Becoming Part of the Old Crowd on Library

Valentine Duell

January 15, 2023 5:32 PM

Gaming Club by Valentine Duell

"Well, this is a fine mess you all have gotten us into." Valentine glared around at the folks at the gaming table. The mission had seemed easy enough to the adventurous souls sitting in a warm and cozy tavern listening to the local town sheriff talk about it. A young nobleman had been kidnapped by some bandits. They demanded a ransom, the family was willing to pay it, but wanted an intermediary to make the exchange. That was all the group had to do, swap money for a lordling in some ruins outside of town. Simple.

Nothing is ever simple. So after the family's second group of mercenaries interfered trying to recover both the boy and the treasure, and the kobalds swarmed up from below, the adventurers had a bit of a problem. They were trussed up three levels down in the ruins, with the unhappy mercenary captain and the 17 year old lordling who was entirely unsuited for this situation. There were kobalds all around them and the location of the money and remaining mercenaries and bandits were completely unknown.

The map was magicked up out of the table, using some of the tricks in Gary and Ness' book of GMing spells. Appropriate lighting effects flickered over the map and their figures were in position on the map.

Valentine smiled at her players. "After commenting Captain Morthel ignores you all and starts to take in the environment better. As far as you can tell, there isn't much more to see. You're sitting tied up in a 10' by 10' stone block room with a very damp floor. Your obvious weapons have been taken, and the only source of light comes through the door into the main room which, as best you can tell, contains a cooking fire. There are somewhere between fifteen or twenty kobalds in that room moving about, doing various ordinary tasks. Two have been positioned at your doorway as guards, but they seem more interested in the main room than yours." She grinned, "That may change at any moment, or if you make a lot of noise."

"Oh yes, young Lord Winston is still whimpering quietly in the back of the room. It seems he would like to very much just go home again." Val leaned back in her chair, "What would you like to do?" This was the fun part now, she got to listen to them come up with whatever scheme they thought might work best. The ropes wouldn't be a big problem, she was sure one or two of the characters had knives tucked away well enough that the kobalds hadn't found them. Plus, Morthel did. Past that, it would be interesting to see what they would do. Individually a kobald was barely a threat, but a large group might be an issue, if they had someone they needed to protect. Plus the players knew by now that kobalds liked their traps, and there were certainly a few of those sprinkled around the ruins.

The big problem they may run into is that Morthel was promised half of the reward money for getting both back safely and he won't give it up easily. He'd be awful stubborn about leaving without it. He may change his mind though, if they find it. Since it is another level down tossed on the dragon's horde who is sleeping upon it.

OOC: Hopefully you all can have some fun with this. Make up whatever character you want and be as specific or vague as you wish. You can set up threads for this escape scene, or other ones about venturing further.

Subthreads:

Becoming Part of the Old Crowd by Phil Carson with Fortune Ardovini

2 Valentine Duell Gaming Club 1490 1 5

Phil Carson

January 22, 2023 1:35 PM

Becoming Part of the Old Crowd by Phil Carson

Last year was the first that Phil wasn't the youngest and newest player in the gaming club. Xarryn and Fortune had both joined, bringing the club's average age out of Advanced classes, and this year had also brought in more new players, but had additionally lost Gabriel and Morgan, and Val, Bertie, and Philippe were both graduating at the end of this school year, which meant that, by this time next year, Phil was going to be the oldest and most experienced of the players (other than Henry, but Henry was not a consistent party member), and that was sort of terrifying because he was still trying to get used to not being the baby of the group anymore.

The good news was that the rest of them were not so tightly packed into two consecutive year groups that the whole club would need to so abruptly roll over its entire roster. Henry was in sixth, Phil himself was in fourth, Fortune and now Gwendolyn in third, and Xarryn in second.

The bad news was that he'd already lost two friends to graduation, including Gabriel who had basically taken the role of Phil's mentor and big brother, and he only had one year left with the three remaining senior members. He'd already told Val he was willing to be her apprentice this year so he could take over next year, but it was going to be an entirely different gaming group to the one he'd joined three years ago. He just hoped he'd be able to keep it running well enough that it continued on past them. That continuing legacy had seemed important to Gabriel, and Phil didn't want to let him down - or Val (who was currently the leader) or Gary (who was the original founder, whom Phil had met exactly once, at his wedding, which he'd gone to with Gabriel), for that matter.

For now, though, they had a game to play and a young lord to rescue. He looked over his character sheet, trying to decide if there was anything he was likely to have on him that hadn't been confiscated that would be useful for getting himself or someone else untied.

He'd learned his lesson with Groot about being able to communicate effectively with the group, and he'd learned with his magus that it was more satisfying to focus on magic or might rather than be mediocre at both, and he'd learned with Gharkam that fighters were fun to roleplay but a little limited in options during the skill checking portions unless Athletics was an option. Gharkam probably could have just flexed his muscles and tried to burst the ropes apart by his mere physicality, but he didn't have a +4 strength this time.

When making this character, there'd been a few factors that had gone into its making. Philippe was playing Durra again (Phil respected the Head Student's dedication to a favorite character, but definitely preferred trying out new things each year for his own character) so he'd immediately taken Orc and Cleric off his list of possibilities, not wanting to duplicate anyone else too much. He'd already tried Human, Hobgoblin and Leshy, so he had eliminated those as well, and had decided on a Goblin this time.

Leaning into the World of Warcraft goblin reputation, he opted to make the character an inventor. He had a clockwork companion who was always on the verge of exploding and he enjoyed collecting junk that might turn out useful later.

"Okay, um, I'm guessing the kobalds who captured us don't know what an ignitor is so they didn't take it away from Doombringer?" Phil ventured, imagining his goblin (whose birthname was Tunk, but the little guy got mad whenever people didn't use his self-proclaimed Mighty Adventurer Name) palming the lighter out its pouch. "Can I burn my ropes off?" He was a charhide goblin so he had fire resistance 1, and probably wasn't too concerned about setting himself on fire or he would have chosen a different profession.

"Oh, and is Doombot," because why wouldn't he name his construct Doombot? With the way it smoked alarmingly even when it was working correctly, it did a great job of instilling a sense of doom in anyone standing too close to it. "... with us, or did he get put wherever the weapons are being kept?" The companion was a medium construct, so it might have gotten mistaken for a weird looking party member and tied up with everyone else, but it was made of clockwork and gears, so it was equally obvious to not be a living creature and might have been deemed too big and dangerous to be left with them.

1 Phil Carson Becoming Part of the Old Crowd 1536 0 5

Fortune Ardovini

January 26, 2023 6:02 PM

I'm one of the new ones. by Fortune Ardovini

Fortune had decided he had hit the jackpot last year when he had discovered the gaming club. It was awesome, it was like the adventure stories he listened to on the wireless at home, but he got a character to interact with the story as well! Sure, there were rules to learn and slow times when other people were figuring out what to do, but overall he thoroughly enjoyed it.

Last year he had taken Val's suggestion to play a relatively simple kind of character that they had made together. He'd been a Human Sorcerer named Walstead. This time he thought he'd try something a bit more exciting and had put together an Elven Summoner named John. John had a dragon he could call to his side, a small one, but a dragon nonetheless. The dragon's name was naturally Burnie.

This particular adventure seemed to have taken a bit of a bad turn, but all good stories do otherwise where would the adventure be? Fortune was pretty sure Burnie could have the group out of ropes pretty quick... but he'd have to summon the dragon back first and the ropes might hinder that a bit. Before he could ask about that, Phil had some questions for Val.

He wasn't sure if he liked the smile on the gamemaster's face when she answered. "Doombringer does still have his ignitor tucked away, however you'll need to give me a Thievery check, difficulty 10 to get it out successfully. If you critically fail, it'll snag on something, and get flung across the room out of reach at the moment and perhaps make some unwanted noise." The girl paused just a moment before she answered his second question, "A quick glance around reveals that you do not see Doombot in the room with you, where he might be...?" She gave that sneaky, unsettling smile again and shrugged. She then seemed ready for more questions or declarations.

Fortune decided he may as well ask, "Am I tied up to well to summon Burnie?"

She gave him a sad nod, "Tied up as you all are, you are Restrained." Fortune recognized the minor bit of emphasis the girl put on the word 'restrained' that meant is was an official term of the game. "Which means," she continued, "That you are flat-footed and immobilized and for the most part can't take any actions with the attack or manipulate traits... such as casting a spell or summoning your Eidolon. Minor reasonable actions might be an option," Val nodded towards Phil, "But for the most part the only thing you can do reliably well at this point are talk, or try to escape your bonds."

"They took my dagger, didn't they?" It was just in a sheath on John's belt, Val nodded. He looked over his sheet longer, but nothing there seemed helpful. "Can I move around at all? If Doombringer is going to try a to get his ignitor, John wants to shuffle himself between the doorway and Doombringer, just in case the guards look in while he's looking.

Val's smile seemed to show a hint of approval as she replied, "Give me an acrobatics check."

Oh thank Merlin, John was at least trained in Acrobatics. Fortune picked up the die and rolled it... and it landed on the 20. "Umm.. natural twenty, so twenty-six total." His momentary look of astonishment turned into a grin. His dice weren't usually so well behaved.

"Alright critical success, excellent." Val responded cheerily, "You easily slide into place, blocking the guard's view of Doombringer, and so quietly you don't make a sound in the process. What next?" She looked over the group as a whole. Fortune just hoped he hadn't just placed himself in the path of certain death, if things went poorly now.

OOC: Valentine Duell is my character as well, so no god-modding is taking place.
Also I rolled that Acrobatics check and it came up a crit.

2 Fortune Ardovini I'm one of the new ones. 1549 0 7

Phil Carson

January 30, 2023 6:30 PM

Things got chaotic for a bit there by Phil Carson

...

OOC: This thread continued in FnF.

Summary:
Phil's character (Doombringer) burned his ropes off and smells a bit charred.
Xarryn's character (Dolgum) bust out of his ropes with strength, alerted the guards to their escape attempt, freed Gwendolyn and Fortune, and threw a dagger into the alerted guard's chest, nearly (but not quite) killing him.
Fortune's character (John) critically failed his attempt to acrobatics his escape from the ropes and fell over in his attempt to get out of the path of certain death, but Dolgum cut him free so he's no longer bound.
Bertie's character (Nirro) and Philippe's character (Durra) had bad luck with their dice and were unable to free themselves, but neither critically failed, so they can keep trying.
Gwendolyn's character (Inva) is free of the ropes after Dolgum cut her free but hasn't done anything yet.
The one injured guard looks about ready to alert the other kobalds that something's wrong.

Initiative is whoever says what their character is doing first, goes first. It's a tense situation and needs a tense mechanic. So far only Xarryn has gone this round. (Dolgum moved to Fortune, freed him, threw his dagger at the guard.)

1 Phil Carson Things got chaotic for a bit there 1536 0 5