[PnP] Old Adventures - Highlights

[Alex Koponen]

Old Adventures - Highlights
  I learned the system and refereed the County Mordara adventure. Bob (an
otherwise nearly flawless player) managed to have his wizard scare off the
goblins with a fireball. Which was lucky, because being at the back of the
party he had managed to include the entire party except himself in the
area of affect. The party members, having more hit points than the
goblins, survived but probably looked like Will-E-Coyote on a bad day.

  Later Bob and I traded off being ref. We created characters for Bob's
game and the first (random) encounter in the game while going through a
forest was with a Soul Diva!
  After seeing my (not my character's) reaction to this news Bob was nice
enough to say that the Soul Diva's master (!) called for it in time. I was
wondering who could possibly control what I think of as the Nastiest
single monster in the game. Fortunately Bob familiarized himself a little
better with the rules and things went well thereafter.

    The only other random encounter that seemed a bit over the top was
when the Storm Giant spotted us from his cloud and decided to come down to
get some combat practice in with us as his punching bags. John's assassin
managed to hide and my 30+ HPV Zehani Wolf pet took the giant's first blow
and was knocked unconscious. I got lucky and took about 2/5ths of the
giant's hit points with an Astral Fire spell and John's character stabbed
him from behind and got a Deadly Hit, finishing off the giant. John,
despite killing many opponents with surprise blows from behind with his
assassin/wizard, almost never managed to get much expertise for doing so,
usually having blown his ambush roll.

  While Bob was refereeing just John and I, both playing spellcasters, we
managed to spend a year (both real and character time) of having our
characters improve casting skills and making nice magical items while
dealing with small adventures. One of those items improved my character's
MDV up to somewhere over 40. A large adventure had to be dealt with, (the
wizard with the pet Soul Diva wanted us to deal with it) so we
successfully took out an assassin's guild. But at the climactic battle the
guild's wizard managed to successfully cast a Destruction spell and left
my character naked, a year's worth of enchanted items turned to dust. A
good move, but it took a while before I could laugh about it. She survived
and has the wizard's toys. But she hasn't had the opportunity to play much
since.

  My turn to ref, some other people joined our group and everyone created
new characters. One (Bob) was a member of Donaran royalty, another was a
Natural Magician. After a month or two of adventures they had taken out
some ruffians when they crawled back to town and asked the local priestess
for some healing, the wizard having run out of mana. The healer does her
stuff, and the royal party member dies. Oops! They had forgotten that they
had already healed him some hours ago and hadn't mentioned this to the
priestess. Bob creates a new character and the party has a new objective,
resurrect their royal member. The priestess casts a Preserve the Dead
spell, giving them a deadline in which to accomplish the deed.
  The priestess mentions that once there had been a sword noted for being
able to resurrect people. Some reseach and they learn the history of the
Life Sword. Some adventures later they get the Life Sword...which wants to
go after a certain lich.
  Somewhat overconfident, after all they have the Life Sword which has
beaten the lich before AND one of the party members is a Natural Magician,
they go after the lich....
  Suffice to say, they made it past all the obstacles and faced the lich
where their confidence did not prove justified and they ended up as
zombies or worse.

 - Alex