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Vornheim, Part II
Players finally got to roll some dice this last session.
I did the old Incredible Shrinking Man thing: at the dinner party, they drank a shrinking potion and shrank down to about 3 inches high. Then there was a kind of weird feast where I was totally ripping off the Mouser-in-Lankhmar-Below bits of Swords In Lankhmar--and then a kitchen fire broke out and the servants ran off to deal with it, and the (shrunken) dinner party was beset by cateagles. These were immature cateagles, really just adolescent kittens. (Cateagles are exactly what they sound like; there are also pigwidgeons in my Vornheim.)
This was intended to be an insurmountable challenge. However, I had established, before they showed up, a little something about magic in this world. We've already decided that black magic--which is to say, traditional MU-stuff (Clerical magic is white) (yes, also cribbed from Lankhmar)--is all done by means of demon-pacts. Well, turns out that demons don't scale (the actual demon at the party, K'k'krallak of the Seventeenth Hell, was unaffected by the potion). So when Ber cast a drying cantrip after spilling her drop of wine all over herself, she was a little surprised when a demon nearly as big as she was showed up, and ate a little of her soul (mechanically, she failed a save vs. magic, and lost a point from a randomly-determined characteristic; in this case, constitution).
But, even knowing that, when the cateagles showed up, she cast Magic Missile. This cost her 4(!!) points of Dexterity when she blew her save (at 1/25th scale, 1d6 per spell level to a random characteristic), but she used a d30 roll on damage. Now, at normal scale, the cateagles each had one hit point. The missile (revealed as a red spiny demon with an unwholesome leer) did nine points of damage, reducing the first (of three) cateagles to a fine red paste. Spark followed suit, but did not use the d30. Three points of damage had the same game effect (well, slightly chunkier red paste), except she made her save and lost no characteristic points.
Then we had a fun battle with the smilodon-sized cateagle (which, at little-tiny scale, had 37 HP--it was an 8HD monster). Palalladin realized that fishbones made fine spears, and with some help from the other partygoers (mainly the 9' (or, er, 4-1/2 inch) goblin ambassador, Uriah Thorpwhistle), did some damage to the cateagle. It still should have been too much monster for them, which would have led to Part Two of my cunning plan.
I had that all set up: Lady Görbler enlisted help to knock over one of the spare potion vials, and drank more potion, encouraging everyone else to as well, so they would shrink to be so small the cateagle wouldn't notice them anymore. However, Ber, using a fishbone spear, tipped with shrinking potion, rolled a critical hit on the cateagle and jabbed it in the mouth, delivering the potion to *it*. Whereupon Balin punched it (now kitten-sized) to death.
This was a bit disappointing, as there was going to be an Incredible Shrinking Man battle with a spider at double-shrunk size, but oh well.
It may be a cheesy old cliche, but "shrink the party and then have a battle with small creatures made large and fearsome" was really quite fun, in practice.
The party has also earned the gratitude of Uriah Thorpwhistle and Alice Gradgrind, two of the goblin ambassadorial contingent, and will be accompanying the diplomatic pouch on its journey in our next session. They've found out a bit about goblin economy and trade. My job will be to map Dickensian London onto an inverted-wedding-cake three-dimensional space, and then populate it with GURPS: Goblins (read, Dickensian) characters and plots.
I tried to make them take on the Dark Elf bereaved girlfriend of one of the devoured partygoers, 'cause they need some more muscle, as a hireling. She's all Pam Grier Bad Girl (and yes, Yzonde was dating her just to piss off his parents). The party wasn't having any. At least they did buy a dog (an Avellinish Hound named Edna, from Zak's wonderful random dog table). I hope that it is a quarter the faithful protector that dear departed Gleichmann was. Because no one has more than five hit points, except the dog. She has six.
I did the old Incredible Shrinking Man thing: at the dinner party, they drank a shrinking potion and shrank down to about 3 inches high. Then there was a kind of weird feast where I was totally ripping off the Mouser-in-Lankhmar-Below bits of Swords In Lankhmar--and then a kitchen fire broke out and the servants ran off to deal with it, and the (shrunken) dinner party was beset by cateagles. These were immature cateagles, really just adolescent kittens. (Cateagles are exactly what they sound like; there are also pigwidgeons in my Vornheim.)
This was intended to be an insurmountable challenge. However, I had established, before they showed up, a little something about magic in this world. We've already decided that black magic--which is to say, traditional MU-stuff (Clerical magic is white) (yes, also cribbed from Lankhmar)--is all done by means of demon-pacts. Well, turns out that demons don't scale (the actual demon at the party, K'k'krallak of the Seventeenth Hell, was unaffected by the potion). So when Ber cast a drying cantrip after spilling her drop of wine all over herself, she was a little surprised when a demon nearly as big as she was showed up, and ate a little of her soul (mechanically, she failed a save vs. magic, and lost a point from a randomly-determined characteristic; in this case, constitution).
But, even knowing that, when the cateagles showed up, she cast Magic Missile. This cost her 4(!!) points of Dexterity when she blew her save (at 1/25th scale, 1d6 per spell level to a random characteristic), but she used a d30 roll on damage. Now, at normal scale, the cateagles each had one hit point. The missile (revealed as a red spiny demon with an unwholesome leer) did nine points of damage, reducing the first (of three) cateagles to a fine red paste. Spark followed suit, but did not use the d30. Three points of damage had the same game effect (well, slightly chunkier red paste), except she made her save and lost no characteristic points.
Then we had a fun battle with the smilodon-sized cateagle (which, at little-tiny scale, had 37 HP--it was an 8HD monster). Palalladin realized that fishbones made fine spears, and with some help from the other partygoers (mainly the 9' (or, er, 4-1/2 inch) goblin ambassador, Uriah Thorpwhistle), did some damage to the cateagle. It still should have been too much monster for them, which would have led to Part Two of my cunning plan.
I had that all set up: Lady Görbler enlisted help to knock over one of the spare potion vials, and drank more potion, encouraging everyone else to as well, so they would shrink to be so small the cateagle wouldn't notice them anymore. However, Ber, using a fishbone spear, tipped with shrinking potion, rolled a critical hit on the cateagle and jabbed it in the mouth, delivering the potion to *it*. Whereupon Balin punched it (now kitten-sized) to death.
This was a bit disappointing, as there was going to be an Incredible Shrinking Man battle with a spider at double-shrunk size, but oh well.
It may be a cheesy old cliche, but "shrink the party and then have a battle with small creatures made large and fearsome" was really quite fun, in practice.
The party has also earned the gratitude of Uriah Thorpwhistle and Alice Gradgrind, two of the goblin ambassadorial contingent, and will be accompanying the diplomatic pouch on its journey in our next session. They've found out a bit about goblin economy and trade. My job will be to map Dickensian London onto an inverted-wedding-cake three-dimensional space, and then populate it with GURPS: Goblins (read, Dickensian) characters and plots.
I tried to make them take on the Dark Elf bereaved girlfriend of one of the devoured partygoers, 'cause they need some more muscle, as a hireling. She's all Pam Grier Bad Girl (and yes, Yzonde was dating her just to piss off his parents). The party wasn't having any. At least they did buy a dog (an Avellinish Hound named Edna, from Zak's wonderful random dog table). I hope that it is a quarter the faithful protector that dear departed Gleichmann was. Because no one has more than five hit points, except the dog. She has six.