Author whitebeard

Campaign report: Rime of the Frostmaiden: session #4

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Arriving in Caer-Dineval, exhausted and hurt, our adventures hole up in the Uphill Climb. There they meet the paladin, Dezith, who’s kind enough to heal their wounds and let them share his room. The town is at its bleakest – boarded up shops and empty houses. The inn has little comfort to offer – a simple meal of bread and fish soup.

“I’ve been here a couple of days. There’s something not right at the castle. Perhaps you could help me check it out.”

Lucas relates the story he heard from Cora in Bremen – her son went missing in the Tundra and returned a few days later, changed, and wearing an odd crystal amulet. He began acting difficultly and eventually left with two tieflings, heading for a castle somewhere. Perhaps he’d find him, Huarwar his name, at the castle. At the very least he could report back to Cora that he’s alive.

The next morning, the party set off up the bluff to the castle. It’s closed up, but there are torches burning on the circular turrets. They stand outside the large, closed wooden doors, portcullises visible through them. Veomileana sends his owl to investigate – signs of activity, footprints in the snow, but no-one visible. They shout out.

“We’re seeking an audience with the speaker!”

“Speaker Crannoc Siever is too sick to entertain guests.” A voice from the guardhouse above the gates.

“We can help – we travel with one skilled in the art of healing.”

“Speaker Crannoc Siever has no need for your heathen rituals… er… hold on… I have received instructions that you are to be admitted and am to pass on the message that we are delighted to have such an esteemed author visit us.”

“Author?” asks Veomileana, looking around the group.

“He means me.” replies Eifira. “I’ll explain later. For now, let’s get inside”

Doors swing open and portcullis lifts. The party is free to enter the castle. They’re in a courtyard, footprints in the snow speak to recent activity, as does the sound of dogs barking and whelping from a small outhouse. Abandoned marketstalls on one side though, say something different. All is not as it should be here. Ahead of them large double doors leading inside to the keep.

Entering the keep, they meet the servant girl Merl who guides them through to see Throob, a minor functionary, who in turn arranges for them to see Kadroth. A tall, old distinguished tiefling greets them in what may have been the speaker’s old office.

“Ah, the author! I’m told to give you the run of the place. Terrific work. Please make yourselves at home and accept the hospitality of the Black Swords. Do stay away from locked doors though.”

“We’d like to speak to Huarwar.”

“Be my guest, he’s in the guard tower. There’s no compulsion here. Everyone here of their own free will”

The party head to the gate-house. Still no escort. They’re either confident or short-staffed. Eifira tells them about the book she wrote: “I discovered a group of nobles in Waterdeep were making pacts with the devil Asmodeus. When I published it, they sent people to kill me. I escaped and that’s why I’m here.”

“Interesting” Veomilea says. “There is more going on here than we thought. Did you see the amulets they were wearing. I suspect this has something to do with it.”

In the gatehouse they find Huarwar and Fel. Huarwar reacts not at all to the news of his mother’s grief. He is to stay here. “Levistus saved me from death, and now I owe him a bond.”

Dezith grabs at Fel’s amulet. “Hey. I need that back.” The party wait for a change to happen in her, some indication of a spell broken but it doesn’t come. “When Levistus saved us, gave us another chance at life, he gave us these amulets to seal the bond.” It’s not yours to take.

Veomilea examines the amulet, it’s magical but not of a type he can readily ascertain. It feels off, desecrated. He returns it to Fel. “You should speak to Hethyl, she sees the future and she’s been in the Black Swords longer than anyone. In the keep, upstairs”

As the party return in search of Hethyl, they encounter Merl the serving girl in the courtyard. She doesn’t have an amulet. She tells them that all she wants to do is get out from under Zadroth’s thumb. “Promise you’ll set me free. There is evil in this place. A wizard has taken up residence below the castle – there’s a trapdoor in the northwest tower. Just promise you’ll take me with you.”

The party decide to visit the elder. Behind a locked door upstairs, swiftly destroyed with an explosive ice freeze to the lock, they come across an old dwarf, rocking in a chair.

“I’ve been expecting you. I guess it’s nearly time. I have a message from Levistus for you before I join him in the Nine Hells.

Xardorok Sunblight is coming and will destroy Icewind Dale with his duergar horde unless you stop him. His fortress lies in the Spine of the World and he is developing a weapon powered by the heart of dragon. It is not yet time for you to face him. But we will be the ones to defeat him and save Icewind Dale.”

And with that she lets out a long breath, her last. The rocking stops.

“Let’s investigate under the castle. I’m keen to meet this wizard” The party splits, Lucas and Eifira return to Kardoth’s office to talk some more.

Veo and Dezith find the trapdoor and are lead down into an underground cistern. A rowboat tied there that takes them east. In the water there are bodies, weighed down with the chainmail they wore – the remains of the palace guards. A cold storeroom to the north, containing the bodies of four members of the Black Swords. Long dead. Killed in battle. Frozen. Kept here until the ground thaws and makes burial possible. However the Black Swords took this castle, it wasn’t by peaceful means.

A room to the south, reached by the rowboat, and in it an humanoid effigy encased in ice, surrounded by heavy chains. This is an altar, they divine. This is where the cult worships. To the west, a small office and sat at the desk, writing, an albino teifling. She doesn’t seem to notice them, but then lifts a hand without looking up: “Go away. I’ve been told to tolerate you but as you can see, I’m busy.” She wears no amulet but tells the party that she too has made a pact with Levistus and works to prepare for the Duergar threat that looms.

Finding a lever in the room to the east, Veo pulls it with his Mage Hand. A noise, loud, of scraping stone comes from the cistern. A large slab has lifted revealing a further passage east. A door to the north.

The paladin heads in first and is surprised by a scrawny man who swings a chair leg at him, narrowly missing. “We mean you no harm, who are you?”.

“Please, help us get out of here.” More faces come out of the darkness – there are five people here, malnourished, dirty, they’ve been imprisoned here for some time.

“We are the speaker’s staff. We have been locked in here with no food. Please help us escape. The speaker, does he live? And Merl, the maidservant?”

“Here, take these.” The paladin offers up his rations and water bottle. “We have not seen the speaker but Merl, she lives, she sent us down here.”

“Will you get us out.”

“Please be patient, we will help you but for now, you must stay here. We do not have the strength for a straight-up escape right now. We will return. Trust us.”

They leave, resealing the slab that kept them contained and rendez-vous with the others in their party.

“The Black Swords believe we could be allies, Zadroth says it is foretold, shall we commit to help them face the Duergar threat? Perhaps they are the lesser of two evils?”

The party face a decision.

Campaign Report: Dragon of Icespire Peak: Session #5

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The story so far… The adventurers – Lotho, the secretive Ranger, Whizzbang the talkative cleric and Nar’rick the fighter – took a job escorting a troubleshooter, Don-Jon Raskin, to a far off gold mine. They’re accompanied by Talon the fighter and Galandro the Bard. There have been no shipments from the mine recently and the owners are worried. On arriving at the mine, they discover it’s been taken over by wererats driven out of their home by raiding orcs. They tell the party that they chased off the miners and are just looking for a home. They’re lead by Zeleen Varnaster and call themselves The Whiskered Gang. The last session ended as the party, granted an audience in the room the rats are now nesting, decide what to do next.

(Nar’rick disappears, being summoned to a different plane of existence for some real-life adventures involving a new human baby.)

“Here’s the plan: we tell the rats we’re leaving and will help them clear out their old home. But we regroup and come up with a way to take this mine back.” Whizzbang suggests. “There are too many of them for a head-on confrontation.”

“Mines like this often have more than one way in and out – in case of tunnel collapse. Let’s take a wander around and see if we can get back in somewhere.”

The mine is called Mountain’s Toe Gold Mine because it’s formed of a large promontory jutting out from the side of a mountain. The party take their leave and after being escorted outside by the two sentry wererats, they wander around the perimeter of the outcrop, looking for ways in.

A graveyard. Ten freshly dug graves. No headstones, but instead pick-axes planted in the soil. “There were sixteen miners here. I guess they didn’t leave as peaceably as the rats claimed.” Don-Jon surveys the scene, no emotion in his voice. Some 20ft above there’s a cave that could lead further in. A little further on an easier entrance, partially obscured by bushes.

“We should go through the cave, more chance of sneaking up on them, less likely it’ll be guarded.” It’s an easy climb, only the heavily-armoured cleric slipping at the first attempt. The tunnel curves and twists downwards. There is an overbearing smell of rotten stuff, a stench of death. A few tens of feet in, a door. But in front of it a hideous creature: a large yellow and green mostrosity, looking like a squat centipede with eight long tentacles protruding from its jawline.

A battle ensues – the centipede’s venom paralyzing Don-Jon as it climbs the walls and makes its way to the back of the party along the roof of the tunnel. The bard breaks into an impromptu version of the great elven ballad: “Dancing on the ceiling.” It’s no match for the adventurers though and it’s uickly dispatched. It seems it hasn’t been able to get through the door but rammed up against it is a charnal pile of its past victims. Poking round the pile there are a few gold pieces and a signet ring – bearing the image of a pick-axe. “This belonged to one of the dwarves”, Lotho thinks, “as he puts it on.”

Stealthily they move through the door into the mine proper. No-one anywhere – they find offices, ransacked, gold stores, emptied, sleeping quarters unused. They make it to the door of the rats nest room – listening confirms that the rat-people are still inside. “Let’s keep searching, but we should be quiet, they have no idea that we’ve come back.”

At the east end of a east-west passageway lies a storeroom, full of dried goods and water butts. But to get to it they need to sneak past the passageway off to the south where the two wererat sentries are posted. The sentries don’t notice them, but it gives them an idea.

“Maybe we can lure them here and get the jump on them. Perhaps if we set out a trail of food.” The plan works and the two wererats follow the food into the ambush. The bard starts playing the Ayn folk tune: “Thunderstruck” in anticipation of what comes next.

“We need to keep quiet, so they don’t alert the others”. The cleric is oblivous though, casting again and again Toll of the Dead, leaving a ringing sound in the air. These two are killed, though they’re tougher than they were expecting. In death they seem to lose their rat-like features and become human again.

But the surprise is gone and three more wererats are approaching to investigate what’s happening.

The cleric nods at the Bard who starts his appegiated crescendo: “Thunder… Thunder…” Throwing caution to the wind, the cleric takes a chance to hit them all at once with a ferocious Thunderwave. A booming noise reverberates through the mine. Still they approach, and after that clamour more are no doubt on the way. How many were there in that nest? “I counted eight” “No, nine.” No-one is quite sure.

An untidy melee – one of them bites Don-Jon deeply. That’s unlikely to be good. Three down now and another three badly injured. More coming. Two large rats scuttle down in the corridor. The one ahead stops and the party gasps as it transforms into one of the hybrid rat/human creatures. “There are too many of them. We need another approach”

“Surrender. We intend to fight to the death.” The cleric’s words have bite, the wererat is listening. “That’s right”, chimes in Don-Jon, “You can’t win. Bring your leader here. It’s time to talk” His words persuade. Lotho moves to one side, still in a defensive stance, to let the wererat past. A brief lull in hostilities. The adventurers tired and injured. What the Faerun are they going to say?

A few months on StartPlaying.Games

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I’ve been listing my online games on the player-GM-match platform StartPlaying since last year. Here’s how it’s gone so far.

StartPlaying calls itself “the largest online platform for players to find tapletop roleplaying games” and for the GM it provides a bunch of services – you get a nice profile page, a simple way to schedule and price sessions, a review system, a messaging system to communicate with players and they take care of all the billing/charging too.

I’m pretty pleased with how these services all work together – I don’t think the UI is much to write home about but it’s improved in useful ways over the past year and I don’t see any reason why that wouldn’t continue. They take a cut of billings. That’s very reasonable. It all works nicely.

A few things I’ve been impressed with – it handles timezones well so I can list things in my local timezone and avoid some of the confusion with players around the world. And recently they’ve released calendar subscription which is great for sharing my listing times with my partner or automating my upcoming games posts.

For players I think it works well – you can sign up and find a campaign pretty easily and expect a good experience and there are a good variety of systems , styles and settings to choose from.

None of these things matter though as a GM, if it can’t deliver the players to you.

I guess I’m in an odd situation – I schedule games when my kids are in school, which means mornings GMT. This is a reasonable evening time in Australia but sucks for the UK and Europe – people seem to have proper jobs to go to – and only extreme nighthawks can make it from the States. I’ve managed to get a couple of games off the ground and all my players have come from my marketing efforts off-site. I’ll write about those another time. But the site itself really hasn’t delivered the amount of players I need to make a success of things.

The discord is full of GMs happy to critique your profile or your adventure listings to encourage sign-ups and there are helpful webinars run by the company on best practices for listings. Call me cynical, but the advice feels a bit SEO-like: ‘here are some things that gave results for me by luck, dressed up as hard advice you should follow’. What worked for one GM twelve months ago to build their audience is as close to anecdote and as far from data as I can imagine.

I’d really like to see some more analytics. I want to know how many people viewed my listings on the site, how many clicked through, how many moved on to read my profile, how many went on to book a different GM. All so I can to try to figure out what point they decided against signing up and tweak accordingly. That way I could make a stab at a few adjustments and more importantly I could monitor behaviour after making changes to see if there’s an effect.

Right now, I’m only guessing that there aren’t many people looking in my games’ timeslot. I have no idea perhaps there are hundreds that just don’t want what I’m selling or are turned off by something I say in my profile. I have no way to tell. Pretty sure the over-confident advice-givers on discord have no way to tell either!

I’d also like to see a better matchmaking service for GM seat-swapping – this is when another GM joins your game to make up the numbers and you recriprocate for them. There’s a discord channel – but it didn’t work at all for me. Approaching GMs directly had a much better result. If games take a while to fill with players, it’s essential that I can offer a decent game to the first couple that show up.

I’m going to stick with StartPlaying for now. As I say, the services it provides all work well enough together an do make my life easier but I’m left having to do the marketing myself, and somewhat in the dark. I think I would prefer a different balance – I’d be happy with less developed GM services if the marketing was slick and it delivered players to me.

If you do want to try out StartPlaying, as a player, using this referral link gives me a little kickback when you book your first game: https://startplaying.games/referral/ckrxv8ebu2dfvbopkbp96htc0