My Fantasy RPG World, Feedback and Ideas appreciated

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dol_Guldur

 

That's possible. Navigation with a fixed point and a star or two stars has been done.

The problem with a cylinder world is that if there is a star over the rotation axis you might not be able to see it.
It depends on a few factors.

 

There is a small chance I'll run my dungeon adventure tonight. More likely it will be in January. Even if I do run my game tonight. I'd say there is only a 50% the PCs would make it into the dungeon in one session. Most likely they will poke around the wilderness on tangent regent hunts for at least one gaming session. Depending on how the players decide they want to handle the Dirty Crows, they could spend five minutes of real time making Stealth rolls or they could spent two to three sessions engaged in lengthy combat or negotiations with them.

My game does not rely on grid based combat like a lot of D&D games. It's just not my style. I run games best when I have a moderately loose outline. Also, I don't like the idea of dungeon rooms with monsters that patiently wait for PCs to enter them. The Wendigo, Guldur, and Guldur's minions can move and where the PCs find them will depend on how quietly they enter the dungeon.

Here is my dungeon outline.
Occupants
Guldur
1 Wendigo
6 skeleton archers
16 common skeleton warriors
4 Bone claw skeleton warriors
3 zombie bears
1 skeleton Chimera

If the PCs corner Guldur in his inner lair (and foolishly give him time to regroup), he can reanimate 1 addition Bone Claw, 2 skeleton archers, and 12 common skeleton warriors, and 7 skeleton wolves).

I thought about giving Guldur an enslaved ghost spy. I don't have time to stat out and come up with a backstory for it tonight and I'm not 100% sure I want to include a ghost. If I include a ghost, the PCs chance of using stealth and finesse goes from slim to basically none.

The Dungeon of Guldur was a tower fortress for a petty dragon noble during the First Age. In the Third Age the Tower fell over and essentially got buried by a wave of dirt. The tower is mostly underground. The dungeon entrance is where the top of the tower used to be.


The Wendigo is the first major obstacle. If the PCs waste a lot of time canvassing the area or hunting for regents, the Wendigo will probably engage them outside the dungeon. If the PCs are really efficient and quiet, they will surprise the Wendigo in its own lair. If they fall in between, the Wendigo will probably have a few minutes warning to plan a quick ambush in the Guard Stairway.


Dungeon Entrance

The top of the tower sticks out of the ground like a tilted crown. The entrance to the tower is now the entrance to the dungeon. The entrance was big enough for a dragon or giant to climb up the stairs. Erosion and centuries of sediment makes the entrance look a bit like a cave thought it’s a bit too regular for a cave.

Old Guard Stairway

A spiral stair case goes around the building. Given that the tower is on its side, sometimes the stairs on their floor, sometimes the ceiling, sometimes the walls. Centuries of snow melting and refreezing has filled this area with ice and dirt. The old stairway provides cover but not great cover. If the Wendigo or Guldur’s elite minions try to use stealth here, pit the bad guys Dexterity + Stealth (difficulty 6) against the good guys Perception + Alertness (difficulty 7).


Guldur has mixed in some caltrops amongst the floor, especially deeper among the tower. Guldur poisons the spikes but the poison gets eroded by the elements so not all of them are poisoned. Perception + Alertness (difficulty 8 to spot by chance, 6 if they are actively looking for traps) to avoid stepping on them, Stamina (difficulty 5) to avoid physical attribute damage if they step on it. One to two levels of damage from the spikes themselves. This same poison is used elsewhere on every trap and every undead’s solder’s weapon, but closer to the main villain lair, the poison isn’t half weathered away so it’s difficulty 6 to resist.

There are random ice patches, but they won’t cause a problem unless the PCs have a running fight here. In which case Dodge and Athletics rolls are at +1 difficulty from slipping.

The Wendigo knows where the spikes are. If he engages the PCs here the Wendigo will try to lure them into these spikes. If the PCs try need to spot the spikes while engaged in a running fight, It’s becomes difficulty 9/7 to spot them. Any botched roll while fighting the Wendigo will result in someone landing on a spike hard.


Top Floor

This used to be where the ancient dragon lord lair. Any of the original dragon’s treasure is long gone. The wall murals are gone. Any sculptures is rubble. There be some stone remnants of dragon sized couches and beds minus the cushion. The large windows have just let mud and sediment creep in.

The Wendigo lairs here. Any gnawed on bones that Guldur cannot use is left here. In fact there are lots of gnawed on bones of tiny animals here.

The varied rubble provides great cover for those familiar with it. In a contested stealth roll the bad guys roll Dexterity + Stealth (difficulty 5) against the PCs Perception + Alertness (difficulty 7).

Guldur hid a treasure chest in one of the dirt piles barely sticking out. A tiny spring activated traps will shoot poisoned needles near the locking mechanism. Perception + Investigation difficulty 6, if they think to check for traps. Perception + Alertness difficulty 9 if they don’t. The chest will explode if it’s opened by guile or force for ten dice at the source. The only way to detect this is with divination magic (which Neshik can do pretty easily). There is also poisoned spikes if the PCs dig around the dirt.

Second Floor

In the First Age, this area was a guard house/servants’ quarters for giants and other thurakel. There aren’t really any relics from this era surviving as nothing made for the thurakel was built to last.

It gets colder underground. A lot of water, and its ice roughly 11 months of the year. Less dirt was able to poor in, but dust is prevalent in any dry area. Guldur put in an elaborate trap door with poisoned spikes, but unfortunately for him it’s relatively obvious. There is a rectangle on the floor that is ice and water free with less dust than the rest of the dungeon. Even in poor light it’s pretty easy to spot.

A giant pile of refuse is along the wall. It’s made up corpse parts, wood scraps. Any parts of dead adventurers, destroyed skeleton servants (most undead can only be reanimated once), and anything else Guldur opts to throw away. The refuse pile was seeded with poisonous spikes and fake treasure chests rigged with traps like the first one.

Third Floor (Guldur’s Vestibule)

In the First Age, this area was the rough equivalent of a commons area and banquet hall though no recognizable remnants of the First remains unless a would-be archaeologist was very thorough.

There is a very obvious painted line on the floor. Also obvious. Beyond the line is perfectly dust free. This is where Guldur orders his janitors to start and end their cleaning. Crossing the line triggers a magical alarm unless the PCs spot and dispel the alarm spell. This spell can only be detected by divination magic but the painted line and suspicious cleanliness should get their guard up.

If the PCs were noisy, Guldur will have his best minions here read to intercept them. If not they will encounter about 20% or Guldur’s undead minions. Guldur repurposed the stonework to give his skeleton archers medium cover.

Either way there are undead janitors waiting in the wings. Regardless of who wins, when the fighting stops, the undead janitors will clean up the aftermath. Assuming the PCs leave the janitors alone, they will paw through the fallen, separate out the metal, corpse, and other remains into three large boxes that are labeled as such.

If they are really patient and subtle and stake the area out for hours, Guldur might come to check his boxes, but it’s extremely unlikely they would get this far without alerting him.

Fourth Floor (Guilder’s Worshop)

A separate alarm spell is here. This area has been repurposed into a work space. The walls are painted over with common mathematical and alchemical formulas. There is both a full well-kept blacksmith forge here and a decent alchemical lab. Along one wall there are hundreds of books. Mostly fakes rigged to explode but if a player figures out the Pi riddle (3.1415etc, they can grab the real books and leave the traps behind. Three fake books, one real book, one fake book, one real book, four fake books, one real book, one fake book…

There are a bunch of bins of valuables. Thought fewer of them are trapped, three good ones, one fake one, one good one, one fake one, four good ones, one fake one. Etc.

Any useful weapons Guldur collects from dead adventurers or unlucky Dirty Crow orcs are stored in bins. Scrap metal is repurposed into bars to be reshaped into stuff later. Any gold, silver, and copper coins Guldur found were also melted down and reshaped into five pound ingots. Also included are regents used for necromancy and abjuration spells.

There’s a secret compartment with a copy of Guldur’s spell book with every trap Guldur could muster. Redundant Explosive Runes spell, poisoned needles, a trap to smash hands that reach for it.

If the PCs were really subtle they might surprise Guldur in his workshop here along 30% of his combat capable minions. If the PCs were not very subtle, Guldur will probably throw everything he has left at them here. If the PCs utterly crushed Guldur’s advance guards in dramatic fashion, cowardly Guldur will throw up token minions here and fall back between to his defensive line in the fifth floor.


Fifth Floor (Guldur's Inner Lair)

Guldur slumbers here and keeps gems, magic items, rarest regents, poison stores, and reserve corpses, (complete with armor and poisoned weapons). A necromancer of Guldur’s can only maintain about a hundred health levels worth of combat capable undead minions at any given time. If the PCs get him to turtle up here, he can start animating replacements. Though if they force Guldur to turtle up and start animating reinforcements it would not be that hard to rope-a-dope Guldur into running out of Quintessence. At which point he only has his traps left.

He has hidden a copy of his spell book, heavily trapped and warded like the first one. There is a THIRD hidden copy in the wilderness outside the dungeon but it’s unlikely the PCs will think to look for it, or bother to look.

There is also lots of cover for shooting from Guldur’s end, pits traps, and Guldur can trigger blocks to fall from the ceiling by flipping switches.

If the PCs defeat Guldur very fast before Guldur could call on all his muscle, there may be a few active undead soldiers here. They are on orders to attack everyone who is not Guldur or the Wendigo, but at this point any fight with them would be pretty anti-climatic.

 

Sounds nice!

I don't do that either.
I usually draw a very rough map for myself that shows the layout, and then make text descriptions what is in each room.
The monsters usually have a rough starting point but move around when they hear something. If they are intelligent they might ambush though.

(Did I mention that I have bought the D&D 5E core books and that I am going to run an adventure in the Forgotten Realms with three players very soon? I am SO happy. But also nervous. It has been.... eight years or so since I ran a game.)

 

I like the idea of Lunatus having a mysterious, poorly understood spire left over from the First Age that they use a landmark.

Nope. We overate, especially me, and a food coma kept me from being able to run. And we would have only had two hours to play which wouldn't be enough time to do much.

I went over my master spell list, and I ultimately decided not to give Guldur access to the school of Conjuration and the spell Dimension Door, a spell which allows emergency teleportation of about 50 yards, then onward to an skeleton steed. I have a bad reputation from previous games of letting recurring villains pull off unlikely escapes very often. I ended up trimming his magic down a lot. He's got Necromancy 5, Abjuration 4, Divination 2, and Illusion 1. If he cannot manage an escape plan with Necromancy or Abjuration Magic, he's not going to be able to do it.

I'm not sure what a reasonable escape plan from an underground tower would look like unless I linked it to a big underground cavern. At which point I have a lot more planning to do. I am not yet ready for a Scaraquan adventure. I have written far less material for Scarsubterra.

I could also rationalize it that while Guldur is a coward, he is a territorial coward. He doesn't want to leave all his stuff.

Real Reason: "I want ruins from the Second and First Age to dot the countryside. I always wanted to try a dungeon based on a horizontal tower"
Stated Reason: "Ancient architecture used superior techniques blending magic and science that are now lost."

Stairs on the walls I guess. But I figured it was originally a spiral staircase (a stair case for 10 foot tall giants) I don't have great instincts for spatial reasoning.

 

It's not impossible, but it's unlikely because a newly spawned ghost is going to have trouble evading a skilled necromancer.

A ghost has to cope with not breathing, eating, walking, touching things and become accustomed to an ethereal existence of floating. Their vision and senses are drastically changed. They have to learn all their ghostly powers by experimentation and there is no guide book for that.

All these new abilities have to be learned while the mortal is coping with the stages of grief for his or her own death.

All this takes at least a few weeks. During this transition, the ghost is very vulnerable. If a ghost slips through the cracks, it's because Guldur slipped up. Not impossible. It only takes one dot Necromancy to detect ghosts. Guldur could be spending weeks obsessing over some inconsequential minutiae and not bothering to check to see if there are any ghosts nearby.

Adding one or more ghosts working against Guldur makes the PCs work much easier. Because a ghost could easily tell the PCs how many undead soldiers Guldur has and where many of the traps are.

If I add one or more ghosts working for Guldur, this makes the dungeon much more dangerous, because it's almost impossible for the PCs to get the element of surprise.

I am leaning towards splitting the difference giving Guldur a ghost slave that is struggling against his/her chains and has moments of resistance.

The original ground entrance would definitely be buried by dirt, rocks, and ice, maybe reduced to rubble. In the First Age, the main entrance was on the roof because dragons fly. The ground entrance would just be for lowly thurakel.

The tower was probably about a 1000 feet tall when it was standing, give or take. The original entrance would probably be at least 500 feet underground, but rather than slapping a quantitative label on it like "612 feed deep," I prefer a vague qualitative label like "very deep".

That's reasonable, and it gives the PCs a fair chance at pursuit. Or maybe the players will just let Guldur get away and just take his treasure.

 

Rival Adventuring Party

Vusnitt the evil gnome is the sole powerful survivor of the crime syndicate that the PCs broke up. I thought about putting Vusnitt in charge of a rival band of adventurers, but I reviewed my notes on Vusnitt and realize that Vusnitt is a sort of a city loving dandy. Vusnitt is not going to voluntarily choose to go after a vague rumor of treasure in the wilderness. I plan to reintroduce the evil later, but not for this adventure.

I’m going to add an orcish band of adventurers. As established before, the Dirty Crow Orc Tribe lies between the PCs and the Dungeon of Guldur. The PCs will have to fight, evade, or negotiate with generic orc soldiers. However, if the PCs linger, someone might wonder. “Hey, why is a gnome healer, half-orc warrior, and elf fighter/mage searching this random stretch of subarctic wilderness?"


Like many orc tribes, the Dirty Crow is traditionally ruled by a chieftain who is the tribe’s greatest warrior. The greatest warrior is currently Urluhg. Urluhg is the strongest orc, but is not exactly the wisest or cleverest, as is often the case in orc tribes.

Silug the high priestess of Nami arguably is the wisest and cleverest orc. She makes most of the Dirty Crows’ strategic decisions, and Urluhg nearly always has no reservations about doing whatever Silug suggests. The most controversial policy Silug implemented is the strategy that the Dirty Crows are currently favoring extortion and intimidation over outright theft. “We can get more treasure this way while losing fewer warriors and cast a long shadow of fear over the humans.”


Murash is the Dirty Crows most powerful priest of Maylar and is Silug’s chief rival. Murash is hoping to become the chief advisor to a powerful warrior who can defeat Urluhg in a challenge, or barring that, Murash wants to gain enough personal power that Urluhg will choose to listen to him. Plan C is for Murash himself to defeat Urluhg in a challenge. Murash is no slouch in combat, but he is no match for Urluhg without using magic. While using magic in a formal duel it’s not outright forbidden, the Dirty Crows tend to disrespect leaders who rely on spells during a fight. Even if using his magic unfettered, Urluhg would probably still beat him. Without magic, Urluhg would certainly beat him.

Murash is not powerful enough to challenge the status quo yet, not without some kind of edge. If Murash gets wind that some demi-human adventurers are looking for something in the wilderness, Murash will then decide that whatever the adventurers are looking for, Murash wants it.


Murash’s and his three companions represent a small Maylar cult, and are effectively an adventuring party.

-Murash is the party leader. He is a competent warrior and divine spell-caster.

-Yambul is a battle singer, which is a fancy way of saying he is a bardic mage. The magic he focuses on is buff spells. He has no major ambitions and is content to play a supporting role for his whole life.

-Vakgar is a strong and powerful warrior who is not that bright, but he is devout to Maylar and loyal to Murash and his twin sister. Murash is grooming him to hopefully one day challenge Urluhg.

-Bula is Vakgar’s twin sister (twin births are pretty common amongst orcs). Maylar is a patron of warriors and hunters. Bula very much sees herself as a hunter. She is no slouch in a straight up fight, but prefers stealth over brute force and is a very skilled tracker. Bula never set out to become a divine spell-caster, but she recently manifested a few dots of rudimentary divine magic as a result of her piety to Maylar and her overall drive. Murash is not sure if he gained a powerful lieutenant or a dangerous potential rival.

 

Way back on page four of this thread. You wrote up this character concept.

My game system has all characters made by assigning points as they see fit, so no character classes and no paladins (though I suppose any righteous warrior could call themselves a paladin) but I filed away this concept as a potential NPC with the minor change of making her Chaotic Good.

My thought was that I would make Umara a Lantern, in other words a priestess of Zarthus. Umara and her adventuring buddies (who do not names, backgrounds, or stats yet) have decided to put a stop the Dirty Crows from extorting the northern villages of Fumaya.

By the time Umara and Company got to the northern lands, all the villagers had already paid their tribute. It's a yearly tribute. Since the villagers already paid for a year of a peace, no one wanted to bother poking the orcs with a stick. It's about nine to ten months until the next tribute is due.

Umara and her team are currently working on recruiting and training a peasant militia to resist the orcs next year. Realizing that a typical orc warrior can fight off three or four peasant militia men, the heroes do not plan to fight fair. They are attempting to create rudimentary fortifications and lots of traps.

Umara and her team all agree that Lord Polnoc, who is supposed to watch over and protect the northern lands is an incompetent. They would love to seem him replaced by someone better, almost anyone.

Umara, a Lantern through and through, nurses a dream of the northern lands seceding from Fumaya and creating a small separate state embodying Zarthus ideas of freedom, strength, and self sufficiency. Umara's team mates are a little less idealistic. After all 90% of Lantern back revolutions are squashed. Of the one that survive, 90% of these Lantern backed proto-states collapse in less than a generation.

Now that King Henryk doesn't have a criminal syndicate weighing he might be able to send aid Lord Polnoc against the orcs harassing his subjects at least in time for the next tribute demand. That'd be nice, but Umara and company aren't going to be put much stock in King Henryk's aid. They probably aren't even aware of the news in King's Lake yet.

Umara's Company definitely qualifies as good guys from a different temple.

Umara's Company could be never contacted never seen, they could distract the orc patrols, or they could be a Deus Ex Machina to save the PCs from a TPK situation.

Spoiler: Character stats for the Orc Adventurers

Murash the Leader
Willpower 6 Lethal Soak
Dexterity 3, Strength 4, Stamina 3, Appearance 2, Charisma 3, Manipulation 3, Intelligence 3, Perception 3, Wits 3
Abilities: Alertness 3, Animal Ken 1, Archery 1, Athletics 3, Brawl 3, Dodge 3, Empathy 1, Etiquette 1, Expression 1, Hearth Wisdom 1, Intimidation 3, Leadership 2, Medicine 3, Melee 4, Performance 1, Ride 2, Stealth 3, Subterfuge 1, Survival 3, Theology 1
Divine Spheres: Augmentation 3, Healing 3
Merits: Divine Spell-caster, Shield Proficiency 1
Speaks Orcish, Common and Elven

Vakgar the Warrior
Willpower 5
Dexterity 4, Strength 6, Stamina 4, Appearance 2, Charisma 3, Manipulation 1, Intelligence 2, Perception 3, Wits 2
Abilities: Alertness 3, Animal Ken 2, Archery 4, Athletics 3, Brawl 4, Dodge 3, Intimidation 3, Melee 4, Ride 4, Stealth 3, Subterfuge 2, Survival 3
Merits: Mounted Archery, Blind Fighting, Shield Proficiency
Flaws: Illiterate
Speaks Orcish and Common

Bula the Huntress
Willpower 6
Dexterity 3, Strength 3, Stamina 4, Appearance 1, Charisma 3, Manipulation 2, Intelligence 4, Perception 3, Wits 3
Abilities: Alertness 3, Animal Ken 3, Archery 3, Athletics 3, Brawl 3, Crafts 1, Dodge 3, Hearth Wisdom 3, History 1, Intimidation 2, Investigation 2, Leadership 1, Legerdemain 1, Medicine 1, Melee 3, Ride 3, Stealth 4, Subterfuge 1, Survival 4, Theology
Divine Spheres: Animal Power 1, Plant Power 1
Merits: Divine Spell-caster, Shield proficiency
Speaks Orcish and Common

Yambul the Battle Singer
Willpower 5
Dexterity 3, Strength 4, Stamina 3, Appearance 2, Charisma 3, Manipulation 3, Intelligence 3, Perception 2, Wits 3
Abilities: Alertness 2, Animal Ken 1, Archery 3, Athletics 2, Brawl 4, Commerce 1, Crafts 1, Dodge 1, Empathy 1, Etiquette 2, Expression 1, Hearth Wisdom 1, History 1, Intimidation 2, Leadership 1, Melee 2, Performance 4, Ride 2, Stealth 2, Subterfuge 2, Survival 3, Theology 1
Rare Abilities: Spell-craft 1
Merits: Arcane Spell-caster
Flaws: Bardic Magician
Casting Attributes: Enchantment 2, Transmutation 3
Enchantment Spells: (1) Compulsion, Daze, Sleep (2) Despair, Heroism, Hold
Transmutation Spells: (1) Darkvision, Expeditious Retreat, Feather Fall, Household Transmuting, Jump, Magic Weapon, Spider Climb, (2) Flame Arrow, Fly, Haste, (3) Physical Augmentation
Speaks Orcish, Common, Elven, and Dwarven

On the whole, Murash's team of adventurers is designed to be just as powerful as the PCs.

Murash is moderately stronger than the PCs in terms of total points. Murash's companions are slightly weaker than the PCs in terms of total points, but it's 4 against 3.

Generally speaking, the player characters will nearly always triumph over an equally skilled party because a player managing his or her character puts a lot more thought into applying the varied abilities of one character than a Game Master juggling several characters at once.

I haven't statted out Umara or her friends, but presumably they would be roughly as powerful as the PCs.

It might be fun to have Vusnitt sponsor a team. Though if he did, the team would probably be realistically less skilled than the PCs. If Vusnitt could get henchmen that were the PCs equals, he would have already sent them against them earlier. Sometimes weaker enemies can be a lot of fun. Underdog bad guys can be dangerous if they catch the PCs at a vulnerable point.

Or maybe Guldur will kill and reanimate Vusnitt's team...

 

It occurred to me that since the dungeon is north of Fumaya, the PCs will have to pass through the lands of Lord Frymar, Zimoz and Polnoc.

Frymar Revisited

Lord Frymar is the wealthiest of King Henryk's vassals, largely because Lord Frymar makes good coin acting as a middleman for trade between Loren and Meckelorn. Frymar controls the only duchy that isn't immediately beset by external foes.

Duke Zimoz believes that Duke Frymar is a selfish coward who is fleecing King Henryk and the other vassals. Duke Zimoz's son, Andrzej Zimoz, is taking it farther and has been moonlighting as a brigand to rob some of Frymar's caravans. Lord Frymar doesn't know who has been raiding his caravans, just that the raiders seem very well informed about his carvans movements. They always wait till the dwarfs or elves are gone and only attack Frymar's men.

Given recent events, Lord Frymar is going to assume Etch has been feeding intelligence on the movements of Lord Frymar's caravans. If Andrzej stops raiding Frymar, he is basically guaranteed to get away with his past crimes. If Andrzej continues his odds of getting caught are going to increase substantially.

Lord Frymar met the PCs briefly about two months prior they did some basic commerce. It's likely news of their heroism in King's Lake will travel faster than the PCs. Based on their reputation as crime fighters, Frymar will probably see if he can get the PCs to go after the brigands bothering him. I doubt the PCs will bite. They do not particularly like Lord Frymar.

If the PCs agree to help Lord Frymar go after the local brigands, Andrej's spy in Frymar's court will inform him of this and Andrej will definitely decide to give up the brigand lifestyle.

It's possible that, during the course of regent hunting, the PCs will accidentally bump into Andrej and his knights pretending to be brigands. If that's the case, Andrej (while still masked) will flee. After all, the PCs are friends of Andrej's father.

Zimoz Revisited

Before traveling to King's Lake, the PCs saved a village. They killed a Murder Tree which was spawning plant monsters. When Lord Zimoz offered him gold as a reward, the PCs refused. As far as Duke Zimoz is concerned, the PCs are always welcome.

Even better, Duke Zimoz made a large donation to the Priesthood of Khemra. In return, Neshik pulled some strings and the Keepers sent a highly competent warrior priest named Udom to join Duke Zimoz's court.

With Udom acting as Zimoz's general, it is highly likely that the goblin raiders that were bothering Duke Zimoz's subjects are not long for this world.

Duke Zimoz will probably give the PCs a heroes' welcome. They could probably get some free provisions if they asked.

I don't see much recipe for adventure hooks, though I suppose they could join Udom's men if he's about to hit a nest of goblins or something here.

Polnoc revisited

Polnoc's lands are beleagured by the Dirty Crow Orc tribe, but they aren't being beleaguered right now. They paid their tribute, and the Dirty Crows are pragmatic and not going to harass someone who paid them tribute. The peasants are going to bunker down for the winter and do little else.

In the past, a rogue Maylar priest tried stealing the tribute two villages meant for the orcs because (A) he wanted the treasure and (B) he hoped he could provoke the two villages into blaming each other and (C) thought it would be mildly amusing if the orcs killed them all. The PCs killed that priest and recovered the tribute. Huzzah.

I don't see much room to put a side quest here now, unless I decide to throw a random monster attacking the peasants besides the Dirty Crows, but I think the Polnoc peasants have suffered enough already.

I could have the PCs meet Umara's party here, or not. Their odds of meeting accidentally are fairly low though if the PCs visit any of the villages, the will learn of Umara by reputation.

Unlikely Frymar and Zimoz, the PCs never met Count Polnoc earlier. Their path doesn't take them near his castle unless they choose to visit him for whatever reason.

 

So in what has become a Friday ritual for me, I went to my favorite sports bar/family restaurant and got a big cheeseburger and a bowl of popcorn and I daydreamed about Scarterra.

I thought about who would be the core party members to Umara. I just turned 37 a few days ago, so naturally all my ideas involved stupid idealistic teenagers and/or angsty teenagers.

Tabor and Tabitha are brother and sister. Father was a ranger, not a super bad ass one like Aaragon from Lord of the Rings, but a competent outdoors man and hunter. Mother was an herbalist and regent gatherers. Both siblings would be very wilderness savvy and have a great jack-of-all trades, master of none thing going especially after Umara teaches them a little bit of book learning, theology, swordplay, and music. Basically they are going to have one or two dot of nearly every ability.

Anyway, Tabor and Tabitha's parents were elf-ophiles so they heard exaggerated tales about how wise, strong, and beautiful elves are. So when a beautiful strong wise elf woman came to the village seeking volunteers to fight the orcs, they couldn't sign up fast enough. Tabitha is totally lost in heroine worship and wants to be Umara. Tabor is totally infatuated and wants to bed Umara. Both eagerly follow Umara barefoot into the Void.


I have always been fascinated by mixed heritage people that overcompensate by diving into the identity of one half of their heritage to the exclusion of the other. I read that when the radical Basque separatist movement in Spain was at it's height, 5% of the general population was mixed Basque-Castilian and 10% of the radical Basque separatists were mixed.

Galil is a half-orc who hates his orc heritage. Galil took Zarthus as his primary patron because Zarthus is considered the spiritual patron of half-breeds and bastards. Now a Zarthus priestess is calling for arms against orcs. Perfect! He gets to serve Zarthus and kill orcs. Maybe if he's lucky he'll redeem his worthless misbegotten life by dying in defense of full blood humans...Galil would have a similar skill set to Tabor and Tabitha. Galil always felt more at home in the woods than the village where he could escape the imagined stares and recriminations he received from the humans for being half orcish.

All three of Umara's proteges could be developing the focused piety and drive towards Zarthus that they could start developing their first dots of divine magic any day now.


It occurred to me that this would make a a decent young adult fantasy novel. At some point Umara would die tragically and the young adult heroes have to continue leading the defense of their village.

-Galil would eventually learn to stop hating life and to value his existence. He feels like he has no family but Tabor and Tabitha have been his family all along. Perhaps at some point he'll have to call on his orcish heritage to save his surrogate family.
-Tabitha would eventually learn to stop trying to be Umara and learn to be herself.
-Tabor would stop pretending to hold Umara's ideas to woo her and come into his own ideas.
-If I wrote a this as a novel, I'd probably want to add a fourth teen. Maybe a brooding boy or girl orphaned by a past orc attack.
-All four characters would also have to learn how to use their budding supernatural powers. Perhaps one of the four teens is a late bloomer for power and it makes he or she self conscious. Yay, for adolescence metaphors!

But that's how a young adult fantasy story works. A Scalenex style story would be different. Umara would survive. She would ultimately create a peasant militia that would kill so many Dirty Crow that the orcs are forced to withdraw. Since the orcs are shown to not be invincible, this inspires villages throughout the north to resist the Dirty Crows. Umara wins everything she set out to do, but a lot of human villagers died in the process, including all of her idealistic teen proteges. Umara is forever haunted over her long elven life with the question, "Was it worth it?"

 

Lord Polnoc is toothless. He doesn't have the authority to take such a tax.

Lord Zimoz offered the PCs money for saving his subjects and they refused AND Neshik set him up with a valuable new courtier AND Neshik sold him a bunch of healing potions at cost. Duke Zimoz would not alienate adventurers who help him like that.

Lord Frymar might try to tax the PCs. His normal MO is to operate as a businessman. He taxes adventurers indirectly by selling them high end gear and materials. Frymar is very good at negotiating commerce. Unfortunately for Frymar, Neshik is just as good at commerce as he is. He doesn't like to wield overt state force, but he might if he thinks he can shake some gold out of the PCs. Probably won't though. The worst he could do to the PCs is to place a heavy fee or restriction upon regent hunting in his lands. It's not a big deal because Neshik can freely hunt regents in the lands of the nobles that like him.

I suppose King Henryk could have claimed a large portion of the treasure liberated from Etch, or even all of it, but King Henryk's chief advisor, Jaromir, is good friends with Neshik, so the king decided not to push his claim. Also, the PCs did the king a favor by taking a bite out of crime and turning over a ledger of nobles that Etch was blackmailing. Now the king has a good idea of which of his vassals are potential troublemakers. Any noble that met with Etch regularly is probably up to no good.

Also, to smooth things over, Jaromir talked the PCs into forking over about 25% of their loot to the state. They paid a lot of gold to the soldiers who helped them and even more gold to the families of the soldiers that died. The weapons and armor they liberated went to the city's armory.

Neshik threw a lot of character creation points for social ties. He is a high ranking Keeper, a member of the Order of Delas, and a folk hero to peasants. The nobles want to show they get along with Neshik and Company publicly because otherwise they would alienate the priesthood of Khemra, gnomes, and a great many peasants. Aranil is a noble blood in Loren, though he is currently pretending to be a common born elf. In theory, he could be pulling his social rank.


It really comes down to meta reasons not setting reasons. The players are not greedy. They are more interested in having adventures and character arcs than getting all the best loot. As long as the players are not being overly focused on gold, I don't need to have NPCs fleece the PCs financially.


Now I go into story reasons. In the real world, power came from land, gold, and faith. Land was the most important resource, so the ones with the land were usually officially in charge. The king and his vassals are the main force in charge, but their power is checked partially by mercantile interests and the Church. Nobles also had to deal with the peasants. The peasants didn't wield much political power day-to-day but the specter of mass peasant revolts did hover over the lords.

Anyway, in the real world, kings had to take the interests, his vassals, the Church, the burghers, and peasants at least sometimes.

In Scarterra, about one in a hundred people are exceptional. In game terms, they have about three times the dots (or more) as the average person. About half of these people have magical ability. The other half are just bad asses. I haven't figured out an in-game term for these people. "Adventurers" doesn't quite work because not every such person goes on adventurers, but I don't have a better term for now so "adventurer" it is.

A party of adventurers could theoretically topple kings. In fact, most princes today are the direct descendants of adventurers who toppled the previous prince. We talked about regulating magic on page 13 and 14 of this thread. We covered weapons and skill at arms a bit later.

Adventurers are a potential threat to princes, but they are also huge potential assets. Adventurers can also fight monsters, bolster the army, cure diseases, facilitate travel and communication, and sway public opinion among the masses.

It's not practical for even a tyrant like King Drosst to imprison, kill, or tax into the poor house all adventurers.

Princes have to pick and choose. Princes want to bribe, co-opt or flatter adventurers to aid them. When adventurers become a threat, they can be hemmed in, taxed, exiled, or killed. There is the problem that if an adventurer is treated like a cash cow, said adventurer may move from the "Supports the Prince" political camp to the "Topple the Prince" political camp.

Princes have to pick and choose, they only going to put pressure on adventurers who actively cause trouble or adventurers who are extremely loaded with wealth. They are likely to give adventurers that are actively helpful or relatively poor a free reign to do as they please.

At this point the PCs are not trouble makers, they are trouble solvers. Also, they aren't particularly wealthy, though are not poor by any stretch of the imagination.

I have been playing RPGs with these friends for 20 years and some change. We are old. In the past we have had problems with Game Masters railroading players and we have had problems with players derailing the Game Master's plot

Right now we do not have that problem because at the end of every session and chapter session. "Do you want to stay the course for this type of story or do something else?" If the players tell me they want to do something else, we will collectively decide in vague terms what that something else will be.

So game starts. I never play tested my game system before, but it's based World of Darkness which we are very familiar with. Make whatever characters you want. And they did.

Then, I said, "How about we do some roadside random encounters and an occasional save a village from the Monster of the Week."

The players agreed.

We had some good sessions. Then the players said "Can we do something where we can get some treasure and still be good guys."

I threw in a monster of the week who happened to have treasure. The PCs also found out about orcs extorting the northern villages.

"You want to go after the orcs?"
"No we are not equipped to take on an army. We got money now, let us sell and buy stuff!" said the players
"You can go to King's Lake." (rubs hands together because King's Lake has a bunch of stuff going on).

I gave the players the options
A-Conduct espionage against the Swynfaredian and disreputable Fumayan nobles
B-Take on organized crime
C-Gather reinforcements to fight the Orcs to the north.
D-Leave King's Lake for more wilderness adventurers.
E-Something the players come up with.

They chose B. After many sessions of investigations and sting operations they broke Etch's organization wide open.

A-Use the information in Etch's journal to find dirt on the local nobles
B-Go on a man hunt for Vusnitt the escaped evil gnome
C-Use their new prestige to gather reinforcements to fight the orcs to the north.
D-Use their new wealth to outfit an expedition for a treasure hunt in a rumored dungeon to the north.
E-Something the players come up with.

The players said. "Constant investigations has gotten a little stale. No A or B. We still don't want to take on a full army so no C. Let's go after D."

If the players go south they are being jerks because I asked them what they wanted to do. My rule is "You can do anything you want, but you got to tell me in advance so I can plan stuff for it."


That suppose, a random lair in the wilderness is not a bad idea.

 

Oops, I fixed the double post by putting my next reply in this. Thanks for the undeserved double like @Paradoxical Pacifism !


Short version of my last session:

PCs destroyed Guldur the Lich and ransacked his dungeon, BUT they were tracked by Bula the orc huntress. She observed them unaware as they were recovering from their adventure, sorting their loot, and burying the skeletons. She is aware that the PCs are adventurers who just explored a dungeon full of undead and are now flush with treasure.

Spoiler: Long Version of my last session

The PCs opted to avoid Duke Frymar. A three day journey took about two weeks as they stuck to the wilderness and gathered regents and food.

PCs visited their friend Duke Zimoz. Neshik spent three to four weeks in Zimoz's alchemist lab turning regents into healing potions and magical oils that temporarily add minor magic properties to weapons and armor.

During this time, Aranil basically hung out while Svetlana beat the crap out of Zimoz's soldiers in training exercises. Lord Zimoz's Master at Arms, Udom, has a spell that turns lethal damage into subdual damage allowing people to fight their friends and at full strength without killing each other.

During these couple weeks, Aranil, Svetlanna, Udom, and six red shirts went after a camp of goblins, killed about three dozen goblins at the cost of three healing potions and one dead red shirt.

After they left Zimoz's castle, Svetlanna/Svetlanna's player said "No more regent hunting, we have enough potions for now! We go straight to the dungeon!"

On the way there they found some game traps in the wilderness. They figured out orcs set the game traps.

"We don't like orcs, let's trip their traps."

Cause and Effect

Bula the huntress.

Someone tripped my traps. Who did it? Ah, I see horse tracks pulling a lightly laden cart. I will follow it.

So despite the fact that the PCs did not waste much time in northern lands, they still got the attention of the Dirty Crows.

Back to the Dungeon

The PCs had some foreshadowing. Near the dungeons the regents were picked over (Guldur), they found a grove of cultivated poisonous plants (Guldur again), and game in the area was very scarce (the Wendigo).

The PCs fought the Wendigo early in the dungeon. Beat the Wendigo relatively easily. I did think it was funny that Aranil's player outsmarted himself. He usually favors magical fire attacks, unless he's near flammable buildings. This time he switched to lightning because he figured, "this is a magical creature. Magical creatures are often protected against fire and/or ice but rarely defended against lightning." Wendigo are actually vulnerable to fire. They figured this out after the Wendigo was brought down because it bled snow instead of blood.

They burned the Wendigo but the heart wouldn't burn, so they took it with them. (Icy Wendigo hearts do melt in fire, it just takes a very long time), so they took it with them.

The PCs began exploring the dungeon. Due to bad luck and Svetlanna's player being somewhat reckless, they triggered a lot of traps. Svetlanna is pretty good at shrugging off hits and Neshik has a lot of healing magic.

Due to poor rolls, Guldur didn't notice the distant magical explosions.

The PCs make there way through to the vestibule of the area of the dungeon Guldur actually uses. They discovered the OCD skeleton janitors and then triggered the first magical alarm.

They fought the small vanguard of Guldur's minions. Beat them with a minimum of fuss. Noticed a larger group of undead preparing a fortified defense which the PCs attacked (after using some of their newly made magical oils). The PCs won, but Neshik and Aranil ended up spending a lot of their magic points, especially Neshik. Neshik really put his healing powers through the paces as Aranil alone took enough damage to kill three times over.

Aranil had less than half of his quintessence and Neshik was down to about a quarter of his mana. The PCs decided to go back a few chambers and set up camp under Aranil's alarm spell.

They didn't go far, and Guldur was aware the PCs were there now, thanks to his somewhat resistant ghost spy. Guldur took the last of his minions and himself and sneaked to their camp. He dispelled Aranil's magic alarm spell but his hyper alert senses woke him up when this happened. The PCs rapidly got to their feet to fight the threat.

If I played Guldur tactically, this would have been a TPK, but Guldur is bat skyte crazy and he was way more defensive than was logical. He usually wasted his action each turn dispelling Aranil's magical attacks against him even though these attacks would have only caused very minor damage. Guldur didn't break out the powerful attack spells until Neshik wounded him severely with a healing spell (healing spells harm the undead).

Once Guldur realized Neshik was the greatest threat, he ordered all his remaining minions to target the gnome, this made the minions easy pickings for Svetlanna when their backs were turned.

Ultimately, the PCs won by the skin of their teeth. Neshik ran out of his mana and Aranil almost ran out his quintessence. Neshik was hit by a high level necromancy spell that was beyond his magical healing abilities so he could barely walk.

The PCs left the dungeon to recuperate outside. I decided to have Neshik's incognito mom, the Khemra spirit visit them with the dawn. Secret Mommy healed Neshik with her advanced healing magic and gave the PCs moderate magical items.

Since Secret Mommy said she is not allowed to help until the quest is over, the PCs took this as a green light that their enemies were defeated (though there were still lots of traps).

The PCs looted the place. Took about a week to recover and gather the stuff (some of the stuff is hard to carry). The PCs made a plan to tell their friend Duke Zimoz about the loot that the PCs cannot really carry themselves: An alchemists laboratory, a small armory of assorted weapons, a well stocked forge, and large quantities of iron ingots and coal.

By the PCs were gathering their stuff and licking their wounds, everyone failed their Perception + Alertness checks to realize Bula was watching them.

That's what I have a week to figure out because that's where the game paused at.

But it's not the chieftain who knows there was a treasure dungeon in his patrol area. It was the chieftain's lieutenant/rival, Murash, that discovered the presence of treasure.

Since the PCs are moving a heavily laden cart filled with loot through the wilderness, Murash and company can track and catch up to them easily.

Murash has two choices, technically three but he would never choose" C"

A) Try to kill the PCs and take all their stuff
B) Try to intimidate the PCs and demand a portion of the PC's stuff as tribute
C) Decide the PCs are too dangerous to provoke and leave them alone.

Murash has three ways he can apply force.

A) He can confront the PCs with his trusted adventuring party alone.
B) He can call up the young warriors loyal to him and bring about 16 orc warriors with him. Murash is 90% sure none of these warriors will rat him out to Chief Urlugh.
C) He can tell the chieftain Urlugh about this to try to win his favor. At which point the PCs could easily find themselves facing 100+ orcs. Murash would only get a tiny portion of the loot and prestige though.