Of Liches, Arenae and Goblins

Three things:

1) The timeless campaign to rid Trollworld of the Liche Lord took another step forward as the Lizardman level was 'tamed'. No fighting, a few saving rolls to spot and identify traps and then a lot of talking backed with CHR SRs and the taking of spare talents for 'befriending', 'negotiating' and the like. A new L5 spell was introduced, "Talk This Way", so that two PCs could master Saurian, a bloodletting rite was survived and a treaty was signed leaving the wizards and their army with free access to the levels below the lizards, with the lizard people guaranteed tenure on their level and told of the imminent return of Molochos, their deity (can't wait for the sequel).

2) Eamon's "The Goblin Cave" has been downloaded 131 times from DriveThru - he is enjoying thoughts of how many PCs he has slaughtered.His reward is a ride on Andy Holmes' "Funfair of Death" so I will take revenge vicariously for the many victims of the 'Cave'.

3) My "Arena of Khaboom" is complete and will go to Lulu very soon and to DriveThru a little later.

That's all, folks!

Another Day, Another Compendium Adventure

(Finally went to see Captain America: The Winter Soldier - I guess I liked the movie; I mean liked the characters and their interactions; I've seen far too many fighting/explosion-computer generated scenes not to yawn a bit at the action...)

So - "Circle of Ice" by Paul Greelman. The character Charlie played got out with only one piece of MRC egregious cheating (well, actually it was GM fiat: 'you go west, you are dead' did not cut it for me). A nice little adventure with a backdrop explaining the 'why' of it all without getting toooo complex; a couple of nice but not ridiculous rewards for getting the job done. I liked the paragraph lengths - enough description to draw you in without bogging you down.

Still more to go so the blog will boldly go on to where many, presumably, have gone before.

Golden Dust, Red Death

I made a new wizard, a human called Neezweke, who set out as a drug smuggler in another Michael Stackpole solo.

Neezweke had to decide whether he delivered the cargo or hijacked and he decided to stick to earning the 1,000 gold he'd been promised. With no drama, he succeeded and then was offered 800 doses of the drug rather than the gold. It sold for 50 a throw so he accepted. Selling was not so easy and took a L2 SR on LK for every 1,000 worth he tried to offload but there was no penalty for failure apart from losing that bundle of drugs.

He took a talent for selling and then made 38 out of 40 rolls, obeying the law of averages and netting 38,000 gold. I suppose he must lodge on Gull and have his money in the bank there. He plans a shopping spree at the Wizards' Guild and should be replete with L2 spells very soon.

AC #2 - Sevem Ayes

Next to take a pop at was Ken's "Seven Ayes".

I rolled up a human to fit the directions and set about adventuring. Before I could blink, I found that I was an orc! This didn't seem to bad as I got an extra dice for both STR and CON and then I had a pub to enter.

My first 'aye' was to agree to leave my weapons with the troll bouncer and then I chose beer rather than wine or something stranger from the ogre barman. My second 'aye' was to agree to buy a lady a drink and before I knew it I had downed three.

That forced me into a LK SR which I made! Only to find myself out of the game, no lady and a galley slave :(

Adventurers' Compendium

I had a crack at the first solo in the Kickstarter compendium of old Sorceror's Apprentice solos ( which sports a very nice cover).

Michael Stackpole's Kingmaker asked for a character with no more than 30 personal adds. I used Ardenstone to generate a human warrior with 7 adds. With a STR of only 9, there were always going to be some potential weak spots for Mike to exploit.

Psycho Bloch (based on someone I once flatted with at Uni) did well - not enough strength to gain the first token but then he cruised along picking up tokens 2-6. He rolled a 3 when 1d6 determined the MR (could have been as high as 60) and he threw 9 to make a L2 SR on CON; he survived a 3d6 Blasting Power from a wizard.

He was out and seemingly greeted by admiring fans when he flubbed a L1 SR on LK with a critical fumble and down he went, a la Julius Caesar, under a flurry of dagger thrusts.

Yes, these are old style solos where death lurks in every paragraph....