Super Ghouls 'n Ghasts

On tuesday night the Hounds confronted a number of ghouls in the Eastern Wood of Tyrma. They were hired by the gruff dwarf Vagr Blackstone, the dockside representative of the Shadow Temple in the city. The ecumenical elvish priests of the Shadow had slain a mannish adventurer and his companions in the wood; they had been getting too close to the temple's activities. However, his horrific corpse had been wandering around and devouring travelers in the Wood.

They've been planning to kill Blackstone in order to protect the master smith Galdri Harnmr (who has a bounty on his head from the Arinnfal for, long ago, sleeping with the sister of a prince without his permission). It was a general decision that they would take care of the undead for Vagr in order to gain his trust and then murder him when the time was appropriate.

The relevant information here, though, is that they had decided to go after the undead and formulated a plan to deal with them. They knew that Tareus the Wanderer (the adventurer who was slain) and his companions had appeared in embodied form, so they could nary be any kind of specter. Furthermore, Vagr revealed that though they seemed to be stupified, Tareus would become enraged whenever a member of the Shadow Temple was within his eyesight, and that would drive him onward in a frenzy.

This led them to hypothesize that they were dealing not with zombies or revenants, but with the spawn of Kypselus: ghouls and ghasts. Myndil the Merry, knowing that he could protect the party with spells that would keep them at bay, went to the Temple of Noronia to ask if there was a way to increase that protection to extend to ghasts. Discovering that iron filings would do the trick, he purchased some from Galdri's Hammersong Forge and they went to their task.

They had decided to use the protection to shoot crossbow bolts and throw knives at the creatures and, after Myndil spoke with animals to have a chipmunk lead them to the grove where Tareus lurked in exchange for a few acorns and nuts, they enacted their protection spells. Now, in our games each combat round takes 15 seconds... but spells last a number of minutes. Thus, the 9 minutes of his protection spell were instead 36 combat rounds and availed them well. In that time they dispatched seven of the ghouls and two ghasts.

Some of Tareus' clan had skittered off during the fight, realizing their attempts to strike the Hounds were hopeless. Here is where the story gets interesting. The Hounds set off to look for them, and their protection spells silently wore off. When they found the three ghouls that had escaped, the creatures nearly killed the entire party.

Let's count that up again: preparedness? 7 ghouls, 2 ghasts. Unprepared? Nearly dead at the hands of 3 ghouls.

That is theory in action, gentlemen.

I've been workin'...

Everyone loves a good story. Stories, after all, are probably the reason why you're roleplaying in the first place. Tolkien, Dunsany, Vance, Cook, Martin, Howard, here are your reasons to pick up a copy of Dungeons and Dragons and play it. They all weave such good stories of the fantastic that one can hardly resist them. Who among us does not wish to emulate the fantasy greats and tell stories of our own? I certainly do. Every time I read some good fantasy I curse that I did not write it, that my own fantasy is not near as engaging or powerful. But here's the thing: I don't take that desire with me into my Dungeons and Dragons games. They just don't seem to be compatible.

"Why not?" you would be very well in asking. What prevents me from writing out the plots that I would otherwise insert into my fiction as adventures? What prevents me from involving my players in the self-same stories that I want to write myself? There are a myriad of reasons, but they can all be summed up with a single idea: the railroad.

You see, stories are not about branching paths and choices. They are about a plot that drives them. Characters in books (other than choose-your-own adventures) cannot make choices other than the ones they do. Sometimes, if an author decides that he does want them to make different choices, he must go back and rewrite large sections of the tale. But there is always an operative theme, motif, and throughline in a book even if you don't always see one. The only themes or motifs that exist in Dungeons and Dragons are that life is cheap, the world is dangerous, and small things matter.

The Art of Losing

If you've ever played a pre-Wizards D&D, if you are part of the OSR, then you know you can't always win the fights you get into. It's a surprise for a lot of players that started with 3.x or 4e; like a JRPG those players sometimes assume that because something is present, the DM wants you to fight it. My evidence is anecdotal rather than statistic, but I've seen it dozens of times and heard stories of dozens more told by the very players who had that attitude. This article isn't to contest that one way or the other, but to talk about what player's should be prepared for.

If you feel sudden warning bells when you face something, perhaps because of the way it's being described or perhaps because it has just torn thousand-pound brass doors from their sockets and is brazenly storming a temple of a respected god, there are plenty of things you can do. Every loss doesn't need to result in being smeared to a fine paste of reddish meat upon the ground and walls, but the impetus to save your party must come from you.