Dubzaron Session 99: Guido’s Fort

Hello, this is BDubs. 

I was a PC in this session which was played back in February of 2023 playing Liano the Elven Enchanter. This ACKS class, the template I rolled, and my high (but not max) Charisma makes for a very interesting approach to being a PC. Liano is like the mega Face. DM JD's session report, which I'll note below, is very sparse indeed. But, because I was a PC I'm going to give you my impressions before I drop his session outline, date concerns, and the XP we rightly earned.

Firstly let's talk about the character class make up. While I've been on hiatus from DMing I spoke to players about the possibility of having a Neutral/Chaotic leaning party. I said something to the effect of "y'all are always wanting to play the really weird and/or stupid ACKS classes so let's make a party, spawn them outside the Empire (where super Lawful Drakon will just imprison them) and see if we can survive in the wilderness and podunk towns out there".

So we ended up with some particularly strange classes:

-Lil' Khangsta the rapping mummy. Son of Kangsta Rappa of BROvenloft fame? I don't remember what "class" this was. Some kind of undead?

-Altair the Nosferatu. That's correct, in ACKS "Nosferatu" is a class. This guy was really weird. In the session he mostly just shot a crossbow. But it was strange walking around with a low level vampire on the team.

-Sage the Hobbit Burglar. This is essentially Bilbo Baggins. He acted about the same except he was a bit surly. It's kind of like a Thief but with a few weird class skills like "begging for mercy" and "annoy the dm"

-Besides those we had some more standard classes like Hunter the Explorer, Elfric the elf spellsword (iirc), and Proteus the Mage.

Most everyone was level 1 but Sage was like level 4 or 5 at this point and my elf Liano was level 2 after I bullied DM Vince McMaximus into an easy score session sewer delve the week or so before. 

So the main crux of the session is we traveled out to a dumb little town called Guido's Fort. It's my understanding the DM was running a module and just changing a coat of paint to make it better fit the Dubzaron milieu. I thought overall it was fantastic. Once we were at the fort was crossed the river into the module's wilderness to bop around. At this point it was feeling alot like B2 "Keep on the Borderlands" where you're looking for the Caves of Chaos. We kind of figured there was no dungeon equivalent to the Caves of Chaos but we still were mostly getting our bearings as you do in B2 in the first session or two.

We traveled around woodland paths within the hex (I think) which the DM treated almost like outdoor dungeon paths. This was pretty cool. During this we dealt with a 2 gang of hobgoblins, 3 killer bees, an ogre, a gang of cavemen. We fought pretty well overall but our main approach was trying to use Liano's abilities to charm as many of them as possible and gather an ad hoc army. 

Liano was able to charm the Ogre (a dream of mine since I first played BX) and a gang of hobgoblins. We convinced the hobs to take us to their camp (lair) where there was almost a big battle due to a comedy of errors and misunderstandings. But thankfully cooler (charmed) head prevailed and we instead made pals with the camp of hobs and used that as our safe point to stay between sessions. 

Liano also took to standing on a stump or something to distract the hobs with his Magical Music ability while Sage the Hobbit robbed the camp blind. We made an ok score this way but didn't level or something. The players at this had decided that we wanted to attack and take over Guido's Fort since there's no way any of us would be able to return to Drakon's Lawful Empire of Law and Law. We'd need a place to lay low. Our schemes involved meeting with the hobgoblin chief so Liano could charm said chief and then we'd take the hob army and wreck Guido's Fort. But that wouldn't be in the cards for session 99, we were out of game time.

I really enjoyed being a PC in this session and DM JD was well on his way to having a cool new region for players to spawn their weirdo anti-social PCs/classes to fill in the world outside the bounds of the Dubzaron Empire's borders. Sadly we only got one more session with DM JD in this location and, while it was amazingly fun (we charmed an ogre and convinced his ogre parents he needed to go to anti-homersectional tr444nsition therapy when we had actually previously killed him [in honorable combat]) DM JD had to retire from frequent play. 

The PCs ended up going on to other locations and finding a way to fit in with other groups that would agree to adventure with a nosferatu or deep one or whatever other dumb stuff this party had. So they still had an impact on the campaign. Yet I lament the misfits weren't able to stay together and take over Guido's Fort. Oh the mischief we'd have engaged in.

Following my comments above are the notes and short session report from DM JD. Thanks, DM JD!

-Bdubs 08/21/2

Timekeeping: 2/22: Crossed river, explored the Hill: 2/23 - 2/24: Stayed in the hobgoblin camp for two days, awaiting communication from the Hobgoblin King. xp from kills: 353 5 Hobgoblins 75 3 Killer Bees 18 1 Ogre 140 3 Neanderthals 60 4 hobgoblins 60 xp from treasure: 92 total xp: 445 8 shares: 56 to PC's, 28 to henchmen

Session 99 DM Jared Timekeeping: 2/22: Crossed river, explored the Hill: 2/23 - 2/24: Stayed in the hobgoblin camp for two days, awaiting communication from the Hobgoblin King. xp from kills: 353 5 Hobgoblins 75 3 Killer Bees 18 1 Ogre 140 3 Neanderthals 60 4 hobgoblins 60 xp from treasure: 92 total xp: 445 8 shares: 56 to PC's, 28 to henchmen

Overview: Party gathers in new location "Guido's Fort" to explore "The Hill," which lies across the river. After numerous small encounters they charm a group of hobgoblins and stay at / burgle their camp. Khangsta was downed to exactly zero and rolled very well for his mortal wounds. Bounced right back! Impressions: First time running a module. It has a great overland map. Copious outdoor encounters. Adapting b/x to ACKs trivially easy. Chaotic-friendly party. Elven Enchanter charms so easily it makes faction play challenging from a DM perspective. Playstyle requires some thought. Allowed players to remain in charmed hobgoblin camp. Not sure if this was the right call. Presumably if it's safe for the hobgoblins, it must be safe for those under their protection.

GM: A- A slow reader, I have to give myself credit for buying and reading the module. I'm worried as the players color outside the lines I won't be able to accomodate that freedom while maintaining an interesting, in-game justified level of challenge. I'm not saying there's an particular 3e challenge level to be maintained, but there must be off-screen reasons why certain in-game power equilibriums have been maintained, and if I don't have good understandings of those dynamics the game will fall apart.