Isle of Fury part 4

A few nights ago we ran part Four of the ongoing Isle of Fury introductory adventure. This played out a bit differently than other nights, as one encounter bled into another and lasted the entire night. It didn't seem to affect things negatively, however, and there was a break in between to do some creative roleplaying, even if no-one got their five minute rest.

As the adventure opened, our Vikings found themselves in a room freshly cleared of guard-goblins. Some quick dungeoneering told them that the goblins had been guarding the opposite side of the room from which they entered; out this unexplored door was a rope bridge extending over a subterranean cavern. Bartix had the idea of chucking the corpses into the chasm... short, sweet, and didn't involve any defilement! Secure in the knowledge that they were successfully working this dungeon backwards, the party retreated to a safe place and slept the night. I shuffled some things around meanwhile to reflect the goblin's awareness of eight missing soldiers.

The next day, Gudrun the fighter shuffled off to "watch the boat," because Todd has a new job and can't play anymore. In his place came Oddny, the 1st level human paladin played by Rebecca. She was good enough to replace a Defender with another Defender, and we're all grateful. The five adventures forged back into the dungeon, retracing their steps without seeing signs of monster activity. They found themselves back on the rope bridge, and Mendas the Rogue volunteered to scout ahead.

A poor Perception role made Mendas miss the guidewire on the bridge, and above him two ranks of spears descended from the stalactites! But I rolled a 1. The traps, we decided, were only engineered against a proper fording of the bridge, and were designed to take out the vulnerable invaders in back of the leader tripping the wire. Since they were crossing it backwards, the spears passed feet in front of him, coming to a rest harmlessly hanging above the bridge. Also, I don't think I gave out experience for this encounter, so there will be a little extra in everyone's envelope.

Continuing on, Mendas peaked into the room at the edge of the rope bridge. There he saw a studious goblin sitting at a desk, scratching at paper. At his feet sat an enormous crocodile. If the goblin was not alert, the crocodile certainly was... bringing the news to the party, they decided to storm the room and see what might happen. Bartix prepared a "Comprehend Languages" spell, and everyone aided him in the hope that he might get a good enough role to speak goblin as well as understand it. We did get maximum aid, but he didn't get enough to gain the speaking ability. Still, there was a chance they could bargain.

The party snuck across the bridge, then moved into the room. The crocodile rushed forward, and the goblin called for help! So no bargaining... The party descended on the crocodile and started whomping on it, getting it bloodied in only two rounds. Still, it was biting and grabbing with equal ferocity, and the small room made it hard to avoid. The goblin stayed at his desk and began to throw spells... This was an elite feyblooded Goblin Warcaster I had made from the DMG, and he ended up working pretty well in this fight.


Since things were more or less under control, Mendas snuck out the other door to the room to see what could be responding to the Warcaster's call. He was immediately seen by three goblins, two of which charged him. This began my night of Tremendous Goblin Luck... I rolled a 20 and an 18, and just like that, the rogue was near-death. He had to tumble away, back into the comparative safety of the crocodile jaws, and leave the stouter Rurik guarding the door.

Varin and Rurik forced the crocodile back a ways, and Oddny charged the Warcaster, leaving him backed up against a desk and generally screwed. So we thought! He unexpectedly teleported (fey-blooded, see) across the room to the rope bridge entrance and popped the party again with a Scintillating Blast. Bartix had previosuly crossed to the other door and used his Thunderwave spell to push back the goblins at the door. Bartix now got his trademark evil grin and turned Thunderwave on the Warcaster. He hit, sent the dude back, and into the chasm! Having a minor action left, Bartix cast Light on his falling form so he'd be easy to find and finish off. Which was awesome...

Paladin swords and warlord greataxes finished the crocodile (I think Rurik had a greataxe critical hit in there, which is always something to behold). Bartix went to the ledge and began his other trademark, "Magic Missile the fuck out of him." Everyone else, meanwhile, formed a cone of death around the doorway, waiting for those two goblins. First one, then a second goblin came charging in, and were quickly dispatched. The party fell silent, but they distinctly heard voices coming from throughout the dungeon. "Wait until you see the whites of their eyes," Bartix could hear. They waited, then heard something else from the other side of the dungeon, which they couldn't locate. Finally the group decided they had to charge these goblins.

Mendas scouted ahead again, and crept slowly into the empty hallway. He stuck his head carefully around a wide doorway, facing missile fire under the protection of total concealment. The way I was rolling, though, it didn't matter: he was immediately pegged by two javelins from the nine goblins in the room, taking some 18 damage. Now that they were committed, the party charged into the room. To lead off the assault, Bartix and Mendas broke out their Daily Powers on tightly grouped foes. First Bartix hit five of them with an Acid Arrow, causing some 40 total damage by the time everyone made their saves (and bloodying three of them straight off). Next Mendas did a Blinding Storm and threw knives in the eyes of four more. That covered the goblins pretty well, and the rest of the group got stuck in.

At this point in the night, most everyone had used their daily and their encounter powers... but they still had action points! The goblins hung on for a while and did some damage, but were rapidly taken out. Whew! The two rooms together netted over 300 experience points apiece, putting Varin and Oddny up to Second Level.


Now that there was time for looting, the group uncovered some 400 gold spread between various bedrolls, strong boxes, and the desk. Also found was a Potion of Healing to partially replenish the four that the party burned on this fight. Varin and Bartix descended into the chasm to find the dead Warcaster, who wore magic Bloodthread +1 cloth armor. This went to the wizard.

We left things there. Another corner of the island cleared!

Casualties:
1 Elite Feyblood Goblin Warcaster
1 Crocodile
4 Goblin Backblades
7 Goblin Warriors
1 large bottle of fancy beer
6 beers

Kind of a sober night... we miss you, Matt!

Runestone Blessings

In the Isle of Fury adventure, our characters have found several runestones detailing the mythological history of the Norse people. Each stone, when read, has a different magical effect. All effects can be triggered as a free action and can be used once. The players have proven, however, that rereading the stone recharges the effect.

The following text is from Goodman Games The Adventure Begins, from their Dungeon Crawl Classics line.

The Rune Stone of Creation: Upon the rune stone of creation the past is revealed, the true story of the beginning of existence. The planting of Yggdrasil, the world-tree, is described and upon its branches are placed Asgard (the realm of the gods), Niflheim (the underground realm of the vulgar humanoid and the dead), Jotunheim (land of the giants), Svartálfaheim (home of the dark elf), Álfheim (home of the light elf), and Midgard (home to man). The carvings tell how the world was created, and how the years are numbered. The secret origins of the dwarfs are revealed, as is the creation of the first man and woman.

Reading the stone grants the effect of the Cleric power Bless, detailed here in the D&D Compendium:

Bless, Cleric level 2 power

Rune Stone of Fury: Upon the rune stone of strength is carved the secrets of the berserker: the rage brought on by battle, a gift from Thor, the ultimate weapon of Northmen, of Æsir and Vanir against their many foes. The runes recall the events that led to the first war, what occurred in the struggle between the Æsir and
Vanir, and the peace that was wrought from the bloody conflict.

Reading the stone grants the following effect:

Savage Beserker, Barbarian Blessing
You rage with the fury of a thousand Conans.
Daily Divine
Effect: Expend and gain the following powers for the rest of the encounter:
Murderous Frenzy
The savage berserker gains 1 action point the first time it reduces a foe to 0 hit points in an encounter.
Savage Rebuke (immediate reaction, when hit by a melee attack; at will)
The savage berserker makes a basic melee attack.

Rune Stone of Wisdom: This rune stone reveals what Odin sacrificed of himself in the pursuit of knowledge. The stone speaks of Odin’s eye, which was plucked out in exchange for inner sight. It tells the story of how Odin willingly impaled himself upon his own spear and was hung from the branches of Yggdrasil until he saw the secret of the original rune stones. The stone reveals that only through pain and loss was knowledge gained.

Reading the stone grants the effect of the Paladin power One Heart, One Mind, detailed in the D&D Compendium:

One Heart, One Mind, Paladin Utility 6 power

Rune Stone of Rebirth: The rune stone of rebirth reveals a story of hope. It speaks of the day when a sliver of golden light will shatter the endless gloom of night. Out from the ashes of the destruction of the gods, a beautiful world will rise. The breath of life will once again fill the lungs of the fair Baldr. Baldr reborn will travel the new world and everywhere his foot touches ground, abundance will sprout without the sowing of seeds.

Reading the stone grants the effect of the magic ritual Remove Affliction, detailed in the D&D Compendium:

Remove Affliction, Level 8 magic ritual

Isle of Fury part 3

Last night we played the third part of the Isle of Fury adventure. When we last saw our Brave Little Vikings, they had breached a suspicious cave complex through a back door, and fought their way through a Cave Bear to do it. Now they continued into the darkness determined to slay any and all goblins that might offend their sensibilities.

The players started out in the cave, standing over the corpse of a freshly slain cave bear. We did some hand-waving to replace Anthony's ranger with Varin, a half-elf warlock played by new player Marc. Everyone got reacquainted and pressed forward into a passage in the back of the chamber.

I'll save some time by using the flavor text from Goodman Games' Isle of Fury; players, please advise me if I'm violating copyright too egregiously:

The dungeon corridor splits into three much smaller hallways. Each of these hallways is obscured by long wisps of spider web that stretch from floor to ceiling.

No one wanted to treat the webs too lightly. Mendas the rogue scouted ahead to the mouth of all three hallways, but found nothing. Bartix the wizard tried to burn the webs, but the environment was too damp to have much affect. In the meantime, they noticed that the inner walls were stalagmites, 15 feet high in a thirty foot ceiling that was probably crawling with spiders. They decided to man up and send Gudrun the fighter in first down the center corridor, with Varin and Rurik the warlord a step behind, and Mendas and Bartix waiting back at the branching point. Halfway in, spiders dropped down: a Deathjump giant spider in front, a swarm of smaller spiders dropping down into a gap in the party, and two more dropping in the other hallways in an attempt to flank. Everyone rolled initiative and began!
This was a tough fight, with lots of poison effects going around and no room to maneuver. Gudrun got stuck in with the deathjump spider and hacked at it throughout the battle. Matt was controlling the fighter (the original player, Todd, has had to leave the game), and forgot to mark on the first attack; then missed the next two attacks when it would have helped. Rurik and Varin retreated from the corridors, but the warlock kept getting stuck adjacent to the swarm, taking a swarm aura attack and an attack of opportunity from using his spells in the same turn. Bartix got in a good rhythm of giving ground and thunderwaving the swarm back. (They took half damage from all but close and area attacks, so the options were limited.) Mendas was engaged immediately by the second deathjump spider, and he and Rurik fought it for quite a while before overcoming it.
There was some cool stuff: Gudrun used his Berserker power gained from reading the Runestone of Thor to respond immediately to attacks on him with another attack; he then cleaved, reaping-struck with an action point, and moved one square instead of shifting to get an attack of opportunity from a swarm, which he responded to. Three axe swipes in one turn! A few turns later, though, he was dropped by spider poison, and barely hung on to life until the end of the battle. At the end of the encounter, only a swarm was left, crawling over Gudrun's helpless form, but it was down to one hit point. I told the room that there was only one little spider left alive. Mendas rushed in to finish it off, but missed... then the swarm acted, rolling a critical hit! Obviously the King Spider had survived to the end. It was eventually killed, and everyone took a break and some healing. Bartix was wary of egg sacks, so he magic-missiled the hell out of the ceiling. A better DM would have squashed his head with a falling rock for that crap.

A word about this encounter: as written, these corridors should have been really tight, giving penalties to armor class. In the meantime, there were only two spider swarms, of generally weak strength, but I can't really read 3rd edition stat blocks. I took out these complexities because it's my second dungeon, and I was trying to make this a vanilla encounter. The fight was still defined by claustrophobic terrain, with everyone's ability to flank and shift and draw line of fire severly hindered.

Also, the miniatures used were Deathjump spiders and a Red Scarab swarm. It's fun to fight the things you're fighting, I'm finding, so I tweak the game rules to fit the miniatures. The rules for the monsters came from a Level 2 Rat Swarm, the only swarm that Level 1 characters had a chance against. But they had poison and a swarm aura and played like spiders. As we go on I'll be more confident at changing the stats of an existing monster to fit the appropriate level. Right now I usually just change the name and visual representation... I've played with adding the distinctive power of, say, a Level 11 Kuo-toa fish-man to a level 3 orc, that sometimes works too.

Proceeding through the caves, the group stopped at a widening corridor and declared that they were rolling Perception. Mendas and Varin rolled far above average and spotted two trigger plates just ahead of them! They avoided the plates and inched through the rest of the room, looking every step... but things seemed clear. Try as they might, no one could find the source of the trap, but they reached the doors without incident. The bit of XP from this encounter put the original four characters up to 2nd level! I kept the game going, but allowed players to add things like a +1 to attack, and anything else they could look up while I tore down the current rooms and built the next encounter.

Just after the trapped room, the party had three pathways to possibly follow. Mendas listened down each one, and heard soft voices coming from the south. The party filed quietly down the rock corridors to find a large room with eight goblin sentries.

This oddly shaped room is home to a halfdozen or more of the rat-tailed creatures (which are now goblins in the rewritten encounters) that inhabit this dungeon. Eight small bedrolls, a small pile of gnawed bones, and other odds and ends are strewn about the floor.

Two were asleep, three were playing cards, and three more seemed inattentive. Batrix tried his daily Cloud of Sleep on a cluster of five of them, and had pretty good success. Meanwhile, Mendas snuck up, ending up right next to one of the goblins. With so many sleeping foes, everyone was thinking "coup de grace." Sadly, they got greedy. Rurik and Gudrun tiptoed in, hoping to get within charge range before the trap was sprung. Sadly, Gudrun flubbed the roll, and the goblins snapped to attention. Not only that, they all beat the party's initiative. No sneak attacks!

In a testament to the party's growing strength, these goblins were getting torn up pretty fast. Still, there were 8 of them. Mendas had overextended himself and was facing four, including an archer that could hang back and stick him throughout the fight.

Two of the goblins charged up to engage the magic users, who had ended up in front of the fighters to get the prime shots. They missed... I think all of the goblins missed that first round. Bartix and Varin shifted away, and Gudrun and Rurik took their places. The plan was to finish off the goblins as quickly as possible, so that the melee fighters could aid Mendas at the front of the room. To do that, Gudrun used his daily Brute Strike to murderize one of them, then Spinning Sweeped the other to knock him prone with an action point. Hmm, I guess the party planned on sleeping some time in the near future. Gundrun then bravely advanced, triggering the prone goblin's one opportunity attack so that Rurik would be unhindered. Fighters are so valiant when controlled by proxy! But that aside, he was best prepared to take the hit, and it was a good strategic move.

Rurik joined Mendas in the southwest corner of the room, where the rogue was looking rough. Mendas considered tumbling to get to the one still sleeping goblin, but with all the difficult terrain of the cave floor, he couldn't make it work. Instead he used his Runestone of Thor power, putting on the bear shirt in a manner that you don't normally see in three foot high guys armed only with knives... but it worked, he started responding to all his hits in kind, and spent an action point which he immediately gained back when he killed a goblin. Rurik used Viper Strike to help Mendas set up a flank (I think that was this battle), cool use of powers now that they had room to move!

Finally it was down to just one goblin bowman. Mendas charged him over the rock as the rest of the party closed in. The goblin critted him, and he berserk-responded back with a crit of his own. Long story short the dude died.

These goblins were kind of loaded, with three healing potions and over 200 gold. Finally: this party has been plotting a treasure-free course through the island for three weeks now.

Casualties:
2 Deathjump Spiders
2 spider swarms
2 magical crossbow traps
6 Goblin Warriors
2 Goblin Sharpshooters
18 beers (well, okay, 11 beers and 7 Mike's hard drink products)

Varin, Half-Elf Warlock

Here is the character sheet for Varin, Half-Elf Warlock.

Level 5
Level 4
Level 3
Level 2
Level 1

Vikings Worth Emulating

Everyone's homework is to be more like these vikings (or viking contemporaries). If you must, it can be in-game.

Egil Skallagrimsson

The Viking at Stamford Bridge

Wolf the Quarrelsome

The Norse

The Norse are not historical Norsemen (cause they're also Norse-Elves, Norse-Dwarfs, etc), they're the most stereotyped visions of Vikings brought to life. To quote Jeff's Gameblog, whom I'm stealing this idea from, Vikings are,

Big horned or winged helmets. Loud. Like to brag. Men wear beards and/or moustaches, often elaborately braided.

In this world, the D&D gods exist: Pelor, Bahamut, the whole bit. But so do the Norse gods: there's both a Kord and a Thor (without the need to play pseudo-Viking, Kord can take on more Asian influences). While the rest of the world recognized this uber-pantheon, the Norse worshiped their smaller pantheon.

The Norse were a totally martial civilization, with an economy buoyed by raiding and slaves. At some point, the rest of the world had enough, and begun a bonafide Lewis-ian Clash of Civilizations against them. The Norse were assaulted in their own shores of Scandia. Thousands died and the population either took to the sea or fell back into the Feywild.

At the same time in the heavens, the Norse gods played out their Ragnarok cycle. In the place of the frost giants and fire demons were the D&D gods, both good and evil, trying to defend their patrons against this violent civilization. The Norse gods were defeated and fell silent when their followers needed them most.

All divine powers stemming from Norse gods stopped working on the continent of Eurasia. This was a crippling blow, and all the Norse that could fled to the small colonies on Hyboria. Divine magic seems to work on these islands and a few miles off the coasts of the main continent, but no one has had actual contact with the gods for a while.

As the game opens, the Norse are a dying people, desperately overpopulating their few island cities. It has been six months since the last Norse set foot on the main continent. The armies of the rest of the world declined immediate pursuit, but are now massing in Albion to finish off the wounded animal. Where can your people go?

The Old World

As I've mentioned before, the bulk of this game is set in a weird New World of savage America. But what is the old world like? I figure it's D&D Greyhawk overlaid on actual continents. All the sparse world information in the 4th Edition core books applies, but we'll play fast and loose on how it works with our map.

The Dragonborn empire has fallen, but I see it happening in Turkey and North Africa. There are not many Dragonborn among the Norse, simply because the two populations are a long ways away from each other.

The fallen Tiefling empire predates the Dragonborn empire, so think of them as centered around Rome. It's not an exact map, and the Tieflings never had as much influence in this world as the Romans did in ours.

Scandia is the name of the Norse homelands. Hyboria is the name of Iceland/Greenland, the place that the Norse have had to exodus to.

Albion is the name of the British Isles. They're the main harassers of the Norse, as they have the biggest grudge against them. Albion is in better shape than historical Britain of the late middle ages, and you can run around it finding standard D&D tropes everywhere. It's possible to travel through the Underdark and cross the channel without ever getting wet.

Note than none of these nations are nations of Dwarfs, Elves, Dragonborn, or whatever. Most areas of the world achieve a more-or-less even multi-racial polyglot.

I hope to work without maps until the campaign makes landfall in the New World. Until then, maps would be boring, "Medieval Europe with pointy ears" affairs.

Making Characters

While we have a decent-sized player group now, we're always recruiting. Here is some information for new players.

Characters in Savage Vinland will start at first level. In a playtest, we all had fun at this low power setting, and decided that this was the best way to learn the new system. Making characters is going to be very easy, and I encourage anyone with a Player's Handbook to make your own and bring it to the game. I ask that you use one of the two Attribute Assignment methods instead of rolling. Any class or race in the book is available, as well as the Warforged race that's not in the book.

Note: This contradicts my original plans; I had wanted to introduce Dragonborn and Warforged in game and make them part of the crazy new world of the campaign. But plans changed, we started out at first level, and to put too much into delayed gratification would be a mistake.

Make your character as complete as possible, with whatever equipment is available at the first level with the standard starting resources. The book does a good job of limiting this, and I don't need to design any further.

If you don't have a book, look things up in the online D&D Compendium (link below). It's a crap way to go, but pretty much the whole Player's Handbook is there.

I would prefer that you use some kind of electronic resource for character creation, such as a savable PDF or the great Excel character sheet. When you're done, send it to me; more for records and less for approval. Give your character a Viking name (more on this later).

Here are some resources:

D&D Compendium

D&D PDF and Excel Sheets

Warforged in 4th Edition

Using Pre-Made Characters

I will be happy to make characters for players; in fact, this may be the only way we can handle creation for players that don't have books. Start an e-mail discussion with me about what you want to play. We'll pick role, race, class, and one of two builds for each class (for instance, a Ranger can be built as a ranged bowman or a close-in two-sword fighter). This can be as involved a discussion as you want: I can run with "Make me a shit-kicker," or I can refer you to different text excerpts online until I'm just filling in the dots at your direction. I'll then make your character and have it ready for the first game.

If I make your character, you can change powers, skills, race, class, anything, for the first three games of the campaign.

Using Pre-Made Characters

I will be happy to make characters for players; in fact, this may be the only way we can handle creation for players that don't have books. Start an e-mail discussion with me about what you want to play. We'll pick role, race, class, and one of two builds for each class (for instance, a Ranger can be built as a ranged bowman or a close-in two-sword fighter). This can be as involved a discussion as you want: I can run with "Make me a shit-kicker," or I can refer you to different text excerpts online until I'm just filling in the dots at your direction. I'll then make your character and have it ready for the first game.

If I make your character, you can change powers, skills, race, class, anything, for the first few games you play.

Hermiad, Elf Ranger

Character sheet for Hermiad, elf Ranger

Level 1

Isle of Fury part 2

The other night we had the second meeting of the Savage Vinland campaign. Only Matt and Markus were available, although Anthony showed up at the halfway point. We got the party through two more encounters, so a good night of gaming!


When we left off, the party landed on the Isle of Fury, made friends with some fish men, killed a bunch of goblins around a hijacked rune stone, and used Bartix's powers (and sick mind) to disguise the battle as a mystic curse thing.

As the game started, the party found themselves at a literal crossroads: they had come from the east, from the beach they landed on, and had met a goblin party coming from the North. They decided to track the goblins back to their point of origin, which ended up being a hill crested by more of these 8-foot high runestones.

Mendas prowled around the forest at the base of the hill to see what was what... he saw four guys and a wolf on the hill, kind of poking around, getting ready to uproot more of these stones. Actually the wolf used a cougar miniature, and I should have kept it as a cat (using wolf stats, I guess). No one likes to hit a dog, and I had fun making "Mrroow!" noises.

The party coallesced and planned their assault. Mendas snuck up the south side of the hill, making his stealth roles all the way up to the stones. Bartix took the center, finding a firing position at the base of the hill behind cover. Rurik and Gudrun advanced from the north, getting about halfway up to the base before they were spotted.

What followed was our best-orchestrated fight yet (including the opening test against kobolds). One goblin won initiative and charged down the hill against Rurik, the only guy he could see. Rurik then got hit by a goblin javelin, and finally a blast of lightning from the hobgoblin warcaster on the hill. He was hurting, but the rest of the party snapped into action.

Bartix had been withholding his action, but fired off a Ice Field on the Hobgoblin (hitting the wolf and a goblin too) designed to keep them from advancing down the hill without slipping. It didn't damage anyone, but may have kept them in place. Mendas jumped out and delivered the first of many sneak attacks, I believe against the goblin. Down at the base of the hill, Gudrun had the last initiative, charging out and killing the goblin in one blow with a crit. This shouldn't be a huge thing, a goblin is pretty much the weakest enemy in the game, but the luck wasn't running with us last game like it was in this battle. It's fun when the players win without extra help from the DM; just the dice!

At the start of the second round, things were in place for a well-controlled battle. Mendas stabbed, Bartix blasted, and Rurik charged before any of the monsters could act. When they could, it was miss after miss. Gudrun joined the fray and locked up the battle: by the time the warcaster got to his third round, he had nowhere he could shift, and couldn't use magic. He went down really fast, helped by Mendas's Blinding Storm of Stabs. It hit these four dudes, and blinded all of them; I think it's the best Daily Power the party has access to.



At this point the party was Blessed from the Rune Stone of Ygdrassil, they had combat advantage nearly all the time, they had some warlord effects: the bonuses were getting crazy. I trust that the math was right, because the goblins died fast.

Once everyone was dead, the party enacted Bartix's plan of runic disfigurement and freeze rays. Sadly there was no treasure. Everyone slept, as the Dailies were all exhausted and the healing surges were running low.

Anthony showed up at this point, and picked up Hermiad, an Elf Two-Blade ranger. Uh, in game he was watching the boat or something. This was the first time we met the 4th Edition equilibrium point of five characters, although with only three players. Anyway, thank god we got to five swords for the next encounter.

The next morning the party went out to the crossroads to check out the scene of their first battle. They found tracks that came from, and went back to, the south of the island. The party followed the tracks back to a cave, which they thought might connect to other caves they had seen from the sea. Mendas and Hermiad scouted and found two more caves, one of which had no evidence of humanoid entrance. They plunged into the cave, hoping to find a back door. And they did, and there was a cave bear!

This was an unsubtle fight: the bear waded in and started clawing, while the PCs flanked him (twice) and stabbed from all sides. The bear flubbed a lot of roles early on, and missed four attempts to recharge his "maul everyone in the room" Claw Frenzy; but then he got it out twice in a row and the PCs were hurt. Still, they nicked the bear away without spending daily powers and taking too many hits.


A word on this cave bear: when I put him in the encounter, I wanted a bear, but the 1st level PCs weren't really strong enough for a 6th level elite. I let it go and hoped they would be 2nd level or have gotten some good treasure or something before they got to him. But this dungeon was open-ended, lots of ways to anything, and the PCs decided to start with this back-door entrance. I was pretty sure the cave bear had been eratta-ed, but didn't have the file downloaded when they announced that they were going into this room... so I let it side. The PCs faced a bear doing 1D8+5 damage, when the corrected bear, I know now, should have been clawing for 2D8+5. That would have killed some people, I'm pretty sure, so a good typo all around! They don't get off so lucky when they meet an Ogre Savage...

We ended things there, two encounters and about 250 experience points (but no treasure for the night! Another hazard of the free-form dungeon approach). We'll play again in two weeks.

Casualties:
1 Hobgoblin Warcaster
1 Gray Wolf
2 Goblin Warriors
1 Goblin Backblade
1 Cave Bear
15 Beers

Isle of Fury part 1

Our first campaign meeting happened over two weeks ago now, so I have to backfill this blog entry. I need to think back, through the haze of San Diego Comic Con, back to when we started playing D&D. We had four players on the first night: Zach, Markus, Todd, and Matt.

Zach plays Bartix the Unseemly, the human wizard.

Markus plays Mendas, the halfling rogue.

Todd plays Gudrun, the human fighter.

Matt plays Rurik (Haruld Rurik Ragnarson), the Tiefling warlord.

We actually had a meeting before the campaign started: our old Scion game couldn't meet, so I roped everyone into playing 4th Edition D&D for the night. Everyone played Keep on the Shadowfell characters and ran through the dungeon in the back of the Dungeon Master's Guide. That involved killing many kobolds. They didn't get to the dragon in the bottom floor (spoiler!) but I figured it netted everyone 400 xp and 25 gold... so all of our characters are not really starting characters. Also Todd played a Dragonborn Paladin that night, so I figure we played a slightly apocryphal history.

As the campaign opens, the Norse people have been run out of Scandia and become a nation of refugees in Hyboria. The characters are junior members of a Viking warband, led by earl Gaermund, and for the past month they've been hanging around the overcrowded slum that the city of Kerio has become. Gaermund calls everyone together and asks that they take a longboat out a day and investigate an island as a potential new home for the clan. Explore everywhere, and if it looks promising, he says, kill everything so that it is safe for the women and children.

That was my hook to start the Isle of Fury adventure from the Dungeon Crawl Classics series by Goodman Games. Our characters are Vikings, and at first level they aren't important Vikings. So I can have people order them around instead of using straight capitalism as a motivation. I found an adventure with some Norse elements, but it was written with all Kobolds. That's fine, but we had just done Kobold Hall, and eventually the campaign will swarm with reptiles. So I replaced nearly all the encounters to use goblins instead.

The party landed on the single beach on the island and investigated an old shipwreck. The wreck was stranded on a coral reef, some 50 feet of the shore, and inhabited by two Kuo-toa who didn't seem to want to cause trouble. The players waded out on the reef, spoke to the monsters, made friends, and got all sorts of valuable information about the island. Good for them, encounter won.

I wasn't sure about this encounter; the players did everything right, got the maximum benefit from the opportunity, didn't get more bloodthirsty than necessary, etc. But D&D is about killing things. It can be more, of course, but my implementation of the game doesn't reach for lots of roleplaying. So the first encounter of the campaign risked setting a disturbingly peaceful precedent. But the players have killed many things since, and justified it to themselves by deciding that the fish-men would make excellent future slaves.

After making a fire to dry their clothes, the party started to explore the island proper. They proceeded carefully, picking through the woods close to a path that led inland. This let them observe a party of goblins coming to a crossroads. A group of five goblins (four warriors and a Skullcleaver leader) was leading a crocodile pulling a great eight-foot long stone covered with runes. Ooh, runes!

The party worked through the woods to place themselves optimally: Gudrun far out in front, Mendas in the middle, and Rurik and Bartix farthest away. They sprung their trap, and started to mix it up. Gudrun got hit early, surrounded by three foes, two of which were the toughest things on the board. Meanwhile the rest of the goblins scattered out to engage the various PCs.

Rurik engaged a goblin while Bartix ran away from it, positioning himself on the map to shoot at the main cluster of enemies. He used his daily Freezing Cloud on them, failing to do some damage but extending it with his Orb of Imposition to hit them a few times over the next two turns. Of course, I read after the game that the orb can only extend At-Will powers, but it was cool while the interpretation lasted.

Mendas knifed his goblin and worked up to the main party. Rurik also got stuck in, in time to save Gudrun. There were finally enough PCs to set up some flanking, and Mendas's sneak attack bonus turned the tide. Gudrun used his Daily power at some point, I forget what it did. For the last three turns everyone was just whacking away at the crocodile, who was pretty tough (a 4th level monster, makes sense!) The reward: 10 gold and a healing potion. I'm generally giving the players potions over money whenever I can, because living is better than money (also I intend to start screwing with the game economy).

The goblins defeated and the crocodile gutted, the party checked out the stone being transported by the ex-goblins. The stone was covered in runes that the party could read, although it wasn't the modern Norscican Common they might write in themselves. It told the story of Yggdrasil and the creation of the world. After completing the story, everyone got the ability to activate the Bless cleric power once. Naturally, everyone read the stone.

Next, Bartix detailed his idea to disguise the presence of the party. First, they gathered all the bodies and carved runes all over their skin. Bartix was the most enthusiastic participant in this, and good roleplaying there, Zach. Next the wizard cast Ray of Frost one million times to freeze everything. Hopefully it would look like the rune stone killed everything in a curse or something.

We had reached the end of the night, and the players discussed the battle briefly. They decided that it would be better tactically to keep the party together, especially keeping the warlord and the fighter adjacent. But nobody died, and it was a tough battle, so job well done for all.


Casualties:
1 Goblin Skullcleaver
4 Goblin Warriors
1 Vicejaw Crocodile
13 beers

The Clan of Earl Gaermund

Here are the names of the Vikings in the clan of Earl Gaermund. At some point in the campaign everyone listed here will launch on a dragon ship and sail to the New World. There are 35 people listed here, and some of them have wives. Note that all the really important people have wives, it's a bit of a status symbol.

Laborers are generally farmers, but can take up arms if needed. Sailors are more martial, but still not specialized warriors.

The ship will launch with 50 men on board, of which 35 are listed here. Five or six will be our characters. The remaining are PC-like people, kept undefined. They function as competing adventuring parties within the clan. Should a character die or be junked, they also provide replacements.

There aren't any Dragonborn or Warforged on this list. I had planned to rule these out of the campaign entirely, but they can be played by characters. In Viking scoiety, these races are accepted but much more rare than they are in the rest of the world, owing to climate, geography, and other factors.

	Name	Role	Race	Class	Level	Wife
1	Gaermund	Chieftan	Human	Fighter	12	Svala
2	Golmund	Retinue	Human	Warlord	10	Ljufu
3	Kjallak	Retinue	Dwarf	Fighter	9	Drifa
4	Arinbjorn	Retinue	Elf	Ranger	10	Aestrid
5	Ingjald	Retinue	Eladrin	Wizard	10	Sibbe
6	Bergvid	Priest	Human	Cleric	8	Nidbiorg
7	Øystæin	Mage	Eladrin	Wizard	9	Dalla
8	Frømund	Miller	Human			Gudrid
9	Häming	Inn Keeper	Dwarf			Jofrid
10	Byrnjolf	Blacksmith	Dwarf			Hallkatla
11	Vott	Laborer	Tiefling			Ingegärd
12	Valthjof	Laborer	Human			Melkorka
13	Tjorvi	Laborer	Dwarf
14	Thorlak	Laborer	Half-Elf			Ingigerd
15	Svart	Laborer	Human			Thorhalla
16	Skallagrim	Laborer	Tiefling			Halldis
17	Ragnvald	Laborer	Dwarf			Holmlaug
18	Njal	Laborer	Human
19	Nafni	Laborer	Human			Sæunn
20	Kætiløy	Laborer	Tiefling
21	Johan	Laborer	Dwarf			Bergljot
22	Hrolf	Laborer	Dwarf
23	Holmstæin	Laborer	Human			Gudlang
24	Frømund	Laborer	Tiefling
25	Alfarin	Laborer	Half-Elf			Tonna
26	Vestar	Sailor	Eladrin
27	Torsten	Sailor	Human			Asdis
28	Ulvkil	Sailor	Elf
29	Thorgrim	Sailor	Half-Elf			Geirny
30	Sumarlid	Sailor	Elf			Yngvild
31	Sæbbi	Sailor	Eladrin
32	Øybiorn	Sailor	Halfling			Hallveig
33	Kolbein	Sailor	Halfling
34	Finnvid	Sailor	Human			Styrlaug
35	Aslak	Sailor	Human

Character Sheets

I have character sheets up for all the characters that have appeared in the campaign. I want to use this as the storage center for all character sheets in the campaign, so we can always print out a current one if I misplace the paper copies. I'll post a new version each time a character levels up.

Current
Bartix
Edgar
Erik the Green
Hermiad
Mendas
Oddny
Rurik
Hermiad
Varin

Retired
Gudrun

Bartix the Unseemly: Human Wizard

Character sheet for Bartix, Human wizard

Level 5
Level 4
Level 3
Level 2
Level 1

Gudrun, Human Fighter

Character Sheet for Gudrun, Human fighter

Level 1

Mendas, Halfling Rogue

Character sheets for Mendas, Halfling Rogue:

Level 6
Level 5
Level 4
Level 3
Level 2
Level 1

Rurik, Tiefling Warlord

Here is the character sheet for Rurik, Tiefling Warlord.

Level 6 CharGen
Level 5 Excel
Level 4
Level 3
Level 2
Level 1

Hauld Rurik Ragnarson

Matt developed the following character history for his Tiefling Warlord. #A-1 Good Job!

Hauld Rurik Ragnarson is the son of Hauld (Nobleman) Johan Ragnarson (the Cunning), son of the Great Jarl (Chief) Ragnar the Charred from whom the honor of the Ragnarson name comes from. Jarl Ragnar was a great Warlord who established a mighty stronghold deep within the dormant volcano Helsblud, deep in the interior of Midgard, where only the Teifling noblemen of his tribe dwelt. His tribe were excellent warriors and raiders but also prospered through mercenary services, slave trade, mining and blacksmithing. This is the world that Rurik grew up in - groomed from an early age in the skills of the Jarl.

During the early years of the foreigner's invasion of Midgard Jarl Ragnar stayed behind with his eldest son, Ollie Ragnarson, to defend the family's hall and homelands (as is the custom for the first-borns) while sending his younger son (who was more experienced with travel being the younger son), Johan, with the refugee boats to preserve the family bloodline.

Upon landing in the new world of Hyborea Rurik tried hard to adapt. He was seperated from most of his family (who stayed behind) and the collected refugees were wary around those of the mercenary tribe of the Ragnarsons. His training as a Warlord could not be put to use as there was no army that would have him as a leader. To show that his loyalties were with the displaced Midgardians he took a common elf for a wife (as Tieflng maidens are rare and the few that existed were spoken for) and tried to start a farm to help feed the massive influx of refugees. This failed horribly as he had neither the patience or skill for farming or hunting, especially in the malnourished soil of Hyborea. His attempts at building a homestead were pitiful at best. Leading men of labor was not like leading soldiers and courtly diplomacy had no place in small colony life. The rich trappings of nobility his family brought from Midgard proved to be less valuable then the simple tools and farm implements others thought to bring. Because of this his wife, finally realizing his gross ineptitude at domestic colony life (and inability to sire offspring), honorably divorced him.

Rurik's outlook shortly changed after the Great Famine of the Second Year. Food was short and the winter harsh. The colony had to make sacrifices to survive - food could not be wasted n any refugees to old, sick or infirm to contribute to the survival of the colony. Instead of waiting to be forced off the sea cliff like the other useless elders Rurik's parents ventured into the wilderness and died honorably from exposure. The morning they found their frozen bodies Rurik was filled with pride and knew he couldn't play at being a colonist farmer anymore - he had to rise to the glory and honor that he was due as a Ragnarson and face his family's fate or die trying.

Campaign Setting

The quick and dirty campaign idea behind Savage Vinland is Viking colonists in the New World, but this will be introduced in media res around fourth or fifth level. The strange dark continent of Paleo-America is much to badass for first-level characters, so we're going to start fighting goblinoids in the Old World first. All the characters will be junior members of a multi-racial Viking clan that has been forced to resettle in Hyboria (Greenland). You all grew up together, and have known each other and most of the people in the background of the campaign since childhood. Throughout the campaign, you will travel with your community, defending it and eventually ruling it. This opens up some options that don't fit the normal Vagabond Adventurer mold. Consider the following:

Is your character married, or shacking up with anyone?

Is your character related to anyone else in the clan? If not, why not?

Does your character have a long generational history with the Norse, or are they more recent, like the child of a slave, or a foreigner that joined the warband?

Medieval social structures are absolutely not the focus in this game. I'll be playing fast and loose with historical Viking details anyway to accommodate magic and races and whatnot. But these elements are just sitting there, so pick them up and run with them if you want.

As for gods, Clerics and Paladins have a mechanistic requirement to pick a D&D god like Pelor or Bahumut. Pick this god, then translate them into a Norse equivalent (Pelor = Baldur, for instance). It doesn't matter how the mapping goes, or even that it is consistent among the party. It's mainly an excuse to get Clerics of Thor.

What is Savage Vinland?

Savage Vinland is the D&D 4th Edition campaign I've been running for about a month. We have five players of various levels of commitment. The short description of the campaign is vikings colonizing the new world... but the new world is full of dungeons! This idea is appropriated from the Beyond Vinland developed by Jeff Rients, who's Jeff's Gameblog I read religiously. I hope that passes as due credit, because the game hasn't gotten cool enough yet for me to proudly crow my derivative creation to the source.

If you play in the game and want to write for this blog, let me know and I'll give you access. Even without access you can still comment.

This blog is meant to keep the playing group up to date on game activities, as a common file cache, and as a means to display anything cool we come up with. It has an probable audience of the seven guys I know, but is written without disregarding the possibility of wider dissemination.