Shadowdark: Bloggah's Blog Part 8: Children of the Scorn

Title blatantly stolen from Joe and Paul.

Whoa, you look rough. 

Tell me about it... Damned kids...

(Note: Bloggah has missed a couple-few sessions due to work and travel)

***

So there we were, standing on the edge of the Harrow. We looked at the decrepit and collapsed buildings as the fog cleared. This place needs some urban renewal...

Creeping through a vacant lot, we find ourselves surrounded by a bunch of kids with skull faces, or skull masks. Is it a holiday?

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One approaches with another of those accursed cards. Columbo lets the kid slide it onto his shield, in case it explodes. Nope. I look at it. Image of the Forest Spirit on one side (lot of good it will do here) and an old, complex sigil on the back. Something to do the the Ash Elves, I hear.

Are they going to attack us? Of course they're going to attack us...

Fine.

Columbo whacks one with his sword, and is shocked as it bounces back and injures him, in turn. We notice they have a blue glow, which fades after a hit. But things bounce off. Interesting. Let me try something. I walk up to two and give em the old burning hands. Foom! Well, whatever it is, its isn't magic-proof. 

The various hack and slash boys try to figure out how to undo these kids without taking a big hit back. Dremont does a bit of his godly smiting or whatever. Somewhere in this Tarim loses his axe down a hole. And I get pummeled by a couple of the kids after my magic goes “poot.”

Oh, and a big stone-shaped ogre thing walks out of the dark and stars pummeling its way through everything to chase after us.

I remember I have a potion of invisibility in my fanny pack. Byee... There are rude words cast my way. I don't care. You got this, boys. I quietly drink a Hugo's Healing Potion(tm).

Columbo gets the bright idea to lure the stone-thing along, shooting at it, as it wanders through the horde of skull-children. Tarim, without his axe, settles for variations of clotheslining and head-knocking. He then jumps into the hole (always a bright idea) and somehow clambers back out with his axe.  Somewhere in this the skull-children either succumb to various pummelings or flee back into the ruins.

With just the stone ogre left, I decided it was time to help. Magic missile! Poot. Dammit.

Columbo and Dremont come through, and we are looking at a pile of dust with a ruby. With beast-noises in the dark, we decide it's prudent to boogie.

Retreating to the more intact parts of town, we crash at our tenement. The ruby is uncut, but for a percentage, we get it cut for a good sale. I consider the magic cast on the skull-kids. Wonder if I could suss it out. Hmm...

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Last week's session here:

***

OK, more nastiness lurks in the dark corners and ruins of the Harrow. And more signs of the Cardmaster. 

Prior to the session, we got down to a favorite RPG topic: Whinging about magic systems. Based on his prior experiences with the doomed Alinor, Paul had earlier decided to go back to the reliability of a simple fighter class (How did that '1' roll work out for you this session?... ;) ) Likewise, Ken/Dremont has had mixed success with his divine magic.

So grousing and whining commenced... After all, there isn't a 'perfect' magic system. That's why we have so many variants: Vancian fire-and-forget, roll-to-cast, dice pools, mana/spell points, etc. What's the flavor of magic that you prefer?

As I mentioned in the session video – I don't mind variability and the unpredictable nature of magic. While I like the idea of the DCC variable magic tables, I feel that flipping back and forth to reference specific spell effects bogs gameplay too much. So simple roll-to-cast, with a chance of failure, is a reasonable alternative to keep play active. In a roll to hit environment, spell rolls give mages a similar action to martial classes during action. There is still the chance of losing a spell for the 'day,' and the gamble of having access to a spell multiple times or not at all continues to make casting a deliberate act. And critical failure can be glorious... It keeps the mage at arm's reach in the party, a not-quite-reliable ally who may be powerful or a hazard. As it should be... 

After all, I play Bloggah as a somewhat clueless fellow, who doesn't quite understand how magic works, so the occasional fizzled spell is all in a day's work for him.

In the end, we agreed to experiment with each caster choosing one favored spell per level to cast with advantage. Magic Missile already comes with Advantage built in at 1st level, so Bloggah will probably select hold person at second level, unless he wants to be a mind reading savant with Detect Thoughts. We'll see.

Either way, the quick workshopping and future experiment also demonstrates how rule sets should approached: as frameworks rather than be-all-end-all structures. No system is perfect or comprehensive, and situations will arise that are either not accounted for, or where alternatives are proposed. So on we go, scribbling in the margins, and seeing what happens in the ongoing experiment that is TTRPGs.

Artist's rendition of our party at the end of a 
typical session.

And we're running tonight, 7 Eastern/4 Pacific: Find us here