Designing Games

After resting in the safety of Klisp’s cavern, the party made their way back up into the ruins where they found the gnome Necromancer Gemelos waiting for them with a number of his skeletons.

DM Note: Designing an interesting, challenging, dangerous, but not immediately lethal boss fight for a party of level 1 PCs with no martial characters is fairly challenging. I decided to give Gemelos 4e style minions. He had 6 skeleton minions that all had 1 hit point, AC 11, no modifiers, and dealt 1d2 damage on a hit. Gemelos’ stripped down action oriented statblock is shown below. I left off any information that wouldn’t be relevant in the combat. I wanted him to do a decent amount of damage once or twice, feel tough, and have the summoned shadows and skeletons create a feeling of a big fight that wasn’t actually that dangerous. As it was, everyone ended the combat either unconscious or with less than 5 hit points remaining.

Gemelos took an arrow before he was able to cast invisibility, but the rogue, Ilenia’s was able to make a 24 perception check and follow Gemelos’ blood trail as he snuck away. While Welby and Haba fought off the skeletons and shadows, Ilenia and Walki-Patooki attacked Gemelos from range. Baba’s burning hands devastated the skeletons, but the shield spell made Gemelos very hard to hit. Haba was taken down before Welby finished off the last of the shadows and Gemelos knocked both Ilenia and Walki-Patooki out with an acid splash. Welby brought Haba back up with a Healing Word and Haba rushed forward and hit Gemelos with burning hands, slaying him.

The party found and returned the familial artifacts and they recovered a ring that allowed the wearer to better remember the Chant of the Ur Menig which will allow them to breathe the unbreathable air of the great, world-spanning cavern deep beneath the earth.

This brought them to level 2. They made their way back to the surface and continued on their way to Lastfort.

“Welcome children of wood and earth, air and stone,” intoned the resonant voice of the tree. “Panur give us the strength to weather the storms of fate and fortune, for who knows what is to come? All we can do is accept our fates.” The tree preached for some time about how the acceptance of suffering and hardship was the path to true happiness and freedom. Habbajabbalavaloo, Walki-Patooki, Ilenia, and Welby Wishbottom stood and listened along with the strangely mutated forest animals. Finally, the tree asked, “who among us today is ready to accept all things and transcend mortal notions of right and wrong, good and bad, before and after?”

After a momemt of thoughtful silence, Habba stepped forward and boldly said, “I am,” which prompted the others to as well. The animals reacted in surprise and having heard their voices for the first time, the tree said, “Oh! Uh… new comers! You have taken in the message of Panur so quickly. My children, show them to the mound.” The animals gathered around the party in a press and lead them splashing through some shallow water to a small mound crowned with stones. At the top was a shaft, some 30 feet deep.

“Jump in!” the animals cried enthusiastically, but the party hesitated so the bear growled, “it’s normal to be afraid when you stand on the edge of great change. All you must do is accept your fate and jump.”

“But the fall will kill us,” said Ilenia.

“Of course,” the bear replied, “what better way to show your commitment to the principle of total acceptance then accepting your own death?”

“I’m not doing that,” Walki-Patooki said flatly.

The bear sighed, “this happens sometimes. It’s OK, we’ll help you. You’ll come to accept your fate on the way down,” and the animals rushed forward to trip and shove the party into the hole.

Habbajabbalavaloo was the first to fall and he was nearly killed instantly. He lay unconscious at the bottom of the well. Welby jumped down to help him and barely survived himself. With a word, he healed them both and soon Walki-Patooki and Ilenia came too, though more gracefully.

The party found themselves in a kind of shrine across from a statue of a woman with her hands held out in welcome and warding. Behind her, a tapestry richly woven with silver traced complex, arcane designs while before her strangely shaped people climbed up from the underworld to meet and trade with richly dressed humans. Between them sat a lizard curled around a ball of lightning, smiling and benevolent.

While they examined the tapestry, a number of skeletons, made from the mixed bones of various woodland creatures, walked past them to the place where they fell down the well. Looked at the empty floor for a minute and then turned around and left down a broad stair, the way they’d come.

After deciding against walking through the doorway topped by an inscription threatening to curse all who enter, the party made their own way down the broad stone steps into a vaulted room dominated by a large circular hole in the floor. They saw beneath the hole a sloping mound of sand and broken rock stretching down into the darkness. Ilenia dropped down to investigate and stalked into the dark out of sight.

As she carefully picked her way down the dune, she noticed two huge yellow eyes glittering in front of her on the edge of her vision. As she approached, the eyes turned out to belong to an enormous lizard watching her closely. “Hello… New faces are so rare these days.” It said slow and sibiliant.

The party spent the rest of the session talking with what amounted to a fantastically knowledgeable, fairly benign dragon-like creature named Klisp. They had loads of questions about the ruin, the giant cavern, and himself, and he was frankly happy to talk having spent most of the last few centuries alone.

Klisp explained that Gemelos, “a small wizard” wanted access to the Spell Engine he guarded, but that he’d never be allowed to see it because he desecrated the tombs of the people who lived and served Klisp for almost two hundred years. The party asked if they killed Gemelos and returned the objects he stole to his friends’ tombs, would Klisp allow them to keep Gemelos’ things, enter the tombs, and let Habajabbalavaloo see the Spell Engine. The last request was too much, but Klisp gave them permission to enter the tombs to return the stolen artifacts and keep whatever they wanted of Gemelos’ things.

I started running a D&D campaign for my 5 and 8 year old kids and two of their friends, a 9 and 11 year old from down the street. We’re using 5th edition because it’s what I’m most comfortable with, so I can easily adapt it on the fly.

For this campaign, I’m using Michael Prescott’s beautiful book Trillemma Adventures. It’s a collection of adventure locations, lore, and beastiaries he’s been working on for years. The setting is really interesting and original, and the locations are varied and unusual. I backed the Kickstarter and am looking forward to running a campaign in his setting.

5 year old Izzy is playing Welby Wishbottom, the Halfling Druid who grew up in the swampy ruins of old wealth in Gruel’s Shore north of Saltbride. Welby is also a student of history because Izzy is. Izzy is most excited about talking to animals and being am animagus.

9 year old Sagan is playing Walki-Patooki, the Elven Ranger from the tropical jungle of the Grinvolt (made tropical by request). He’s left home with a silver drum he’s trained to use to catch the ghosts of other Elves of the Grinvolt, so he can bring them home. He doesn’t know this, but I’ll be using a modified version of Matt Colville’s Monster Tamer subclass instead of the standard (awful) Beast Master. Sagan really wants a pet snake, so being able to catch and bond with animals was really appealing to him.

9 year old Violet is playing Ilenia the Drow Rogue who grew up on the mean streets of Saltbride as the city’s wealth was slipping away. She was orphaned at a young age and learned her trade from a local gang. My version of Saltbride is – like much of my setting – a riot of diversity, with people of all ancestries living and working together. People tend to identify more by where they’re from than what they are. So the fact that Ilenia is Drow is less a cause for mistrust than it would be in The Forgotten Realms.

11 year old Logan is playing Habajabbalavaloo a bright blue Gnome from another dimension – the Elemental Plane of Chaos. He’s traveling the world looking to learn it’s mysteries and unravel its secrets.

The Adventure Begins

Walki-Patooki walks into The Happy Sailor, a tavern in the “Wedden” (The “wet end” of town) of the stinking, crowded city of Saltbride. It’s cheap and he doesn’t have much money, but the stink of cheap ale, watery cabbage soup, and sweat combine dizzyingly with the noise and press of people in the smoke. He stumbles into someone he didn’t see, a tiny blue man in robes, who’s bowl of steaming cabbage soup spills across the floor. The little blue man turns and starts berating Walki-Patooki, the sapphire in his forehead glittering menacingly. Not wanting trouble from this alien creature, Walki-Patooki buys them both “fresh” bowls to make it up to the angry little man.

Seeing the commotion, a grey skinned woman steps forward and says to the blue Gnome, “What even are you?”

“Information pays for information,” replies the man his hand dropping to his knife at the Drow’s threatening posture. “I am new to this… place….”

Habajabbalavaloo had arrived that morning and spent the day in the Hall of Justice where 2 silver coins buy you a day in the public records. He learned much of this place and its history in those hours and soon he and Ilenia found themselves talking about a conversation she’d just overheard that evening. A cranberry picker from a small swamp town a day north of Saltbride said he’d run into a talking deer that tried inviting him to some freaky forest animal religious ceremony. This drew the attention of a halfling sipping his soup nearby.

Welby Wishbottom lives right near that town and had recently discovered that he could talk to animals himself. Naturally, the young swamp rat’s ears perked up when he heard the people at the next table mention talking animals near his home.

Walki-Patooki had encountered an animal possessed by a spirit once, and though it didn’t talk, this had enough of a supernatural spark about it, he wondered if it could be possession too.

Ilenia suspected this story related to a local phenomenon that’d been going on for years, where children would be abducted off the street, disappear for months, and then show back up one day with no memory of where they’d been. In her years on the street, she had put together one unusual fact about these children. All of them grow, make, and drink, a specific kind of tea. This has been happening long enough that most eateries in the city serve the tea – an earthy, strong brew, that is a mild stimulant.

Early the next morning the four gathered in the nearly deserted common room of the Happy Sailor and ate a quick breakfast of heavily spiced eel and onion and set out to investigate the talking animals, but on their way out of town, Habba suggested maybe seeing if they could earn a spot of money doing a quick job. This is how they met a couple of Coopers and their son who offered to pay them each 5 pieces of gold to load a bunch of empty barrels onto a pair of wagons. The crew quickly realized the barrels were not empty at all, and Habba made the connection that these folks were guildmembers trying to illegally skip town with their possessions. After a hushed conversation, the family climbed into their own barrels and the party agreed to help smuggle them out and guard their journey to the city of Lastfort for another 25 gold each. Habba left one barrel empty and scattered a handful of rice into the barrel.

On their way out of town, the city watch questioned them and asked to inspect the barrels, so they opened the one empty barrel and they explained that they were rice merchants from the far off city of Wint on their way home. After a tense exchange, they were sent on their way.

They made their way North to the village of XXXX. Hiding the wagons with the Coopers in a nearby ruin of a nearby manor house, Habba stayed behind to keep guard while Welby took Ilenia and Walki-Patooki into the village to talk to a young friend of his. They confirmed the story they’d heard and learned that it was from the edge of the swamp to the east. Meanwhile, Habba found his way to the upper story of the old manor, where poking around a moss covered mantle, he pried a loose brick out to find a gold ring set with an unusual blue crystal. When Welby returned, he was able to sense magical energies in the crystal, and recalled from reading old books found mouldering in the many ruined mansions scattered in swamps like this, crystals known as mage flowers extracted from the brains of wizards.

The afternoon was spent searching the eastern swamp for any sign of talking animals without success. That night, as Ilenia sat watch while everyone else slept, a pair of crossbow bolts streaked through the night, one catching her in the thigh. With a cry of alarm, she fired back with her hand crossbow at the bandits springing out of the tall grass. Walki-Patooki and Habba took slew one of the bandits, before a brutal slice of steel brought Habbajabbalavaloo down. Welby healed his wounds and the two remaining bandits fled. Only one bandit remained, begging for mercy. Ilenia argued they should kill him to be safe, but Walki-Patooki wouldn’t hear it and tied the man to a tree. During the night, while the others slept, Walki-Patooki let the man go, convinced he’d do them no more harm.

The next day, Walki-Patooki found a game trail and following it, lead the wagon through the trees to a clearing where a deer with human ears and teeth looked up from grazing and invited them to join the service that was about to begin. Nearby, a raccoon with human hands sat beside a bear with a human nose before a great old oak tree.

“Greetings friends,” boomed the tree, it’s voice resonant, “gather round and meditate on the glory of acceptance.”