Outline:
The group breaks into a mausoleum. The two 9 foot tall stone golems that guard it are not amused. Later, the GM realises he made a (minor, fixable) mistake.
Vital Statistics:
System: Core2D6 (v0.23)
Scenario: Night of the Vampires
Tone: Action, investigation, mild horror.
Safety Tools/Lines & Veils: Mild descriptive horror (PG-13/Buffy at most), No Player vs Player attacks (exception, unless under hypnotism etc), no explicit bedroom scenes, none of the usual isms/phobias.
The party:
Aki: a cautious beastling ranger (with reindeer horns!) with a trained hawk as a companion. Failed trader, has a mysterious list of names he’s crossing off.
Jackal: An orc bounty hunter. A scarred and scary appearance, although he says he only cares about the money, has a conscience and moral code.
Vanya: a sarcastic high elf rogue who had once been a vampire, was mysteriously cured, and now just wants to drink vodka and kill vampires (and maybe rescue her sister vampires).
On a side quest/taking a break for a few sessions:
Domovik: A dwarf fighter, protector of homes. Works better at night, sometimes trips over his long furs. Serves a patron saint of homes.
To explain Domovik’s absence, the player & I agreed that the following had occurred: The previous night, Domovik was confronted by a very drunk and angry Johann, who was a soldier they’d met in part one that was returning home from the war. Johann had got back to his village to find vampires had killed his entire family in his absence and was demanding for Domovik’s help to track and kill them. Domovik realised the drunk soldier would get himself killed if he didn’t intervene. The pair were last seen on the search for some garlic infused vodka…
Recap
GM note: to get my minor mistake out of the way – I’ll discuss it more at the end of the post – the players seemed a little uncertain what to do for the first hour or so of the session. Thinking it over later, I realised my mistake had been not giving them suggestions and possible prompts which they could choose to follow (or not) to give them an idea of the scope of the scenario. More on this later.
Gnome Tinkerers and a Shadowy Assassin
The following morning, the party had a look around central Svalgrad. Vanya wanted to try to get some information from the locals and attempted to smooth up to Ingrid. Despite Vanya not being renowned for her social skills, Ingrid was happy to serve her vodka. She said the snow witch was responsible for the vampires, and that she misspoke the previous evening when she’d rubbished the idea. This seemed odd, but Vanya could get nothing more out of the owner of the Octagon.
Central Svalgrad. I left most of the shops at the top (On “The Parade”) blank so players could add any shops they wanted to.
The local bard Kolin-with-a-K had in the meantime finished his song about the battle of the watchtower. It was now called “The Hands of Ashmir” and made it sound as if Lord Ashmir had done all the work with the players being barely referenced at all. Aki tried to smooth things over with the bard, who took a mocking attitude, as if he knew things Aki didn’t.
Aki noticed on the fur market that the local furs were much cheaper than they were in the south and he could make a pretty penny by buying here and selling there. He shrugged and walked on. His trading days were behind him.
Jackal headed to the potion shop where the gruff orc was gleefully jumped on by Poppy. The young gnome was already much recovered from her ordeal. Gnomes have a very short memory for being hurt, plus she’d had her aunt’s healing potions and one that made her hair look luscious to help.
Jackal handed over the vial of vampire blood he had covertly collected. Rosemary tested her latest formula on it and declared she had a cure for vampire blood. If injected into a vhoul, it should remove the vampire’s influence and control over the vampire-blood drinking human (or other species). If injected into a vampire, Rosemary hypothesized that it would seriously hurt or even kill one. However, she only had one dose. The ingredients to make it were hard to come by and expensive.
“Great,” Jackal said, “Now about that hair growth potion…”
Poppy’s mother the tinkerer gnome had set up in her cousin’s back room and was busy working on various devices to help the party in their quest. She could either finish a net gun she had been developing, or a grappling hook gun. Jackal asked her to work on the grappling hook gun.
GMs note: The gnomes mean well, but using one of the items given requires a Luck roll to make sure it works or – in the case of potions – is the correct one. Otherwise there will be some other benign effect. Like curing the constipation you don’t have.
Aki went to speak to the Blacksmith, whose son had been turned into a vampire and was now in the iron gibbet, waiting to be burned in two days time. The blacksmith was mourning his son, but said that the thing in the iron gibbet was not Jon any longer. Aki remarked that it was strange Lord Ashmir had accompanied them to the watchtower, at which point the blacksmith scoffed bitterly and asked if the Reeve had been there. Aki confirmed she had.
The blacksmith took Aki to one side and whispered that, according to rumour, The Reeve was once an assassin who went by the code name of the Shadow, and left a distinctive mark at all of her kills or on her arrows. One vertical line with two smaller lines crossing it horizontally to represent a dagger. The rumour was that she had been paid to assassinate Lord Ashmir himself, but he must have made her a better offer because now she is completely loyal.
“If you can believe all of that, of course…”
Hearing all of this later on, Jackal was astonished.
The orc bounty hunter had been tracking the Shadow for years. She was his “white whale” – one of the highest bounties ever set – and it was still active. If the Reeve was indeed the Shadow, and if the Jackal could capture her – dead or alive – he’d have riches beyond his wildest dreams. Not to mention a reputation as the best bounty hunter in the business
GM’s Note: The Reeve’s (as yet unconfirmed) background story was written before the player created his orc bounty hunter. So it made sense to offer them the Shadow as Jackal’s “white whale” – which the player agreed to take on as part of the game. Which was cool.
(Well, I thought so anyway. Weaving characters backgrounds into a game gives it a greater sense of player involvement in the story. I’ve got loose ideas of how to do so for the other three also, Jackal’s was the first to pop, so to speak. Also note: we had agreed for brevity that all information would be Open Table & we’d assume the group discussed what they had learnt whilst going different directions at lunch or whatever.)
A Vampire Burning and a Troll Doctor
On the town square the vampire they had captured the night before was in the iron gibbet. A crowd gathered to watch as the sun rose and the vampire, screaming gibberish, was turned to dust and bone. The local priest, Father Frederick of the Church of the Holy Light administered last rites around the burning vampire, saying how it was returning to the light (This prompted one of the most hilariously dead pan eye-rolls I had ever seen anyone do from Jackal’s player)
The priest offered to bless the party before they ventured out on their mission, something which would strengthen them in battle.
The group heard screaming from a nearby building and a voice crying “Stop, stop, you monster, you’re going to kill me!”
They burst into a room to find a troll standing over a man strapped to a table with a meat cleaver raised. It took them a second to realise he was the local doctor.
Cue comedy broad East London accent from the GM as Anton the troll proceeded to flirt with all of the players (“Darlin, love, sweetheart”), tell them he had fled the capital city because he was sued for malpractice (“It was a total stitch up job”), chop off the man’s frostbitten foot (“Oh god, the blood!”), continue to indiscriminately flirt with all of the group, complain loudly about vampires and how he has no time for them (“It ain’t natural”), tell them he was happy to be on “Team Vampire Hunters” (“Let’s be besties, yeah?”) inform them that he lived on the premises and that his bedroom (wink, wink) was upstairs – and finally to be apologised for by his clearly long suffering intern, Tristan, who bandaged up the man’s bloody stump in the meantime.
In modern day terms, Anton is a walking sexual harassment case, I noted to the players. But (ironic handwaved apology) times were different back then.
GM’s Note: Anton – a gender ambivalent troll doctor who believed they were god’s gift to everyone, who was on the run due to being sued for malpractice and had a pathological fear of blood – was, in fact:
A character created by my mum for a previous RPG I wrote and then shelved.
No, really. Shelved RPG or no, there’s no way I was letting this absolute diamond of a character go to waste.
I told the players they had now met all the major NPCs and most of the minor ones for the scenario. Which they seemed oddly relieved by, now I think about it…
The group had a couple of hours before their dinner invitation with Lord Ashmir. They could either check out the Church and the service there, or head to the Mausoleum where Vanya had noticed some suspicious figures the previous night. They opted for the Mausoleum.
Battle at The Mausoleum
The Mausoleum. The area at the top is the Old Mausoleum, from when families were buried together. Left and Right are women and men respectively in the new Mausoleum. The black rectangles are unfilled tombs.
Lord Ashmir’s family Mausoleum was a huge stone structure with no windows and one door. There were footprints in the snow leading up to it, and the lock was easily picked. Once inside, they started looking at the tombs and inscriptions.
Five minutes later, the reinforced doors slammed shut. Two nine foot tall stone golem guardians stepped off their plinths and proceeded to kick the players around for a good twenty minutes or so (Real world time – battle time was probably about 8 rounds or so, so a couple of minutes for the characters. Enough time to draw some blood, crack some ribs and for player panic to set in). These implacable guardians were made of solid stone and had no obvious weakness.
Vanya tried to reason with them but quickly realised they were basic constructs with one simple command: Kill all intruders.
It also quickly became apparent that the guardians were unbeatable.
GM’s note: I mean, yeeeeah – but there were some ways to damage the creatures other than trying to chip bits out of their solid stone bodies with swords. Jackal’s early failed attempt to trip one with a rope was heading in the right direction, and using the environment – the stairs in particular – might have helped. But this encounter was set up to be a “Oh no, oh s**t, we’re all going to die!” moment and hey, it worked.
Heh.
Minis by ArcKnight, Map by Dave
As the group battled the golems around the mausoleum, desperately trying to find a way out, they discovered a riddle that gave them the command word to stop the attack. It was Vanya who finally worked it out and triumphantly shouted the word to stop the assault. The golems dutifully returned to their plinths.
GM Note: I’m not going to show the actual riddle here to avoid spoilers for when I publish the scenario, in case another GM ever wants to run it (or, indeed, use it for their own scenario.). It was about the right difficulty though, and made sense for the scene (The idea being that if a Lord forgot the command word, they could quickly check the riddle before the Golems activated. It also explained how the Iceblade gang – see later – had access to the Mausoleum, having solved the riddle themselves)
It had been a pretty savage battle, with Jackal taking the lion’s share of the damage.
A battle board I created for the players to easily keep track of everyone’s wounds and so on. Also to help players be aware of each other as a group. Jackal got hit hard and took the first wound of the campaign. I didn’t cheer at finally drawing first blood. Ok, that’s a lie. I did cheer. Bad Dave!
The Knock from Inside a Tomb
The players had barely recovered from the fight with the golems when they heard a light knocking from inside one of the tombs, on the women’s side. Without much hesitation, they opened it. A desiccated husk of a vampire leapt out and tried to go for Aki’s neck. The creature was withered and broken after who knew how many decades trapped inside the tomb. The three vampire hunters had no problem killing the deranged vamp.
Then four more tombs opened and another four desperately hungry, fragile and withered vampires attacked them.
Jackal realised he might not survive this, given his recent beating, and stepped back. Aki and Vanya teamed up and dusted two of the four vamps with relative ease. Three more tombs opened, three more of these maddened, bone and paper dry skin creatures joined the fray.
“How many of these things are there???” Vanya wondered.
Aki winced as Vanya’s sword grazed him by accident. (One of Vanya’s drawbacks is that when fighting vampires in a team up, she might lose concentration and hurt an ally.)
The wounded Jackal hung back as starved and broken vampires attacked Vanya and Aki.
In all, there were twelve of the vampires. The good news was that they were so utterly drained after having been starved of blood for decades (centuries?) that they were no match for Vanya and Aki, who swiftly dispatched them. Only Jackal’s blood being spilt in the previous battle had given them enough desperate strength to rise up.
“This is a bit weird,” someone commented, “Why were there starving vampires trapped in the tomb?”
GM’s Note to my players who might be reading this: That was a very good question. There are reasons, as you may or may not find out. (cue unhinged maniacal giggle from the GM…).
Some Surprising Discoveries
With little time left before they had to head to their dinner appointment with Lord Ashmir, the players decided to…open some more tombs.
Obviously.
They quickly found that Lord Ashmir’s father’s tomb was…(dramatic pause) eeeeeempty!!!
They also found that three of the larger tombs in the old mausoleum section were stashed full with fine furs and artisinal vodka.
“Smugglers!”
A local gang (For some reason I felt the need to explain this) was using the mausoleum as a safe stash house for goods they wanted to avoid paying taxes on. Being in an isolated location, visited once a year at most, and guarded by the golems made it a perfect place to stash goods. The three figures that Vanya had seen the previous night were members of this gang, the notorious Iceblade family.
Vanya shrugged and grabbed a bottle of vodka. The group decided it was time to leave.
End of Session Cliff-hanger
Aki, Jackal & Vanya stepped out of the mausoleum, covered in vampire dust, bruised and battered from being kicked around by two 9 foot tall stone golems.
Outside, Lord Ashmir, the Reeve & a dozen crossbow wielding soldiers were waiting.
With a thunderous look on his face, Ashmir furiously demanded to know why the f**k they had all been trashing his family Mausoleum…
Thus ended session 3
GM Session Notes:
I was half expecting this session to go off the rails, as it was the first one in which players could do whatever they wanted. However, things stayed very much on the rails and the players followed my “Plan A” for the session.
Which was fine, but also left me a little puzzled as I’d been anticipating a couple of left-field choices of things to do from their side.
(The only other thing to really note is that my revised number of expected sessions after part two was upheld, so I’m expecting 5-7 more episodes before the accidental campaign is concluded)
My minor, fixable mistake: Prompts
Thinking it over afterwards (and comparing it to the Mervyn’s Peak game) I realised the fault was on my side.
Apart from (possibly) overwhelming the players with a lot of world building and NPC’s in this scenario, I hadn’t made any suggestions as to what they could do, investigate, look into or find out about.
During the Mervyn’s Peak scenario I’d been up front about where it was worth the players heading to next or looking into and left it up to them to decide which route they wanted to take – or if they wanted to do something entirely different instead.
It was only towards the end of the town section, as the players were considering going to the church, that I gave them a choice of that or the mausoleum (based on how much time they had before the planned dinner with Ashmir). I realised I should have made a bunch of suggestions at the start of the “Open world” declaration to give them some idea of the scope of what they could do.
Essentially, I needed to prompt them a little with some options (which would also act as plot reminders) and then let them either follow them (or not) or come up with their own ideas.
Perhaps somewhat ironically, forgetting to give them prompts actually ended up making the session more railroady, not less.
I don’t think anyone else seriously minded (although one player felt they weren’t getting anywhere during the town section), but from a GM perspective it was daft of me to forget this basic tool to get the game rolling (and to also help covertly recap details players may have forgotten between sessions.).
So yeah – next time we get to an Open World section: Prompts.
Just a few suggestions to get some discussion going between players and help decide what they want to do next. I’ll even add another card to the table next to the X card, Not Relevant card and Rule of Cool card as a reminder (see last sessions notes for all of that.). Prompts will be a tappable card for the players if they ever feel they need some options.
But, I mean, look:
Realistically, it doesn’t really matter now because they’re all going to die at the start of the next session in a hail of crossbow bolts.
Kidding! I think?
To be fair, a lot rests on the group’s people skills at this point. Hmmmm, I better start writing another campaign. You know, just in case…
Until next time!
Character sheets (not session updated)
On a side quest:
Hi!
Comments