Public Game Notes, August 23, 2001

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

The game began with the characters talking in a tavern in a small hamlet. (The tavern is named 'the tavern', or at least that's what it's called by anyone who wants to refer to it. The town is called Shepford, a corruption of 'sheep-ford'.)

Prolix the gnome had just been giving some peasants a lesson in applied probability when he joined the group. There was some spirited discussion of the merits of the local beer with the foreign fop (named Torak).

The priest was the only one who heard the ominous creaking of the floorboards and the high-pitched squeaking. A moment later, the floor collapsed, dumping the whole group and an old cripple at another table into a large roughly circular room, with a wide passage leading north.

In a moment, four dire rats (one of them bleeding badly from a spear embedded in its left flank) were upon them. As the heroes grabbed broken table legs to use as makeshift weapons, the dire rats charged through the group, discovered that the corridor ended, and turned to fight.

In another moment, six bipedal rats, carrying short spears and wearing ragged leather armor, entered in pursuit of the rats. They were overconfident of their ability against the unarmored heroes, and entered combat against them too.

There were some severe losses before the course of battle turned, but no one fell. The heroes managed to kill the rats and drive off the rat-men. Even the old cripple (named Colm) was kept safe from harm. (He turned out to be a merchant, and was most grateful for their help; he promised them discounts on his wares if they were to discover what lay beneath the earth.)

The tavernkeeper was shocked at what had happened, for he had not had any cellar before. (Free drinks for everyone!)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ OOC Notes
I'd intended it to be a more asskicking episode than it was; y'all drove off the rats and the rat-men instead of having to retreat upstairs while they were after you. But that's just fine; good job, y'all.

Part of the problem, of course, was that I rolled a whole bunch of 1's on my attack rolls.

It's also the case that I was pretty darn generous about the attack capability of table legs (to the point that there was no real point in preferring a spear to a table leg). If I were to run it again, I might say that a table leg does 1d4 subdual damage (which makes it only slightly better than a fist in terms of damage; the big benefit is that you don't get attacks of opportunity.)

Thanks to Mike for running the rats. I think that did make things go more smoothly.

I think that we did a good job of keeping the game flowing quickly without having to check the rulebooks too much. I liked that.

I hope this was fun and exciting for y'all.

Comments

Re: this was fun

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

Private Notes: One 'private notes' was me exposing my private notes since the situation to which they referred was past.

You can't see all 6 of the posts there, can you?

I've now edited that 'Private Notes' field to express that I've made that public.

Attacks of Opportunity: Preparing a spell will expose you to attacks of opportunity (unless you convince me otherwise). My interpretation of the Improved Unarmed Strike feat is that your fist counts as a weapon. But casting a spell invites attacks of opportunity even if you have a weapon in hand. (You can cast a spell on the defensive, which means you take no attacks of opportunity, but you have to make a Concentration check to get it off.)

You might want to choose a name other than Flora. (Though I don't mind if you keep it.)

Charisma: One interpretation of Charisma that D&D provides is that of strength of will and personality. (Though it doesn't contribute to Will saves. Another little quirk of the rules.) You might interpret her high Charisma as a tremendous strength of will that imposes itself on others, without being immensely extroverted.

Roleplaying: The players seem a lot more dedicated to roleplaying than I was. That's exciting for me--I certainly want to be supportive of roleplaying (especially roleplaying that's fun for everyone) but I don't intend to get fascist about it.

Re: this was fun

[cellio]

Private notes: Yes, it's doing what you want.

Attacks of opportunity: I expected spell-casting to expose one to attacks; after all, you've got other things on your mind.

Thanks for the other comments. I think role-playing will be fun; I don't claim to be any good at it. But it'll be a fun challenge (within the limit that we should still be a cooperative party, not a bickering one).