Book of Amicus, Chapter 45

The Skull Collectors have several new trophies! My new found powers given by the almighty pantheon led by my master Jupiter has proved to be useful. The Skull Collectors have turned aside a malicious attack by the forces of Lucius Bastardo, and discovered an small underground complex of rooms below Skull Manor.

I have set up a storage rack in one of these underground rooms. There I have been jarring and pickling many of the bits and pieces I've collected from our arcane enemies:

The eyes and blood of a medusa

The teeth of two gargoyles

The blood of a Giant Weasel

The petrified, demonic feces of four spirit apes

Fingers from 4 of Lucius Bastardo's lieutenants

A wizard's tongue

The blood of a dozen orcs

The muscles and ligaments of four ogres

The claws and muscles of a werewolf

The brains and ichor of 15 ghouls

The sticky tongues and feet of 7 giant gecko lizards

The fungus spores of 4 shriekers

The fangs and tails of 2 giant rattlesnakes

The organs of a chaos serpent

Bone chips of 10 animated skeletons

Action Shot

About to storm into the medusa's lair.

Book of Amicus, Chapter 44

Joy of joys! My research has finally borne fruit. It was by happenstance that I was able to secure the slim, dusty folio known only as the "Smokables of the Flamen Dialis" from my contacts to the South. I have paid a considerable fee of 200 gold coins to make sure it made the trip intact. It is considered apostasy by the formal Church of Bor so the recipes and chants contained therein were lost when the Empire fell, or so I thought. In it I have uncovered the following:

Blessing of Agnitia: By blowing into the face of a hurt ally the smoke pulled from the serpent-entwined pipe of Asclepius miraculous healing can be performed. Wounds can be closed and fear dispelled using a more potent form of the verses I knew for Jupiter's own basic blessing. (Cure Moderate Wounds)

Fellowship of Faunus: The blessed fumes of the sacred pipe extends to the animal world as well. By lighting smokables are appropriate for the creature and situation, I am now able to make them more agreeable and friendly to me. (Charm Animal)

Jupiter's Vengance: When in the presence of a thunderstorm, smoking this melange of tobacco allows the faithful to guide Jove's hand and call ruinous thunderbolts on unsuspecting enemies. (Call Lightning)

In other news, my henchman Louse continues to do a great job. I recently gave her a 100gp bonus for her hard work.

(+200 "banked" gp, and a simple 100gp stipend goes to Louise for her achievements)

Choking Nerf

Whilst investigating which spells to take for my next level, I came across this detail from the Choking Grip spell:

The choking grip lasts so long as the caster concentrates upon it, or until the target makes a successful saving throw.

Essentially, we shouldn't have been able to kill the leader because the spell would be done once the first saving throw was successful. Sorry.

GM-Less Game Part 2

Gentlemen,
I propose that our next game, we play a GM-less "autopilot" session. Let me pitch it thusly:

I'll create a map/terrain of our base

Our guards report seeing something sketchy

At a randomly determined time, our base is attacked

Assuming we drive off the attack successfully, we may track the attackers back to their lair

A small dungeon lair of the attackers is then assaulted

Random Factors:

What is attacking?

Why are they attacking?

When are they attacking?

Where is their lair, and what does it look like? Is it above ground? Below ground? Half and half?

How many of them are there? If there are a lot of them and they are powerful, are there factions?

I'll examples of random factors and ask for submissions. I'll draw cards during play and be the "proxy GM", playing Pontifex Amicus as a quiet NPC while arranging what the attackers do. I'll also see that we all share in what the "bad guys" do by assigning each of us a unit of baddies to control. Imagine that instead of Dave controlling Ogres, Orcs, Pigdogs, etc, that we roll for our PCs AND roll for the baddies we control.

Ideas? Concerns?

Dave - Do we have any description of what our base looks like? Is it a manor like a building, or is it a palisade? How should we introduce the "masked adventurer"? Perhaps he carries with him an important piece of information that endears him to the group (and actually reads it off the randomly picked card)?

When Worlds Collide

I forgot to mention this on Sunday, but in the last few weeks I've seen Jason's niece in the 7th grade exploratory language program, and ran into Andrew's sister at the parent coference night.  She said "I've heard so much about you"--while I was thinking to myself "I didn't know Andrew had a sister."

Jury Duty

Funny story. So, this week I was chosen to serve jury duty. As it turns out, a local celebrity was chosen as well. Ron Martin of WGAL 8 fame was chosen that week also. As the orientation video began Monday morning, the choice of narrator drew a round of laughter from all of us potential jurors.

Next Session

Next ACKS game, Sunday December 15th, 4pm. Jove willing.

The Book of Amicus, Chapter 43

Following our conflict with the ghouls, Louise has proven herself to be a worthwhile henchman worthy of Jove's bounty. I shared 250 gold from my own hoard with her and asked that she stay on as my personal bodyguard. Furthermore I have spent another 950 gold toward relearning some of the ancient rites of Jupiter. With luck I will receive his boons shortly. (250 toward Louise and banking 950 in case I need a new character)

DM-less game

Andrew brought up the idea of doing a DM-less game some time.

Here's a quick suggestion:

1--Draw 6-10 Tiles from the stack at random, this would be the maximum size of the dungeon.

2--Come up with a table or a set of cards to draw as each room is entered.  It would say if there was a treasure, monster, both, or a trap.

3--Monsters and Treasures would be rolled from the "Monster and Treasure Assortment" for the appropriate level (with a chance of encountering things from a higher or lower level of course).

4--Maybe have a small stack of Tricks or Weird Rooms to draw from.

5--To make it more interesting, since we would have few planned surprises or items of interest, perhaps have it so that we are deposited by magic or a trap, and must find the exit somewhere (randomly determined).

If we didn't want to do a dungeon, but rather an outdoor type quest, we could use that GM emulator booklet I got this summer.   It was a lot of fancy falderal, but it kinda of boiled down to agreeing on the chance something would happen, roll for it and there was a chance that something weird would happen instead.   It might turn out really neat once we got used to it, if anyone wants to look at it, remind me on Sunday.


Comments?  Thoughts?  Alternative Schemes?

Sharing the Tiles project

The question has arisen of sharing the Dungeon Tiles for home access for prospective DM's.  I've thought of a couple of plans:

1)  I could make sketches of each tile (several to a page) and scan and upload them.  

2)  We could take photos of them, post them on the wiki, or something.

3)  I could just lend people the stack between games.   I don't forsee designing any more dungeon levels in the near future, since there is still a fair amount of Skull Mountain unexplored.

4)  I could just give people some blank tiles, the formula is pretty straight forward:   All entrances and exits are at the 5" to 7" mark on anywhere from 1 to 4 sides of the tile.

Next Session

Next ACKS game, Sunday December 8, 4pm