I had gotten some excellent advice from our friend Scott Anderson, I had designed an overly precise flaw to the dungeon, and none of us were really paying attention to the game. So, we had to back up. I asked my players what they wanted to do, and told them what my thoughts were. Most of the last game wasn't a total loss, we did good work! We decided to back things up to just before the party left the elevator, the relic of Sebaldus gave everyone a dire warning of what lay ahead.

CORRECTING THE RULES

I also had to correct some mechanical flaws that have crept into the system. Masque of the Red Death, I don't feel, was designed for higher levels of play. I don't think that the designers ever thought that folks like us would be playing it long term.

If I could go back to the beginning I would have blended the two spellcasting classes into one class, and added psionics as a fourth class. Mystics are just too limited in what they can do, and they are reduced to spell work because if the bad guys are able to close, folks are going to die. To correct the problem I have abandoned the Priest Sphere system and allowed the player to pick spells based off of role-playing rather than the very limited system core to Masque rules. The altered casting times still apply! But the system for acquiring spells doesn't work. To give the player an offensive option I also gave her a psionic wild talent, which play-tested fine.

With combat, I had to drop the Rate Of Fire as it applies to firearms. As it sat, a random encounter of eight 0th level bandits who got the jump on the party, all of them having 6 shots apiece, would TPK even our 8th level party in a couple of rounds, which won't work, so I reverted back to Core rules of 3/2 for fighters and one shot for everyone else. I've got a PC who has a trick shooting proficiency, I let him fire into melee with no penalties.

The AC issue (everyone's base AC is 10) was addressed by reminding them all that AC floats, it improves with taking cover and using your environment. On my end, I had to apply this system to my creatures.

These changes all improved the game. Combat was much swifter and more fair for everyone.

INFORMING THE PARTY OF NEW VICTORY CONDITIONS

This dungeon was my own design, because of events outside of the game which was beyond our control, they were all killed. We went back to the beginning of the 9th dungeon level, and I let everybody know that this was it. No takebacks. The party could not leave this dungeon, and they must finish tonight. If at the end of the night they still haven't slain the Belalp witch, they lost. She escapes and entombs them all in the dungeon and the game is over.

The players had taken over the elevator and made it secure. Two players were unable to attend the game, their characters controlled the elevator and guarded the supplies that they had so the active party was unencumbered.

Play Begins

The players went back up to the main dungeon and systematically cleared it out and found some nice weapons and armor that I had placed up there. I had hidden some Drow Platemail+5 as well as a Drow Longsword+5. Both of these items helped immensely and disappeared as soon as they left the dungeon.

I had wanted to take away their guns, this tomb hasn't been opened for a thousand years, everything except for the witch is dead and cursed, mostly ogre skeletons and zombies, and another section for the huge undead giants. Guns were pretty worthless, but I had old-fashioned arms scattered around to deal with them. The trick was to increase your AC. We had four players show up for this session and the game was well balanced, tons of XP to go around nice treasure, and the player who had put on the Drow armor and was a tank managed to find a huge spider which she rode around the giant section of the dungeon.

One player did end up dying, the victim of a giant banshee, but she was resurrected before she turned into an undead herself. It was a dangerous place and I expected some fatalities. By searching the dungeon before taking on the 9th level they were ready to take on that dangerous stuff.

Right out of the elevator, on the bottom level they had to face an entire unit of lawful monster skeletons who fought like centurions, it was a brutal battle and this time they were more evenly matched. It was still a long encounter, powerful undead fighters who were also very difficult to hit. The party figured out a way to punch a hole into their defense and managed to control the pace of the fight. It wasn't just a dice-fest either, which made things go more smoothly and we all enjoyed it more.

Finally, they fought their way to the Witch and after a long tricky battle she tried begging for mercy and they promply executed her. They had control of the dungeon and it was getting late so we decided to skip the battle with the undead centurions, choosing to quickly summarize it, the skeletons would have done the exact same thing, and offered no challenge.

They fetched the Relic, this time the witch was dead so the Demonic god was weaker and Sebaldus had a chance of defeating it . . . a 25% chance, but since the witch was dead, the party could still escape if Sabaldus lost. I had them roll the dice. They needed a 75 or higher to defeat the devil: they rolled a 76. Sebaldus destroyed the sentient idol, breaking the curse on the land and finally defeating this dungeon.

Sebaldus rewarded those who showed up in different ways. The Cleric was granted the Wild Talent, The Gunslinger was given more strength, the German Spy was granted Dexterity, and the Explorer was given the ability to know Latin.

The fun that we all had from this session more than made up for the last session!

AFTERMATH

This was my most ambitious game design. It incorporated a lot of OD&D principles, and while the initial prep for it was intense, there was virtually no prep once we started playing it. The entire scenario lasted us seven sessions.

It featured two separate dungeons; a mine and a witches lair, both reset themselves in a way that they could always be explored and offer challenges. We didn't finish the mine section, it had one more scenario hidden in it which was never triggered. 

Overall, it offered something for everybody at the table. A very difficult mystery to solve, a living world to interact with, tons of NPCs which were fun to run, and enough XP to bring the regular players up to level so they can take on even more grueling challenges ahead, as I now think that they are ready to get back on the trail of the main campaign villain, Fu Manchu. So! It is off to London, which I will write and maybe play with some Play-By-Post via Facebook. We are skipping the game for the month of October, and opting to have a Halloween Party instead.

 

Well, last weeks game had some major issues and ended up falling apart. Technically, everybody died, but there were things going on beyond our ability to control. It was horrible. Nobody had their thinking caps on and this is a very hard game. I knew that from the beginning. Whenever something like this happens, you learn a lot, and we did.

Lets back up. We took a month off and are playing twice this month, this being the first session to make up for August. I had beat them down with a dragon, and their characters needed time to heal up. This gave us a week where they just stayed in their cabin, and I really don't like that much missing time, especially since this campaign will only last for 10 years of in-game time. To fill the gap I wrote some fiction.

There were things that I wanted to recap, and game elements which weren't being utilized, such as the mystics tarot cards. I never wanted to shut the game down for the time it takes to focus on divination, not in real-time anyway, so I took the opportunity to do that. Providing hints, and clues and basically telling them that it is time to move. They are transporting the bones of Saint Sabaldus, he is their knight, but there is a dark knight as well, and the party can't fight him, Sabaldus has to.

I also revealed that there were three parts, the Dragon, the creature in the mine, and the Witch, these were all connected, not separate at all, but one big problem. In order to tip the scale in Sabaldus's favor they had to eliminate at least one of these targets.

I also decided to bring the character who died last adventure back to life. I have never done this before, in all my years of gaming nobody has ever been resurrected. It was a pointless death, but I also had the Holy Relic. The character had served the town, so the town served her. They fetched her body from the canyon and returned her to the party where Sabaldus gave her back her life. In exchange for this, they lost the girl that they had saved to the witches. This also speeds up the clock, once she is made a witch they will form a coven, and this will allow the ancient witch who is imprisoned under the church to escape.

I introduced a new character as well, a German Detective who has been hunting them ever since they left Germany with the artifact, he showed up with a ton of men and they have now taken over the village of Belalp, and they arrested Van Helsing, so he is off of the table as well.

At that point, we began the game. Everybody really loved the story, the player who had died was jazzed as I had told her to keep this to herself, she rolled her Resurrection survival and passed it. Then they cleared out of town taking the artifact with them.

I thought that they were going after the dragon, they almost killed it last time, and it is injured still; I'd figure that they'd go finish the job. They didn't, instead they went right to the Tomb of the Witch, and broke the seal. There was no going back now, the Witch was officially loose.

This specific dungeon was the hardest thing that I have ever drawn up. It hasn't seen a living soul since Father Sabaldus trapped her in there back when he was alive. Inside is a living nightmare, those who followed the Witch Kevra were entombed as well, and a war over supplies raged inside until every one of them were dead. This war repeats itself over and over again. Even the dead here cannot be slain, the curse always brings them back.

Somehow, I don't know how they do it, my dungeons are always mazes, but they always seem to stumble right where they need to go. The nastiest trap in the place, they figured out. An elevator which must be locked at the bottom, it goes to the Witch's chambers, and she controls the undead to lower the elevator if she wants to. If the players don't pay attention to this elevator, they will be the ones who are entombed down there as it is the only way in or out.

So, the players fight their way to the witch's chambers, and find an evil sentient statue of some forgotten pagan god, it is casting spells, and the witch appears but gets blown away. The players take the Relic into the room, Sam knows that this is where the artifact belongs, and then the war begins, the horror of true good vs. evil, but since they didn't really kill any of the beasts party (the witch, the dragon, and whatever is haunting the darkness in the mine) Sabaldus can't win. I am describing this battle of light and telling them that it is getting darker and darker and they aren't doing anything about it. They are just sitting their listening to this. Finally I just shut down the game.

We've been playing this game for almost a whole year. Everyone was distracted and having difficulty. They didn't understand what was going on, I thought that it was obvious, but was wrong. A couple of the players were loving it, it is harder than hell. The Wizard didn't show up to play, so they had no offensive spells. We also figured out that the Mystic is unbalanced and unplayable at the level that she is at. When they designed the Masque of the Red Death box set, it was meant for a one shot adventure, but we've been playing it long-term. She is not a normal cleric, and is so restricted in her spells that all she is is a medic, and she hated it. We talked after the game and decided to grant her an offensive psionic power which hopefully will give her character that little boost that she needs.

I felt like a failure. I take things personally, I do! I did make a big error during the game. I couldn't find the stats for the ancient witch, it wasn't on my stat block sheet, instead I had placed it right on the Random Encounters sheet and had forgot, so I improvised. She had a Fake Kevra, which I ran, but I gave it way too much power, and hit one of the fighters almost killing him instantly. Afterwards I found my mistake, so there is that.

I offered two options: We could either hold the game where it is at, or we could reboot it from where the PC resurrected. So far they have opted to hold, they returned to the elevator and locked it between floors so they are safe, but I told them that there is only one path to win the scenario. They have to kill this witch tomorrow. If they flee, they'll be killed. With all of the bumbling they did end up cornering both themselves and the witch, but with the injuries that they have, they are in a very tight spot.

I feel like a cad for stopping the game because of TPK. We've got a character who has no hp left, a high level cleric who is helpless in a pit of the undead, a fighter who can't enter the Demon room, and another fighter who was charmed by the statue and is now working for it. Only the thief of the party is unharmed, and they hope to kill the witch in her own domain. Personally, I think that they are doomed if they follow this path.

I don't know. I didn't give them any XP because I was angry, but calmed down during the post game discussion. There are lots of reasons why the game collapsed, but it still feels cheap. I am not willing to take it easy on them in regards to fighting the witch. That would be a huge disservice to them. Like I said, the majority of the players were cool with the difficulty level, but we all agreed that we weren't mentally in the game as the game required us to be.

What would you do?

Do you think that it was wrong to not TPK a party for one off night? It was many factors: my bumbling, bad dice rolls, and caring for a player who was not able to play. I have no problem TPKing early games, but we've been playing these characters for over 10 years, they got us back into the hobby. I can't do that to them.

Bad games are a bummer!

I forgot to jot down my notes from last game. I made up a quick play session out in the fringe of the village, blatantly ripping off one of my favorite movies, The Witch. They were able to defeat the scenario really quickly, and save a young girl who they have taken on as a potential henchmen. What? Didn't see that coming, but we'll see where it goes.

The players have been reluctant to explore the wilderness, so I put some pressure on them, Mr. Harker, who is now just down the mountain helping with research in the city of Brig has been followed by a German Detective, he had been seen with PC Sam White at a bank in Zurich. He is smart and looking to recover the Relic of St. Sabaldus. Harker had to risk sending a pigeon up to the players, but it is unknown if the message had been intercepted or not.

In other news, the scholar who has written a book on the Belalp Witch has finally been able to finance an expedition to search an area where she believes is the best spot to find old Belalp, and the players manage to get hired on to lead this expedition.

It just so happens that one of the players were able to decipher the clues found a few sessions back and had a really good idea where the church was, but they were able to get there with a bigger party and on somebody else's dime. It was a bit more difficult than they thought, the church wasn't where the cryptic map suggested. Well, it was, but it was buried deep under the ice. After more searching they found a chimney sticking out of the glacier of Mt. Sparhorn, melting the snow, the Explorer PC climbed down and discovered the perfectly preserved medieval village of Belalp trapped under a dome of blue ice.

The scholar had also hired some big strong locals who were far too large to climb down the narrow chimney, but this presented a problem. The party needs to HIDE the Relic of Sabaldus in the church, and it will do no good to have the world know about this place. Exploring the entombed village, they find a cave to the south which leads to the medieval Cathedral they have been searching for for so long.

Exploring the Cathedral, they find an ancient church which the cathedral was built around, and in the basement of this church they find a stone seal with a terrible warning, beyond this seal, placed by Saint Sabaldus himself, is the Witch of Belalp, however this seal is unbroken.

The players return to Old Belalp and spend the night in an old inn hoping that the scholar and the rest of their party get bored and just go away, or something; which doesn't happen. In the morning they find the scholar feeling betrayed which she is taking pictures of this amazing place.

Long story short, the players finally discover the cave system in the area, they exited the cave on the other side of the Massa River, traveling in hours what would normally take days. The scholar is pissed, she wants to go back to Old Belalp and further study the medieval village for her next book. The players agree but this time they exit the cave all the way back at one of the abandoned mines just outside of current Belalp. The Scholar is pissed, after all of that work, she got a few pictures but the village of Old Belalp is still lost! This pleases the party. She might have pictures, but she has still been bamboozled.

They now know that they can reach the church through the Belalp #2 mine, now it is just making some decisions about what to do. Breaking the seal and entering the tomb of the Belalp Witch is going to be incredibly risky, this dungeon is the meanest and most difficult that I have ever designed, I don't know if they are ready for it yet, but we'll see what happens.

Game wise, I was lazy. I had to work overtime the night before, and I was exhausted. I rolled for random encounters but we had no combat at all. We still had a blast though! I did run off script, changed the look and feel of the old Medieval village, originally it was supposed to be open air but I think that the last minute change was a lot more fun.

I have no idea what is going to happen next game, the secret BBS that my players use is buzzing, and the spell casters are getting together tonight to come up with some ideas on how to best manage their spells. I'm excited!

via Pinterest

via Pinterest

Via Pinterest

This session report is mostly about game design; we tried something new and the players got a ton of work done. I've tried a couple of times to write up the notes into some linear fashion but they always turned into short stories, so instead, I will make this very brief.

 In session 8 the players got one over on me. For years I have always been able to get away with mobs. Lynchings involving lots of people are dangerous and wicked things! For the most part, my players have never been able to settle one down; until session 8. Through very good Role-play and quick thinking, the players were able to stop the terrified and riled up citizens of Belalp from playing into the villain's game plan.

From the enemies point of view, this was a well-thought out and calculated move that was critical to the master plan. There are agents operating within the village of Belalp, and one specifically was going to be rewarded that night. They had framed the old woman, instigated a lynching, and planned to use it as a distraction to steal a baby for a vile ritual which would greatly increase the agent's power as well as the mastermind's.

This didn't happen, the mastermind found themselves perilously exposed to discovery, the evidence against the old woman was solid enough to cause a gut reaction but not good enough to withstand any close scrutiny, and no baby was stolen; thus no ritual was performed and the plan was thwarted.

The players definitely earned this win! They now had a chance to force an encounter with the enemy before it had a chance to reach its full potential. The players had been able to give themselves a three-day window to figure out what is going on, identify the enemy agent, and deal with them.

The elements of having the perfect game were there: Allow the agent to steal the baby, accurately predict where the ritual was to take place and catch her and her boss in the act. Of course, we all know that the perfect game is an elusive thing, but the potential was there.

I wanted things to be tense, as well as frantic; I've toyed around with time-based adventures before, but never really was all that happy with the results. My villains had their work cut out for them, they had a lot to do in a very small window, they had to strengthen the evidence against the old women, create another diversion, set the groundwork for a fast and precise kidnapping, and complete the ritual while the old woman burned, preferably along with the PC's.

I decided to try something new, I really enjoy strategy games and I thought that this scenario would fit that format in a very interesting way. Instead of using a clock to count time, the players, and the villains had a limited amount of actions allotted to them to complete their goals.

Now there is a problem with this, strategy games are difficult, you have to experiment for a while until you hit upon formulas that work, D&D is very different. There are no redos in Dungeons & Dragons. There are no take-backs, either. I had to figure out a way to make this game fair for both sides; while I enjoy strategy games, my players might not, and it is them on the hot-seat, not me. 

So, I got to designing. I decided that 13 Actions might be enough; it would hopefully give them enough wiggle room to let them make an error or two without the entire thing becoming impossible to win. I wanted a really good challenge, and a difficult game, but not something that was too mentally demanding.

Prior to play, I laid out the ground rules.

• Play is broken up into a set number of actions. Day 1 has 3 actions, Days 2 and 3 each have 5. 
• At the end of the game, Events will play themselves out, independently.
• The party is not allowed to split up, each action must be done as a team. This is out of fairness to the enemy who has the same amount of actions as the players do.
• Movement Rates are going to be ignored, it is free to walk in all civilized spaces, but there is a charge of 3 actions if one goes out into the wilderness.
• There is no need to go out into the wilderness.
• While the players are limited in actions, once one is declared, you are allowed as much time as you need to to explore the location and complete the action.

We took our time before beginning, this is a strange playstyle and I wasn't sure if it would work or not, we were play-testing. I let them know that if I feel that the game failed because of something that I did, then we'd replay it in a more traditional game. By the third day I knew that the game had worked.

SECRET RULES

I kept some rules of play a secret for pacing reasons, I also had to keep the game fair. Like I said, D&D doesn't give one much time to think, evidence has to be loud enough so that puzzles can be solved in real-time at the table.

At the end of each day, if they went back to their cabin they got a free turn which was used as a briefing. The NPC ally Dr. Van Helsing would talk with them about what they had figured out. Now Van Helsing, in order to function, had his own motivations and biases. I didn't give anything away, I just asked leading questions so that they could have a better chance of thinking clearly and faster than if they had just been left to ponder this stuff on their own. I did limit the number of times that Van Helsing could eliminate a false lead and point them into a different direction.

In regards to enemy activity, for the most part, I kept it so that when the heroes made a move, the enemy moved at the same time. I had a short list dictating daily objectives for the enemy, however, they were not limited to these actions, they had to be responsive to the players. An attack meant to draw attention to itself would force the players to make a decision, complete their planned action and let the police handle the attack, or investigate the scene itself. As always, my villains played to win. Some enemy actions were just distractions while others were productive. Some went undetected, while others; since the players were close to the locations in question, were noticed.

If at anytime the enemy and the player chose the same location, I would have rolled a secret initiative but this never came up. What I ended up with was a nice clean investigation game, it made in-town exploration exciting, everyone was on the same page, and running the NPCs was a breeze!

The time required to play this scenario out was perfect for the time we had allotted to us, as DM I was able to maintain a strong grip on pacing, which was important because I wanted the players to experience the pressure that their characters were under. They were able to acquire LOTS of information about the village and the people who live there (too much to write here). They had to choose their moves wisely, they did make a few errors which I had expected, but by the last turn I judged that the game had succeeded, they knew who the agent was, what her plan was, now they just had to predict her last move.

The game wasn't perfect for either side. That last turn was one of the most intense moments that I had ever had in D&D, I so wanted to help them, they had almost played the perfect game but this last move had to be precise for them to pull it off. In the end, they made the wrong decision but this was a really difficult game. They still ended up winning. The agent hiding in the village of Belalp was exposed and became a loose end, the mastermind knew that it was just a matter of time before she led the heroes right to them, so the agent was eliminated.

The heroes were able to stop the enemy from thripling its strength, but the agent who eliminated his co-conspirators and former boss is now a local hero as he was able to steal all of the glory from the players and become untouchable.

Over all, this was a very well played game that was demanding on the players' skill to get a job done in a limited amount of time that was simulated perfectly. It was definitely gamey, the mechanics were more out in the open than I normally have them, but it more than made up for it in playability. This is something that I will definitely be doing again.

On a technical note, I had wished that I had laid down the play mat and used miniatures, but we didn't; however for enemies I had so many to track I just gave them 4 hits and dead, drawing circles for each one and dividing each circle into fourths; instead of rolling damage, the party was shooting wildly into the woods, I had them just tell me when they hit or not, if they rolled 20's then I took off 2 HD but mostly it was just 1 HD per hit. It kept the combat fast and much easier to track considering the number of enemies. A combat scene which normally would had been boring because I took to long, could quickly be played out without losing anything; in fact it was probably easier on the monsters as guns dish out 2d6+1 damage, they were naturally 5HD creatures. For determining the monster targets, I throw a d10, I had 1-6 represent players, 4-10 meant that the creatures missed and targeted the giant man across from them.

• All of the wives take turns helping the bachelor sheriff with his housekeeping, so all the women had access to him.
• The totem that had been used on the party member Vanessa Smith, required someone who had access to her things, the only suspect being Nela Saner who offered herself to be their housekeeper right away.
• Ivan Hoffer also had access to Vanessa's property as he was sleeping in the tent with them at the time of the attack.
• Lynn Tuller, the woman who was caught administering Sheriff Hoffer and practicing folk magic is not above suspicion either. Van Helsing says that she is no doubt a practitioner of spiritualism, a relatively new pseudo-religion that is in vogue right now, and they rarely practice alone.
• Corinne Meyer, a none-native transplant and author who moved up here for the tranquility. She lives alone in the woods and has written a book on the Belalp witch.
• Agatha Gammenthaler, the old woman kept in protective custody to protect her from allegations of witchcraft.
• Van Helsing suggested that Charlotte refrain from using her skill set, else she becomes a prime target of the current local rage, and says that he believes that they aren't looking for a human witch, but fears that they are in fact dealing with the ancient undead. He says that the only way that they will be able to identify it, is by the aura of fear that all powerful undead share.

Hard at work blogging with my wifes old PC

The game! Like I said, it was really hard to stay focused; I can't tell you how many times that we had to start and stop because of interruptions or people getting side-tracked, in spite of this, we still had a very productive game. I designed this scenario in a rather modular way, and to last us at least 2 more sessions. There are some little things that I have to tweak which I wasn't happy about.

2e Otyugh says he borrowed your toothbrush

• The Blatten Mill was forced to shut down.
• Belalp is secluded as hell, very few of the people ever come down to town, except in winter time when travel is much easier.  
• The people that live up there are tougher than normal people, seeming to enjoy the severe isolation that would drive most people mad, and adding that no amount of money could convince any of the Blatten locals to go up there.
• The whole area is dedicated to wood and mines. While the Blatten mill was forced to shut down, the Belalp mine caved in a few years ago and the miners up there are stubbornly working a less productive and much older mine, which they say is haunted.