Team 2

I'm also going to run my roommate Sean, Sean's friend Brent, and Brent's brother whose name I keep forgetting through the game as well, as a seperate party whose adventures take place roughly simultaneously with the other groups'.

I want to reuse some material, obviously, but I also want to have these parties exist in the same world, so I'll see if I can strike that balance. I think there's some good opportunities here for interesting indirect (and occaisionally direct) overlap between the groups, where the result of one party's actions affect the other...

Session 1: Dead by Sunset, Regenerating by Moonlight, Oct 4th

This is a bit of a short version recap of the first session of the Coral Island campaign. Out-of-game comments are italicized. Advice and feedback welcome.

The game begins as the players sail out of Twilight Bay, on the northern coast of the eastern continent of the world. They are on the boat of Angus Landar, who has hired them to crew a boat to Coral Island, a one-way trip of considerble risk and uncertainty. On the way, Angus teaches the men much about sailing, fishing, and just a bit about love. As the sun sets on the seventh night of the journey, Coral Island appears on the horizon, but so does an ominous ship.

Geoff notices similarly ominous bubbles on the water, and mutters halfhearted warning, but within seconds, submerged attackers leap from the water. It seems Angus has had run-ins with these ruffians before: they are raiders from the nation of New Valta, who have been threatening and harassing the ships that try to land at Coral Island. Before long, lives and ships have been threatened, and combat ensues. The ship in the distance approaches, two ominous “thwumping” sounds ring out in the distance.

Garik, who had been at the front of the ship, finds himself in a tough spot, surrounded by the three attackers, who begin hacking at him mercilessly. To make matters worse, two men wearing strange gliding devices begin circling the ship, raining crossbow bolts upon the players. A pair of triple-shot attacks are leveled at Garik, the perceived leader and favorite target of the New Valtans. His own inspiring words keep him fighting, as does the healing touch of paladin John. The other players charge into the melee, as well as Angus himself, swinging his sword and throwing daggers. Cannon shots also rain onto the ship, punching holes in its hull. One slams into one of the ships masts, and it crashes directly onto Josh, who is battered nearly into submission (things that have fallen on Josh: 1).

Soon, after bolt after bolt, sword strike after sword strike, Garik can take no more and falls under a rain of wounds. Every time he gets up, he’s knocked back down again, refusing to give up. Meanwhile, Josh fires Eldritch bolts at the flying foes, damaging the wings of one, who totters dangerously through the air. Soon, the tide of battle has turned: one of the boat-locked raiders has perished, and then another, and a renewed Garik heaves a throwing hammer into a gliding soldier’s chest. At last, the last raider leaps from the ship, one glider flies into the distance, while another is forced to make an emergency landing and surrender to the victorious players.

Angus is thankful to the party, paying them their wage, and also rewarding them with an axe that can deliver knockback-inducing blows. They also (retroactively...sorry) find 3 strange coins on one of the raiders. Angus is refers to them as infernals: they are coins made from truesteel, a seemingly unmaleable, unalterable, undamageable material that someone or something has rendered into these coins. They are not especially valuable, but are interesting oddities to collectors.

Having docked in Firewater, the major port of the tri-city nation of Cordalia, conversations ensue. The players have questions about the situation they’ve found themselves in, and Angus agrees to meet them at the Red Dragon bar to explain things later that night. They convene there and buy few pitchers of ale. The gist of Angus’s, meandering, occasionally weepy, sometimes Scottish, tale is:
- This is the nation of Cordalia, made up of 3 major cities on the West side of Coral Island
- About 200 years ago, some people from the capitol formed a new nation, New Valta, on a small island just off the Northern coast.
- About 5 years ago, they declared war on us, citing trade oppression.
- They’re a smaller nation, but they’ve demonstrated a real knack for technology. - The capitol’s subject to a mighty naval blockade, so Firewater has become an important harbor.
- The town’s also important because of the truesteel mine. The island’s pocketed with this stuff folks call truesteel, tough as anything, so much so there’s no way to cut it at all. At this mine, they’ve been pulling up all kinds of complicated stuff out of it made out of truesteel, gears and rods and all kinds of devices that are giving off magic. The capitol’s got a deal with the mine’s owner that’s sending a lot of it up north, and making him rich.

Just as Angus waxes darkly, lightning flashes and Geoff thinks he spots a face in the window. He mutters mention of it in his usual alarmist fashion, and the conversation continues. Then, lightning strikes again, this time Geoff and John definitely see something and this time Geoff reacts, leaping across the table and through the window. Or, at least, partway through the window before eating shit and simply slamming his face through it. “You’ve got goblins” he explains patiently to the irate bartender, while Garik diplomatically pays him for the window.

Soon, scurrying is heard above and an explosion rocks the ceiling, prompting Garik and Geoff (team G!) to clamor out the window, while Josh and John (team J!) run out the front door of the bar. They soon learn there are 5 goblins on the roof of the inn, and a mad, bomb-throwing troll and a goblin buddy on the higher roof of the nearby church.

Sadly, I get a little lazy with this combat – it is 2 am, we’ve been at either character creation or playing for the last 7 hours, people seemed pooped, so I end up rushing things. Also, the level didn’t quite work out in practice (see recap below).

As soon as Geoff and Garik leave the inn, they are greeted with a firebomb to the face, which the pounding rain thankfully extinguishes. Geoff’s nature skill lets him recognize the troll as being a little unusual, but not that this is a cave troll, who trade their weaknesses against fire for a fear of light and radiant attacks.

Meanwhile, the lead goblin on the roof of the inn begins heaving javelins at John and Josh, while the lackeys proceed to demolish the bar’s fancy, steam (-punk (-lite) –powered ventilation and heating system. Garik and Geoff struggle to climb the church, eventually reaching the summit and cornering the goblin on the church roof. The troll disregards his ally and heaves a firebomb at him in hopes of damaging both of his adversaries. Unfortunately, the bomb misses left and far, sails off the building, and directly down onto Josh, who is standing in the alley below, now on fire (things that have fallen on Josh: 2).

This actually was a d8 roll for miss direction (far and left), d3 roll for distance in that direction (1 space), and a 50/50 to hit the tree Josh was under (nope) – making it a roughly 1/48 chance that that happened. Wild.

In the meantime, the goblin lackeys each tried to jump hastily off the roof of the bar, each failing their roughly 50/50 acrobatics check. John took advantage by running up and using his Dragonborn fire breath to roast 3 of them out of existence, but missed his charge attack, missing hitting for the cycle by a single. The goblin warrior above, flanked and desperate, leapt from the buildingtop, trying to grab onto the flagpoles below and bounce away. When he missed and came tumbling down down to earth, Josh took the opportunity to take a wild swing at him as he fell nearby. Fate took the opportunity (when he rolled a 1), to make the dwarf land on his head and bounce to the ground instead (things that have fallen on Josh: 3).

Bird's-eye view

John moves in to finish goblin #4

Just then, a cart goes flying by, laden with a couple of goblins and driven by a red-cloaked figure. Seeing the fight as too perilous to leave, most of the players stay to dispatch the troll, but Josh leaps on a nearby horse and gives pursuit.
Garik and Geoff had mounted the highest part of the church, and are battling the troll. But when Garik find himself unable to get a clean shot in, he makes a daring move, vaults from the railing on the high tower, around Geoff and slams his new axe into the Troll’s chest, sending it flying backwards and off the rooftop, as Garik lands on the ledge below. Geoff, seeking to finish the job, himself uses his daring move to leap from the building onto the Troll, but fails terribly, cracking his head on the ledge at Garrick’s feet, flipping through the air, and landing in the mud.

As Geoff rises groggily to his feet, the battle continues, with the Troll falling, rising and falling, until at last a local magic shop keeper arrives with a radiant-powered weapon, that the players use to finish the troll at last.

Josh has been trying to catch the cart, dodging the wreckage thrown by the goblins in the back, eventually pulling abreast with the cart, and trying to blast its wheels with eldritch blasts, missing, dodging, falling behind, and generally riding like he never had before (the rolls where insane here, he must have hit 10 50/50 or worse rolls in row). He spots a glowing sack in the back of the cart, and aims to steal it away, still riding and blasting like crazy. At last, a blast connected, damaging the wheel, and another blew it to smithereens, killing the goblin lackeys in the crash, disintegrating the cart, and sending the sack and troll flying. As the Troll got up in a daze, Josh ran up to the sack, heaved it onto his horse (20 on the str check!), and took off into the night.

Back in town, wealthy merchant and truesteel mine-owner Boris thanked the players for recovering the 2 magic engines that the trolls had stolen. In return, he convinced the guard lieutenant to give the players a strange dagger recovered from another troll killed at the site of the robbery. The party’s obvious capabilities and heroism are also rewarded with a valuable piece of information, a note found on the troll, from someone, discussing a delivery of “rods”. These are almost certainly truesteel rods, the lieutenant muttered to himself, who could provide such a thing, he wondered. There could only be three people, but who would betray the town so? The trolls had struck Boris’s warehouse just as the guards left to investigate the attack at the Red Dragon, was this, as Geoff conjectured, the real purpose of the attack (probably…)?

The battles won, the players found themselves already embroiled in two attacks in which they had no direct role. But they will find themselves increasingly drawn into a plot that threatens the existence of the nation of Cordalia.

I think that the sessions went well, and at least served to log some hours with the system. The first battle in particular was a lot of fun. There were a couple of hitches, from my perspective, though. As fun as it was to make those levels, they didn’t quite work in practice. In both fights, the main enemies ended up backed into alleys where only one player could attack them, which was not as fun, and dulled some of the dynamism of the 4th ed rules. Similarly, the height factor seemed like it would be fun, but ended up being something of a chore in practice.

Part of this was the late night, the everyone’s lack of familiarity with the system, and a very melee-heavy party build, but I think I need to go with more open environments in the future.

I also think now I have a better read on what stuff I need to work out beforehand (some stuff caught me unprepared), and on how to balance encounters.

Its interesting, every RPG has its flow. 2nd ed. Dnd was sort of bad in that outcome felt inevitable after the first couple of rounds. Battlestations had this way of looking really bad for the players, but then working out. 4th ed. Dnd is more like the latter, I think, due to the much more convenient, much stronger healing than we have seen in the past. Healing as a minor action changes everything; when you can heal someone else without losing much attack power, it makes for much more of a back and forth, as opposed to a horserace to 0 hp between you and the monsters.

Still getting the feel for it, but it is a nice system that I think I can work with.