Summoning mishap! The Knight of Science! Gypsies! Magma rune they thought was an air rune! The amoeba demon!
Where do I begin?
Perhaps with the people.
By session 90 we have many of the characters who will survive to the time of writing (Feb 2017).
Lulu Spiderbite, of course. Barbarian of many ridiculous powers, many of which I forget about until she begins murdering people.
Jain Doe, Dwarf with a real hardcore angle on rune magic. She accidentally murders a character in a tragic rune dyslexia accident, to my effervescent glee.
Jumurak, truly the second Jumurak but I eventually dropped the "Jumurak2" moniker. Summoned the amoeba demon which would become his prized pet and thorn in my side.
Zan, a Cleric who is a para-dimensional pseudo-clone of the departed Zea. Intended originally to become Zea when he caught up to his former self in levels, declined to do so.
And finally Sophia, a Necromancer who has quietly gone on to become one of the most powerful characters in the game.
An honourable mention goes to Eleyn, played by Tom who was mentioned last time. She's gone but technically still alive in the campaign world, albeit she's got the body of a genitalia demon and is used as a living womb by frog monsters.
Kitty was new, playing Sophia the Necromancer. She's great and nowadays the de facto controller of Guido the Silver Skeleton and her in-game husband POWERMAN. You'll see that happen when they reach the Slaughtergrid in a few months of recaps!
Also new, another James! Nowadays he's known as James Ratman due to his stint as the first Ratman the game ever had, but as of these recaps he plays Eleyn's sister Nora.
Finally we had Oliver R, playing a Specialist. He was a regular for a while before just sort of dropping off the radar, I'm not sure where he is these days.
Art Attacks start dropping with some regularity, the competition hots up! Soon I will have to give additional exp rewards for extra exceptional art. It's awesome!
Gamewise, we had the finale of the Rune Dungeon! Goblina, a previous player's character, took the place of the original final boss crystal thing.
More importantly, we had the FEAR OF A BLACKENED PLANET summoned into the world via a botched Summon ritual from the Summon-happy Jumurak.
Most saved, but the illustrious Stabbington Shanks became a survivalist prepper forevermore! Or at least, for a while.
He regained his mind via a glyph focused through a shard from the shattered dragon crystal, but I think that might have been a mistake really. Maybe Dom would have stayed if he'd started a new character.
No matter. After escaping the rune dungeon through an alternate exit, they were lost in the mountains for a while before finding their way to the walled city of Gush.
D-oom's excellent Mead & Mayhem got a good workout! The bar brawl resulted in Jumurak using Summon once more, managing to create a completely loyal amoeba demon! They tell this tale often, but I was quite drunk at the time and readily agreed to the idea that it would eat HP and split any time it doubled its HP.
Boy did that come in handy. I can't really complain though, every other time he'd cast Summon it had ended in disaster!
Mt White Plume was attempted and soon abandoned as a bad job. It's a death trap.
You may notice a theme in that Tom's characters keep dying. Ironically, his longest-surviving character would go on to die over and over before being cursed to a horrific form of life.
The BEST THING EVER happened in Mt White Plume though. Told that Jain the Dwarf was a powerful rune mage, Bohemund requested a Create Air glyph to assist him in breathing underwater. To his downfall, it was actually a Create Magma glyph. He died instantly.
Their next stop in Pembrooktonshire was where they met the Knight of Science and also discovered that gypsies exist in the campaign world.
Somehow the group really enjoyed the idea of actual gypsies being in the game, racism and all.
Coming from Australia where you don't really get gypsies, this was a surprise to me! To be fair, my Australian girlfriend used to think that gypsies were a mythical creature like goblins or elves, which goes to show what Australians are like really.
The Knight of Science was great fun. I played him as a combo of Judge Dredd and myself as a thirteen year old evangelical atheist. He's still remembered fondly.
After burning him to death in a house and fleeing town (a traditional LotFP manoeuvre), the party went on to enter the Grinding Gear which is one of those older LotFP modules published before Raggi decided to stop using generic D&D monsters.
They ended up burning that place down too.
Mini Reviews
Rune Dungeon
Back once again, this dungeon's really had a workout! Using the hyper-mutated goblin children of a former character as the progenitor of one of the dungeon's factions was a lot of fun!
They found an exit then went back in and rinsed the place. They left with rune technologies, and I think they must have started working on their plans for an airship almost immediately.
A year on, and no such airship has appeared yet. One day maybe.
Back once again, this dungeon's really had a workout! Using the hyper-mutated goblin children of a former character as the progenitor of one of the dungeon's factions was a lot of fun!
They found an exit then went back in and rinsed the place. They left with rune technologies, and I think they must have started working on their plans for an airship almost immediately.
A year on, and no such airship has appeared yet. One day maybe.
Mead & Mayhem
Honourable mention for this doozy of a booklet. Basic gimmick - roll a d30 every round of a bar fight, most results add a bonus to the next round's d30 roll which means things tend to escalate entertainingly!
White Plume Mountain
Remarkably small for a module of such pedigree, they never got past the first couple of rooms.
On the one hand, the players were well below the recommended level. On the other hand, my group is smart and cunning and ruthless.
Honourable mention for this doozy of a booklet. Basic gimmick - roll a d30 every round of a bar fight, most results add a bonus to the next round's d30 roll which means things tend to escalate entertainingly!
White Plume Mountain
Remarkably small for a module of such pedigree, they never got past the first couple of rooms.
On the one hand, the players were well below the recommended level. On the other hand, my group is smart and cunning and ruthless.
Tom lost two characters in a row in the kelpie room, both times due to player actions (a wrongly-drawn rune and a summoning accident).
They fled, saying they'd come back later. At time of writing they have not yet done so.
No Dignity in Death: The Three Brides
This one was a lot of fun to run. Albeit I only ran the first part - Small Town Murder - before the players fled town.
All very social, not much combat, a murder mystery. Gypsies suspected, but in the end the players helped them escape rather than prove their innocence.
The best part is the Knight of Science who is this incredible rationalist law-abiding and overwhelmingly GOOD character who obeys the LAW and is NEVER WRONG.
I loved hamming this guy up. I kind of wish the party hadn't burnt him to death!
The Grinding Gear
A legitimate death trap dungeon that the players got stuck inside (by design) for a while.
They actually did shockingly well, as far as I remember. More on it in the next retrospective I guess, since they spend several frustrated sessions in there.
Since it's an early LotFP module, goblins and stirges and stuff are present. I reskinned them for my purposes. Most notably the stirges became Blood Birds - thin-beaked blood drinking doom-birds which spiralled out of the roof and swarmed people. They were fearsome!
They fled, saying they'd come back later. At time of writing they have not yet done so.
No Dignity in Death: The Three Brides
This one was a lot of fun to run. Albeit I only ran the first part - Small Town Murder - before the players fled town.
All very social, not much combat, a murder mystery. Gypsies suspected, but in the end the players helped them escape rather than prove their innocence.
The best part is the Knight of Science who is this incredible rationalist law-abiding and overwhelmingly GOOD character who obeys the LAW and is NEVER WRONG.
I loved hamming this guy up. I kind of wish the party hadn't burnt him to death!
The Grinding Gear
A legitimate death trap dungeon that the players got stuck inside (by design) for a while.
They actually did shockingly well, as far as I remember. More on it in the next retrospective I guess, since they spend several frustrated sessions in there.
Since it's an early LotFP module, goblins and stirges and stuff are present. I reskinned them for my purposes. Most notably the stirges became Blood Birds - thin-beaked blood drinking doom-birds which spiralled out of the roof and swarmed people. They were fearsome!
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