Game log for 17 April 2016

Dramatis personae

Anêr, swashbuckler 

Yémos, cleric

Mayhem, widdwe bawbawian 

Caleb, wizard

Kim, thief

Ash, squire

Quid occurrit, nullo pugnando

Here was a session with no fighting.

Mostly, the gang went down a river and into a swamp over the span of a week. On the second morning on the river, one of the logs on the raft came loose from its ropes, sprung up, and knocked Villûdē, Caleb, Kim, and Yémos into the water. Villûdē was the only one who could swim, so she saved the others, one-by-one, and they heard the log cackle as it floated away. Then they fixed their raft, and lost a little ground.

Three days later, now in the swamp, Caleb, Ash, and Ash's horse fell into a sinkhole when they stopped to make camp. Ash knocked himself out as he fell, so Caleb cast Levitate and brought everyone to the top, Ash needed a lot of healing.

The next day (12 Skraptôs), the gang reached the peat farm. There, they met Ajurêš, an older man with a goatee, who didn't answer too many questions. When Caleb brought up the ibathene, Ajurêš and his hobbit with a cleft lip sidekick walked away. Villûdē told Caleb that they were all nuts for wanting to find the ibathene, and said, "If we get anywhere near it, we're leaving." Nobody argued.

That night, they camped not far from the farm and stocked up on food. Kim and Caleb talked through their path and looked at the map, and chose to move towards a big wooded island in the middle of the swamp.

Two days later, three folks covered in mud hailed them. They were tribesmen of the Spider Tooth Clan. Well, erstwhile tribesmen; the tribe had kicked them out for not sharing their hunting catch of frogs. They thought they should have all the frogs after getting hurt falling out of a tree while hunting for frogs.

Yémos healed them, and they thanked him. They told the gang that it was now in the hunting ground of the ibathene, and the island was the home of a clutch of spirit nagas. However, the heroes went towards the island, and made camp on its edge.

Res aliae 

GM's mistake: I forgot to apply the -5 to Swimming rolls for lifesaving, so this was much easier than it should have been. Oddly, I did apply the difference in ST scores. Oops on what I would have been a good challenge. It was the Weirdness Magnet bother for the session; I'm putting that into my planning now.

The sinkhole, however, was random. How I handle disasters is I roll 3d6 twice. On a 5 or less on either roll is a disaster, which happens at a random time of travel (d12+6 for the hour) or when it makes sense. In this case, it was when they had gotten off the raft to make camp, because how can you have a sinkhole while on a raft?

Why two rolls? DF16 has some disasters happen more often in bad weather, so I make a second roll for those so I can apply a modifier to let that happen. I use the modifiers to Survival and Tracking on page 30 as modifiers to the roll, so in Dire weather, a weather-affected disaster will happen on a 7 or less.

Here are the charts for when I do roll a disaster in the swamp:

Static Swamp Disasters

1 Disease (p. 34)

2 Quicksand (p. 33)

3-4 Stinging Plants (p. 33-34)

5-6 Swarm (p. 34)

Weather-Affected Swamp Disasters

1-2 Disease (p. 34)

3-6 Sinkhole (p. 33)

Yes, I have Disease on both. This is a swamp, that's why. Plains and Woodlands have Disease on only one table. I'll pick the disease when I get that roll; it's likely leptospirosis. (I don't share Kromm's reluctance to use malaria, especially in a world with the Cure Disease spell, but not on these random rolls.) No, no stats here; I have a submission to Pyramid on this. Anyways, for this one, everyone resists HT, then the delay happens, so the players won't know there was a disaster right away. So maybe I rolled it and my players don't know it yet. :-)

It's good that I rolled the sinkhole, however, as in a swamp with many foes, only one roll came up encounter: the tribesmen. They seem to have blazed a lucky path so far.