#vermilliondice

Cast

Mogui (IndigoDie): Druid. Does what he’s told by his employer. Indigo has played this module before. Yot (LimeDie): Cleric. Looking to redeem himself for past failures. Lime will commit to bits. Bernard 'Bean' Dipp (NavyDie): Ranger. Trying his best despite being so young. Navy doodles when he’s bored. Delilah Dunford (VermilionDie): Rogue. Searching for an identity beyond her family. Vermilion could not make this session. Game Master (SepiaDie/me): The world (a dusty, dusty world). The walls probably have stories to tell. I’m desperately trying to keep ahead with drawing the map.

Session Three

We reopen in the loot room we ended in the last session. Navy is given his rewards and I expound on the uses of the various items they received.

Now given the opportunity to read his letter, Navy delays long enough to wonder if he’s chosen to make Bean illiterate, but eventually he takes to giving the description: his mother wrote it, opening with a joke, and giving random updates about life in town despite the letter needing to have been placed before the arrival of the party, but it’s an opportunity for the players to expound on their families, so maybe his mother is a little airheaded?

The letter canonizes a High School which has a football team and a glee club. Will anything come of it? Probably not. Did I say with a sigh ‘Guess that’s canon now…’? You bet I did! Always say yes! Improv!

The party headed back into the room with the pool, tested the other door to find it locked, and moved towards the wailing.

The chamber to the East of the entrance contained several walls crisscrossing. A door stood locked to the south. The puzzle of this room is walking around various hidden pit traps while finding three switches that must be held down at the same time to unlock the exit. I originally ruled the switches take a few minutes to reset so the party can run to get to the door, but then I remembered Delilah is technically still there, so I reverted it to operate as written.

Bean and Yot both took turns falling in holes as Mogui moved around cautiously and managed to jump clear of the one pit he did accidentally trigger.

The three maneuvered around the chamber until they found the necessary switches, activated them, and Delilah held open the door so they could get through.

Walking through the next hallway, they finally reached the door for the room from whence the wailing was emitting.

They all decide to ignore it.

Which means they’ve skipped some plot exposition. Oh well, keep rolling and adapt.

Instead, they go down a fork and into an empty room, which formerly held a giant beetle, but I cut that combat as being wholly unnecessary. Instead, our party continues through into the next chamber, which has a fight I did not cut, as I thought it would have narrative value.

A fire pit smolders in the center of the room, a charred corpse within. Upon the arrival of our party, a dark apparition arises and squares up to fight our heroes.

Bean had acquired an Oil of Magic Weapon, granting his bow Plus-One Status, and rendering it a magic attack, so he’s able to harm the shadow.

Yot, meanwhile, uses Holy Flame. Fun fact about our apparition: it was born because a pyrophobic man burned alive in a structure already pretty rife with necromantic energies. That terror and agony was all it took to create the shadow.

So the enemy is real mad at being set on fire, sending out psionic screams for flavor.

Mogui just watches the fight.

After a few rounds of Magic Bow and holy flames, the Shadow perishes. Victory music for everybody!

The party leaves the room, continues to ignore the terrified wails, and enters the last available door.

Within is a round, domed room, with a wooden pillar, standing on an outcrop over a pit at the center of the room, that fires blunted arrows. This is felt to be rather unpleasant, and the party discusses how to deal with it.

Eventually, they check out the door, and find a mechanism built into it.[1] The party attempts to break the mechanism.

Bean then enters, and is pelted by blunt arrows. He walks around and tries to open a southern exit, finding it to be locked, so Bean attempts to approach the trap. Unfortunately, he takes enough nonlethal damage to get knocked out. Whoops.

After waiting for the mechanical whirring to stop, the other two call after Bean, receiving no response. So they cautiously enter.

The trap is now docile. And the southern door is unlocked.

So, what happened here, by the text of the module, is that the trap keeps running for ten rounds, at which time it’ll be exhausted of arrows, and the south exit will automatically unlock. The hope was the party would take the tower shields from the wood golem of last session to block the arrows.

Because of how they broke the activating mechanism (as they snapped off the metal arm in the door hinge that turned the machine off and on), I decided that now once it turned on, it couldn’t turn off. So after Bean was knocked out, the trap kept running until it ran out of rounds.

Don’t ask how the trap’s supposed to keep pelting adventurers inside the chamber after the door closes. Magic I guess.

Stop asking how traps work.

Mogui investigated the south exit while Yot checked on Bean. The door was, of course, unlocked, to the annoyance of Navy, and Yot was taking his sweet time healing Bean, but soon the party was on their feet again and ready for whatever came next.

The final room of the floor widened as it went, the ceiling supported by four columns. Stairs to the south lead to the… basement? Second basement? The crypt’s already underground, so what terminology applies here, I’m not…

Also, there’s two statues in recesses of the south wall. The Module text doesn’t call any attention to them, but they’re probably Kassen.

Our heroes enter this room, get to approximately the middle of the room, and four skeletons, with talon-like clawed fingers and blood dripping from their bones, step out from behind the columns, and menace the heroes.

Combat begins.

As does a series of horrible rolls from both parties. Just a lot of do-nothing turns. Yot tries to bash the skeletons and misses, Bean fires arrows and the closest he got sent the arrow through the ribcage of one skeleton. The skeletons weren’t faring much better, three of them crit fumbling at some point, which I interpreted them as falling prone for a turn.

The rolls were so bad I gently reminded my party that I set up a dice-roll bot in the Discord channel, if they wanted to put Roll20’s die-roller into dice prison. They didn’t go for it.

Back and forth the combat went, the skeletons getting a couple lucky hits on Bean. Eventually, and tragically, those lucky hits added up and Bean hit zero. Navy started making Death Saves, a realm where the exhaustingly low rolls followed and brought him to his death.

NavyDie then spent the rest of the combat doodling an increasingly elaborate death scene, with grave stone, candles, what was either a pentagram or an alchemy circle,[2] and death himself. Whatever self-amusement was needed.

As a narrative-first GM, Player Characters dying in combat is not something I enjoy. I am now in an awkward position of needing to figure out how to proceed and keep Navy involved. If he still wishes to play, of course. A couple options immediately spring to mind: bringing in a new character will be narratively awkward at this point, as we need to justify why the ignorant town would send back up, or why a kid is running so late; there’s an available NPC I could give Navy, but he’d be an odd (but doable) add; or, and this is an idea I like most, I can bring Bean back for a price…[3]

But I need to talk it through with NavyDie first.

Back to those still alive.

Mogui maneuvers to keep a safe distance, eventually coaxing one of the four skeletons back to the previous room, running a circle and returning to the main combat room, closing the door behind him. I rolled a die to determine the nature of the skeletons, and concluded they’re running on animalistic instinct, and thus can’t operate a door.

Also, this cuts down on enemies to delay the fight and rewards IndigoDie for clever problem solving.

Yot, growing tired of not hitting with his Mace, starts using Holy Flame again, forcing the Skeletons to use the horrible dice rolls to avoid damage instead of Yot using the same rolls to cause damage. Progress starts to get made.

Mogui turns into a tiger and starts running about and attempting to hit the skeletons, but still no luck.

There’s also some talk about how the skeletons aren’t taking attacks of opportunity, which had a very elegant explanation: I totally forgot about that mechanic, and I also just plain hate attacks of opportunity. They feel cheap and punish players for not carefully considering every minutiae of their actions.[4]

Eventually, the skeletons are finally either redead, or trapped in another room.

With one dead, the remaining three party members stare towards the stairs to the next floor. As the only escape is to fight the skeleton in the previous room, they mostly consider what difficulty they’re prepared to face.

Of the three sessions played thus far, this one felt of middle quality. I forgot to read my opening crawl text, and I waited until the last minute to write notes for the remainder of the floor (after copying over the leftovers from session two). Neither the combat with the Shadow (where I forgot to implement the smoke in the eyes mechanic the module wanted me to) or the Bloody Skeletons (with horrible dice rolls)[5] felt particularly fun or worthwhile. I’ll probably look to cut more superfluous fights going forward.

I’m also looking forward to moving out of the dungeon. I am learning a lot, as was my goal with running this module, but I’m missing being able to Role-Play as GM.[6] I’m certainly learning to answer questions the text didn’t bother to address, and also how annoying module formatting can be with where it explains things.

When I find time, I should sit down and design a dungeon of my own. That would also be a good learning experience, and also let me feel more at ease with making world-based rulings on the fly and implement elements I like and minimize those I don’t.

There’s just so much combat and map-based traps written in this thing. Makes it too difficult to abstract out the traps and rely on theater of the mind.

Most important take away: Attacks of Opportunity are dumb, and I hereby houserule them away.

I’ve already set things in motion for fun plot developments after this session’s events and feedback received, and hopefully the next write-up will come in about two weeks.

Until next time, may your dice make things interesting.[8]

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Cast

Mogui (IndigoDie): Druid. Sponsored by Lord Grey to go on this rite of passage. Indigo is an old pal from High School. Yot (LimeDie): Cleric. Mercenary that finds himself in Kassen often. Lime is a newer pal from an Improv Club. Delilah Dunford (VermilionDie): Rogue. Daughter of nobles, volunteered for this mission by her butler. Vermilion is someone I knew during high school, but the age of our pal-ness is vaguely defined. Bernard 'Bean' Dipp (NavyDie): Ranger(?). Young man forced to grow up quickly in light of his father's affliction. Navy is an Improv pal, and was also absent this session. Game Master (SepiaDie/me): Environment (mostly skeletons). Dungeon is a crypt where something spooky might be happening. Sepia is me, and thus probably my greatest enemy.

Session Two

I opened with two quick prose bits that Lime described as ‘Loading Screen’ text. Which is accurate, I suppose. Both were from travel guides, one formal, the other what I intend to be my Hitchhiker’s guide. It’s a fun narrative device I picked up from Dice Friends[1]: in-setting exposition and world building.

The party starts where they left off: standing outside the crypt, looking at some dead horses.

Delilah investigates the saddlebags, identifying the maker mark of the town leather worker, Mr. Shepherd, a pleasant if quiet elf man.[2] The bags contain blunt arrows, travel rations, and two pillows. Curious.

The party enters the dungeon proper, and I have to actually use the Roll20 application for more than doodling[3] and tracking relative locations.

In the first room is two fresh corpses, two heavily broken skeletons, and six less-broken skeletons.

The fresh bodies are two friends of Kassen’s mayor. What a tragedy. Why are they here, though?

Six skeletons rise up to fight the interlopers. Combat begins!

I think the fight went well. Three players kept a fair clip as compared to, say, seven to eight. Six skeletons focused on just attacking whoever is closest or draws their aggression. The skeletons have low health, so they were dispatched quickly. As a GM, the fight didn't feel like it dragged.

Skeletons now rendered dead, again, our heroes are now able to take a breath and take in the scene. A mural of Kassen driving off a horde of enemies decorates the opposite wall,[4] a reasonable amount of dust coats the various surfaces, and a wailing echoes through the hallowed halls.

I failed to indicate the direction the wailing was coming from (the southeast exit), so the party elected to do the logical thing and go through the northwest door.

This room held a pool of water, fed by a fountain depicting a woman crying over a dying Kassen. Kassen’s head had worn off, however, a detail to concern the players with its possible meaning.

A voice Booms ‘Magic is the Key’.

At the bottom of the forty foot deep pool lays hundreds of keys. A tough, complicated puzzle to…

Yot cast light on a pebble, dove in, and cast Detect Magic.[5] One of the keys is radiating magic. The module didn’t say what type of magic it was, so I just shrugged at clarifying questions and admitted it didn’t really matter.[6]

The key unlocks one of the doors in the room, which leads to a hall flanked on either side by statues of Kassen holding swords. The utter dedication to this one guy is starting to get a little silly. Surely there were other members of his mercenary band that… might deserve…

Anyways, ignoring the fun change to the narrative I could make,[7] the party progresses and accidentally steps on a pressure plate, which drops the swords onto… mostly just Delilah, who was leading the way, the other two standing in the gaps between the statues.[8] Luckily, the trap has to be manually reset, so they can just use acrobatics checks to pass now that the swords are down.

Next room: multilevel chamber, with a giant statue standing before them, holding two shields, one reading ‘Home’ and the other ‘Family’.

And yes, the statue is of Kassen. So much Kassen decoration. So many tax dollars wasted on glorifying a founder in a location most people would never visit, with the Mayor being the only one confirmed to visit more than once in his life. They could’ve used the upkeep costs on fixing potholes, or making a park, or expanding Kassen.

The nice thing about being a Game Master is you can address such fridge logic.

Mogui descends the stairs to the lower level first, activating a wood golem! It steps off a pressure plate, which turns the stairs into a slope.

Initiative is rolled, and the wooden golem crits on Mogui, knocking him into death save territory. Whoops.

Yot follows him down, slipping on the slope and landing prone. Delilah prepares a rope down before shooting the enemy with her bow. Critical failure. She throws herself off balance and slides down to the lower level.[9]

Yot attempts to battle the wood golem, ignoring his companion rolling dice to not die right next to him. Meanwhile, Delilah climbs onto the wood golem in a sneak attack. While up there, she spots an odd keyhole on the back of its neck.

Luckily, she just happened to have a magic key. Which she uses to turn off the boss fight, causing it to move back to its podium and restore the stairs to a usable state.

Mogui is also healed to standing.

Were it not for the golem scoring two (2!) critical hits on my players, I’d say it was a pretty good fight design. The room had levels, lending interesting positioning options, the puzzle of the staircase-to-ramp mechanism, and despite the golem having high hit points for the player’s level, it also had a discoverable ‘off switch’ to give more of a puzzler solution. Fights are better when designed as puzzles instead of a series of dice rolls.

Puzzle design can be hard, though. However, combat might also be a case of a little work going a long way to just make the mechanical showcase more interesting.

This session held one straight fight, a puzzle, then a puzzle-fight. It felt like a good session composition, though it would have been nice to have some role-playing.

Oh wait. I’m in charge here.

The party takes a moment to take a breath. They decide they need a break. Their GM sits, knowing the door they’re standing right next to goes to the prize room. They just need to… go in…

Instead, the party backtracks to the fountain-and-keys room for a short rest.

Maybe I’m not as in charge here as I’d hoped.

As players start asking for an end of the session, I play the ‘We’re so close to a big moment’ card, and gently tell them to go through that door.

Now, the module as written has the party enter the room to find a masterwork weapon[10] or other item, and a potion for each party member, and a note saying how proud their families are. A gift from the community for their new adults. Nice, but lacks a certain punch.

So, I give them their potions and non-masterwork items. Because usable loot is good to have. But you know what’s rarely utilized? Trinkets! Things with no mechanical value at all!

So Mogui, whose player I workshopped with for this specific moment,[11] found a Family Tree prepared for him by his employer, Lord Grey. I also took the note of pride and turned it into a letter from Lord Grey. Then I made Indigo tell me what the letter says.[12] Mogui was sent to work for Lord Grey in exchange for his family receiving a noble title, and this family tree was the needed evidence for his family to claim their title. The letter essentially thanked him for his service and Lord Grey’s pride in having him.

Next was Yot. He didn’t have family in town, so how do I work him into this? Well, honorary adoption, of course. The widows and mothers of Kassen have knitted him winter clothes like a hat, socks, and gloves.[13] The starter I gave for his letter was small notes from the community thanking him for his help. When I turned Lime loose, he wanted to add indictments from loved ones he let die in the field. And, as important as it is for a GM not to invalidate player choices, it’s important for the GM and player to workshop. Because such things wouldn’t have reasonably gotten on that table, instead I suggested that they were forgivenesses for those deaths, which Yot nevertheless took hard.

The final present party member, Delilah, received two gold coins from her parents and a bag of her favorite sweets from her butler. I just dictated the parent’s letter as them just giving her her allowance, not fully understanding what their daughter volunteered for. Her butler’s letter, however, I let Vermilion handle. She turned it into an apology for fibbing about how involved her parents were in allowing her to join this rite of passage mission, but he is proud of her, and hopes she enjoys the candy.

For Bean, who was following behind but was likely too scared to be of any help this session,[15] there was a hand carved figurine of a dog, made by his father, as well as a letter from the same. I’ll have Navy get his fair moment to do his letter.[16]

Thus ends the session.

I felt more confident leading this session, and the actual contents felt meatier than just travelling to the crypt. I’ve started adding my own material, and no one’s told me they’re unsatisfied,[17] so let’s call it a successful session!

Actually combatting my nature and making a point-by-point break down on what happens in each room and how it works went a long way to keeping me confident and cool. I don’t need to impress anyone. And I put in good work.

I was especially proud of the trinkets. I feel like the players engaged with them, it provided a chance to trick the players into exposition, and it was a role-playing moment. Every session is better when you write open ended chances to role-play.

The actual walking through the dungeon and traps still needs work, though. Certain traps activate when a player steps on a certain space, and I’m still struggling with how to perform trapfinding checks without making everyone cautious. Making players check every space with a check would get tedious, doing a check behind my screen on behalf of a player feels blasphemous as players should roll their own dice, and just having them doing it once they enter the room just feels narratively disconnected. I’ll need to think on that hall with swords and statues.

Also figure out what happened to fountain Kassen’s head.

And on why there’s just… so much Kassen around the place.

Anyways, I had fun with it. The session got a puzzle and a half, a combat and a half, skill checks, and roleplaying! Getting better as a GM! I feel it!

Now to achieve a session good enough it fills my players to yearn to talk to me about it outside of the session! The after session decompression and discussion was always my favorite times during the high school games.

I have a patreon and ko-fi if you wish to support me. Financial support will set me on my path to an actual play show and making a living writing and creating.

Until next time, may your dice make things interesting.[19]

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