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