Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Dubzaron Session 141: Dazed and Confused

Session played on 02/21/2024.

Participating PCs: 
Daria: L9 Bladedancer, Lawful.
George of the Jungle: L4 Beastmaster, Neutral
Reaver: L5 Barbarian, Death Dealer, Neutral.
Rory: L5 Barbarian, Death Dealer, Neutral.
Tuck: L6 Barbarian, Neutral
Williow: L7 Mystic Warrior (Monk), Lawful.
Xanthos: L7 Cleric, Mendicant, Lawful. 


Hench:
George: Wolfie the Wolf 2+2 HD
Tuck: Duck the L4 Fighter, Ye the L4 Bard
Reaver: Thiefos the L1 Thief, Magos the L3 Mage
Rory: Subatai the L3 Nephilim 
Xanthos: Ulysses L2 Explorer, Agenor the L4 Fighter, Nestor the L2 Venturer, Fang the Dire Wolf, Tigga the Phase Tiger


XP Pool for Fight 1 (all PC and hench participated): 920 and Treasure 1300 = 2,220
Total Cuts: 25
Hench Cut: 89
PC Cut: 178

XP Pool for Fight  2 (below list participated): 3,200
Participating: Daria, George, Reaver, Rory, Tuck, Willow, Xanthos. Duck, Magos, Subatai, Agenor, Ye.
Total Cuts: 19
Hench Cut: 168.
PC Cut: 337

Session Report
This week the party was back in the world of Dubzaron, no longer in Barsoom! They had a big prize out there being offered by a couple of Patrons: Kyle Oconner and Prefect Drakon.

Kyle wants someone to go delve deep into Queens Rest Mountain on the look out for some red (purple? idfk) twin peaks style curtains. Kyle wants this in connection with the witch he lost during #OPERATIONMUSCLETHUNDER

If they find it the PCs will likely be like the proverbial dog who catches the car since Celeste the Witch was lost to STORMBRINGER. Yes I crafted this hook with Kyle's player to dare him and my players to risk bringing the evil sword back to the World of Dubzaron. Or destroy it forever. Or throw it into some other DMs campaign (LOLOLO) or whatever.

Tonight they did NOT find it. This was the sort of session the BROSR calls a "milk run session". It was a bit of a bog standard dungeon delve but with some deep roots in past session, downtime and session play. 

They set out from Kyle's city of Claymore Crossing to go to Forward Operating Base Queen; the FOB I mentioned on "Who Is Dundermoose" podcast that the patron built to encourage PCs to delve this dungeon. Check out the podcast today! It's much more interesting than this session report. 

Along the way the PCs came across some giant dumb humanoid creatures with gray spiky horns up their arms. There were four of them and they were tearing up a local co-op garden the local barbaric folk had established for common use. This angered Reaver and Rory who were buds with the folk of Kyle's Clanhold so they charged. 

The pcs chopped up these big brutes rather quickly and claimed the big sacks of cash they were carrying. They tried to find tracks back to the brutes' lair and found tracks. There was then player discussion on whether they were going to chase the hook to this possible lair (and big treasure horde) or keep going to FOB Queen and their main mission.

One PC cast some divination spell/ability to determine "how likely xyz would happen" and this was a nice way of them saving session time since I then checked for Lair percentage change at the end of the tracks. My house rules for worldbuilding tracking captured or killed monsters back to their lair for zeroprep play is as follows:

-PCs make a successful track on the captured or killed monster
-DM checks for Lair % chance but does not reveal to the players.
-DM divides average treasure amount in that lair by 1,000 and it is that many hexes away from civilization. 5,000 average gp = 5 hexes or 30 miles away from where they were fought. x2 if monster has flying.
-PCs travel following the tracks. Are told at end of first day of tracking if these tracks indicate a lair.
-PCs make a new track check each day of travel and lose trail to lair if they fail.

Elite Players always (ALWAYS) ask if the wilderness monster they just killed has a Lair nearby with an easier score. So now you can do it like me with zero prep. You're welcome.

The PCs didn't need to use up a day of travel, thanks to the Divination spell. So on to FOB Queen they went. They used a couple of Commune spells so Daria and Xanthos could ask their deities about the possible location of the purple curtain room. Xanthos's deity is the god of travel who I cast as Jack Sparrow who was walking around FOB Queen getting drunk as Xanthos prostrated before him and asked him questions. Daria's goddess Ianna rode a golden chariot down into FOB Queen causing a ruccus while Daria asked her about hair product and other airhead things between real questions.

After these quick, but fun, RP scenes; the party knew which of the three doors of the dungeon would be the closest to the room. And what sort of threat (mob or singular monster) they'd be most likely to see traveling to said room. The latter helped Daria choose which buff spells to cast on herself for max combat effectiveness. Gelatinous Rube would be proud. 

There's not much to report beyond this which is why I gave you my Tracking to Lair rules above.

The Party traveled out to Queens Rest Mountain dungeon the next day, left some of their hench behind with the big gaggle of mercs, and marched up the volcano whose crater leads into the dungeon.

They traveled about 3 rooms deep into the dungeon (which is build into the northern wall INSIDE the volcano) until coming to a fight that kept them busy the rest of the night.

There were two big fat guy looking monsters (think Brendan Fraiser in his one a24 film) with huge stomachs which opened up with teeth. Their heads were pumpkins covered with eyes. It was a guy and girl monster so the girl monster got memed into being a big fat Zendaya. I guess "Dunc 2" was on everyone's mind.

When I mentioned they were eating a long centipede looking lizard thing when the party arrived the caller said "like lady and the tramp with the spaghetti" so that's of course what it became; much to the disgusted chuckles of all present. 

These things had really high AC, high HP, and (most importantly to wasting session time) cast Confusion on about half the party in the 2nd round of combat. 


The whole fight slowed to a crawl as players needed to check for their Confused behavior each round. Hench and PCs began to fight, hard swinging barbarians stood stupefied now and then, and Xanthos the cleric was unable to cast powerful divine spells. 

I don't remember all the details but even after both monster was dead the party members stayed confused and fought eachother; to some objection from the players. Rory was first to use wrestling moves to tie up his Confused henchman. Until Daria eventually cast Dispel Magic; which worked in getting everyone back to themselves.

The night had grown long and the party only went about one room deeper into the place while realizing they had adventured these rooms months and months back. The caller was annoyed no one could remember the rooms very well. Thankfully my own notes were pretty good; unlike my recent podcast of confusing Mayor Tuck of Fishton as Billy. Sorry, bud.

They came to a room with a big statue of Alicia the Sorceress Queen who harried the southern border of Dubzaron Prefecture over the summer. To the north was a big double doors that was locked by magic means that Daria was unable to Dispel so the party cut their losses and left the dungeon and went back to FOB Queen.

There were no random encounters on the way out or back, sadly.

PC Class Grades
Daria: L9 Bladedancer, Lawful: S for Superior. She danced with the blade and conferred with her goddess to fun rp and statistical effect. Not E as she could have saved the party's bacon (or moreso game time) with an early Dispel Magic of the Confuse effect. 
George of the Jungle: L4 Beastmaster, Neutral. E for Excellent. I saw nothing egregious in the play here.
Reaver: L5 Barbarian, Death Dealer, Neutral. E for Excellent. Was brutal and death dealing.
Rory: L5 Barbarian, Death Dealer, Neutral. E for Excellent. Was also brutal and death dealing.
Tuck: L6 Barbarian, Neutral. E for Excellent. Brave and tough. Didn't back away from a fight or leave allies out to dry.
Williow: L7 Mystic Warrior (Monk), Lawful. E for Excellent for combat prowess and using the divination ability to save his party time on the tracking stuff. (I remembered who did it!)
Xanthos: L7 Cleric, Mendicant, Lawful. E for Excellent. The only times I would have got on him about spells not used he was confused. He healed when he should have.


Monday, February 12, 2024

Dubzaron Session 139: Escape from Barsoom

This session was played on 01/31/2024. 


PCS:

Chippette of the Mysteris (L1 Priestess, Lawful)
Daria (L9 Bladedancer, Lawful)
Proteus Beta (L3 Mage soothsayer, Neutral)
Reaver (L5 Barbarian Death Dealer, Neutral)
Rory (L5 Barbarian Death Dealer, Neutral)
Tulsa Doom (L1 Shaman Snake Handler, Netural)
Sheela (L1 Mage, Netural)

Hench
Proteus: Nonus (L4 Fighter), Pytho (L1 Geckoman)
Roray: Subatai the alien guy

Session Report

A group of PCs has been trapped on Barsoom for months on end. Some of them did some interesting downtime actions such as Reaver the Barbarian who became an ornithopter pilot for Helium's navy (air force?). But mostly the players didn't know what to do in downtime on Barsoom. Some mentioned they had no random encounter charts for exploration. Oops!

Turns out I was using the Fiend Folio random encounter charts but changing the appearance of most of the monsters do be more spacey and/or planetary romance. That'll come into play later since, as all Elite DMs know, good random encounter charts are the backbone of a great campaign.

So the party didn't have much of a plan for tonight except "we want to get off Barsoom". Hmm alright then. They got trapped here a while back when they came through a mechanically powered portal in a dungeon. They broke the engine by taking the crystals out because they are greedy. But it opened one last time and sucked them in from Dubzaron world to Barsoom (Mars). 

Recently they went off to capture the White Witch (yes, from Narnian fame) who was doing sacrifices to open the portal with Old Magic since the PCs messed up the mechanical functionality. It was touch and go capturing the White Witch (Proteus died and was cloned as Proteus Beta fr fr no cap) but she was languishing in Helium's dungeons for months thanks to the heroic PCs.

Dejah Thoris and the royal family of Helium thus was paying the PCs upkeep expenses, housing them in luxury in the crystal castle. 

The PCs spent a great deal of time at the beginning of the session trying to put their heads together on how they might escape Barsoom. Some of the details above were vaguely known to them or perhaps they forgot the specific elements of it since the time between Barsoom sessions was so long. It started to come back to them when they got permission to interrogate the White Witch.

She was quite rude and Reaver even had to go all Taming of the Shrew on her at one point. But before the guards could extricate the PCs from the dungeon for this breach of protocol they had learned the above and some extra info:

-White Witch is working for the goddess Issus herself
-the PCs knew where the temple of Issus was located and believed maybe they'd find some portal or means to open it there
-they could also open the portal they were already aware of about 30 miles from Helium if they sacrificed a Barsoomian (human like, not thark)

The PCs then had audience with Dejah Thoris and learned, were they to go to the Temple/City of Issus, they'd never be allowed back to Helium or any other Barsoomian city. Those of you who have read the books know this is taboo. Once you see Iss, you do not return! It is a final pilgrimage. 

PCs didn't want to risk having no Safe Zone to return to since they didn't even know what they were looking for at Iss. So the two neutral barbarian PCs figured why not just capture one of Helium's enemies and kill him to open the other portal. 

So that became the plan.

This all took way too long and could have been prepped by PCs before hand. But I must say the "worldbuilding" of it was fun since it was like playing trivia with the "John Carter" books where myself and the players brainstormed what we recalled from the stories to dovetail it into something gameable. This is probably similar to what 5e players of "Forgotten Realms" campaigns do when they are not railroaded. But it's more fun since the Appendix N stories are simply more interesting than the setting books or tie in novels of Forgotten Realms. 

During their talks with Dejah they learned that there were currently border disputes with the city of Zodenga. I used my patented random distance and direction decider system (found in THIS session report about Barsoom) to determine Zodenga was currently about 36 miles north of Helium. Zodenga, I decided, was a city walking on spider legs and always on the (slow) move. 

Oh lastly, all this roleplaying could have been for naught because I determined that the ritual spell to open the portal was on a scroll the PCs captured from the White Witch's library a while back. I ruled Proteus Beta could have been studying this the whole time since he did no other downtime actions. And he'd need to make an ACKS "Magic Research" check to see if he'd actually be able to pull it off in the first place even with the blood sacrifice.

The check was pretty hard. Like 14 or better on a d20 I think because hes only level 3. If I was running 1e I would have done this with a "Percentage to Know Spell" check.

He succeeded in the throw but this goes to show that you can't always prep things. We'd have needed to shift the PCs plan yet again and had a totally different session entirely if he'd have failed. Practice NoPrep so you can be light on your feet for things like this!

They then spent some time buying thoats (which was some more fun trivia about what they are like, what normal D&D mount they would be similar enough to for pricing etc) to ride off into the wastes north to their goal. Reaver was on his ornithopter.

I began using the AXIOMS article for hex stocking combined with the Appendix B from the 1e for what sort of terrain. The AXIOMS has stuff like "valuable terrain", "dangerous terrain" and such. This helped make the vancian style travelogue I was running not only have NPCs and monsters but also interesting terrain features and types that were unpredictable.

Alright onto the travel itself.

First monster was a sand creeper or something like that from Fiend Folio. The entry says it simply wants to kill Good things and you absolutely can not shake it by running since it has perfect tracking. So it was creeping on Chipette the "Lawful" Priestess before the Pcs decided to evade. Some hours later it was still following them so Reaver and Rory the barbarians set up an ambush and killed it in a surprise round. The thing has some good abilities and decent HD but two mid level barbarians with good equipment was too much for our creeper pal.

The party came across some valuable moss in one hex but didn't have the means to farm it for magic item creation (or to sell it) and had to leave it behind. 

There wasn't much else in the way of encounters but they did come across a 10 foot high pyramid obelisk with an ipad type thing on the front. Proteus Beta (iirc) was able to type in the pass code and get it open as it was a treasure cache fr fr no cap. Inside was a bunch of gold and a throwing disk that seemed pretty magical and powerful upon first look.

Some day or so later Sheela the ladymage bumped into a huge mushroom which expelled powder that made her sneeze uncontrollably. Forever. 

This is why it was easier that night when, camping, a tall SlenderMan in a red brimmed hat was able to sneak up behind Sheelaand put a blade to her throat. Reaver was awake but the bad guy was so sneaky it just didn't work out. Reaver was seemingly about to kill slenderman (despite it likely meaning Sheela would be dead) but he got a look into slenderman's eyes and was charmed. This guy seemed really great!

Reaver really played it up, talking to the slender fellow about how he's too thin and needs to hit the gym and he believes in him. Damn it feels good to be a bro!

This all happened because slenderman (actually a vampire) got surprised on the party but he also got a very positive reaction to them (not max but close). So I did some fancy footwork and abductive reasoning on why a vampire wouldn't just kill or capture one of them. He needed something. But what? His description was improvised as I was talking and I was imagining him as an edgy gen y high school dude ("I've studied the blade") so he needed something from the city of Zodenga.Since I memed up all this stupid stuff, he needed his bejeweled trenchcoat which was being held in the Zodenga museum of history. 

He couldn't go inside due to all the holy relics in there which being around caused him pain. But PCs could do it!

Since Reaver and Sheela were charmed they thought this was a fantastic idea. Since slenderman's reaction was so positive I had him agree to help the party get a sacrifice if they did this, as well. I figured he could have been following the pcs for a few hours and hearing them talk about their (dumb) plan.

So a session that started with a plan to have a Barsoom war skirmish with an ornithopter and thoats became a big dumb heist instead.

Reaver hovered way up in the clouds above the city while the rest of the party went inside the city. I made a reaction check if the guards would care about these non red-martian humans entering their city and they didn't. Did the same at the museum and the guards there didn't care. 

I can't really relate exactly what happened in the museum except it was slapstick and really stupid. 

Rory's henchman checked the display of the trenchcoat for traps. He's low level so of course he thought it wasn't trapped and of course he was wrong. Chipette (iirc) grabbed the trenchcoat and the whole museum rang with alarms. Daria stood in front of a guard to try and block his view or trip him up from chasing Chipette. Rory did the same. Sheela sneezed in someone's face at some point (???) and then ran outside. 

I was checking for reactions and iniative from guards around the museum. The place wasn't crawling and had about one guard per wing. The city was also mobilizing but Reaver dropped from the clouds to grab Sheela off the street when she ran outside. 

The wall guards noticed him but their reaction was Friendly so they thought it was just some kind of air show. Reaver flew with style to fool them and gave them a thumbs up or something.

The whole thing was very stupid. Ocean's 11 this was not.

But they got out of the city and back to slenderman who gave them a prisoner Zodenga soldier in trade for the trenchcoat. He also gave Reaver a magic ring as a gift of thanks of which I'm absolutely certain nothing bad could come of. Good rper Reaver popped it on since it came from his new best friend. 

The party trekked a few days south back to the sacrificial table and portal for this poor soldier.

There wasn't much in the way of difficult encounters on the way back but when they got back to the ruined city with the altar they came across 3 giant beetles that were eating the ruined buildings like fraggles. These were just stone giants but I changed how they looked. DCC taught me how to just change the look of monsters on the fly like this. You can even slightly change some of their abilities but keep the same relative difficult and treasure types etc when you get really good at it. For instance Slenderman is a vampire but I shifted some of his abilities to more align with the worldbuilding concept I had and was created for him. 

Reaver was able to trick the giant beetles into moving away from the part of the ruined city they needed by leaving a trail of like 100 gold pieces which the creatures were eating up as they went off in the distance.

Proteus Beta was then ready to do the ritual by killing the Zodenga soldier. The soldier in true "Fighting Man of Mars" fashion begged a blade in his hand before he was killed of which Rory (I think?) obliged before gutting him. Proteus opened up a portal back to Dubzaron world with the blood component on the chaotic altar.

Slenderman suddenly appeared and jumped through the portal (Deuces, players!) and the Party was like wtf. I then told them I'd randomly determine how many people could go through the portal before it would close. So based on the roll (minus one for quick Slenderman!) some PCs or their hench might remained trapped on Barsoom.

Sadly the dice were in the PCs favor and it stayed open for all of them. They were back in Dubzaron and traveled to Kyle OConner's city of Claymore Crossing to end the session. 

PC Class Grades
Chipette: E. Leaned into the diplomacy stuff with the White Witch and Dejah at the beginning; which is part of her ACKS template.
Daria: S. There wasn't much bladedancing going on.
Proteus Beta fr fr: S because there was no spellcasting. He may have been gun shy since Arcane spells can backfire on Barsoom.
Reaver and Rory both got E for setting an ambush and generally being bloodthirsty Neutral barbarians.
Tulsa Doom. S. Since he was a shaman who never communed or did anything that shamany that I could recall.
Sheela. S for no spellcasting as well.

DM Grade and Thoughts: B-. I felt I delivered well on all the random elements of this session but the heist was probably too easy. I feel there's probably something I missed there as far as problems or issues they could have seen. The slenderman stuff was well done since it can be difficult to have a monster/NPC challenge that isn't simply about combat. Also changing the monsters on the fly to be more Barsoomian worked well and gave good flavor I think.

Friday, December 15, 2023

Dubzaron Battle Braunstein: Fishstein

 Introduction


On 12/13/2023 the Dubzaron campaign took a break from normal session play and instead we ran one of Jeffro Johnson's newfangled "Battle Braunsteins". I have dubbed ours the "Fishstein". Check out the #Fishstein hashtag on tw111ter if you'd like to see some of the in character funpoasting mine players have been engaging in. Or my initial announcement about same.


But what is a Battle Braunstein? Well first I invite you to take a look at Jeffro's blog with his thoughts about it. I'll give my thoughts about it here:

The Battle Braunstein is where, instead of using 1:1 downtime to resolve campaign events like war or assassination or backroom schemes, you do it with session play. 

The main advantage of this, as opposed to letting Patrons and PCs do these things in 1:1 downtime, is that the DM is present and can adjudicate any strange questions that may arise. The BROSR has found that with 1:1 downtime (which usually allows player/patron autonomy and "solo play" to avoid a DM time bottle neck) Patrons/PCs get into an EZ mode solo game. Can you really expect a PC who uses an army against an NPC orc lair in 1:1 downtime to play up the orcs possible tactics and craftiness to defeat the player's human army the way a DM might? 

Some DMs (who are worse than me) say that the Battle Braunstein also helps avoid DM burnout due to the time investment of reviewing 1:1 time downtime requests. As I'm a better DM and mostly ignore these requests unless completely necessary (it's not necessary for me to tell a player where to find rules on recruiting armies, buying magic items etc since ACKS has rules for that and players are perfectly able to find them themselves) the time bottleneck thing is not an issue for me. YMMV if you're worse than me.

Another real advantage of the Battle Braunstein is it being a fun EVENT that can be played out in a single session (or maybe two or three if needed) that is more like a party and a TOTALLY NEW PLAY MODE than what most D&D campaigns are able to experience or present to their players. 

So how do you do a Battle Braunstein? This TOTALLY NEW PLAY MODE is still a work in progress. Jeffro ran his in the worlds' famous Trollopulous campaign a few weeks back and you can read his DM method approach there. I'll outline my approach as I describe the Fishstein itself. Since it's more fun to give thoughts on approach as part of the story and adventure(s), ime. 

But, prior to Battle Braunstein play itself, you'll need some sort of scenario that involves faction scale players. For the event I named these Faction Leaders. These leaders can be PCs who have an army or some mid to high level resource(s) and/or NPCs with same. 

In an ongoing 1:1 time BROSR campaign (the only sort anyone should be playing) you will develop loose threads and hanging events, NPCs, points of interest, etc. Elite PCs may decide to ignore these things to chase easier scores. Why go raid the dragon lair they found when they can make 1/4 as much cash (thus XP) killing some bandits they heard were nearby instead? 

This is a fine gameplay approach, despite some BROSR DMs getting mad about it, but the Battle Braunstein SOLVES THIS PROBLEM. If the players ignore the dragon for a month or two, the dragon starts growing in power or influence or need for vengeance against the PCs or other NPCs that may be in your campaign region. Past BROSR theory posited the DM can then use 1:1 downtime to have the NPC harry the PCs or something between sessions but in real play we've found that DMs usually can't get excited enough to do that or (even worse) Players complain to no end that "it's not fair" thus giving the DM a negative feeling about even putting in the time to try it.

The region the Fishstein was played out in is a bit off the normal Dubzaron campaign map. Players had wanted to adventure around the area where they discovered a Class IV town in session play which they gave the name Fishston. This town was generated with the 1e random terrain generation by a co-DM in a session played where I was not present. The players came up, in session, with a town that was a mix between Innsmouth and New Orleans. The town rolled as "Chaotic" so this first session was about escaping with their lives and/or burgling the locals. But at the end of the night they had a new town on the map. And, if you know ACKS, having a Class 4 town to shop in that wasn't controlled by the Lawful powers, was very convenient for more anti-social Netural PCs and the Chaotic PCs (though we have few of those).

So with the stage set said lets get on to the Cast of Characters.

Fishstein Cast of Characters

Mayor Tuck the Barbarian: One of the PCs, a barbarian named Tuck, over the summer gathered his forces with another high level PC named Edelweiss and attacked and conquered Fishton in like August I think. Because a random city (deemed Fish City) was generated right next to Fishton in ANOTHER session with random terrain generation, Tuck was given control of Fishton and Edelweiss took Fish City. Fish City was considered "off limits" for the Fishstein as the purpose of the event was resolving what happened to Fishton. 

Tuck himself is a very successful PC barbarian whose exploits can be read about all across this blog. The exploit I leaned hardest on was him dueling a Frost Giant some 40 session back and acquiring the sobriquet of "giant slayer". 

Only two sessions back, however, he angered a savvy and powerful NPC named Kush.


Kush the Weed Beserker: You can read all about Kush in this session report. He ended up being one of the loose threads I was talking about. The players burgled his mead hall and Kush was angry. In conventional play a DM would say "oh well!" and in BROSR play without the Battle Braunstein, the DM would usually say "wow that's cool but when can I find the time to do something with this?!"

Kush himself has a weed plantation in the hills south of Fishton which is held by about 60 beserkers. He's Chaotic, has a powerful witch who advises him, and pals around with Weed Giants who want the smoke. His main goal was to kill Tuck for his cowardly ways and burgling him in session. His secondary goal was to help serve the chaos gods (mostly for his witch) including helping to rise up the demoness of our next faction leader.


Titus Endicus: Titus is a horrible warlock and cultist leader of the CThaylor cult. CThaylor is our Dubzaron mashup of Cthuhlu and T4ylor Sw1ft. And you thought Muppetlantist was stupid? This evil monster was created in yet another sesison I was not apart of. I told the players the Chaos peasants of Fishton (before it was conquered) served Dagon who lived below the river. They gave Dagon all their money (like the Nixie in "Three Hearts Three Lions", natch) in hopes Dagon would one day rise up to show its horrible visage. 

The players, in session, decided to dungeoneer below the river into an Appendix A dungeon which had like 5% chance per room of having Dagon in each randomly generated room. It apparently hit right away (I wasn't there) and they memed Dagon into instead being CThaylor. Seems CThaylor charmed a bunch of them with her sappy music and the players, despite having killed the cult and stalled CThaylor's rise for a time, fled for healing. 

Titus's goal was obvious. Get CThaylor to rise up! And destroy all Lawful/Neutral people and buildings in Fishton. This Faction leader was played by the same player who runs Vince (Patron) and mostly importantly Trabajo (PC) who is a Floridaman class who recently put on a cursed ring. The ring Geased him to come serve the cult with his beautiful mid gf Mid Summer.

Ajax: Ajax is an NPC that I developed based on Player downtime action. Some Thief PCs (who I will not name) burgled Edelweiss's war box while she was stuck in Brovenloft. This made Edelweiss's henchman unable to pay the soldiers for one month. In ACKS that demands a Loyalty check from the troops. Upon running these checks, half of Edel's troops abandoned her. Then myself and Ajax's players made a check to see if Ajax attacked and/or took Fish City from Edel entirely. The answer was Ajax attacked by was pushed back. Ajax was left with about 200 mercenary troops and a randomly determined magic item which I memed into an artifact called the "Ring of DJock (instead of Djinn)". DJock was a djinn which Ajax could summon but who demanded Ajax shove gross nerds into lockers. 


So Ajax's goal, besides killing or yeeting every arcane magic user he could find, was to find a place for his men to leave and be supplied. Fishton seemed an obvious choice right? But he also wanted to (at a future date) eliminate Edelweiss for being a gross nerd and for not paying him and his men. One Fishstein goal then was for him to acquire allies for this future operation.

Standing Mountain and the perfidious elves: Standing Mountain is a level 4 or 5 Elven Spellsword PC. He helped conquer Fishton some months back on the agreement the elves would have their own neighborhood in the town, g4za strip style. Elves with their own laws and rules and loyalties right next door to you? What could go wrong?


Standing Mountain's goal was to keep this neighborhood in tact and possibly take over the whole town himself so the elves would have their own city. His secondary goal was the open a gate to Elfland in Fishton and acquire artifacts (like Ajax's Ring of DJock).

Malcolm McKenzie the grizzled barbarian: Malcolm is the NPC Vassal of the powerful barbarian patron Kyle O'Conner. Kyle sent him to Fishton to "see what's going on over there" and to take some action if needed. Malcolm had an army about 4 times the size of anyone else in the event so he could easily be a spoiler. As such I gave him a scoring sheet and character description that might limit him just stomping everyone else. One story element I added is, since Malcolm is Kyle's uncle, it stands to reason his nephew rose to the throne over to him due to some flaw in the uncle's approach to state and warcraft.


I posited he likes to win battles where he's outmatched. I also posited he wanted to give Fishton to Kyle as a Winter Equionix gift without asking the nephew for extra resources.

So that's the cast of characters. We have a mad warlock trying to raise a demon from the waves, an angry beserker trying to kill a PC by any means necessary, a put upon barbarian Mayor, an unpredictable elf, and a resourceful and tricky bro bandit. All vying for control of a single town and region. So, what happened?

After Action Report

Play started when I announced that Standing Mountain's teacher and master, Waving Tree the Elven Spellsword, finished a ritual he had been doing at the Great Tree Standing Mountain had grown in the center of his district. Waving Tree exploded into starlight and opened a portal into the Great Tree and about 100 elven warriors of various sorts came filing out and kneeled before Standing Mountain to serve him. As the PC elf didn't have much in the way of armies yet (but was working on it the last few weeks) this was my way of getting him in the game and delivering on past effort he had put in developing the district and searching for elf warriors.

Waiving Tree's spirit then blasted across the skyline and every facton leader started hearing Twin Peaks style static in their ears. They could focus the sound like a transistor radio by twisting their ears and tune in to heard the words of any other faction leader. The caveat being each faction leader had to give permission. This was my story reason for allowing Faction leaders to speak to eachother privately without needing to be in the same room. We were not going to have time to work out each face to face meeting and how those might happen with regards to safety precautions between parties. It would have added too much to the DM work when I could just allow mic talk freely with this story macguffin. 

I informed players they could talk to each other freely in character and scheme all their like. Alliances, betrayals, false and real promises. All on the table. That's one of the Battle Braunstein's best new play experiences. It reminds me of the game "Diplomacy" and was a big part of Jeffro's Battle Braunstein, as I've been told. 

I then went about "going around the table" essentially meeting with each faction leader in private mic discussion one at a time to see what their questions, concerns, or rulings might be. While I did this, I could see players shuffle off to private mic rooms with eachother already. Fantastic!

I found the main thing every player asked me about privately was "do I have a recon or know much much this other faction leader has in their army". The answer was no, at least not yet. ACKS has rules for running "recon checks" so I promised each of them I'd get to doing that shortly and see who know what about who.

Kush surprised me by stating he'd be marching on Fishton before he even got his first recon check. He was impatient or maybe he had a plan? I decided he'd be marching "for a day or so" while I ran the checks and players could scheme.

The checks themself took forever and this is a very cumbersome part of the ACKS Domains at War:Campaigns book which I don't enjoy at all. I understand the idea behind it and think army vs army recon needs some sort of established rules but to my mind, this aint it.

At the end of the checks the players knew a bit about most of the other armies (though some checks totally failed and folks had no clue). One check which may have changed Kush's plan to attack the town was if he know the size of McKenzie's massive force. It was just about 2 miles north of the town while Kush was attacking the south. 

Battle approached as Kush marched across the fields towards Fishton. Tuck saw the dust kicking up and this would not be a surprise attack. Tuck's men manned the wall. Standing Mountain's elves hemmed and hawwed about taking the wall. I made it clear to Standing Mountain that he'd need to be in the walls itself to take part of the battle, after he asked me if he could just "hold his tree" which we were treating as a big tower defense location but deeper into the town. He didn't love the idea of being in the walls with human forces and risking elf blood but eventually he mixed in with Tuck's forces.

Ajax for his part had started marching towards Fishton from the north and arrived at the town around the same time as Kush. Because I rolled him as "surprised" by Kush, he didn't have time to man the Fishton walls and was instead out in the field. He had apparently been working Tuck to make an oath to him (Ajax) to eliminate Edelweiss and Fish City someday with him. For that, Ajax would throw in with the Fishton Mayor. In a beautiful piece of play, Ajax refused to join the defense of Fishton in the first round of the battle until Tuck made the oath! He didn't help until round 2!

McKenzie noticed the battle from 2 miles away and began gathering his forces to march. We devised it would take him about 15 minutes to get there and I ruled it would take about 15-20 minutes to get the men on the move. So he'd arrive on the battle (and easily kill everyone if he wanted) in about the 3rd round.

Kush assaulted the walls with his screaming beserkers as he had 2 INVISIBLE weed dragons flying overhead and coughing the sticky icky on Tuck's men and the Standing Mountain's elves. The dragons were actually some weed giants that Kush cast "polymorph other" on to turn them this way. When they were killed they turned back into giants. Kush also had 2 weed giants who were smashing at the walls. 

Elf and men clashed and by the end of the first round of mass combat about 60 of the Fishton side had fallen and two of Kush's weed giants had been felled. Killing giants was one of Tuck's scoring conditions so I made sure to remind him to note this. 

I made a check to see if Kush saw McKenzie's forces marching toward the town from the north, which seemed fair since Kush himself was transformed into a FLYING tiger. He saw them and decided to disengage. Ajax and Tuck didn't take chase but McKenzie did.

Titus had some flash mobs of sw1fties going on during the battle but this didn't really grab anyone's attention much beyond Tuck sending authorities to break it up. The flash mobbers went back to their barista jobs.

Here is when we got into the sort of more free form play that Jeffro talked about in his Fishstein. Up until now I was tracking time pretty closely. But as the clock was winding closer to our stop time I started to realize the main elements which were dovetailing and what would really matter. 

Firstly, McKenzie decided to chase Kush into the hills and just destroy him. He told me he had oaths from some of the other faction leaders (which are scoring conditions for him) so he was going to lean on that as a way to win. Which meant Kush had to die so Fishton would be left at peace. 

So it became clear that what REALLY mattered was if McKenzie caught him. Since victory (if caught) was assured over Kush. So we worked out distances and movement speed for each army. With Kush traveling twice as fast as the barbarian's, it came down to an ACKS strategy check to see who acted first. Kush won so McKenzie would spend around 2 or 3 days chasing through the hills which were Kush's home. One can understand why he'd be able to evade an interloper force in his own hills. 

Next, there was the usual weird (stupid) D&D plan going on. This time it was between Kush and Titus about getting CThaylor to rise from the waves. I no-prepped this and told both players "you'll have to figure out how such a thing will be accomplished, I'll make a check at the time or something". Kush, new to brosr session play (he's been a patron a few times) was perhaps a bit skeptical something so important could just be made up at the time. But we did it!  


Through play and meme magick we decided that the way to rise CThaylor from the river was obvious. Clearly one will need to perform a mock wedding with a cursed ring between a woman polymorphed to look like CThaylor and a floridaman. Oh and it has to be down while standing in the river. Everyone knows this. 

To accomplish this, however, Kush would need to get his witch into Fishton to meet with Titus's cult so the witch could cast the polymorph and perform the ceremony. Kush decided to fly the witch and another invisible weed dragon into town so I made a check to see if this breach was noticed. It wasn't so game on.

In the meantime Tuck had gotten Standing Mountain and Ajax to align with him and agree to deal with the cult. They tried to investigate around town and figure out where the shadowy cult had their headquarters. Unfortunately Standing Mountain's henchman venturer (merchant) Chumlee (of Pawn Stars fame) was captured by the cult. There was an interrogation so the cult knew the "good guys" were gunning for them. Wedding planning was sped up!

Titus left Chumlee alive in the street surrounded by various snack cake wrappers to make Standing Mountain believes the fat sob had merely gone on a sugar bender all night. I note now that Titus left points on the table since he had a scoring condition to sacrifice leveled hench etc of other factions! Was Titus's player playing "get along gang"?

The finale of all this is obvious. It was always obvious. It had to be. And the dice abide. 

Tuck, Ajax and Standing Mountains forces learned about where the CThaylor cult hideout was. Upon seeing a mixed use building with a St4rbucks, F0rever 21 and Ch1potle all on the bottom floor, they should have realized sooner where the sw1fties reside! 

I didn't run the attack on the hideout house with rolls because inside were only a couple dozen thieves and assassins. Titus decided to build his faction with ruffians (thief sorts who do thiefy things) rather than troops. But eliminating the evil sw1fties bought the evil faction leaders some time for what we have now deemed the Wet Wedding. 

Kush also sent his single invisible weed dragon to attack the combined Tuck forces as they approached the river to slow them down and give more time for the Wet Wedding celebration. The weed dragon killed a unit of Tuck's men but managed to slow them down 10 minutes or so.

I made a check for Standing Mountain to notice the Wet Wedding ceremony going on down the street from the Hideout since he's an elf with much better listen and find secret door checks. He succeeded and peeled off from the mass combat to try and drop a fireball on the wedding and end it before the ring could be put on Mid Summer (polymorphed as a miniature CThaylor). The fireball went off and she and Trabajo were killed. Standing Mountain was sad about killing his hermano de otra madre.

Titus shot his own fireball at Standing Mountain and hurt the elf and his giant hawk but felled neither.

But did Standing Mountain the Wet Wedding ceremony? Here's when the usual DM vs PC finagling and arguments began. You've all had them. 

I googled how long the average wedding ceremony was: 10-30 minutes. So I made a chart to roll a dice and came up with 20 minutes. And the battle vs the Weed Dragon was 10 minutes. So Standing Mountain peeled off during minute 20 within the phase when the wedding MIGHT commence. 

So the solution I came up with is an opposed initiative check from Standing Mountain vs The Quick Seamstress (Kush's witch who was previously named Mary Jane). The Quick Seamstress won the check meaning she rushed through the ceremony. CThaylor would rise!

But wait! "Hey dubs you said there was only a 50% chance the wedding would take 20 minutes!!! So maybe it took 30 and Mid Summer and Trabajo were killed before it ended!!" ARGH! Curse my dumb chart. I won't bore you with the details but I had to admit the player was right. 

So the results of the Fishstein came down to a coin flip.

And it came up fishtails. CThaylor rose from the river and I let everyone know that her stats were the same as the 1e Deities and Demigods (out of print) Cthulhu but weaker by 50%. 1e Cthulu has 400 hp so CThaylor has 200 etc. 


She rose from the waters and started singing and smashing everything and everyone in town who was not Chaotic aligned. Titus the Warlock and Mary Jane the Quick Seamstress witch laughed and cackled as this massive stupid kaiju foolishness wrecked the town. 

Tuck and co booked it out of town and CThaylor did not catch them. She wasn't really chasing them. Once all Lawful and Neutral folk within the town's walls were eaten and their temples, homes, and businesses smashed; CThaylor sat down on a throne of giant rubble and hummed "Shake it Off" to herself. Did the players like this? Well; players gonna hate hate hate hate.

Conclusion 

The new campaign state in this region has been developed. And it was done in a way which was FUN. Fishton has dropped down to a Class 5 city in ACKS Rules. It's now a Chaotic town again and a scary and confounding possible adventure locale. Players have already talked about trying to go in and rescue Trabajo. Maybe he survived somehow? 

Tuck is no longer mayor (obviously) and Standing Mountain's dream of a powerful elven district in Fishton has slipped through his grasp like the ashes of burnt leaves. This even hurts me since I had an elven PC who I sent to live in this district! Did he survive?

Ajax the mercenary bandit has oaths from 2 PCs to help him take over Fish City from said PCs former adventuring compatriot. Will they follow through? Will Ajax demand this post haste or somewhere down the line? I believe Ajax will make for the wilderness and live on the land for a time to supply his land. If "bandits" are rolled on the random encounter charts in this region in the future it will likely be Ajax or some of his people. The story can be developed further from there until I decide is a good time to resolve the Fish City hanging thread.

Kyle, through McKenzie, was unable to claim Fishton as a vassal. If he still cares about this he'll need to gather forces or maybe hire high level PCs to deal with the CThaylor situation by sideways means. 

Kush now controls Fishton and his evil devil weed trade is re-established. His witch is happy as all peasants in town must make blood and treasure sacrifice to CThaylor on the regular. It's clear Kush and his Witch will rise in power and they'll have the ability to do evil spell rituals and attract chaotic humans and beings from far off. Including any evil PCs that get rolled up (I personally have an evil lizardman warrior that will likely move here).

That is all true if Titus and Kush can work together. Evil's main problem is lack of trust. But this tension works in the favor of the campaign and perhaps PCs could do some faction play stuff of turning these guys against eachother in session. It leaves the region state ripe for ADVENTURE not lost threads that we all pretend never existed.

Parting Thoughts

This was really fun. 

A player asked how a DM knows when to run something like this. 

I decided to run this particular scenario since I thought the CThaylor cult was fascinating and terrifying and I thought Kush was a fantastic NPC with a great tie in to the PCs and region. Though he was created to explain the situation with Edelweiss's Ajax was another NPC that needed some time to resolve what he'd do. 

I advise DMs to run a Battle Braunstein when they find themselves in a similar situation. When you start acquiring threads of great stuff you simply don't have enough session or downtime time (and mental acuity) to resolve, run it like this.

The Battle Braunstein is a new gaming tech based on the oldest of all RPG gaming tech: the original Braunstein. 

Play like this probably isn't all that different from the sorts of things Alexander Macris (the author of Adventure, Conqueror King System) does in his sessions with higher level PCs. I imagine they have wars, and push ahead into the calendar with variable timekeeping to resolve loyalty checks with peasants and troops. They may even do a bit of PVP on a political or statecraft scale.

But I still think the Braunstein is somehow something new. There's something intangible here of being able to grab all those things about your campaign that have the DM or players pumped up and turn them into a night of PVP fun. The PVP element will do what the BROSR always talks about which is give player autonomy and also give new input from outside sources beyond the DM for the behavior of antagonists. 


You can start a campaign this way (see my entry on the "audacious approach" to patrons) or even better you can spice up a campaign that may be growing stale somehow. Or at least have a region that is.

You can do it like I did and involve a couple of the PCs who have reached a particular scale (in this case "platoon" scale of having 500 troops or less) or you can make it a fully NPC event to resolve a political upheaval you see happening in your campaign or feel that must needs to happen.

McKenzie's player said that the backroom deals were very interesting. He stated that the instructions from the Patron (Kyle) were more conservative than the scoring sheet I made for McKenzie. As noted above I designed this on purpose because Kyle's orders would likely make for a less fun Braunstein event. As we've noted on podcasts this can sometimes be the danger of patron play; the flattening of the gameplay space or the rounding off the edges of difficulty. It's fair for a DM to give win conditions etc that help make a fun playstyle and playspace.

These games are designed to be played.

So, it's time to give the Battle Braunstein a shot and play yours! Be sure to report on it when you do.

Scoring

Gold Medal: Titus Endicus with 4,500 points
Silver Medal: Kush with 3,500 points
Bronze: Malcolm McKenzie with 1,600 points

Score Breakdown

Ajax (1,500)

-Kill Arcane Casters through your own warfare: 100 points per HD over 2 
-Take Fishton in League: 1,000
-Take Fishton Undisputed: 2,500
-Activate Null Magic Zone: 2,000
-Win duel with martial faction character of level 6+: 1,000 +200 per level above you
-Acquire Faction leader oath to help with the Edelweiss problem at some point: 500 points per oath ... This was accomplished 3 times with oaths from Tuck, McKenzie, and Standing Mountain. DING DING DING

Kush (3,500)

-kill Tuck: 2,000
-Tuck dies: 200
-CThaylor released: 1,000... DING
-Devil Weed trade re-established: 1,000 ... DING
-Fishton vassaled to Kush somehow (leader kicking up to Kush): 2,500
-Kush takes Fishton himself: 1,500 ... DING
-Personally Kill Lawful cleric, paladin of level 6+ controlled by other Faction player: 1,000 +200 points per HD over 6
-points above still earned even if faction is destroyed at the end

Titus Endicus  (4,500)

-Cthaylor released: 2,500  DING
-CThaylor destroys Fishton: 2,000  DING
-Lawful Divine Casters killed by some machinations of Cult: 200 points per HD4+ (400 points for level 5 etc)
-Sacrifices made of Lawful peasants etc: 1 point per peasant
-Sacrifices (not killed in war) made of Lawful/Neutral classed people controlled by another Faction: 50 points per HD (example 1 level 1 fighter and 2 level 2 mages = 250 points)
-points above still earned even if faction is destroyed at the end

Standing Mountain (0 points)

-SM takes over Fishton: 1,000 points
-Elf District Survives: 1,000 points if true at end of event plus 100 points per week
-Secure Artifact for the elves as per Waving Tree’s request: 1,000 points per artifact
-Open a portal to elfland: 2,000 points
-Make no oaths by end of the event (including lying about it): 1,000

Tuck (600)

-hold Fishton: 2,000 points at end of event OR 200 points per week up to 2,000 max (example: 400 points if hold it for two weeks before it’s taken by someone else. 2,000 points if event ends and situation resolved and you’re holding it, despite length of event) ... One week  survived so DING 
-eliminate the CThaylor cult: 1,500 points
-kill Kush yourself: 1,500 points
-Kush dies: 100 points
-Trabajo lives: 1,000 points
-Kill giants: 200 points per giant killed through your own warfare or blade. Two were killed. DING DING

Malcolm McKenzie (1,600)

-Get oath from a faction leader to end Edelweiss’s reign of Fish City (to be played later if needed): 500 points per ally (dm will ask privately if they are lying, no points if they are) ... DING DING DING

-Win Duel with Martial Character(s) from Other Player(s) Faction(s): 200 points per level over 5

-Run elves out of Fishton or Kill them all: 1,000 points

-Fishton elves gone by other means not involving McKenzie: 100 points ... DING

-Win battle where you are outmatched in BR by 20% or more (to show bravery): 1,500 points

-Win battle where you outmatch the opponent BR by 50% or more: 

-500 points as McKenzie has an old school mindset of nigh equal bloodshed. He will shrug and say “nephew you know I never saw glory in stomping on a cripple”. Doing this might still be necessary to win other points. It’s your call

-Get Fishton to vassal under Kyle without bringing in new resources from Kyle. Like a Winter Solstice surprise to the nephew! (doesn’t matter who is running the town): 2,000 points




Dubzaron Session 141: Dazed and Confused

Session played on 02/21/2024. Participating PCs:  Daria: L9 Bladedancer, Lawful. George of the Jungle: L4 Beastmaster, Neutral Reaver: L5 Ba...