toyo's doghouse

The Slaying Stone Session 2 & 3

Double feature today because I didn't want to edit Session 2's. Forgive me for the wall of text on the wall of text website.

Session 2

The party started off with a whole lot of free time, and decided to spend their time investigating the slums of the city to see what they can learn there. There they met a group of kobolds defending their home turf, learned a bit about the political misfortune of kobolds under a hobgoblin military occupation, and met Speelock, a kobold mage who wanted to oversee the Slaying Stone ritual being performed. (The party, for some reason, did not allow this to happen.) This could've been a fight, but smooth talking from the bard and earth priest (and making it clear their allegiances are not with Hu-Jat) made the kobolds willing to ask a favor from the party - find Beyard, a member of their community who likes to wander. The party gently bribes them with goblin explosives they stole from the library, and informs them of the Gnomes with a bag of pixie dust.

From there, the party continued stalling for time until they could stake out the market - they decided to check out the stables, where they learned about Hu-Jat's good friend Shredder, a terrifying drake, and the earth priest pretended to be a horse. The bard continued their ruse of being a goblin noble from the Capitol. The earth priest horse broke free and has given an innocent stablehand nightmares for the forseeable future.

As night fell, the party kept an eye on the gnomes, trailing them to the library and swiftly dispatching them the same way as the last. The bard ran to pull a group of guards from the market and while they were too late to the party, the goblin explosivist (Finy) that sleeps in the library got to see all of his loyal employees get whacked by a giant hammer. The guards are at attention and now the party is newly notable in the city of Gorizzbad, for better or worse.

Library Combat

Session 3

In the following session, the party went to bed in the market and woke up as the scurry of business awoke around them. They spoke to Heras, who attempted to get information and learned that Hu-jat believes the kobolds are behind the recent chaos in town. They also spoke to Camay, who sold the party a scroll of Pry Thoughts and made it clear she believes they are connected to the recent trouble in town. From there, the party went off to investigate the inn further and get to the bottom of the Gnome troubles.

After some consideration for careful approaches, the party cowabunga'd into the empty basement and finds themselves falling into and up out of a well, surrounded by a gnome warcamp. The party alpha strikes their slammers and jester, but the two cursed cottages spawning little clinger gnomes provided a bit of trouble to the party. After gathering their bounty, the party finds a contract laid out on their feast table - Signed by a witch named Drusus, the gnomes agreed to find the Slaying Stone in Gorrizbad in exchange for a home in the Olukral Wood to the east. With Faerie's magic closing off the well, the party has no choice but to continue onwards towards a cottage in the distance. Gnome Camp Combat

With the choice between Lilypad Lake and the Dryad Wood, the party picks the wood due to the limited swimming abilities of the party. The party stumbles into a clearing where a collection of dryads and pixies are playing a song and dancing around a kobold tied to a beautiful tree. The bruiser has a very short attempt at diplomacy before setting off a fight, where the dryads and pixies are cut down via the application of Pixie Dust explosives. The party frees the kobold, who is indeed the Beyard that got lost, and finds an Enchanted Satchel left behind by a long lost traveller. Grove Combat

Reflections

In session 3, I think the party did a lot of good Sandbox Gaming. Really enjoyed giving them the reins and letting them find their own information and getting involved with the various factions of the town. They felt a little lost about it, especially when I got picky about how time was functioning, but they learned a lot and got closer to the truth of the situation across town. I have some conflicting thoughts on how I ran the kobolds confrontation; I think I'm a liiiiiiitle too hesitant to throw fights at the players, especially with the non-lethal default that Tactiquest runs with. Fights are fun! But I'm also really enjoying the roleplay and want to honor the world in my mind, and those kobolds didn't really want to get in a fight.

In session 4, I am reminded that I want to get better at roleplaying. Camay Cotton is not quite an antagonist but not quite a protagonist. Hopefully I'm able to tie her in as like, relevant to how Hu-jat and the city views our heroes. Faerie is very fun, a bit railroad-y but it's basically a magic dungeon. If this was a longer game I'd give them more choices but I did say this would be like, 5 sessions long...

Tactiquest combat is so nice. I love not rolling dice, the enemies are really interesting, I don't know what the classes do but I don't need to because features are like, a sentence long max. I had a brief moment where a gnome was high up on a cliff and someone below the clfif wanted to shove him back, and I was like "well, that doesn't make sense in the fiction" and the response was "but the rules don't say that". If the player wasn't literally the author of the game I might've pushed back harder, but really, it did not matter in the moment. That gnome was dead as hell soon anyways. In the future I might ask for something like "What does that look like?" so I can see the logic in their mind, rather than shutting it down. Also I think alpha striking enemies is a little TOO strong but I can fix that with encounter design - put mooks or Wall type enemies up front, use terrain better, maybe push the starting position of enemies far enough away that fast classes like Scoundrel can reach but slow people would have to Hurry.

Prep

Also I made this cute frog map and the other PC's didn't choose it. So look at my frogs. Lake Combat

#playreport