Communist miner rebellion

First session of my d12 play test campaign took pleasantly surprising direction.

This was the very first session of the campaign so some basics things got written down first. The starting place of the campaign is the City of Snakes and the local lord is Count Thaddeus Snake who’s ancestors stole wisdom from snakes and tamed the land. City of Snakes has university where you can study theology and  sciences. The count is great benefactor of the university and especially the sciences department. Considering that the world is based on Renaissance period Germany this is exceptional. Another exceptional thing just outside the town is the star faring Guild’s compound.

All good stories need an inn so we got one, the Huge Crow. Huge Crow is favored by student and university faculty, food and beer are plentiful and cheap. The specialty of the place is that there chess sets on every table. Huge Crow servers as the home base for our intrepid heroes and this is where they started gathering their first rumors about what was going on in the county. After buying some drink and touring other local bars as well the player characters managed to hear following rumors:

3:16 Carnage among the Troopers

Today I was playing 3:16 in my regular haunt, university’s RPG club. We started the night with 11 players. The start was bit chaotic with everyone shouting over each other and some of the more experienced players helping first time players with their characters. Situation improved bit by bit as people started to die and some left the game early.

Most of the dead players were executed by their fellow troopers. I’m not sure if it was the very crowded small room or people just getting fed up with the slow pace because the player of the major (first casualty) was giving conflicting orders to his squad. Also, I’m not sure if the conflicting orders were because he was messing with us or because he was drunk or both. Anyways, the major was executed by his sergeant. The other sergeant was promoted to major and and that triggered another trooper vs. trooper conflict when the new major clashed with his corporal. The corporal was trying to pull rank on him because the first major had put him in charge of the first squad… The corporal was executed by the new major and his lackeys.

Anyways… after these two episodes the player count had dropped to 6 and things started to move forward again. We actually managed to complete some of our mission objectives, saving friendly forces from lifeforms. Rest of the mission was actually quite good. All the usual 3:16 mission silliness ensued, our drop ship getting shot down just when we were supposed to go pick up last group of survivors, troopers almost dying to grenades and people using strengths and weaknesses to kill lifeforms or save their asses instead of executing their COs

Is it a trap?

I killed two characters today.

I was GMing Pathfinder and Children of the Void, slightly modified by me. On the eastern end of the island there is a ruined lighthouse. With little poking around the PCs managed not to break their necks by falling of the cliff and found the magical sword hidden nearby. What they didn’t find was the wraith lurking in the ground beneath the lighthouse.They think the mostly intact lighthouse is a good campsite on the hostile island. The druid even uses various stone shaping spells to fix the place up.

Come night and the vengeful spirit rises and proceeds to suck life out of two completely surprised PCs. One PCs got away by riding his harpy zombie to safety and the fourth was away from the camp scouting their opposition.

PCs are around 4-5th level and the wraith is about same level. What makes it particularly nasty in this context is that it is incorporeal undead. In fact I think it is the first incorporeal undead in whole Adventure Path so the PCs didn’t know they should prepare for one. PCs of the party’s level have very little effective means against incorporeal undead besides clerics and the party had none. Their oracle almost had enough levels to try to control the creature (he needed one night of rest to ding 5th level) and couple of magical weapons and offensive spell which weren’t very effective.

This encounter got me thinking that although it looks like standard combat encounter with magical sword as price it plays more like trap. The trap might trigger the next night after the PCs have visited the site (the wraith pursues them), during the day the wraith hides because it is powerless in sunlight. The PCs can come and get the magic sword and slip away without ever facing the wraith. Or if they make camp at the lighthouse they invite surprise visit from the restless dead. There is very little warning that there might be nasty undead, besides mentioning that the island is haunted. Of course there is dead body with the magical sword but this D&D, when does dead body mean anything besides loot!

All in all, cruel way to kill of 5th level PCs.

It kind of reminds me of the wizard in the Tower of the Stargazer. The difference is that the wizard can’t do anything without the PCs letting him out, so the PCs have to decide (whether knowingly or not) to let the shit hit the fan. And the PCs can talk with the wizard. In this case, it’s hit or miss. Either they get out without problems with the loot or somebody dies.

The question is, is this good design for adventure?

The cruel bastard in me definitely likes this. Anything to see the PCs in trouble and having to earn their XP and magical loot. On the other hand, it kind of suck to have your PC die on basically “save or die” way. But I’m leaning towards old school gaming so I guess that it is okay.

Yeah, it’s brilliant.