Game log 5 April 2020: Thrown to the wolves

Dramatis personae

Horace, wizard
Felcanis, elf cleric
Jiro, swordswoman
Lucdalen, elf-hating elf wizard
Kurt, hobbit fighter

Quid occurrit

Felcanis has trouble getting back to sleep after the fight. Still, the next morning, the gang sets out, looking for the dungeon. Not long after setting out, they see some shapes moving in the trees—five wolves. The wolves look hungry, and the mule looks well-fed.

It pretty much goes like you’d expect. The wolves run for the mule, but the thick woods slow them down, letting the characters make mincemeat of them. The highlight is Kurt instead of killing a wolf, instead he announces, “I’m going to mount this beast.” Mercifully, that just means trying to subdue the wolf, and making friends with it. Kurt does subdue the wolf, though after the wolf doesn’t like Kurt, they kill it, too.

After that, they gut the wolves and take their meat, then start looking for the dungeon. The next day, they let Felcanis sleep, and while she sleeps, Horace and Lucdalen keep bickering, then move on a little bit until they set up camp again. The night goes well, and not long after dawn, they find a stream leading to a big set of doors.

Res aliae

While I prefer text, we do use voice as well because John (Felcanis) doesn’t type well. Unfortunately, Roll20 voice crapped out on me, which led to me making a Discord call in the middle of the game. Having voice open might have made clear that some of the bickering was purely in-character, so we’re going to try Discord for that tomorrow.

The travel, however, went well, and even though it looks like a minor fight (and it was), the wolf fight went well, too. Kurt trying to take down and get on a wolf gave Fantastic Dungeon Grappling a workout, which it handled well.

Game log for 22 March 2020: Virtual travel

Dramatis personae

Horace, wizard
Felcanis, elf cleric
Jiro, swordswoman
Lucdalen, elf-hating elf wizard
Kurt, hobbit fighter

Quid occurrit

They make it to the Magog tavern in Ōndrûnkš. There, Jiro buys a book from a peddler with one ear called Traces of the East, which is about the elves of the east of the Eldalîvā Woods. (Odd place, but the peddler is there having a drink.) She finds nothing special in the book, then she lets Horace read it.

Horace finds out that the book does have a few remarks about the Curious Cairn of the Collector:

“The evil sect near the western edge of the woods has a big library. Alas, it has only one spell book, and even that book, The Revealed Great Exploits of the Engineer: For Which He Was Burnt, has only two spells in its selection, as an add-on: Mind over Matter and Vision of Doom.” As Horace knows nothing about these spells, this makes him interested.

Nothing happens at night, and the next night they spend in a peasant hovel in Bóllā, the last village before the woods. The next morning, they set forth into the woods.

The first day of the trip is unremarkable, though they don’t get far as nobody knows much about trips through the woods. Indeed, they were lucky that Kurt chose to buy a compass from a peasant in Bóllā.

That night, a thin snake comes to the camp when Lucdalen is on watch, though when they at last spot it, it flees, with Jiro and Kurt uselessly trying to hit it in the dark.

Res aliae

Not much of a session in the logs, but the players did have a lot of roleplaying banter in the tavern. The big after-action discussion was about travel, which folks had a hard time following in Roll20.  Part of the issue was that this was the first wilderness trip with the new characters, and the new characters do not include wilderness stud Mayhem. Mayhem has points in three Survival skills, and knows them at a level of about 18, and generally gets more wilderness awesome from there. Anyways, I did make sure to spell things out for them, which somehow are more understandable in person.

Roll20 worked alright. Right now I'm fiddling with maps; if/when they make it to the dungeon (it's never assured to get there), I'll have to have maps, and I'll have to split things so that they're loadable.  They're not quite at the level I'd like, but I have to have something. It's different to prep these things than to worry about Weirdness Magnet.