Session Report: Wolves Upon the Coast 01 - Overwhelming Manticore Initiative
You gotta write session reports now. It's the law.
Inaugural session for Wolves Upon the Coast. Grafted ruleset, content unchanged. The players draw up characters: Ruis and Pictish speaking Cerball, Norseman Hemingr (AKA Hemmingway), and literate Brythonic Ceclilia. This takes 45 minutes. I decide to start them off Ruislip, off the coast of the 01.08 Runestones. I roll for weather (overcast) wind (northwesterly), and for an encounter: A full on 32 bandits (Disposition: Disinterested)
The runestones are visible from the starting karvi: The party sees three persons loitering amongst them, and smoke from trees a bit further inland. The Norse runestone is read, and they chat with the bandits, who expound on their disdain for mundane life and their own wandering habits, while stroking the axes in their belts ogling the karvi. One of the three was dispatched as the party landed to make for the camp about 10 minutes away. The party chats briefly, ponders killing the bandits, ignores the runestones, rebuffs invitation to come to their camp for 'ample ale, and meat' and - observing a number of armed men issue from the distant forest at word from the runner - makes definitely for the boat. They sail south.
01.09: Manticore Cave. Seacaves are visible, an ex-thrall lookout swears he saw a human face peering from one, but no others do. The party elects to investigate. I roll: The tide is fully out, hours til it's high. Six thralls with the boat, six ashore + three PCs. Cerbal and Hemingr and one torchbearer - the lookout - enter the cave while Cecilia guards entryway and boat. The smell of sour meat issues faintly. They call out messages of peace "We can help you!" as they search for the human face. Tracks, scaled like those of a bear but in detail dissimilar, are visible in the ocean-moistened sand. A solitary voice can be heard, speaking to itself. At the shouting it goes silent: Some time later, from the darkness, an inhumanly low voice promises gifts. The party approaches: A human face. It bobs too low. A neck, too long, a body like that of a dog, with great clawed feet, a tail with wicked spiked of iron coiling behind it into the light. The party does not immediately apprehend this is one, monstrous, creature, until the smile on needle-pointed teeth makes clear the situation. The party stands fast and violence ensues, Hemingr - 'Hemmingway' - is downed immediately, unable even to make his attack. He is stunned at -2 HP. Cerbal and the torchbearer flee, Cerbal making a dexterity check to outpace her companion despite her armour on a 'Don't need to be faster than a bear, only faster than the slowest party member' logic. Indeed, metal spikes flit past them in the dark, and the torchbearer is hit, but not downed, as consequence. Hemmingway lies abandoned.
At the cave mouth Cecilia hears sounds of distress and unrest: She rushes with her six club-armed ex-thralls to render aid. The groups meet, combat ensues. In the pitch darkness, meanwhile, Hemmingway passes his death check and regains consciousness, mobility, and rises with 0HP. He staggers along one wall towards the sounds of battle.
I forget that the manticore should have supernatural HP and treat it as usual. In the briefest moments before fighting becomes general, Cerbal prevails upon one of the wavering ex-thralls to take up her sword and shield in the front line (while she fights with javelin and bow behind him). By luck, this is one of the three ex-thralls with a full 6 HP. The manticore is ultimately reduced from its starting HP of 20 to 8 HP and flees - the party has extraordinarily taken no casualties. All ex-thralls except the one promoted by gift of arms have nevertheless fled. One, mercifully, drops a torch so the party is not doomed in darkness.
I explain the boast system. Cecilia boasts she will run all the way to Hemmingway with the torch, seizes it up, and sets off. Feeling their comrade might be rescued, the party resolves to pursue the manticore (though they do not know what it is) into the cave.
In the pitch dark tunnel, far away, staggering Hemmingway sees a point of light in distance. A great shape occludes it periodically and loudness grows. He gamely readies his cleaver.
They pursue it closely, though it fires iron spikes back at them, and combat of all parties resumes when they meet Hemmingway: The luckless Norseman, again the butt of failed initiative, is again downed before even being able to attack (I have the player control the ex-thrall in the meantime).
The manticore's last 4 HP take as many rounds. Cecilia would also have been downed if not for her new-boasted HD, and the ex-thrall is reduced to 1HP. The manticore is slain, however, Cecilia's boast confirmed, and all regain 6 HP in a bath of the foul beast's invigourating blood. The downed Hemmingway is so anointed and spared the peril of making a second death check. There the session ends.
Very pleasant to run with preparation already done for me. I used tldraw for my own planning (the annotated Wolves hexmap, with arrow for party movement and corresponding date overdrawn, with tables for quick reference pasted) and a separate tldraw with the party's ex-thralls and boat enumerated, and space for their self-drawn map. My Wacom tablet + rapid tab switching between tldraw in Firefox + open pdfs + open Obsidian notes did not play well, and my Ubuntu laptop refused to accept clicking twice during the session. First, I restarted. Second, I let it be and worked from memory while speaking on Discord on my phone (I was still able to see the zoomed out tldraw). I'll def overhaul how I organise my notes.
A lack of detailed maps went well.
I realise only after the session no one spoke the same language.
I was very pleased with the first real-session test of my (combat system)[https://rar.bearblog.dev/arrayer-roll-one-die-for-attack-and-damage-in-a-streamlined-yet-pleasant-way/] : it was very fast, and the players appreciated being able to roll for individual attacks after a number of sessions with wonky, er, innovative systems being imposed on them. I shifted the order of combat phases in play to place reloading at the start of one turn rather than the end of another, which was more logicial. I am pleased as well with the risk of death any reduction below 0HP brought. I felt sympathy for downed Hemmingway, but didn't pull the punch when the die revealed he was to be downed without response a second time. In future I will have downed players immediately take control of NPC companions or mercenaries.
Because of my laptop's freezing issues I rolled mostly using physical dice. In future I would prefer to use discord's dice bot to make plainly visible the aloof nature of these rolls (not that there was any ill feeling).
Overall time was about 2.5 hours. We'll work towards greater speed so we can cover more ground in future.