AROS: Random Tidbits

I had a post drafted up about running A Rasp Of Sand, call it halfway between impressions, tips, and a review. I have kind of a need to be thorough and detailed so there were a lot of different aspects to it. I made the mistake of drafting it in the actual blogger post drafting interface on mobile, so it's gone now. BOOM. 

Oh well. Instead, here's a sweet Family logo that my player Vegas made. His family's trade is Slug Farmer.

DeGastropoda Family Crest

I cannot describe how tickled I was! It was so great. We were starting our fourth session with two dead generations and I asked for everyone's family crest. Vegas was all "hold on lemme get out mspaint." Truly someone committed to the glory of slug farming.

That third generation died in the first room (sometimes two awful shark people show up), so they quickly rolled up new characters and started Generation 4. We'll see how far they make it!

Overall A Rasp Of Sand has been a fun diversion after a multi-year campaign and we're all enjoying the change of structure. Maybe deeper thoughts later if I end up re-writing that post and I'll release the (SUPER BASIC) character generator I made sometime soon.

Campaign Retrospective: Decaying Lands

 After ~5 years and exactly 75 sessions my group has finished our Decaying Lands campaign. This campaign started off the first tabletop RPG I had ever run at the inaugural IntroCONso, with James, Vegas, and Peanut Butter navigating The Trail of Stone and Sorrow (Sugarplum observed). A one-shot turned into a five year campaign. I almost feel like I should just quit running games because I'm not sure how I can even pretend to follow this up. I wanted to talk about what worked and what I could have done better in the hope that some of this is maybe useful. The headers started off on topic but then got less and less focused so don't rely on that too much.

Game Setup / Logistics

I mostly ran around in Google+ RPG circles and read stuff there and on blogs so I ran that first session in Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Art-free editions of things are a great introduction to a game. Raggi / LotFP has guaranteed that I won't make that choice again but from a game perspective I am definitely burned out on B/X in general. There are plenty of other games that embrace a focus on "grant[ing] primacy to the imagined physical space" (Evey NAILED it with that line). For this campaign though using a retroclone was useful in that it enabled a huge amount of general compatibility with stuff I could mine for ideas. Dungeons, classes, monsters, all of it. I don't have a good knowledge of monsters or internalized idea of strength so even something as simple as pulling up a Labyrinth Lord bestiary was a help. And all the wild classes were great! LS writes some of the best ones.

We played on roll20, cycling through various video and chat solutions. Hangouts, despite being the G+ goto, never worked reliably for me on my computer. We did roll20 video for a while (not great), discord video (pretty okay), Zoom when it was available (great video but fuck them), and then finally settled on Jitsi. Jitsi is open source, their FAQ makes me feel good, and their service is pretty solid. Go use Jitsi.

Roll20 is great for me but I also don't use almost anything in its feature list. I scribble maps and hide things on the GM layer. I didn't even think about searching for tokens until a month or two ago. I probably could have made do with just a login-less whiteboard but having the persistence between sessions for maps and characters was really helpful. Half the time we'd forget how to play combat, so roll20 was a good reference.

I setup a player trello board and two private ones, one for my secret notes and another for ideas and "to-do." The player one got some initial use and then was mostly for me to refer to for stats on items we came up with in the game. It was also pretty handy to have a list of cards to point someone at and say "here, that's how you make a paper person, follow those steps." Keeping my notes and inspiration on separate boards was definitely useful though, would recommend that for sure.

I also had a bunch of spreadsheets that I used to help manage information. Maybe halfway through, right before a big hex crawl, I tweaked James Young's inventory sheet (maybe here?) to make it calculate encumbrance more automated and basically took care of everything for the party. I did this because I could (in a spreadsheet I mean), I enjoy automating things, and the session we spent mathing out and planning that expedition was probably one of the worst in the whole five years. I now love games that have "here's 12 slots" for their inventory. The experience tracking spreadsheet was way better though, and more broadly useful. There were google docs for rumors and "prep" too but that second part was almost non-existent. More on that below.

Play(er) Frequency

Since this started as a very intimate one-shot in a high lethality kind of world and system I wanted to schedule so that everyone would be there every session. With four players and one referee it turns out that's pretty challenging. We started at IntroCONso 1 and only played our 7th session by the time of IntroCONso 3, a year and a half later. No good. We decided to change to a fixed, every other week, schedule. To accommodate this we bumped up the number of players in the group and made some rules to work around it.

• Party size 6-7
• As long as 3+ people show up, we run the campaign
• If you can't play, your PC is safe from any harm but cannot assist
• Players can choose to make their PC available for other players, exposing them to harm
• You only get XP for sessions you attend

This last rule about XP was really dumb in practice and it took me WAY too long to change it. The only upside was that I made a fancy spreadsheet to automate XP allocation. The enormous downside was that the pace of the game (and the players) was INCREDIBLY slow. This meant that a PC could participate in multi-session build-ups and preparation for some score and then miss the actual session with all the XP. Awful, not worth it. I could see this kind of XP system working in a game where each session was a self-contained delve where the party MUST end it in safety but ain't nobody got time for those kinds of constraints when you're playing after the kids go to sleep on a weekday.

I can't think of any occasions where an absent player offered up their PC for use by the rest of the party. I think even if they did, given the risk of death I'm not sure the party would have taken them up on it. Not that death actually happened a ton, but it was enough for the possibility to be there. Checking the rolls of the dead, there were only five PCs that died over the course of the game (although substantially more retainers). Will get to that in a moment though.

When a bunch of folks were absent and we didn't get the "3+" I'd still run some kind of pickup game. I think having a set of "emergency dungeons" on hand for these occasions is really helpful and I hope it contributed to the players always feeling like if they showed up, they would get to play something, no matter what. In fact the very first one turned into its own little sub-campaign universe, which I love.

On the flip side, one of my players said that they appreciated that there wasn't any pressure to always show up. If they were having a long day or just weren't feeling it then no big deal, there would still be a game for everyone else. I think that probably helped to contribute to the staying power of the campaign, as well. It's also worth noting that though the group size was consistent at 6-7 players the makeup of that group changed over time as people's availability shifted and changed. In total we had 9 players (with one special guest) as people came in and out of the game. That also kept things fresh and the momentum moving.

In general, I'd count the regular schedule and larger group as incredibly important for the game's success.

Prep / Refereeing

Session Summaries

If you checked the campaign summary link above you may have picked up on a disconnect: 75 sessions in a campaign but summaries died at session 46. What gives? While I did enjoy writing the summaries I would sometimes get behind. I also have a need to be complete and not leave out details. Eventually the summaries got to be this huge mental weight that were not worth the payoff. I didn't write them for views, I wrote them for myself and my players, but it was important to recognize that they were not helping anymore and cut them off. 

On the flip side, the summaries were a handy reference but I was able to trim them down to just be a few sentences of major events on a comment on the "Today is Day 196 / Winter 16" trello card. It served the same purpose (for me) as the summaries but was something I could bang out right after the game session. I still can't believe that 75 sessions played out over the course of only 196 days...

Speaking of days, I think I got this calendar from cecil howe but this helped to keep track of things.

Calendar

• Started campaign on Summer 1
• 90 days per season (3 months of 30 days)
• Season is 9 weeks of 10 days each
• Every 5th day is a rest day
• Moon phases (day of season)
• 1           New Moon (31, 61)
• 2-14     Waxing to Full (32-44, 62-74)
• 15-17   Full Moon (45-47, 75-77)
• 18-30   Waning to New (48-60, 78-90)

Referee Style

My main goal is to give players the freedom to drive the game wherever they want to go and an environment that is interesting enough to facilitate that. I got a lot of mileage out of rumors but the one-shot setup with The Trail of Stone and Sorrow helped to set the stage because the players were invested in saving Polde, a very unfortunate farmer from the adventure. It gave the players a purpose while exposing them to larger portions of the world which I could riff off and build connections from.

I don't push, though. Even that first one-shot setup had a handful of hooks; they could have ignored the trouble with Polde and gone through the town to somewhere else or rambled off into the woods. Since I don't push and the world was pretty dangerous it meant a pretty slow pace. Bertilak le Vert's player joined in the last six months (ish?) and was completely shocked that the highest level PC was only 5. Then after playing for a while, seeing the pace of play, and getting into the swing of things it started to make a lot more sense. This careful play was further encouraged by my removal of Search and Traps as skills, relying solely on telegraphed clues and clever play to discover things.

This slowness caused me a lot of anxious wondering that I was dragging my players down into minutia (like the details in the summaries). So I had to talk to them! A lot! They affirmed that they enjoyed the slow pace because it was caused by their considered interactions with a world that "made sense." This last part I think is the crucial bit. The game was slow because they wanted it to be slow because their choices mattered and would affect the world in "rational", predictable ways. The term for this kind of "making sense" is (I think) Gygaxian naturalism, and it goes all the way back to James M.

This is all getting rambly, so the last bit I wanted to note is that the tendency towards naturalism meant that I didn't have to write down almost anything. I mostly just spent time between sessions (driving, showering, pooping, etc) thinking about how things would make sense and be laid out according to motivations and logic and running it like that. That caused me to miss something the players should have found in a dungeon or two but overall it was a big help in running the game. I don't mean to say that I used any quantum ogres though, just that I didn't write much down beyond vague map scribbles and some key words.

Summary

If I had to pull out some guidelines from my experience, it'd be just as generic as all the other stuff I've seen online. Still, here it is.

1. Keep a larger group of players so that it doesn't matter if someone doesn't show up
2. Set a fixed gaming schedule, set a minimum number of players (e.g. half+) and play with whoever is there
3. Check in with the group and make sure folks are still getting what they want out of the game
4. Don't over-complicate support systems (like encumbrance or XP). Get or make tools for the ones you really care about, especially if the players don't have as much focus for it.
5. Change rules / rulesets if they are not working
6. Be able to recognize if part of your referee process is hurting you and cut it
7. Make incidental things easy for yourself so you don't have to think about them (e.g. calendars, weather)
8. It's okay to give a push in the beginning to get things going and give the world some space to develop.
9. Don't get in your own head too much; TALK to your players and check-in on how everyone is doing, what they like, what they don't.
10. If you make the world function according to consistent logic you don't have to remember or think about nearly as many things.
11. Put more treasure in, especially for a game where you advance with treasure...

What's Next?

Decaying Lands ended last Thursday and I've already sent out the invite for next Thursday's session. I'm going to run A Rasp Of Sand from Dave Cox as a palette-cleansing interlude campaign. Everyone got a short summary of the situation of a the flooded world and the d12 list of possible family careers which is all they really need to know. We'll see what happens this coming Thursday!

After that, going to run a sort of sci-fi / fantasy game. Party thaws out on a space ship / station orbiting a planet, thing is falling apart, computer cores are damaged and the AI can't explain much. They'll need to go down to the planet using a sort of pod that can be picked up with a balloon when the ship / station comes round again. I've got some ideas, will post them up if I get a chance. Trying REAL hard to not get stuck in posts needing to be actually fleshed out but I am doubtful I can actually manage that.

Thanks I Hate It

I screwed up the blog colors / theme and this interface is dumb.

Edit: I think the colors are better now but new blogger still sucks.

Cauldron Cooked PCs

My players have been having quite an extensive back and forth discussion with one of Benton's Incunabula and it has been SO much fun. You should go read the post (and all the rest too) but an incunabula is an incredibly powerful sorcerer from an age past that's had their brain rendered into book form, bound in flesh. To communicate with such an entity one must write in their own blood which is then pumped through the brain matter and used to form veiny responses.

The party has spoken a lot with this one. They also have access to a "cauldron of creation" that the book's previous student was able to construct. THEN they removed a black sorcerer's heart from said (newly?) monstrous student, with the incunabula telling the group that they have all they need to "improve themselves." Lot going on here, basically, but we had three cauldron takers!

How Does It Work

1. Player decides what they WANT to get, player and referee figure out how many cauldron uses that would equal. Each "uses" will require a roll on a mutation table.
2. FUEL the cauldron up with number of uses of alchemical components needed
3. Magic-user / cook makes a SAVE vs Magic (with a bonus for being guided by the Incunabula)
4. If the wizard passes, the player can CHOOSE which table to roll on. If the wizard fails, all the rolls will be on the d100 table.
   • d500 Coins & Scrolls Table: probably won't kill you, effects all over the place
   • d100 Goblin Punch Table: 30 "good" ones, 40 "neutral, 20 "bad", 10 "lethal"
5. The PC gets whatever it was the player wanted plus whatever they rolled for.

Results

Tenkos, played by Sugarplum, took the first dip to regain his arm, amputated by way of second-guessing a partially entered portal. He came out with an arm, a batlike face, and the ability to echolocate by screaming (came with the face). Good thing Tenkos wears that plague doctor mask a lot!

Bertilak le Vert, the new guy, saw that and thought hell yeah! He's a big fighter lad so he wanted to get stronger. He came out with a +2 to his Strength modifier and the ability to apply that modifier to damage rolls (usually in Lamentations there's no bonus to damage). However he ALSO came out with translucent skin full of leprosy juice, spinnerets on his butt, and some extra joints on his limbs that mean he can't walk when he's upright. Like a raccoon, apparently!

Raccoon skeleton. They can't walk if they're upright. I had no idea.

Bertilak still had a hankering for the cauldron. His newly picked up retainer with nothing left to live for, Cyril wanted in on it too. Player suggested a bunch of different ideas and he locked in on "body made of stone" to "match how his heart." (He's a bit drama). We settled on three uses, this is what he got:

Cyril's Cauldron Dip

• Benefit: Body made completely out of stone
• d100 - 20 (Spider Legs spider-centaur. climb on walls and ceilings)
• d100 - 21 (chest cabinet, skeleton key opens slot)
• d100 - 71 (quadrupedal, can't walk while standing, no 2h weapons)

We balanced out spider legs with quadrupedal but saying that his arms got the extra joints so still can't use two handed weapons.

Bertilak wanted to go in AGAIN after that (party still had enough for two dips). He wanted to regain some of his lost constitution from his first dip. He got that and then NEARLY died.

Bertilak Dip 2

• Benefit: Gain 4d3+1d6 (+10 total)
• d100 - 70 (no nose, turns flat)
• d100 - 96 (lilliputian, 3" tall)

This combined with his prior dip equaled:

Bertilak le King of Cauldron Swimming

• Benefit: +2 Str mod, apply Str to damage
• d100 - 19 (spinnerets, 100' per day)
• d100 - 71 (quadrupedal, cannot move while standing, no 2h weapons)
• d100 - 87 (translucent skin, lose d6 con [-6 total], bodily fluids spray leprosy)
• Benefit: Gain 4d3+1d6 (+10 total)
• d100 - 70 (no nose, turns flat)
• d100 - 96 (lilliputian, 3" tall)

So now the 3" tall super strong super hardy fighter with leprosy fluids and spinnerets is going to ride around in the chest cabinet cavity of his spider-centaur retainer made completely out of stone. Hooray for mutations!

Updates

I haven't really read any blogs since g+ got shut down. Then someone shared a link to noise sans signal and I got reminded of everything I was missing out on.

Part of the reason this blog has been dormant for so long is that I had play reports backlogged. The last two session reports are from more than fifteen sessions ago but they sat unfinished. Writing the reports was fun, and maybe useful for my players (the main purpose), but in the end it turned into a draining obligation of my own doing. Self-assigned homework. So I stopped. I'm especially glad to have made that call now that we started playing every week. I'll still note any deaths on the campaign page though, that's just fun.

The other reason it's been so dead (forever, not just recently) is that I never finish anything. Like forty drafts and nothing to show for it. In a bit of back and forth about blogging under their "on abyss" post (I think?), Kyana shared some similar thoughts but encouraged me to blog more and not worry about length or completeness. Just get it out there. Good advice, and something I definitely needed to hear.

So that's what I'm going to try and do. In a related spring cleaning note I nuked my blogroll and am going to slowly build it back up. Gonna call it here  in the spirit of finishing things.

Thanks again to Kyana for the push.

Decaying Lands 46: Dickstaches

PCs Present & Played:

Barthelm Schade, Specialist (James)

Claus Drexol, Magic-User (Vegas)

  Phillip Bachman, linklad

  Lucien Courtet, infantryman

Jehan, Woodsman [reskinned Halfling] (Helpful Waffle)
  Walter, poacher

Tenkos, Cleric [plague doctor kit] (Sugarplum)
  Teake's Teeth
  Tinslee & Therese, Teamsters
Viggo Pyreborn, ?? (Peanut Butter)

---

Expedition into Ghallia-That-Fell Day 8

Travel Summary

Expedition Day; Season Day; Weather; Hexes; Expenditures; Notes

Expedition 8; Fall 60; Rain; 0622; n/a

Marching Order

Edward, Freddard
Indira (axe, torch), Cyrille (polearm)
Lucien, Viggo
Tenkos, Barthelm
Claus, Philip (torch)
Sacha (greatsword), Basille (spear)

Watches

A. Tenkos, Timothee (I1), Indira (I2)

B. Viggo, Yvonne (I3), Basile (I4)

C. Barthelm, Joseph (A1), Sacha (I6)

D. Lucien (for Claus), Rosaline (P1), Cyril (P2)

Camp Setup: Horses in the barn, party split between the barn and the church, Percival in the church, other folks down in the dungeon

---

Last time the party made it past the stone guardians, almost lost a Tooth, smoked some cigars, discovered a library, met a thief turned into a sheet of vellum, and Barthelm lost a shoe.

Topside Barn

Agatha (archer)

Joseph (archer)

Timothy (axe, cook)

Tinslee & Therese (teamsters)

Horses (so many)

Topside Church

Sgt Teake

Yvonne (spear)

Rosaline (polearm)

Percival the Ratfolk

Dungeon Expedition

PCs

Lucien (Claus' bodyguard)

Philip (torch!)

Indira (axe, torch)

Basille (spear)

Sacha (greatsword)

Cyrille (polearm)

Edward, Freddard, "Eye-Van" the Ratfolk

First they did an experiment with the shield, its case, and its effects. They figured out that cracking the case still results in a full 360 degree pull from the shield at a distance of about 40 feet.

"So we don't have a lance, we just have a bomb." - Jehan

Sidebar: Accurate.

They also deduced that the shield doesn't seem to affect things through the thick stone walls when they opened it in the stairwell outside of the library and only ripped off the door and some nails immediately past the door. The shield of course ate all the metal.

While they were hanging around waiting Barthelm started to doodle on the portrait, drawing a comically large moustache (like a Dalí) and a Big Ole Penis. They dubbed it "dickstache" and told me that's what I needed to name this summary. Here we are!

Viggo quickly opened the shield case in front of the 3 o'clock door, ripped the metal out of it and ripped a bunch of nails out of the shelves behind him. Unfortunately he was between the nails and the shield and he took some damage as they flew into his back.

"Can we make a deal that if shit goes down and people start dropping, we don't leave without Thom?"

They explored through the door into what looked like a kitchen. There was a sink with running faucet, eating area, crates full of rotten food, and a small door in the corner that led into what looked like a squat toilet. The ratfolk (Freddard and Edward) saw the running water in the toilet hole, realized it was large enough to fit in, and scurried off exploring. Moving the food crates on the other side revealed another stop in the dumbwaiter from upstairs.

Instead of a back wall, a large heavy curtain hung from rings in the ceiling. The party sent the ratfolk through first and, when they didn't hear immediate murder sounds, went thru themselves.

They found a living space, complete with work desk, bookshelves, and reasonably comfortable bed. Investigating the bed revealed some kind of magic circle underneath. Tossing the desk uncovered details of a teleportation ritual that could be performed from inside the circle (max two people) with unknown destination.

Jehan was especially interested in the bookshelf, searching for information on Ghallia-That-Fell, and came away with the following:

Princely Lineages of Ghallia
Ghallic Geography: An Overview
Deep Places, and How to Find Them

They also scrounged up two potions from the desk:

Potion 1: Dark purple, smelled metallic
Potion 2: Milky yellow, Claus took a sip and had the most vivid memory of this delightful herbal soup he'd eaten one time

Sidebar: There may have been more here, but this is all that's left. I stopped writing session summaries with this one. Too much time for not enough payoff.

Decaying Lands 45: Paper Airplane Thom

PCs Present & Played:

Barthelm Schade, Specialist (James)

Claus Drexol, Magic-User (Vegas)

  Phillip Bachman, linklad

  Lucien Courtet, infantryman

Jehan, Woodsman [reskinned Halfling] (Helpful Waffle)
  Walter, poacher

Tenkos, Cleric [plague doctor kit] (Sugarplum)
  Teake's Teeth
  Tinslee & Therese, Teamsters
Viggo Pyreborn, ?? (Peanut Butter)

---

Expedition into Ghallia-That-Fell Day 8

Travel Summary

Expedition Day; Season Day; Weather; Hexes; Expenditures; Notes

Expedition 8; Fall 60; Rain; 0622; n/a

Marching Order

Edward, Freddard
Indira (axe, torch), Cyrille (polearm)
Lucien, Viggo
Tenkos, Barthelm
Claus, Philip (torch)
Sacha (greatsword), Basille (spear)

Watches

A. Tenkos, Timothee (I1), Indira (I2)

B. Viggo, Yvonne (I3), Basile (I4)

C. Barthelm, Joseph (A1), Sacha (I6)

D. Lucien (for Claus), Rosaline (P1), Cyril (P2)

Camp Setup: Horses in the barn, party split between the barn and the church, Percival in the church, other folks down in the dungeon

---

Last time the party descended a spiral staircase around some kind of gravity well, entered Guillaume's laboratory without an invitation, acquired a metal eating shield, and somehow managed to only lose a single ratfolk.

Topside Barn

Agatha (archer)

Joseph (archer)

Timothy (axe, cook)

Tinslee & Therese (teamsters)

Horses (so many)

Topside Church

Sgt Teake

Yvonne (spear)

Rosaline (polearm)

Percival the Ratfolk

Dungeon Expedition

PCs

Lucien (Claus' bodyguard)

Philip (torch!)

Indira (axe, torch)

Basille (spear)

Sacha (greatsword)

Cyrille (polearm)

Edward, Freddard, "Eye-Van" the Ratfolk

The rest of the party heard Viggo shouting exuberantly about the explosion of the door. Then they saw him get silhouetted when he lit his torch and started to explore the far room. In between Viggo and everyone else was a room with a bunch of stone golems inside that activated a round after someone entered.

They collectively considered two problems:

- How do we get everyone else across that room?
- How do we prevent Viggo's new toy from destroying all of our gear?

"I think it's time to summon a beetle." - Barthelm

That was greeted by a quick "No!" from Claus in a complete role reversal. I guess there is something that even Claus fears? So then they focused on the second question.

Does the shield work if Viggo isn't holding it?

Viggo placed the shield on the ground, Barthelm threw a copper piece across, and nothing happened! Viggo picked it up and it still didn't affect the copper piece. They tried a steel holy symbol, that got sucked in. They tried to turn the shield away and toss a crossbow bolt into the room, wondering if it is directional, but the bolt got sucked around and vanished.

Sidebar: Barthelm has one of every "no weight" item in the Lamentations rulebook, which is why he had a steel holy symbol, nails last time, a mirror... all sorts of things. I can appreciate that kind of approach.

Viggo began to case the room in more detail, looking for some kind of clue to help. The room was small, round, and full of expertly carved wooden lounge furniture. Two small tables sat in the middle, empty tea services sitting on top, and there was a door off to the side. All of the furniture was assembled with metal-free wood joints.

hachisen-tsugi-shikuchi-no-shihousashi joint

He found a couple of boxes of old (but still decent) cigars in the small tables, lit one, and turned his attention to the large portrait that dominated the room. It was easily six feet high, half again as wide, and had a plaque underneath that read "Guillaume le Galapiat."

Portrait of Guillaume le Galapiat

Viggo kept poking and prodding the furniture in the room but eventually came to the portrait itself and tried to pull at one of the edges. He was rewarded as the portrait, balanced on a copper hinge and mount mechanism, swung easily away from the wall. Behind, a 3x3 cavity leading back to a dumbwaiter.

In the cavity was a large, rectangular black crystal case, like a big encyclopedia. Viggo found a slight indentation, opened it up, and discovered that it contained a round cavity lined with black velvet. He placed the shield inside, closed it, and they repeated their experiment with the crossbow bolt. This time, success! It seemed that the crystal case was able to contain the shield's powers. Viggo places the whole thing back behind the portrait and closed it up.

While this had been occurring Tenkos was keeping an eye toward the stone golem room. He noticed odd reflections and glints of light on the floor, especially around the body of their dead ratfolk buddy Eye-Van.

Once Viggo signaled that the shield seemed to be neutralized he cracked open the cigar box, lit one up, and waited for everyone else.

Barthelm dashed across the golem room first. The idea was to cover the 80 feet or so quickly enough to not have the golems trigger since they seemed confined to the room. Things were going well until his right foot squished into something with a loud plop followed by an acrid burning smell. Once across, he saw that his right boot had a hole in it and his foot was burned.

The retainers all went next. Indira, with the torch, volunteered to go first. Unfortunately she too squelched into something gross and burny with her right foot. Unlike Barthelm "Mountain of Meaty HP" Schade, however, she dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes and the stone guardians begain to activate.

The group right behind her quickly reacted, grabbing her and pulling her back towards the stairwell before the guardians could act. She was still unconscious however, so Tenkos used his magic to heal her back up.

Instant morale boost for the retainers.

Someone (Tenkos?) noticed that the little translucent jellies seemed to be "eating" the body of poor departed Eye-Van the ratfolk so they waited until the body was all gone and resumed dashing across the room. As folks arrived, Viggo was handing out cigars from the box he had found.

"You're smoking all of our XP!"

Barthelm debated taking all the copper out of the door for resale (and because screw this wizard!) but they agreed that it would probably take too long. Jehan also noted that it might be very useful on the way out to have a functional door that they could close.

They made their way down a spiral staircase that ended in a door. This time the door was bound and hinged with iron, rather than copper. PCs lined up to try and pick the lock but to no avail. Viggo sent everyone else back up to the waiting room, fetched the shield in its crystal case, and crosses his fingers. Fortunately he was able to open and shut the case quickly enough that he a) didn't get hurt and b) didn't seem to affect anything too much in the room beyond. From the lack of reaction upstairs they figured that either the stone or the distance blocked the effect.

They found a large, octogonal library behind the collapsed door. Many of the shelves were broken, with moldy piles of books littered throughout, but there were a good number of intact shelves as well.

They went in and surveyed the room. Every side of the octagon had a door on it (they had entered from the "bottom right"). The right / 3 o'clock door was more heavily locked than the other six but otherwise the room had a fair amount of radial symmetry going on. Each of those six doors also had a small desk in front of it. Immediately in front of the stairwell doorway sat a lectern with a single sheet on it.

They spread out thru the room, browsing and investigating. Claus realized that the layout of the library matched the Teutonian "University System" and that he'd be able to find topics pretty easily based on that.

Sidebar: Spend a turn searching for a book on a topic, roll to see if it survived, then can get an answer.

While the rest of the folks were casing the joint and their retainers were standing guard (except the ratfolk who were looking at everything), Barthelm stood by the lectern near the entrance. He gradually became aware of a low steady noise, like a barely audible wailing, coming from the lectern. Barthelm looked down and saw a piece of vellum covered in beautiful calligraphy.

"Swiftfinger Thom, renowned thief, attempted to steal the following books...

• Advanced Alchemy
• Death Cults of the North
• The Journal of Blissful Ignorance
• Preparation Rites

Thom was transmuted into vellum as punishment."

Thom was not in much of a mental state to talk, delivering drawn out one word moans for answers, but it did seem like they were in response to Barthelm's questions.

Kermit the Frog bugging out, just imagine the screaming that would go with this

Can't remember exactly what Barthelm asked but the gist was that Thom was terrified of everything, especially this place and its master, and wanted to die.

"Thom I'm going to fold you into a paper airplane and throw you, you guide us to where we need to go." - Barthelm

While it is quite difficult to fold a piece of vellum into a paper airplane Barthelm gave it his best shot and chucked Thom's sheet into the air. The vellum floated back a bit toward the more heavily barred door on the eastern side of the room. Barthelm threw "him" again and the same thing happened.

I think Barthelm suggested at this point that they were going to continue deeper into the tower and bring Thom with them and Thom's answer was a wail of a "Noooooooooo" with maybe a "deaaaaaath" for good measure. Barthelm smacked the vellum sheet!

"Listen up Thom!" Barthelm gave a quick motivational speech, probably centered on not leaving anyone behind and helping Thom. Thom's response was muted. Overall they learned from Thom that he is very scared to go deeper, scared of Guillaume, and wants to die.

They started plans to continue by saying that they were going to open one of the other doors to investigate. This turned into a plan wherein Viggo would stay, everyone else would leave, and then they'd try to open the shield case a crack to "focus" the metal sucking power. As their plan got more complicated we decided it was late enough and ended the session.