Betina's Musings While Drinking with the Blue Elves of the Lunar Sphere

 How odd is it to meet people who come from one of the spheres represented by sculptures on the 3rd level of the Complex that we have been trying to remove over multiple delves without success?  How strange is it to have met these beings from the lunar sphere after we failed to gain access to the portal that would take us to yet another world represented by the sphere sculptures?  How uncanny is it that I'm one the people responsible for the disappearance of the compatriots of these blue elves from the lunar sphere and I barely remember my participation?  Before I had my worldview/philosophy changed by physical contact with an altar on the 3rd level of the Complex, would I have felt any guilt about the part I had played in the first encounter I had with the blue elves; binding them and leaving them to whatever fate they encountered afterward?  Probably not, but I've touched that alter and been changed by it and ALL of my experiences in the Complex and now I do feel guilt about this.  Our conversation on philosophy and religious ritual has been utterly fascinating, but when Scamandros and Dogmouth depart the Burning Witch, having not made the same headway in conversing with the elves, I'll have to own up to my responsibility in the fate of the Blue Elves' friends and offer my services to help them track down the missing duo....  if they'll take my assistance, and if
they don't kill me on the spot for revealing what I've done.  I wasn't alone in the encounter with those first elves, but I cannot reveal the identities of the others who were present.  It wouldn't be fair to my fellow adventurers to out them for something they did out of a sense of survival.  I can only hope the Blue Elves will understand my reasoning for taking sole responsibility and offering to do whatever it takes to satisfy their investigation into the disappearance of their friends.  Alright, there go Scamandros and Dogmouth... if this was my last delve and drinking session with them I hope they remember me fondly.

 
"This has been a lovely conversation," Betina says to the Blue Elves after the departure of her delving companions Scamandros and Dogmouth, "but I have a confession to make.  I'm responsible for some of what has happened to the two you are searching for and I want to make it right if I can."

Betina Is Blind And Other News

Betina the Blind

Several sessions back in Nick's Dying Earth inspired campaign, my character Betina was blinded by a creature known as the Slithering Devil.  The session after being blinded, a party of adventurers including her made their way to a location in the dungeon known as the White Alter.  After several hours of meditation the characters that sat vigil in front of the White Alter came away transformed either psychically or physically.  Betina had the good fortune to have her sense of touch enhanced to the extent that her ability to participate in combat was restored (OSE rules heavily penalize blind characters to the point they are unable to engage in combat).  I'll be playing my 9th session as Betina on Friday.

Real Life Steps On the Gas

As the Covid 19 pandemic swept through the world, many folks' lives moved into a weird limbo state of self-quarantine.  Not for me.  At the time things began shutting down I was a temp worker in an essential job.  Then within five days I got sick (never got tested or needed hospitalization, so not sure if it was the 'rona or not), my grandfather died (not the' rona, he was elderly and had cancer; he was like a father to me), and my outdoor cat was injured and required veterinary care.  My temp job ended on April 30th and I was able to line up another job  that started the following week.  It came with travel requirements and a graveyard shift schedule that I'm still adapting to as I write this post.  Gaming has been one of the bright spots in life lately and I'm grateful to have the opportunity to play!

Will DM for Birthday (or any) Cake, LOL

Woohoo!  One of my players has a birthday on Saturday and I get to resurrect my LotFP Year of the Goat Campaign as part of the celebration!  We dipped our toes into to Call of Cthulhu for awhile which was fun, but I'm so thrilled to go back to running LotFP.  I'm trying to alchemize my nervousness to DM again into excitement!  The last game of anything (Cthulhu) I ran was over the Winter Solstice. 

Betina Has Some Downtime

"Take the Wine, Take That Pearl"

I've played three sessions in Nick's Dying Earth inspired campaign with a fourth one coming up in a couple days.  I didn't get around to rolling for downtime activities between sessions 1* and 2*, but I've been able to do so between sessions 2* and 3* and after session 3*.  Rolling on the Festival of the Vernal Equinox table, Betina stumbles upon a Cherry Wine Drinking Contest and decides to participate in hopes of winning a modest purse.  She's in fine form that evening (makes her Save vs. Poison throw) and comes away from the contest 100gp richer and without a hangover.

Interrogation

Betina and the party of adventurers came out of the my third session resolved to interrogate a Member of the Order of the Illuminated Eye they had captured.  The PCs kept this member alive after killing her fellows in a fight detailed here.  

What's Next?

Betina will go into the Grand Cavity again, so stay tuned to see if she survives!




Footnote:  My session numbering conventions do not match up with Nick's.  For clarity my session one is Burning Witch session #5, my session two is Burning Witch session #7, and my session three is Burning Witch session #8.

Blog Update! Session Report! Bast Is BACK!

Betina Level 1 Fighter!

 

 Stepped Away from Blogging, But Kept Gaming

 Back in late 2018 I was really trying to build some momentum with my blog when the news that G+ was shutting down in 2019 was released.  For the moderate amount I used it, I was feeling what I thought was a disproportionate amount of sadness and loss for the social platform.  I had joined G+ in 2013 because of the flourishing OSR scene of creators, DMs, and players hanging out over there crowdsourcing game materials and running online games over Hangouts.  Those feelings made signing in to my blog and trying to write pretty difficult, so I quit working on the blog, but I've continued to game both in real life and online.  Before G+ shut down, I joined Discord and made sure I linked up with my G+ friends over there so I could continue to chat and game with them whenever possible.  I was never on Facebook and I couldn't bring myself to join MeWe (that name is so dumb, I just can't even, lol).  Nothing will ever be like G+ was in the heyday and I'm okay with that.  My only regret was I had meant to run games on Hangouts when G+ still existed, but I never got my shit together to do it.  So why am I back to the blog today?  To write a session report for XP in the latest game I played in of course!

Making My First OSE Character

Earlier in the week, my friend Nick over at Underworld Adventurer invited me to play in an online Old-School Essentials game.  OSE is essentially D&D B/X all polished up and laid-out for ease of use.  I've played B/X before, and I've played OSE before, but when I played OSE before Friday, it was Flailsnails style, so I was always playing a character from another retro-clone ruleset.  Friday morning before the game, I read Nick's "Adventuring in the Twilight Age" blog post and rolled up Betina, a 1st level fighter (human) using the Old-School Essentials Basic Rules PDF that you can get for free from the Necrotic Gnome website (I linked to the Free Downloads page where you can find the rules PDF along with some character sheets and a few other goodies! Check it out!)

With a character all rolled up, I answered Nick's Hangout call and we got started!

PCs from this session are:

Gawoosh- Gnome and Illusionist
Dogmouth- Thief
Finn- Dwarf (I might be spelling Finn's name wrong. If so, sorry!)
Avreml Oofnik- Borscht Thief
Betina- Fighter

I think most of us were level 1, but I didn't take notes for this game, so I don't remember, lol.  The PCs hired some junkie teenage thugs, Atticuss and Looney Luna, and proceeded to the cave(s).  Gawoosh had delved in the cave before so the party had some advance knowledge of what to expect in certain areas.  The first trouble was encountered quickly when Atticuss was sent to scout around a corner where voices were heard.  Very oddly dressed (Power Rangers?) captured Atticuss, so Betina and Dogmouth went around the corner to see if they could get him back.  Betina and Dogmouth blustered and bluffed their way into intimidating the "Power Rangers" into letting go of Atticuss by mostly spouting a bunch of bureaucrat-ese and lying about her and Dogmouth's association with gnomes.

As quickly as Atticuss was reunited with the party, he was just as quickly lost for good when the party lowered him into a pit and he entered a tunnel in the wall 30' down where something likely ate him leaving only his foot.

Deciding to abandon the pit for the time being, Gawoosh asked the party if they would like to go to a market in part of the cave system and meet The Foreman.  They agreed to go and followed him over to the market entrance where they almost got into a conflict with security due to lack of following proper social distancing protocols.  Gawoosh smoothed things over by flashing some kind of business card or similar object and the party was able to enter the market.

Sequence-wise I can't remember if we went shopping or met The Foreman first...  Betina bought a bag of snakes for herself and a single snake for Avreml.  Avreml set up a deal to supply the produce stand with beets.  Gawoosh bought a couple of potions.  When meeting with The Foreman, the party struck a deal with him to take care of whatever killed Atticuss so he could dispatch a repair crew to fix the hole in the side of the pit.  He issued requisition forms for explosives and a barrel and the party collected the materials on the way out of the market.

Back at the pit, an explosive device was rigged with the barrel, explosives, Betina's snakes, and Atticuss' leftover foot.  Betina asked the hireling Looney Luna to allow herself to be lowered down to guide the device into the tunnel, but Luna refused.  Betina disarmed Luna and made her pay back her initial hireling pay.  Then Betina had the party lower her down to use a 10' pole equipped with a grappling hook.  After several tries, the device made it into the tunnel where it exploded.  Betina was quickly hauled back up and the party then decided to all descend the rigging Avreml had expertly assembled earlier when Atticuss was lowered into the pit.  The explosive had blown a larger aperture in the wall of the pit and the party was able to enter, collect some psychedelic flowers (I can't remember what they were, but we thought we could get money for them).  Voices were heard from above at the top of the pit just before the rope and rigging the party had used to descend into the pit came clattering down, forcing the party to exit through a slanting (upwards) tunnel.  The party was attacked by Carrion Crawlers, with Avreml getting paralyzed in the first round of attacks.  The decision to retreat was made; Betina and Dogmouth carried the paralyzed Avreml to a 30' by 40' room with a waterfall and stream cutting through diagonally.  Gawoosh threw flaming flasks of oil into the entrance and one of the CCs caught fire.  I think Finn pegged that one with a crossbow bolt.  Betina made a called shot to hack off the tentacles of the burning CC, managing to slice off four before the unharmed CC paralyzed her, Dogmouth and Gawoosh.  With only Finn the dwarf left, the unharmed CC failed it's morale roll and retreated.  Finn arranged the party to his liking then occupied himself until the paralysis wore off.  When everyone regained the ability to move, it was decided the best course of action was to climb the waterfall to see where that led.

I'm a little fuzzy on where exactly we went through after that; I know one area had some fungus or yeast cultivators who ignored the party.  After that, the party made it back to the level they had started at and returned to the market to receive payment from The Foreman (200cp each) for services rendered.

Stay tuned for what Betina gets up to when I roll on Nick's carousing table!

Switching Campaign Gears Today

Depeche Mode and Pile O' Maps

Just Can't Get Enough...

Of Dave Gahan or OSR maps;)  My plans today were to draw maps of either a wizard's tower or a dwarven delve for the online game I want to run.  I decided to outsource the work and get it all done this afternoon.  Digging through my hard drive yielded gems from a couple of Bundle of Holding acquisitions from last year.  I got a variety of maps to kick the campaign off from Dyson Logos' Dodecahedron Review 2016 and ACKS Lairs & Encounters.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoy drawing maps, but I need to get moving on running a G+ Flailsnails game before G+ washes away like a sandcastle!  I know I could just move over and run on the Discord Flailsnails server, but I want to get at least one G+ game in just 'cause.  More work on this needs to be done before I can schedule a game, but it was good to get the mapping squared away.  I need to work on the home campaign, too, before I run it this weekend.  The "Mimic Chasers" (this group needs a name, this will do for now) are knocking around Halwic with their investigations, but I need to turn the heat up for this next session!

Links To The G+ Flailsnails Red Tide Related Posts

https://mockorangecairn.blogspot.com/2018/09/diy30-day-twelve.html

https://mockorangecairn.blogspot.com/2018/09/diy30-day-thirteen.html 

https://mockorangecairn.blogspot.com/2018/09/diy30-day-fourteen.html 

Scenic Dunnsmouth Prep Wrapped Up

I'm Excited to Run Scenic Dunnsmouth

I finished doing the village set-up yesterday.  Lots of pig farmers in the version of Dunnsmouth I rolled up, lol.  All that's left to do is get the village placed on the big campaign map.  I'm holding off on getting this and a few other things on the big campaign map because I want to do the southern part of the map all at once. 

In Other News

We resumed playing Year of the Goat Campaign last Sunday.  The PCs made it to Halwic encountering many refugees from the fire, plague, and mimics.  They spoke to the Abbess of St. Forsythia and learned what they could from her about where the mimic(s) popped up.  Next session they'll inquire with the head of the family that was victimized by mimic(s) to investigate further.  Material I worked on during #DIY30 was very helpful to me!  Fun session.

Pivoting Towards Scenic Dunnsmouth

Scenic Dunnsmouth notes and adventure module

Getting A Handle On Year Old Notes

I began prepping the adventure Scenic Dunnsmouth by Zzarchov Kowolski to place on my campaign map a little over a year ago.  Today I went back to the notes and map I started to see what I had left to complete before I need to run it.  After awhile of looking at the module, my notes, and the map I had made, I decided today's work would be to make a tidier map (I could barely read the numbers of the houses because my handwriting+sharpie=illegible scrawl).

Old Map

I scored a small roll of cool grid paper recently and thought that would be great for the new map.  The width of the new roll of paper was about a centimeter longer than the original map's length, so I could cut the perfect width for the map off the roll and have nearly the same dimensions!

New Map

I did a little bit of refining of the original by re-orienting the north south axis a bit and spacing the buildings out from each other where they had been really crowded before.  Also, I moved the time cube from the west of the boat house to the north east.  Next work session I'll get the notes completed, then I can check this off the to-do list;-)