Fox, the proprietor Bentley greeted them, a jovial halfling with eyeglasses and a greying, balding head. The party ordered drinks and inquired after the Reeve. Bentley pointed them at a table where a portly mutton-chopped man was speaking with a statuesque redheaded woman in chainmail armour. They introduced themselves as Eric the village Reeve, and Hilda, captain of the town guard. Eric told them more about the attacks on the livestock.

Several sheep had been brutally killed in the past few weeks, blood and gore scattered around, mostly in the pastures just north of the village, on the edge of the forest. Not only that, but also the last regular supply wagon from Neensford was overdue by about a week. Eric said that some villagers have been whispering that it might be a dragon responsible. Whatever the truth, he offered the party 200gp if they could find who was responsible and put a stop to it, returning either heads of goblin raiders or evidence of slaying whatever monster it turned out to be. He recommended they go talk to George, the boar hunter, as he claims to have seen a beast attacking sheep.

Father William

The party went to George’s hut and knocked, but nobody was home. As they were about to leave, an old man with a long grey beard, wearing clerical vestments, came past and asked if they were looking for George. This was Father William, the village priest, who worshipped Boccob, the god of magic. He talked at length in a bit of a rant about all the problems of the village. He related the tale of Sir Brandon, who 200 years ago slew a dragon in these parts. The local king knighted him and his followers, and the village adopted Brandon’s name. Brandon and his associates were buried in a tomb in the forest north of the village.

Father William then went on a rant about Ingrid, the village alchemist, who he accused of being a witch, in league with a coven lurking in the forest, He was sure that these witches had something to do with cursing the village and killing the sheep. He also ranted about the “faeries” who lived in the forest, probably consorting with the witches. Nogge quietly suggested the “faeries” were probably just village teenagers having romantic trysts.

The Golden Egg Tavern

The party decided to check out the other inn in town, the Golden Egg Tavern. Here they met Quinn, the owner. He was a thin man with a white beard, very friendly, but suspicious of Bentley. He claimed that Bentley was stealing his best liquor from the cellar at night. He showed them his earth-walled cellar. Notgandalf cast Detect Magic to search for any magical entrances or hiding places, but found none. Quinn offered them 20gp if they could catch Bentley red-handed.

Quinn also mentioned a group of three dwarf brothers who came into town occasionally for supplies and to trade metals from their mine up north at the foothills of the mountains. But they haven’t been to town for over a week now, which is unusual.

Witches

Being mid-afternoon, the party decided to visit Ingrid the alchemist first. Ingrid turned out to be a scrawny and shy young woman who offered to sell them wolfsbane. “Good for repelling wolves!”

The party asked about Father William’s assertion of a witch coven in the woods. Ingrid laughed and said there is indeed a “witch” in the woods, but Vivian is just a harmless old lady whom she visits occasionally for afternoon tea and to make sure she’s doing okay. Ingrid also says that Vivian has lived her for decades and might have some useful information about fighting the dragon.

The party travelled a mile or so east into the forest and found Vivian’s clearing. It was full of intricately detailed topiary shrubs, pruned into the shapes of people and woodland animals. Approaching the hut in the middle, they passed by a pond. A group of nixies poked their heads out of the water and demanded they toss their weapons into the water, “otherwise the witch will turn you into shrubberies!” Notgandalf tossed in a spare dagger to appease them, and then Vivian emerged from her hut and shooed the nixies away, inviting the adventurers in for some tea.

Vivian looked like a witch, with frizzy grey hair and bulging eye, dressed in an old-fashioned frilly dress. She served tea in her kitchen-lounge, which was decorated with overstuffed, quilted furniture and had a rack of gardening tools on the wall. She talked enthusiastically about her topiaries and told them not to mind the nixies.

Asked about the monster attacks and any other strange goings on, Vivian said it was unusual the dwarves hadn’t been to town for a while. She said she likes the oldest brother, Grimni, and the other brothers are named Brol and Kedri. She thought the attacks could be a dragon, and that the heroes might be able to use the sap of a grove of unusual trees in the western woods across the river, which had a powerful soporific effect. But the trees were guarded by fae fauns and the party should be wary of them.

As they left, Vivian asked if they’d lost anything to the nixies. She called them off and Notgandalf waded into the pond to retrieve his dagger, and also found a plain sword in a jewelled scabbard, which Vivian let him keep.

George the hunter

Returning to the village, the party revisited George’s house, where he was at home. George had wild red hair and beard, and was missing his left arm. He said he was out hunting wild boar. A few days ago he was returning to the village when he spotted the dragon attacking some sheep. A scaly black monster the size of a couple of horses, squat to the ground on splayed legs, drooling horrible spittle everywhere. He intervened and the dragon turned on him, He shoved his arm down its throat to avoid it taking his head, and it bit off his arm. He said the caustic spittle somehow stopped it bleeding, and Ingrid helped him with some healing herbs. He tried hitting the beast but his weapons bounced off tough scales on its back and it slithered away back into the northern forest. He suspects it must have a lair up near the mountains.

The Golden Egg, part 2

With the sun going down, the party returned to the Golden Egg. With Quinn’s permission, they decided to stake out the cellar, taking turns to keep watch, with the retainers standing guard on the ground floor above. In the middle of the night, during Garamond’s watch, the cellar door at the top of the stairs clicked open and soft footsteps moved down. Garamond could not see anything in the dark with infravision, and roused Drashi, who also didn’t see anything. They both saw a flask of liquor lifting up into the air and tipping over, with a sound of drinking. Drashi decided to launch a tackle at the invisible thief. He crashed into and grabbed the thief, who became visible, a leprechaun!

The leprechaun begged to be freed, and said his name was Naggeneen. He offered his pot of gold for his freedom. The party had the retainers roused Quinn to come down, who was surprised to see the booze thief was a leprechaun and not his rival innkeeper Bentley. Quinn negotiated with Naggeneen, saying he’d free the leprechaun if he could have the pot of gold and Naggeneen agreed to go steal liquir from Bentley’s inn instead. Naggeneen agreed, then laughed when Drashi let him go, saying his pot of gold was hidden in the ruined castle a few miles north of Brandonstead, and the castle was now overrun with goblins! He said, “Good luck!” and vanished.

Quinn agreed to pay the heroes the 20gp he had offered them to solve his problem. He also said that if they happened to visit the ruined castle, he would gladly give them a tenth of anything in what was now his pot of gold.

Sir Brandon’s Tomb

The next morning, they sought Father William at the church of Boccob, to get directions to Sir Brandon’s Tomb. A statue of Sir Brandon stood behind the small church building. Father William mentioned that Brandon had been buried with his magical dragon-slaying sword, and that he had sent his initiate, Brother Dirk, to the tomb yesterday to see if he could retrieve the sword, but Dirk had not returned.

Armed with directions to Sir Brandon’s Tomb, the party followed the east bank of the river north towards the mountains before cutting inland after about three miles towards a visible hillock among the trees. Here they found Brandon’s tomb, accessed by a white stone slab set into the hillside as a door. A faded mural was painted on the door, showing a conquering knight. The earth around the door was disturbed, showing recent passage of someone through it. The party decided to offer the cleric Tarlan hazard pay to accompany them inside, while the other retainers stood guard outside.

The five of them opened the door and entered a chamber decorated with wall mosaics. The first depicted Brandon and three other figures: a shaggy giant of a man with a greatsword, a wizened old priest, and a wild-eyed man with an axe. The second mural showed Brandon skewering a great black dragon with his sword through its mouth and up into its head. The third showed Brandon and his men being knighted by a queen.

Footprints in the earthen floor revealed a trail leading to a passage in the west, then back towards another opening in the east, from where the party could hear sounds clattering and hushed voices. Tarlan said he recognised goblin language, and it sounded like they were arguing. The group sneaked to the eastern opening with torches held back. They spotted four goblins squabbling and poking around in various crypt alcoves around the room. Notgandalf used the element of surprise to cast a Magic Missile at one, knocking it dead! Garamond loosed a brace of arrows, but both missed their targets. Reacting, the goblins immediately surrendered and begged for their lives. The party called the attack off.

With Tarlan interpreting, the goblins said they had been looking for a new hideout, but a number of them had been lost downstairs, and now they were just looking for loot before fleeing. The goblins warned the party not to move a heavy stone which they had used to block one of the crypt alcoves, saying there was a slimy monster behind it. They also wanted to accompany the party until they could get out safely.

Lower level

The party, with Tarlan and the goblins, took a northward passage out of the crypt room. Stairs led down and turned west, opening into a long corridor decorated with carvings of trees and woodland animals. At the foot of the stairs were the bodies of three goblins, torn to shreds and splattered all over the floor and lower walls. The goblins shrieked in fear.

A chittering noise could be heard form the long corridor to the west. The party decided to explore a passage to the south first, finding a room with a circular dais supporting a 3-foot tall nude clay statue of a may with antlers and two offering bowls, in which coins glinted. Making a circle on the floor around the dais were ten equispaced black stones. Another passageway led west.

The party considered their options…

Loot

20 gold coins – from Quinn for catching his booze thief.

Game trivia: Only 5 die rolls in 4 hours of play!

New content today: