Dwimmermount Session 2: In Which They Meet Dwarves, Skeletons, And a Magic Beetle

May 2nd, 914
Verrick of Tyche wakes to the sound of disembodied female voice saying “When you find the books, burn them.” Is it a prophecy sent by the goddess? The dervish keeps this revelation to himself, for now.

The party wakes early and heads to Dwimmermount. As they march along the trade road, a green dragon swoops by overhead. The beast seems uninterested in the party, but Jasper boldly fires an arrow at it anyway. Fortunately, his missile comes nowhere near the dragon, which flies off into the mountains to the east.

The party passes the stairs which lead up to the Red Doors, but decides to press on in search of the rumored secret back entrance to the dungeon. They spend the day hiking and searching around the north face of the mountain, but find nothing but a herd of deer. Verrick thanks Tyche for the luck, and tries to fell one of the deer, but his arrow misses the mark and they flee into the forest. As night falls, the despondent adventurers force march back to Muntburg Village.

Dwimmermount Session 1: In Which a Wizard Is Mugged

My lovely wife asked me to run a game for some of her friends from work, so I decided to run ACKS Dwimmermount. Most of this first session was taken up by character creation. The campaign background I sent the players is repeated below, followed by the first session actual play report.

Background:

All your life, you have lived in the shadow of Dwimmermount. Carved into this great peak which towers over your homeland is a vast, ancient, magical, subterranean fortress, which is also called Dwimmermount. For hundreds—perhaps thousands—of years, Dwimmermount served as a center for magical research, and as a stronghold for the succession of empires which rose and fell in this region. Dwimmermount fell two centuries ago, when a rebel uprising culminated in a mysterious cataclysm that sealed the dungeon off from the outside world.

Session 14: In Which the Legion Explores the Zargonian Stronghold, the Eye of Zargon, and the Galleries

Tuesday, 28th day; 9th month (Horse); year 734

Retcon: Realizing that the month is just about over, the Legion decides against releasing the refugees who are staying in the Temple until after Zargon’s reaction to another month without sacrifices is dealt with.

Wednesday, 29th day; 9th month (Horse); year 734

After recovering from the battle against Thrak-Sha’s army, Thjolstoff orders his mercenaries to continue rounding up Cynidicean families and forcing them to take shelter in the Temple. He also has them start conscripting as many recruits as they can from among the people of the city. The conscripts will have all mustered within a week.

Session 13: In Which the Legion Drives the Zargonians From Cynidicea

Saturday, 25th day; 9th month (Horse); year 734

The Legion continues making preparations for the rumored upcoming battle with Thrak-Sha’s zargonians. They move their ballista up onto the roof of the Temple, and move as many refugees as possible into the Halls of Pleasure. They find Pablo, their young ex-henchman, among the refugees hand assign him to watch the iron door that leads from the Halls of Pleasure into the Pyramid. They position three scout teams – each consisting of one of the Telkaynie and one of the lowest-ranking members of the Eyes – at strategic points along the shore of Sabban-Ka’s Reservoir. Alas, the shore proves too large for their small force to watch effectively in the dark. The first the scouts know of the arrival of the zargonians is when the team positioned furthest east is ambushed by a small squad of them. Fortunately, the Legion’s scouts are able to escape to the Temple to tell their tale. The Legion responds by sounding the horn that signals their scouts and other forces to retreat into the Temple.

The Hexcrawling Game: Part 3 – House Rules

Part 1 – Part 2

Here, finally, is my first attempt at house rules for hexcrawling. Most of it, any way. A separate post on hazardous terrain will follow. There will also be playtesting reports, once they have seen actual use at the table. As you can see, I had to screw up the value of roads in order to make the movement point system work. But, I think that is a reasonable price to pay. We’ll see how it works out in practice.

Session 12: In Which The Legion Finally Conquers Cynidicea

Wednesday, 22nd day; 9th month (Horse); year 734

Upon returning from the Isle of the Dead and hearing of the impending Zargonian invasion, Amalaith decides that the Spearmaidens can no longer afford to cower behind the walls of their Tower. Taking her Spearmaiden henchmen and the Staff of Healing with her (despite the Legion’s reluctance to send another powerful magic item off with one of her players’ characters after the loss of the helm of telepathy and ring of x-ray vision), she heads to the Tower of Madarua to confront the High Spearmaiden Dalyaa-Nush. Calling together all of her sisters, Amalaith gives a fiery speech. Invoking her trials on the Isle of Death, where Madarua’s grace was all that stood between her and certain death, she demands that the Spearmaidens follow her as she joins forces with the Legion of the Gods Above to finally free Cynidicea from Zargon and his beastmen.

The Hexcrawling Game: Part 2 – Intentions

OK, I lied. No actual house rules yet. What I want to do instead is lay out what I am trying to accomplish with this exercise. What do I want to have at the end of it?

The Hexcrawling Game: Part 1- Rules as Written

The adventures I ran most in my youth were hexcrawls; specifically, Isle of Dread (X1) and the Volturnus series (SF0-3) for Star Frontiers. Looking back, after reading a lot of good articles on hexcrawling in the last couple of years, I didn’t run them well. I want to do much better when the Crusader Kingdoms campaign (which seems less aptly named all the time) moves into it’s wilderness exploration phase. So, I have been doing a lot of reading, and even ran Mutiny On The Eleanor Moraes (SFKH2) as a one-off to practice. Based on this, I have decided I want to house-rule the ACKS wilderness adventuring rules a little bit. Most importantly, I want to move to a movement points model as similar as I can get to the one from Avalon Hill’s Outdoor Survival game, as described in this Damn You Gygax! article at Delta’s D&D Hotspot. However, not wanting to screw up the delicate balance of ACKSonomics, I don’t want to change the actual distances moved per unit of game time.

Session 11: In Which the Legion Spins the Wheel

Tuesday, 21st day; 9th month (Horse); year 734

The Legion undertakes another expedition into the Pyramid of Sabban-Ka, intending this time to find Ulzain’s tomb. They take only a dozen of their best henchman, hoping that they will fare better with a less cumbersome party. On their way in, Thirleiro finds another secret door in the corridor that connects the Halls of Pleasure to the rest of the 5th tier. The secret door leads to a corridor, at the end of which is an archway obscured by a strange, shimmering field. Hovering in mid-air just beyond the field is a copper-plated staff carved in the shape of a pair of entwined snakes.

Session 10: In Which the Legion Loots the Tomb of Sabban-Ka

Sunday, 12th day; 9th month (Horse); year 734

On the day after the Legion returns from their foray into the Pyramid to rescue the templars, Spinello hosts a feast for the henchmen in the tavern wing of their stronghold. He attempts to arrange things in the Fortenzan style. The Cynidicean servants do their best to follow his instructions – which call for foods, beverages, and musical instruments alien to their civilization. The results are…interesting…but entertaining enough to keep spirits up among the battered members of the party.