Rulings & Ruminations

The Hess' nest stinks of rotting fish. Our Hess partner introduces himself as Jez, along with his friends, rotund Gruzz, who bears a third eye, SaSo, and Nant, whose scales lack all pigment. We discuss the Hess' missing idol until wormlings assault our position from all sides. We take one out with a bear trap, and do our best to spike the doors closed, but a brawl breaks out. Alongside the Hess, we slaughter and loot them all. Umesh scouts our surroundings, finding a pile of "fake dead," before Gruzz reveals a secret door in their lair, filled with loot. With the Hess, we head to the wormlings' hideout and sack it, too. The Hess tell us of their twisted cousins, the Yoch Hounds, and we encounter old writing under algal growth, telling us to "pray before the benediction of Kezek; the blessed may pass the fall and come to the deep." Kezek, we learn, is the Hess' idol. Shortly thereafter, we reach a massive lizard carving with outstretched hands, surrou...

Triangles in the floor beneath the Grand Palm twist and contort, revealing a hole deep into the earth. We descend its slope to find the tracks of man and beast in the sand, and gnarled roots grabbing at our clothes in the cramped tunnels. A glow attracts our attention, and we find elemental faces of moss, roots, and worms. A tangled mass of plantlife steals Bishal's spellbook! Ade fights for it, but Bishal trades Phan's soggy tome for the return of his own. The faces tell is Reincarnate is in these halls, but we enter a natural cavern instead, where graffiti warns us of a dragon in the submerged cavern — so we quickly switch back to worked tunnels. An embossed archway featuring a skeleton turns out to be a dangerous blade trap. Reshma fumbles a spell and erodes, suffering a sleepy second face on the back of her head. Ade revives her with his vital fists. We find statues of human kings — improbable in these lands. Their names are destroyed, lost to time. Then, statues of fish an...

This is a letter I wrote in Discord for the gang after our session today, which was highly rated, if imperfect. I'm trying to grow and develop the game, keeping it fresh and fair, so I try to keep open communication. __**on Stunts & Paladins**__ I'm enjoying stunts in all their Apocalypse World -derived glory. They're from the blog Buildings Are People , source of many of our house rules. I got into RPGs through PbtA, not D&D, so they appeal to me. I think they're a flexible way to handle outside the box requests. I hope you're enjoying having the hit/mix/miss sketched out beforehand, to make the stakes clear. Please offer other suggestions, or yes-and mine, as seems appropriate. Something I'd like to look at more explicitly is specifying our intent. Burning Wheel is big on this: before rolling, players and ref always discuss intent behind the action. We could probably explore this more directly. With the paladin example, reaching out to Prosp...

The gang scours the barrowmounds for loot and surprises, and finds them, beginning with a jewelled broadsword that seems to bring rays of sunlight through the low grey clouds. Six skeletons leave their alcoves in pursuit, but they're turned back in the sun. Another mound yields ragged tapestries of noble visages, old Ironguards. Probing behind, Viktor finds a ghoul and the gang tears it apart. The next tapestry, the same — but this one with a hollow stare, and a raspy question: "Why?" The final tapestry yields (you guessed it) a ghoul. The gang dispatches it and turns their attention to the next chamber. Therein they find statues of helmeted, athletic men, and a simple wooden cup filled with fresh mead. The statues animate and attack when the cup is touched. The party paralyzes one with a ghoul tongue and pulls its head off while another tangles with the group. They escape with the cup thanks to Attraction magic. When cracking another mound, the party is beset by a clutch...

200315 knaves of the earth session summary The party works a family of owlbears into a frenzy, hides from a clutch of vulture-like barrow harpies, and gives their all against a pair of vile purple ghaists. Exploring the barrow mounds further, footlong centipedes rain, zombies are recapitulated, and four giant toads flee a blackened mummy. The party does not, though: they stand against the wretched, dessicated mummy and steal its jewelry. In a wretched blow, its rotting touch kills Luwang for what may well be the final time. Despite the loss, having looted the jewels of an entombed family of four, the party senses yet more opportunity in the mounds...

Yama, Ade, Qui, Bishal, Umesh, w/ tipsta as ref Jade's Favour has been making money and moves in the world; found a new home for a dragon, uncovered the secrets of the sky metal, funded an insurgent group in the Roach Feeders. Now we're on a quest to recover the world's most powerful magic word: Reincarnate. We seek the watchtower in the Topaz Isles. With the help of Spider Climb, Yama reaches the top, spying on the way a family of spiderpedes, as well as some conspicuously tidy rooms. At the summit, he finds four platonic solids of pure sky stone, and vaults them down for the gang to recover. In his descent, Yama encounters a brilliant gold and red elemental lion — the Sakomere Guardian — while the gang below is set upon by a clutch of grim natives bearing spears. Yama pleas his case, and the lion agrees to show the way to the Grand Palm in exchange for the solids' return. The lion and its followers depart as Yama is killed by a spring trap of spiders, so the gang foll...

Barrowmaze session one Intro and prep This was our first foray into Barrowmaze , a module I'd adopted one the fly once when I needed a short, five-room dungeon to fill the back hour of a session, but which I didn't know in any intimate way beyond using a barrow mound on the fly that time, probably 9-10 sessions ago. I read about 100 rooms and two dozen mounds, mostly lower level stuff. The module is rated for roughly 1 to 5s in Labyrinth Lord & other B/X derivatives , and the party spans 1-4 right now, so the encounters this session were below their level, broadly. (This was the right move to prep, though, since they did eventually take the main beginner's entrance to the maze itself, through the plundered mound with the block and tackle in mound 12.) Mapping All the same, I put it on the map, coincidentally near a larger town the party sought to visit. During the Wish segment of our feedback round, and again in discord chat, I heard some excitement to try...

In an effort to learn more of the foul Barrowmaze a few days out from Breakwater Landing, the gang asked around the Brazen Strumpet. Luwang, in disguise as a famous actress, approached the braggadocious Krell Ironguard, and found he knew nothing of the Veins, making his stories of heroics in the Barrowmaze weak tea in the party's estimation. Overhearing talk about runic tablets, chaos gods, and the safety of the pools, the gang did some trading and ventured west, to the sunken, fetid Barrowmoor, and the dozens of burial mounds set within. Surveying the eerie, damp, ancient landscape under a cold, low sky made them uneasy, but they soon began exploring tombs. They found a block and tackle within a plundered mound leading to a dark dungeon below: the very Barrowmaze itself. Opting instead to explore some more, Ferris found and read a weathered pillar, carved in the Black Tongue, extolling followers of the chaos god Nergal. Mirabilis, eager to wield his sledgehammer, went to to...