Ravenloft #3
Have you heard about Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine?
I figure everyone has by now.
In case you don’t know, Paizo, the company that has been making the magazines the past few years had their license to do so pulled by WotC so that WotC can go back to making it themselves, but in an online only format as part of their “Digital Initiative”. It has made a lot of gamers mad. A few have hit a raving lunacy level of frothing anger.
Me, I haven’t cared particularly about either magazine since the early 90’s. I bought a Dragon Mag a couple of years ago and the layout bugged me and there wasn’t any content I was interested in, so I haven’t bought any since.
A few of the angered people have said that WotC is turning the latter day T$R. I can’t say they’re right, but I also can’t say they’re wrong – I just hope they are.
WotC also pulled Code Monkey Publishing’s license to create and sell more of their add-ons to E-Tools a few months back. That saddened me a bit as I liked what CMP did to fix and improve the pile of crap E-Tools was when originally released.
A few months ago WotC also had a questionnaire pop up on their website asking our opinions about buying online content. If that wasn’t foreshadowing the “Digital Initiative”, then I’ve forgotten the meaning of foreshadowing.
I don’t know WotC’s long term goals beyond making money, but as long as they don’t take their customers for granted like T$R did, in this case taking all of their currently free content on their websites and putting it into the new online magazines and charging us for them, then I think everything will turn out fine.
Oh and if Mike Mearls every tries to change the rust monster again by making it weaker, I’ll throw him off a skyscraper and belly flop onto his broken and shattered body.
(Sorry, that just needed to be said.)
Now we head to the game.
No Allen or Justin this week. So while also breaking in their own new PC’s Aaron and Brian played Marco and Tenbeers.
Last week we stopped where our remaining PC’s were looking down into a hole in the floor of the defiled church of Lathander.
This week we started where Dale asked if we had searched the place and we responded that we told him several times that we were taking 20’s while searching the whole place. So then he told us about the trap door covering up a set of stairs leading below. (This is caused by Dale himself getting so caught up in the module that he forgets or misses some simple things. Every DM does it, Dale is just more entertaining when he does it; like not seeing the stairs on the map.)
Now I was expecting a slog through some catacombs or crypts, but I’m finding that a lot of these side quests are actually very short when it comes to encounters.
They can also be pretty deadly.
The area down the steps was no crypt, just a wide open basement with a few undead; 3 of the stronger zombies we’ve been fighting and a something Dale called a blaspheme.
Since I don’t own the Libris Mortis, or whatever that thing is in, all I know about it was that it had a high AC (23 or so), a lot of hit points, and could hit each round for 1d8+13 damage which it never missed with in this combat.
Mina was infected with the “walking death” disease by one of the zombies and literally came within one activation of her rising as one. We found out then that the plague activates when someone goes below 0 hit points. Even if at -1hp, anyone infected with the plague will rise in 1d4+1 rounds as one of those zombies. Mina was healed by Marco just before Mina would have risen as a zombie.
By the time the fight was over, half of us had been infected with the disease, but once the blaspheme was killed the plague went away.
We had just completed one part of Madame Eva’s fortune told quests by removing the source of the walking death.
One other odd thing happened during this fight; Grevan actually got into combat and did something effective. He wasn’t as much of a tool afterwards either.
After the fight he refused to let us burn the defiled church of Lathander to the ground. He intended to reclaim it and remove the taint of evil from it. And we decided to let him and use it as a base of operations as well, for which he thanked us.
Among the zombies we had slain in there was Ashlynn’s two lost comrades.
Do you know what that means?
We got all kinds of loot! We got the stuff off the fallen priest of Lathander, the blaspheme, Theo, Skellex, Ashlynn, and Ashlynn’s friends!
You just have to love the neutral-greedy alignment. But what we ended up with was several magical armors and masterwork weapons we had to sell most of, and plenty of one-shot divine scrolls, potions, and odd alchemical items that may come in handy.
Kelvin got an Amulet of Health +2, which he desperately needed. Even though I rolled pretty decent hit points, 30hp just isn’t enough in this world.
But Kelvin had to cast Identify twice; once for the Amulet of Health +2 and once for the Cloak of Charisma +2. Everything else could be identified pretty easily; it was all +1 except for a greatsword +2.
The first ID was cast from a scroll, which killed the remainder of the day since ID still has an 8 hour casting time, even off of a scroll.
Then some more bad things happened while we tried to rest.
Dozens of wolves began howling outside the church and scratching at the doors at midnight. Luckily the rest of the group had been helping clean and board up the place while Kelvin was casting ID, plus Dannovich, prior to his fall had done plenty to fortify the church through the recent years.
After fifteen minutes they left.
Then at 2am they returned.
After fifteen minutes they left.
Then at 4am they returned.
After fifteen minutes they left.
Then at 6am they returned.
After fifteen minutes they left.
Their only goal was to deprive us of sleep, and it worked. We had to spend several extra hours in the morning to make up for the lost sleep.
Kelvin memorized his spells and cast ID for the second item while rest of the group continued the reparations on the church and they made time to investigate the church’s graveyard. They found evidence of one particular grave with recently dug up soil all around it, with what appeared to be signs of clawing from underground. They made note of that for tomorrow.
The wolves returned and repeated their activity from the previous night. The distress on our sleeping habits caused us to get a -1 penalty on all Will saves until our sleep patterns return to normal.
This time anyone who was on guard duty would occasionally look out a church window. At one point we saw a hundred ghostly blue figures emerge from the graveyard and make a trek to the castle where Lord Strahd “lives”. We could even make out the ghostly images of Theo, Ashlynn, Dannovich, and Skellex in the mass of apparition.
We don’t know what that means, but I doubt it’s good.
The next morning when we were about to investigate the graveyard, as almost an afterthought, we got our new party members (this also could have happened the previous day, I have forgotten). Since they had the “Hey I’m a PC!” stamp on their forehead, we immediately accepted them into our group, though they didn’t get anything special from our loot (yet). I personally don’t like doing that, but I also don’t like wasting time on introductions every week either, so with a few role-playing based reservations I let it go.
First there was Ian. He is Aaron’s new PC who is very similar to his Ian of the previous campaign (he even said he was too lazy to even bother changing the name). He is a fighter/rogue type specializing in whirlwind attacks, polearms, and tripping.
Then there was Deimos (Day-moes). He is Brian’s new PC, a cleric/fighter (or cleric/something) also from the Necrophontes family who somehow knew of his brother’s death. He came to see proof of his brother’s demise, and to aid us.
Off, 25 feet, to the graveyard!
As expected, the dug up earthen grave had an underground tunnel beneath which led to a crypt area.
And of course we were attacked by undead. This is D&D in a graveyard after all. There were a couple of ghouls (probably powered up a bit) that burst from the walls once we opened a particular coffin, some kind of undead harpy, and a powered up monk ghoul.
But we have two clerics in the group, and Dale is using rules that changes undead turning into holy fireballs rather than making undead run away. This combat started scary, but ended with a whimper. Marco was frozen by a ghoul touch, Ian was tripped as a result of his own failed trip attempt, and Deimos was charmed by the harpy. In spite of that we surrounded the monk and beat it to pulp, holy fireballs fried the ghouls, and the harpy was cornered and bashed real good.
We found a few items of interest, but the big item was a holy symbol of Lathander (which I believe was referred to as the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind). That means we have another checkmark placed on Madame Eva’s fortune to-do list. Now we just need to “activate” it some how.
That was easy enough, so we decided to return to town to see if the zombies were gone from town, as well as the disease.
They were and it was.
We looked around and did some shopping for minor supplies and so on now that the stores can reopen. Bildrath charges double prices because he can.
Kelvin fed the horses. They aren’t dead yet, somehow.
Next we decided to head to the burgomaster’s mansion to find some information there.
On the way we heard some sobbing coming from one of the many boarded up houses.
As usual we investigated and found a distraught middle-aged woman who was very sad because her little girl, Gertruda, ran away from home. She showed us her room which looked like an eight year old girl’s room with rainbows, unicorns, and princes in castles. At first we thought the girl ran off the castle to find her prince, but then the woman told us that Gertruda was actually 18 years old. So now we think Gertruda ran off to get away from her over protective mother. Though the castle may still be where she ran to.
We promised the woman that we’d try to find her daughter for her and left.
Finally we made it to the burgomaster’s mansion.
It was nice and big, and ready to fall apart. The windows and doors were all boarded up and the gate to the place was rusted almost entirely off its hinges.
We approached the front door and a woman’s voice told us to leave unless we had come to bury her father, the burgomaster. We responded that we could do that so long as she accompanied us and answered some questions, but she didn’t give us much new information.
The woman, Irena, stated that her father was murdered by poison from Strahd because her father stood up to him and kept him at bay with the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind (though we’re not sure specifically why). But Mina’s heal check determined that he died of a heart attack from fright rather than poison.
Irena also told us that Izmark the Lesser was her brother. I missed that little bit of information in our previous session.
So off we went with Irena and her dead father to bury him in the village cemetery. She refused to let us burn his body – and you just know that’s going to come back to bite us in the ass, or throat I guess.
On the way we stopped to get Izmark so he could be there for his father’s burial.
During all of this Deimos used it to convert Irena and Izmark to worship Kelemvor. Which is kind of funny because the last time some reverend tried to get me to convert at a funeral almost got that reverend punched (true story).
After that we stopped.
Next session we might try to find some waterfall that we heard about in the city. There’s a pretty good chance that it is the “river that flies” from the fortune telling.
I really like the fortune telling aspect of the game. From what Dale’s told us the results of it actually determine what your goals are for the module. That’s pretty interesting and makes the module somewhat re-playable.
Updated list of clues and thoughts:
- My opinion of Grevan Thalmer has improved, but I still don’t trust him. We haven’t told him that we have the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind, and don’t think we should.
- We’ll be getting the Sunsword this next session I suspect. It will probably be in a dungeon behind the waterfall we heard about.
- Something doesn’t seem right with either Irena’s story of her father’s death, or Izmark’s version. Something isn’t adding up, but all I have is a hunch.
- The missing Girtruda is probably in the castle, but I can’t help but think she’s hiding somewhere else. If her mother protected her from the outside world so much, that means she doesn’t know how evil everyone else believes Strahd to be. If she went to the castle, she’s dead. Part of me thinks she might be hiding with Bildrath or Perrywimple, but that is only a hunch. Plus I really need to stop watching so much Law & Order.
- The ghosts from the graveyard could mean anything, good or bad. Part of me just prefers the scorched earth method of problem solving this – burn all of the bodies in the graveyard. But that “solution” offers no recourse if I’m wrong.
Next week Sunsword & maybe Castle Ravenloft.
I figure everyone has by now.
In case you don’t know, Paizo, the company that has been making the magazines the past few years had their license to do so pulled by WotC so that WotC can go back to making it themselves, but in an online only format as part of their “Digital Initiative”. It has made a lot of gamers mad. A few have hit a raving lunacy level of frothing anger.
Me, I haven’t cared particularly about either magazine since the early 90’s. I bought a Dragon Mag a couple of years ago and the layout bugged me and there wasn’t any content I was interested in, so I haven’t bought any since.
A few of the angered people have said that WotC is turning the latter day T$R. I can’t say they’re right, but I also can’t say they’re wrong – I just hope they are.
WotC also pulled Code Monkey Publishing’s license to create and sell more of their add-ons to E-Tools a few months back. That saddened me a bit as I liked what CMP did to fix and improve the pile of crap E-Tools was when originally released.
A few months ago WotC also had a questionnaire pop up on their website asking our opinions about buying online content. If that wasn’t foreshadowing the “Digital Initiative”, then I’ve forgotten the meaning of foreshadowing.
I don’t know WotC’s long term goals beyond making money, but as long as they don’t take their customers for granted like T$R did, in this case taking all of their currently free content on their websites and putting it into the new online magazines and charging us for them, then I think everything will turn out fine.
Oh and if Mike Mearls every tries to change the rust monster again by making it weaker, I’ll throw him off a skyscraper and belly flop onto his broken and shattered body.
(Sorry, that just needed to be said.)
Now we head to the game.
No Allen or Justin this week. So while also breaking in their own new PC’s Aaron and Brian played Marco and Tenbeers.
Last week we stopped where our remaining PC’s were looking down into a hole in the floor of the defiled church of Lathander.
This week we started where Dale asked if we had searched the place and we responded that we told him several times that we were taking 20’s while searching the whole place. So then he told us about the trap door covering up a set of stairs leading below. (This is caused by Dale himself getting so caught up in the module that he forgets or misses some simple things. Every DM does it, Dale is just more entertaining when he does it; like not seeing the stairs on the map.)
Now I was expecting a slog through some catacombs or crypts, but I’m finding that a lot of these side quests are actually very short when it comes to encounters.
They can also be pretty deadly.
The area down the steps was no crypt, just a wide open basement with a few undead; 3 of the stronger zombies we’ve been fighting and a something Dale called a blaspheme.
Since I don’t own the Libris Mortis, or whatever that thing is in, all I know about it was that it had a high AC (23 or so), a lot of hit points, and could hit each round for 1d8+13 damage which it never missed with in this combat.
Mina was infected with the “walking death” disease by one of the zombies and literally came within one activation of her rising as one. We found out then that the plague activates when someone goes below 0 hit points. Even if at -1hp, anyone infected with the plague will rise in 1d4+1 rounds as one of those zombies. Mina was healed by Marco just before Mina would have risen as a zombie.
By the time the fight was over, half of us had been infected with the disease, but once the blaspheme was killed the plague went away.
We had just completed one part of Madame Eva’s fortune told quests by removing the source of the walking death.
One other odd thing happened during this fight; Grevan actually got into combat and did something effective. He wasn’t as much of a tool afterwards either.
After the fight he refused to let us burn the defiled church of Lathander to the ground. He intended to reclaim it and remove the taint of evil from it. And we decided to let him and use it as a base of operations as well, for which he thanked us.
Among the zombies we had slain in there was Ashlynn’s two lost comrades.
Do you know what that means?
We got all kinds of loot! We got the stuff off the fallen priest of Lathander, the blaspheme, Theo, Skellex, Ashlynn, and Ashlynn’s friends!
You just have to love the neutral-greedy alignment. But what we ended up with was several magical armors and masterwork weapons we had to sell most of, and plenty of one-shot divine scrolls, potions, and odd alchemical items that may come in handy.
Kelvin got an Amulet of Health +2, which he desperately needed. Even though I rolled pretty decent hit points, 30hp just isn’t enough in this world.
But Kelvin had to cast Identify twice; once for the Amulet of Health +2 and once for the Cloak of Charisma +2. Everything else could be identified pretty easily; it was all +1 except for a greatsword +2.
The first ID was cast from a scroll, which killed the remainder of the day since ID still has an 8 hour casting time, even off of a scroll.
Then some more bad things happened while we tried to rest.
Dozens of wolves began howling outside the church and scratching at the doors at midnight. Luckily the rest of the group had been helping clean and board up the place while Kelvin was casting ID, plus Dannovich, prior to his fall had done plenty to fortify the church through the recent years.
After fifteen minutes they left.
Then at 2am they returned.
After fifteen minutes they left.
Then at 4am they returned.
After fifteen minutes they left.
Then at 6am they returned.
After fifteen minutes they left.
Their only goal was to deprive us of sleep, and it worked. We had to spend several extra hours in the morning to make up for the lost sleep.
Kelvin memorized his spells and cast ID for the second item while rest of the group continued the reparations on the church and they made time to investigate the church’s graveyard. They found evidence of one particular grave with recently dug up soil all around it, with what appeared to be signs of clawing from underground. They made note of that for tomorrow.
The wolves returned and repeated their activity from the previous night. The distress on our sleeping habits caused us to get a -1 penalty on all Will saves until our sleep patterns return to normal.
This time anyone who was on guard duty would occasionally look out a church window. At one point we saw a hundred ghostly blue figures emerge from the graveyard and make a trek to the castle where Lord Strahd “lives”. We could even make out the ghostly images of Theo, Ashlynn, Dannovich, and Skellex in the mass of apparition.
We don’t know what that means, but I doubt it’s good.
The next morning when we were about to investigate the graveyard, as almost an afterthought, we got our new party members (this also could have happened the previous day, I have forgotten). Since they had the “Hey I’m a PC!” stamp on their forehead, we immediately accepted them into our group, though they didn’t get anything special from our loot (yet). I personally don’t like doing that, but I also don’t like wasting time on introductions every week either, so with a few role-playing based reservations I let it go.
First there was Ian. He is Aaron’s new PC who is very similar to his Ian of the previous campaign (he even said he was too lazy to even bother changing the name). He is a fighter/rogue type specializing in whirlwind attacks, polearms, and tripping.
Then there was Deimos (Day-moes). He is Brian’s new PC, a cleric/fighter (or cleric/something) also from the Necrophontes family who somehow knew of his brother’s death. He came to see proof of his brother’s demise, and to aid us.
Off, 25 feet, to the graveyard!
As expected, the dug up earthen grave had an underground tunnel beneath which led to a crypt area.
And of course we were attacked by undead. This is D&D in a graveyard after all. There were a couple of ghouls (probably powered up a bit) that burst from the walls once we opened a particular coffin, some kind of undead harpy, and a powered up monk ghoul.
But we have two clerics in the group, and Dale is using rules that changes undead turning into holy fireballs rather than making undead run away. This combat started scary, but ended with a whimper. Marco was frozen by a ghoul touch, Ian was tripped as a result of his own failed trip attempt, and Deimos was charmed by the harpy. In spite of that we surrounded the monk and beat it to pulp, holy fireballs fried the ghouls, and the harpy was cornered and bashed real good.
We found a few items of interest, but the big item was a holy symbol of Lathander (which I believe was referred to as the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind). That means we have another checkmark placed on Madame Eva’s fortune to-do list. Now we just need to “activate” it some how.
That was easy enough, so we decided to return to town to see if the zombies were gone from town, as well as the disease.
They were and it was.
We looked around and did some shopping for minor supplies and so on now that the stores can reopen. Bildrath charges double prices because he can.
Kelvin fed the horses. They aren’t dead yet, somehow.
Next we decided to head to the burgomaster’s mansion to find some information there.
On the way we heard some sobbing coming from one of the many boarded up houses.
As usual we investigated and found a distraught middle-aged woman who was very sad because her little girl, Gertruda, ran away from home. She showed us her room which looked like an eight year old girl’s room with rainbows, unicorns, and princes in castles. At first we thought the girl ran off the castle to find her prince, but then the woman told us that Gertruda was actually 18 years old. So now we think Gertruda ran off to get away from her over protective mother. Though the castle may still be where she ran to.
We promised the woman that we’d try to find her daughter for her and left.
Finally we made it to the burgomaster’s mansion.
It was nice and big, and ready to fall apart. The windows and doors were all boarded up and the gate to the place was rusted almost entirely off its hinges.
We approached the front door and a woman’s voice told us to leave unless we had come to bury her father, the burgomaster. We responded that we could do that so long as she accompanied us and answered some questions, but she didn’t give us much new information.
The woman, Irena, stated that her father was murdered by poison from Strahd because her father stood up to him and kept him at bay with the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind (though we’re not sure specifically why). But Mina’s heal check determined that he died of a heart attack from fright rather than poison.
Irena also told us that Izmark the Lesser was her brother. I missed that little bit of information in our previous session.
So off we went with Irena and her dead father to bury him in the village cemetery. She refused to let us burn his body – and you just know that’s going to come back to bite us in the ass, or throat I guess.
On the way we stopped to get Izmark so he could be there for his father’s burial.
During all of this Deimos used it to convert Irena and Izmark to worship Kelemvor. Which is kind of funny because the last time some reverend tried to get me to convert at a funeral almost got that reverend punched (true story).
After that we stopped.
Next session we might try to find some waterfall that we heard about in the city. There’s a pretty good chance that it is the “river that flies” from the fortune telling.
I really like the fortune telling aspect of the game. From what Dale’s told us the results of it actually determine what your goals are for the module. That’s pretty interesting and makes the module somewhat re-playable.
Updated list of clues and thoughts:
- My opinion of Grevan Thalmer has improved, but I still don’t trust him. We haven’t told him that we have the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind, and don’t think we should.
- We’ll be getting the Sunsword this next session I suspect. It will probably be in a dungeon behind the waterfall we heard about.
- Something doesn’t seem right with either Irena’s story of her father’s death, or Izmark’s version. Something isn’t adding up, but all I have is a hunch.
- The missing Girtruda is probably in the castle, but I can’t help but think she’s hiding somewhere else. If her mother protected her from the outside world so much, that means she doesn’t know how evil everyone else believes Strahd to be. If she went to the castle, she’s dead. Part of me thinks she might be hiding with Bildrath or Perrywimple, but that is only a hunch. Plus I really need to stop watching so much Law & Order.
- The ghosts from the graveyard could mean anything, good or bad. Part of me just prefers the scorched earth method of problem solving this – burn all of the bodies in the graveyard. But that “solution” offers no recourse if I’m wrong.
Next week Sunsword & maybe Castle Ravenloft.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 9:25 PM
3 Comments:
Great reading; hope I get to run this for people someday!
Oh, and to add, I'm not really sad about the demise of Dragon either --- but as a long time D&D player I'm getting more turned off by 3,5 and the direction the game is going -- too many books in my opinion and in my own game players sometimes want to run something from "The great book of exalted cheese" or "The Complete Wizbang" book --- sometimes players spend more time on their PC builds than actually playing which kind or rubs me the wrong way... so I fear for the future of the game we know and love.
I. too, like using e-tools and am disappointed that they decided not to continue to support it.
Thanks!
I'm not too sad about the magazines leaving either, but I am concerned that WotC is pulling all of their licenses in, one at a time. It throws a cloud of uncertainty about the future of D&D.
I've heard some rumors, but that is all they are, rumors.
As for the cheese with all the D&D products, I've found that as long as you don't allow every little thing in your game, it's not too much of an issue. Plus there is no rule that you have to allow it, I've run more than one game where it was core plus setting books.
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