Adventurer Conquerer King: Session One

[james_davis_nicoll]

This is a D&D-like system with a Harn-like post-combat table. The region is a bit like the Carolingian Empire: the Old Empire is vanished from this region (although it still exists) and the new society has not quite jelled enough to maintain the roads or deal with bandits effectively.

As the first session opens

Snooty first-level sage Renaldo Hashton Bryce has recruited a motley band of first-level adventurers, promising them a full share of the treasure he hopes to find in what was probably not called The Tombs of Certain Death. In the party are Otho, who regards "raised in a barn" as a couple of rungs up the ladder from where he was actually raised, a dwarven vault guard named Iatro Sirequake who had NPC aura,Titus, a former legionnaire with an impressive fortune (to Otho) in owed back-pay, and Patience, a cleric who technically doesn't have any healing spells yet (she can, however, lay on hands for 2 HP per day).

It's a long walk to the The Tombs of Certain Death and along the way, Otho failed completely to keep the others fed, opting to save his good rolls for combat (apparently). There were two encounters of note:

The group encountered a pair of created abominations, deer-badger crosses. Although Otho claims to eschew combat (and spends a lot of time hiding in bushes well away from his companions), he was the first one to attack, snapping off a quick shot at what turned out to be a young animal. The parent was not happy about this and said so; the characters were sure this speech was no more than the sounds you would hear from a parrot but they let the pair retreat, preferring to avoid combat.

(There was also some business with a raven familiar that our mage recognized but I missed that bit because I was in the bathroom)

A few days later, the group found a homestead, seemingly abandoned in the middle of dinner. A bit of investigation turned up four corpses, two adults and two children, all killed with weapons (Otho was relieved because he was worried it was the injured deer-badger from the previous encounter driven mad with pain and infection). Oddly, the three plus killers did not seem to have looted the place.

The two soldiers soon noticed that the group was being watched by the raven again. This might have ended with a bit of ravencide except for the appearance of four woad-daubed berserkers, drawn to our realm by a mage hiding in the woods. Otho managed to get caught out in the open by one and was badly wounded before he could cut his opponent down; Otho is best with a bow but he's not bad with his short sword of an unfamiliar design.

The sage took out all four berserkers with one well-aimed sleep spell.

Otho went looking for the mage he was sure was out in the woods. He didn't have much trouble finding him but he made the mistake of shouting back to the others rather than sneaking back to them to tell them where the mage was. This got him burned down on the spot by the mage. Curse you, only six hit points and a misplaced faith in armour class!

The rest of the party showed up and proceeded to put the beat-down on the mage or rather there was a lot of whiffing as three of them missed and crunching as the vault guard went to work. The mage didn't last long, although technically he wasn't killed.

The raven hung around to "defend" the mage who enslaved him. It turns out the raven doesn't really care for his owner and while he never actually encouraged the party to cut the mage's throat, it was also clear the raven would be pretty happy if that happened.

Otho survived thanks to the cleric healing him from -1 to 1 but with a long-term disability that will keep him from doing forced marches until he can find a high-level cleric to heal him (preferably one with children he likes, because Otho doesn't have any money as such so probably kidnapping the archbishop's kids is the way to go). The party decided to hole up in the farm for a while so Otho could heal.

After some debate about what to do with the prisoners, the party killed the berserkers because they (or at least the legionnaire) were within their legal rights to do so and also keeping all four prisoner long enough for Otho to heal and for the party to drag the berserkers to the nearest town was not practical. I am not sure what happened with the mage; he was dying and he may not have been treated.

For the record, I think everyone is neutral.

Sorry, I don't know what happened to him, treatmentwise. Looting-wise, the party picked him clean, taking all of his effects (maps, a magic ring and so on) for their own. The ring is good for +2 AC and Otho asked to use it until the quest is over, since he is usually the one out in front. Otho promised that his possession of the ring is temporary. Otho is lying.

We're allowed to have one unique detail as part of our characters' backgrounds: Patience can remember past lives. I am considering making Otho one of the last remnants of a now-forgotten, tiny and dwindling pre-Imperial population, a once-civilized but now entirely rustic group who avoided being assimilated by a loathed nation or or worse by sticking to the undeveloped parts of the region claimed by the Empire and avoiding all contact with Imperials. For centuries.

Otho, sadly, has been seduced by the the gaudy luxuries civilization offers, which to him is mainly useful tools not made by him or a relative. So far this is not working out that well for him.

Comments

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

one of the last remnants of a now-forgotten, tiny and dwindling pre-Imperial population

The last son of *Tartessos?

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

The ring does certainly look like a Ring of Protection (Reynaldo made his Lore Mastery throw on that). You are not sure at all that it gives you +2AC.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

PCs do tend to put faith in whatever magic thingies they find. Some GMs find amusement in handing them a Ring of Mollusk Control (in the desert) or a Staff of Scorpion Summoning (not control, just summoning).

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

In part, handing them something that looks like a Ring of Protection and then playing the "what AC bonus, if any, does this thing really confer" does promise some fun value.

On the other hand, this means that

(a) the GM has to keep fairly meticulous records of the magic items handed to players, and their current state of "discovered abilities" (speaking of which, I suspect I'll have to dream up a new spreadsheet form real soon now)

(b) whenever the GM asks "so, what's your AC" of players, the consideration of "OK, is that with, or without that Ring of Protection you found on the hand of that mage you nuked in the first session?" has to be negotiated...

It's not clear to me that both these factors don't swallow up the fun you've acquired in the original statement all on its own...

Another consideration is that the way combat works in ACKs is: every PC has a known "throw target" that's their base value to hit anything (i.e. all PCs have a base attack throw value of 10+). To this throw target you must add the AC of the thing you're trying to hit.

To you roll, you get to add your STR bonus, and any bonuses you get from your weapons, spells, or whatever, that contribute to your trying to hit something.

Advantage? You don't have to subtract anything, as long as everyone knows what the AC is you're trying to hit. The minute you want to be coy about AC value, at all, you have to engage in a much more agile mental calculation, rather like the old HERO system problem. (If you tell me what DCV I'm trying to hit, I can tell you in a half second if I win; if you ask me to tell you what DCV I can hit with that roll, the answer takes more CPU cycles, because human brains that have to remember how to subtract, when to subtract, and what to subtract from what, take longer to do that then just add one thing to another.)

What all this means is that I'm pretty sure that, when playing this game, our group will have, net, more fun if the GM says up front: yeah, this opponent has an AC of 10, instead of that delicate tango of keeping it a mystery. And I suspect, our group will have more fun, net if we don't really have much mystery around what a PC's current AC might actually be...

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

You are of course correct. The "X of Y +Z" magic item is rarely interchangeable with the "mysterious enchanted thingy of unknown properties," and mixing them doesn't work well.

I still remember the time the PCs made off with a thing that generated intense cold, found in an ice-filled cave; the campaign ended before they discovered I was also running a 'monster frozen in ice' scenario.