Meg Zone

DolMEGwood play report: session three

Session three of my DolMEGwood campaign was the first session I consider mostly a failure. I remain unhappy with it, though I am of two minds: on one hand it's nice to be able to confront the problems that emerged so early in the campaign, but on the other there are some that I would have hoped to have not been problems in the first place. More on this later, but first a character roster:

This session's summary was written by Hannah. She's also provided a TL;DR:

Session Three Commentary

On the 26th of Chysting [the party] set out from the Clashed Antler in Prigwort. They intended to meet up with the romantic youths that Aldus and Gertwinne had previously spoken with, but upon learning that the knights intended to only offer them a set wage and not a share of the treasure, they parted ways with them and struck out on their own. Incensed by the encounter, Dayle swore on the stars that the party would reach the treasure before the knights did.

See my session one play report for further context on the romantic youths. In reflecting on session one, it became clear to me that the agreement the players thought they had with the romantic youths was not the agreement the youths thought they had with the party. Thus the abrupt clarification and change of plans at the top of the session. While I'm sure the players would have loved to have the combat aid of four warhorse-riding knights, they preferred the entirety of Chasobrithe's abandoned hoard (reasonable). This also set up a neat rivalry between the party and the knights, something that Dayle capitalized upon by swearing an oath. I think that this was definitely a genre-appropriate oath and one I remain happy with.

After traveling only a couple of hours, the party heard strange nursery rhymes and then a cry of pain coming from a little ways off in the forest. They followed the sound to find six redcaps cavorting around an unconscious friar and proceeded to immediately engage them in combat. Gertwinne swore to knock the hat off a redcap and immediately accomplished this with her sling. Maydrid swore to rescue the friar. This took a little longer, and both sides traded and parried blows. Eventually, however, Maydrid slew three of the redcaps, Gertwinne slew one, and Dayle slew one. In the process, Maydrid received a nasty (although roguish) scar on her arm, and Dale's leg was grievously wounded. The final redcap surrendered and sprinted off into the forest.

This encounter was rolled randomly as the party traveled into the hex south of Prigwort: the fact that the encounter was redcaps was rolled using the random encounter tables in the campaign book and the circumstances of the encounter were rolled using the tables in the redcap entry in the monster book. I think this was a pretty fun encounter, in theory! In practice it was the low point of the session.

Dayle threw a javelin at the lead redcap as soon as the situation was apparent, which cut off any potential conversation—something I'm fine with—but the resulting combat took the next fifty minutes of real time—something I'm far less fine with. The reason for the length was threefold, as I see it:

  1. Neither side could hit the other. Players went multiple rounds without hitting enemies they should have been hitting. Similarly the redcaps, though they had a much lower chance of hitting because of the players' superior armor, were missing more often than they were hitting. It was a standstill, but not an exciting one in the slightest. I don't think that the system math has any issues that could help people hit more; I really think that they just were rolling really badly. I don't see anyone to blame but RNG here.

  2. Mechanical and positioning confusion. This was the first combat for all of the players in a system that none of them were familiar with, so obviously there were occasional points of rules confusion: What is my attack bonus? How does swearing an oath work mid-combat? What happens when I drop to zero hit points? Similarly there was confusion in the fictional circumstances; the battlefield involved two "zones" of combat that players were moving between, and I found myself recapping multiple times per combat round who was where and who was being attacked by what enemies. I similarly don't think there's anyone to blame here, and I think that (at least the first half of) this issue will hopefully be alleviated the more people play. I could also draw up a hasty map using the MIRO board to at least give people an idea of "combat zones" and vague enemy positioning, but I don't envision myself ever using a tactical battle map in this game.

  3. Combat continued on past the point of reasonable conclusion. This is the biggest issue as I see it, and it's one mostly perpetrated by me—I see the cause as my having a hard time mentally breaking from the strictures of D&D 5E "heroic combat." Let me explain: though Eric was the one that initiated violence by having their character throw a javelin at the redcaps, I certainly didn't help the situation by leaning into the violence. Every time a character reduced a redcap to zero hit points, I described their deaths; the redcaps were succeeding their morale rolls, sure, but I think that that's another part of the issue—at a certain point the fiction should outweigh the morale rolls and the redcaps should have fled. It is far more genre appropriate to conclude a fight with one side surrendering or fleeing than a senseless slaughter; in fact I wrote this into the combat rules when I wrote them:

A non-player character that has their guard broken is at the whims of the players: their sword is sent skittering; their morale is broken. Tie them up, cut them down, run them through—they cannot fight back. Grand beings may choose to battle on or flee at zero HP, taking wounds like a player character. While I certainly do not lean away from the violence in this description, I want it to be violence and death purposefully dealt. It is far more dramatic for the redcap's cudgel to be smacked from its hands and stare up at Maydrid, morale broken, and she is given the option to skewer it or command it to flee. Instead I was pushing the characters into killing by narrating the deaths myself. In games like 5E it is so easy to fall into the heroic slaughter of goblins or pixies or whatever fodder enemy the DM has placed in front of you, and it was a goal for this game for me to cultivate leaning away from that mindless violence—I certainly failed in this fight. You might argue in my favor that the players wanted to kill the redcaps from the beginning, because they were the ones who incited the violence in the first place, but I still think that the crux of the problem was not giving them the option.

One last note about the combat is that two oaths were sworn during its course, and I think that they display very well the continued process of locating what exactly a chivalric oath should be. Gertwinne swore to "knock the hat off this guy's smug little head," and succeeded—but I remain unsure if this is a chivalric oath or a boast. I think it's the latter. I'm much happier with Maydrid's oath to "disrupt this ritual to protect the friar"—I think it's much more clearly a chivalric oath. As more examples are set and more time is spent getting in the headspace of Dolmenwood, I think that the distinction between WUTC boast and DolMEGwood oath will become clearer.

The party sorted through the supplies left behind by the redcaps to find 20 groats, two sacks of dried turnips (a total of 12 dry rations worth), and a bag of goose down worth 50 groats. They woke up and spoke to the friar, who said he'd been out gathering mushrooms when he was surprised by the sound of nursery rhymes being sung, and remembered nothing else. He urged the party to return with him to Prigwort, but with a full day of daylight ahead and an oath in mind, the party determined to bandage Dayle and Maydrid's wounds and push on.

Rather than roll on the Dolmenwood treasure tables, I rolled on the appropriate one in Luke Gearing's &&&&&&&&& Treasure. I think that the redcaps' banditry having resulted in plundered trade goods is far more fun than the players simply rifling through their pockets for a bunch of coins and gems.

I enjoyed the mini-conversation with the friar, though I am unhappy with the conclusion to the encounter. I rolled for a random pilgrimage location using the table in the monster book and Friar Josprey was headed to Castle Brackenwold. I decided he was staying at the Church of St. Waylaine in Prigwort and was gathering fungi at the edge of the forest when he was kidnapped by redcaps. This is a neat little backstory! Where I am unhappy is with my decision to have him travel back to Prigwort alone and offer for the players to visit him in the church, rather than continue traveling with the safety of the group. In hindsight this was the perfect opportunity to have the party (or Maydrid in particular, as the one who woke Josprey from his magical slumber and comforted him initially) diagetically earn a follower or companion. Adam wonderfully explains the philosophy of earning followers in this blog post, and I certainly agree with him. I'm honestly not sure why I didn't think of that in the moment, as from the beginning with DolMEGwood I've emphasized the importance that followers and travel companions should have. Were I to run this session again, I would definitely go down this route. Hell, I might even offer to Maydrid's player to "retcon" it or have Maydrid find him again during downtime. I think this was quite a squandered opportunity on my part.

As evening fell, they nearly stumbled right into a huge chasm, like a scar in the land. From deep within, they heard the sound of a great, rhythmic wind—almost like the breathing of enormous lungs. Dayle's wounded leg made climbing down into the chasm inadvisable, so Gertwinne promised to lay eyes on the treasure on his behalf, and she and Maydrid ventured down into the chasm, leaving Aldus and Dayle with the donkeys and supplies. They discovered that at one end of the chasm was a cave, and entered to find a narrow passageway that wound beneath the land for nearly half a mile before opening up into an enormous cave.

Well, it looks like Chasobrithe isn't dead after all. The players were extremely wary at this point but it was nearly quitting time, so there was no time to putz around. Dayle had an oath to pursue—otherwise he could never swear another. I think that there was a fun roleplay moment here too, where Dayle spoke with Gertwinne and Maydrid and essentially made them swear to return to him having seen the wyrm's hoard, otherwise he'd drag himself down there, even with the wounded leg.

Leaving her bag with Maydrid, Gertwinne crept forward to peer into the cave. She caught a glimpse of glittering gold, and, her promise to Dayle fulfilled, began to sneak back out, but before she could exit, the rhythmic wind stopped, and the gold began to move as the dragon woke up. Gertwinne found herself face-to-face with a dragon--although not the face she expected. To one side of the enormous neck hung a nearly-decapitated, seemingly completely dead dragon's head. Growing from the stump beside the dead head was a slender, snake-like neck topped with the head of a cockerel, looking down at her with malice.

In the module as-written, Chasobrithe has healed from his near-decapitation over his long centuries of slumber and the cockerel head just emerges from the scar point as a second head. I thought that was a little lame and that this is far cooler. This scene was really visual for me when I was describing it. I love a good dragon encounter.

Gertwinne then, perhaps unsurprisingly, failed her save against paralyzing dragon fear. From down the passageway, Maydrid could hear a thundering voice speaking to Gertwinne, saying it had a few questions for the intruder. Maydrid dropped her bag and Gertwinne's bag and sprinted away down the cave, finally emerging with the news that the Wyrm Casobrithe seemingly still lives--but that our party were the first to reach the treasure, fulfilling Dayle's oath. The shaken party made camp, then returned to Prigwort in the morning.

My game system doesn't have saves versus fear or whatever Dolmenwood wants from a character to save versus dragon fear. My options, as I saw them, were a physique save as a save versus paralysis analogue, or a warding save versus the supernatural, petrifying fear conjured in the presence of a wyrm. I went for the latter primarily because it is much harder to succeed on—it should not be an easy thing to resist a wyrm as great and old as Chasobrithe. (It also encourages the players, in a broader sense, to start looking into warding charms...)

I worry that by describing the cockerel's voice as fairly high-pitched and quiet—with the volume of speech and breath amplified by the massive chamber and lengthy passage to the surface giving the impression of a great set of lungs and vast vocal channel to fuel it—I gave the players the wrong impression as to Chasobrithe's strength. I hope that Gertwinne's death being simple narration, as opposed to any contest of wills or rolls beyond the initial fear, makes them think twice about trying to capitalize on the wyrm's "weakness" with a platoon of mercenaries. (The fact that I'm pointing it out in this post might help too.)

I'm fairly happy with this encounter with Chasobrithe. It's an unfortunate end that Gertwinne suffered, but sometimes you walk into a dragon's lair and are killed despite your best efforts at being cautious. A "fun" note to end on at the end of a fairly disappointing session overall.

Next post: DolMEGwood session four play report. Or, I might mix it up and post about the Litany of Dragonsong from my MEGadungeon campaign. We'll see what I feel like tackling first.

Next session: We had to cancel MEGadungeon this week, so next session is DolMEGwood session five this Saturday.

  1. During the week's downtime between sessions, Alzred read the Prigwort gazetteer in the game's Discord server and was intrigued by the seven noble brewing houses. During downtime Alzred wrote that Aldus "wants to find a job at one of the Brewmasters. He needs coin above all, but also… what better spot to understand this town and neighboring lands!" I think that this is a perfect example of what I want the gazetteer(s) to do: give a baseline amount of information but inspire further poking. Aldus learned that House Oberon is the most prominent of the brewing houses and have a sorcerer in their midst, while House Pilston is an up-and-coming house that is mass-producing low-quality beverages: sullying the good name of the Prigwort breweries, but economically strong. Aldus decided to stay away from the sorcerer-family and work for House Pilston.↩

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