Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Character betrays party: film at 11





We got to do our Night Below game two weeks in a row, which is a rare treat. Let’s just say that Andy promised to take the trash out and mow the lawn for the wife for the next 30 years so we could get that extra access to her workshop.

Anyway, this session would prove to be just as memorable as the last Deck of Many Things session.

Let’s talk about the character Lily for a second. When a couple of new players came along last year, both of their characters began in the hands of a fierce tribe of gnolls in the sub-surface caves above the deeper Underdark. First captives of surface world slavers looking to make a buck from the Illithids way down at The City of The Glass Pool, the gnolls came along and picked up a little something for dinner, slaying most of the slavers in combat, and taking the already bound captives to a larger cave to butcher and munch them. Seconds from becoming a nice meal as the gnoll chopped up one captive after another, Lily and the other new character Lumarin the lawful good Grey Elf MU, were saved and became a part of the overall quest against the COTGP and the Aboleth in the Sunless Sea.

Lily is a local of the frontier settlement Overtown above, and her upbringing was less than ideal. She was a child mostly of the streets, and at a young age learned both to steal and to sell herself. At some point Lily learned magic from a mage “john” (yeah, I am allowing human multi-classing in some cases), and hence began her adventuring career as a Thief/MU. In her notes on her history, Lily described a gang leader boyfriend in town named Xavier who had tricked her into killing her own estranged father. When Lily was captured by the slavers, she was on the run from Xavier.

I should mention that Lily’s player, Paul, is a young guy very new to tabletop, and most of his experience is with video games. It was kind of refreshing to have this rpg near-virgin come to the table, as in stark contrast to most of my other players he comes with no baggage from previous years/decades of game play. Paul’s character actions, which might be pretty munchinky from more experienced players, take on a sort of innocent quality. Pretty much Paul is just trying to run a character with a broken soul, and nothing he did with Lily comes from just being a prick or anything. That in itself is refreshing, no doubt.

Lily had proven herself mostly unworthy of trust by sneaking around stealing and hogging treasure while others fought the good fight in encounters. Krysantha the Drow was especially hard on her, and in at least one case Vaidno the half elf Bard kept Krys from letting loose with violence on Lily and her nihilistic attitude. Things had gotten bad enough that when Lily got wishes from the Deck of Many Things in the last game, she offered one to Krysantha if she would agree to leave Lily alone in her endeavors from now on.

OK, as for the current party in general, they had left the Jubilex Shrine slime caves and were well on their way further down. Beaming from their fabulous rewards from the Deck of Many Things, nothing impeded the party or broke their spirit. Several wandering Displacer Beasts were handily dispatched. Further down the road, a Purple Worm (fixed encounter in book 2 of NB) attacked, but they managed to defeat it in fairly quick time (only Vaidno took a hit from the tail, and making his save was one of at least three close calls he had this game. I took to calling him “Survaivno”).

But the next encounter proved to be a bitch for everybody, even me.

In book 2 after the purple worm area, there is a set encounter with a high level group of slavers. A 7th level fighter in plate, a 7th level female human MU, a 6th level human cleric, a 6/6 high elvish female figher/MU, and Prentyss, a 9th level thief (and “Frienemy” of Lily who vied for Xavier’s attention). All these NPC’s have magic items up the yin yang besides their own decent powers and abilities. Some time ago I decided I would include Lily’s old gang leader boyfriend Xavier (a fighter/thief 6/7) to round out this group. Tall, dark, and sadistic, I gave him (besides other things) a magical tattoo that could turn into a giant rattlesnake once a day that would help fight for him.

Of course, I based this all around Lily, having previously rounded out the NPC personalities in relation to having known Lily before, and I also had given Lily notes about them before this encounter (“in case she ever ran into her old gang again”). So yeah, this was all about a cool encounter with people from Lily’s troubled past. I rarely use high level groups of NPC’s in encounters these days, although I did that a lot In the past. I feel it is not just a great challenge to players, but it often comes off like a cool comic book hero/villain group encounter. With my comic book upbringing, this is a great thing and I just don’t do it enough anymore. Here I was going to make up for it in spades. A possible battle royal, and finally a real challenge for this party.

So down in the tunnels, the Xavier gang is heading towards the party. 9th level thief Prentyss, invisible, scouts the way up ahead, and comes across the party while they are encamped and preparing for a rest period. Prentyss recognized her old friend Lily, and listens to the heated discussion going on (as the party tends to have). After a few minutes Prentyss returns to Xavier to tell him about Lily and her new friends. Xavier assumes Lily has joined up with some other gang, and decides he can use her to make capturing the characters easier. Xavier sends his fighter and bodyguard Groznyi to the character party to ask Lily to go speak with Xavier while Groznyi stays with the party as a hostage. After some arguing, Lily is allowed to head down the tunnel alone.

At this point I need several minutes with Lily’s player Paul, so I throw everybody out and tell them it’ll be a bit. Almost all of them smoke something or another, so it’s “smoke ‘em if you got em’.”

Xavier is there waiting with his badass gang for Lily. Basically, he asks a bit about the party, then asks her to rejoin him and help him take the party alive for sale down at the City of the Glass Pool. Now, although Lily’s alignment is pretty much chaotic neutral, Paul told me early on that she has a tendency towards evil, but not fully. So when I designed this encounter for Lily I had no idea which way this character would lean. At least for now, she agrees to lull the party into a false sense of security and lead them past the Xavier gang.

Finally back at the camp, Lily tells the party that her old friends are willing to let them pass without a fuss. Krysantha, ever the angry paranoid, is unconvinced. The drow goes ahead and uses her detect lie on Lily, and proceeds to give her the third degree. As still invisible Prentyss is listening close by, she goes and tells Xavier that the plan is not working, and he and the gang move in for the attack.

All hell busts loose as 6 powerful player characters and 6 NPC’s lock it up. Well, 5 player characters, because Lily turns invisible and hides. She seems unsure of what to do. I will admit that at this point I figure Lily will help save the day, but it is not to be so. She sneaks up behind a badly wounded Vaidno (one of her main defenders in group arguments regarding her) and attempts a backstab.

This was a big “oh shit” moment for me. Paul likes the character, and you would imagine that if for nothing else he would help the party to still stay in the game. But no. Lily decides that the ultimate quest is doomed to fail and figures helping Xavier is the best way out of the horrors of the Night Below (or as I call it after this game, “The Hurt Locker”).

Anyway, Lily misses her backstab on Vaidno! The bard lucks out again, because Lily’s extra damage would possibly have killed him. Lily hits herself with Mirror Image as attacks begin to come her way.

Although the NPC high level cleric is quickly killed early on in the battle by Vaidno and his flashing blades, most fight to a pretty good standstill, great blows being given and received. The NPC party has a high level MU and a mid level fighter/MU, and they use their decent amount of spells for good effect. But since Xavier wants the party alive, they hold off on fireballs and lightning bolts. But as damage is mounting on both sides, both Lily and the high level MU burst loose with fireballs. I describe the tunnel shaking badly, and Xavier tries to pull his people back from the fight, yelling at the characters to do the same so nobody else dies. Most comply, but Lumarin the high elf MU decides he hasn’t had enough and lets loose with some chain lightning on the NPC’s (an unusual move for the lawful good and reasoning Lumarin, but he had just come out of unconsciousness so he gets a pass).

At this point the game had gone until 11:30PM. We usually stop around 10:30, but this fight was bigger than I thought it would be. I was getting a big exhausted and cranky (I went into this session tired as hell). I described a roof shaking and possibility of collapse, and I was a bit pissed when the chain lightning went off because I had so far been lenient on fireballs and explosions from the party in the games. I just had not taught the players a lesson about not being careful with that shit underground. So I went for a cave-in roll. Got a 5 on a 6 and here comes the cave in.

Now, the players got scared and thought I was super mad when I called for a saving throw vs. death magic. But it isn’t instant death, I have just traditionally used that save for natural disasters like cave-ins and floods and the like. It was just a save for no damage. Those who failed got several dice in damage, and a couple of the characters went into negatives, including Terry who assumed her character Helena was toast at this point. All the NPC’s managed to make it out alive and kicking, and it provided a decent way to have them escape without any more fighting. I even had Prentyss, who was charmed, turn and run out of self preservation.

I was fairly generous letting the dying PC’s be gotten to and saved by the others in the dust from the collapse, but still, with one of the party fighters and the MU now in a world of hurt and needing a week of rest to be at full capacity (or at least a full heal spell), and many of the others battered and bruised and plenty damaged, the party is in a bad place. They are at the literal front steps of the Derro area before the City of the Glass Pool, and they will be needing every hit point for that.

This was a really exciting last couple of games. Unlike the last Deck of Things game where I got to negotiate characters dreams with them, this one was brutal dice rolling and bookkeeping game. Trying to do the turns of several powerful NPC’s in quick fashion (in many cases my doing turns for all those NPC’s was shorter than most of the single characters turns) is a bit of a challenge, but rewarding in the end. It was a hell of a battle royale.

September was the two year point for this campaign. 3-4 more sessions, and this ride is over – or is it?

(added note: Lily escaped with the bad guys, much to the party's chagrin!)

9 comments:

  1. Um...so what happened with Paul/Lily? Did she get left for dead or did she escape with Xavier's gang or what?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah, so which side of the cave-in did Lily find herself?

    ReplyDelete
  3. John/JB: Oh yeah, good point! Lily was ushered away by black platemail wearing evil fighter Groznyi, who also recovered the body of Xavier's evil cleric (depriving the party of those nice magic items and wealth).

    So Lily escaped with the bad guys. I tell you, the player party would have LOVED to have Lily still with them.

    ReplyDelete
  4. So, how is this going to work in the future? Will Paul still run Lily or is Lily now an NPC?

    Have to say, that Lily - although she turned on her party - is a very well-rounded and developed character. If I was DMing that I'd have been secretly ecstatic if one of my players 'role-played' so true to a difficult character's personality; letting character truth triumph over "what's best for the party".

    Your next game is going to be very interesting!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I remember that encounter! I guest DMed that day and the DM I was subbing for asked me to drop the hammer as hard as I could. I really, really tried to waste one of the party members, but no go. The party Ranger, equipped with Finslayer was hacking and slashing with the party's Wizard and Cleric were on a roll.

    The only saving grace was that as the party retreated, a purple worm ate some hirelings.

    My e-mail address "jhaevin" actually comes from the human fighter I played in that campaign.

    Good times...

    ReplyDelete
  6. I tell you, the player party would have LOVED to have Lily still with them.

    was there any tension between the players? or were only the characters furious? :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. I had a GM many years ago who never did this with NPCs, but did it with PCs. He would take a player aside and instruct them to betray the party. They did so. It actually made the game less fun, looking back on it now.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Acro: yeah, I think it was great role playing. Paul is a quiet and gentle guy, so the actions don't refelect him at all.
    Chris: The encounter is so gnarly in the book, because the bad guys come out swinging, using fireballs and shit right away at the back of the party hopeing to kill MU's right away and all that. It didn't make sense to me - these are slavers, they want money so they want prisoners. So I had them hold off a bit and that gave the PC's a bit of an advantage. Still, the PC's consider it their most brutal battle yet.
    Shlom: No enminty at all. I think like me the players were just "oh shit!" A lot of anger aimed at the escaped Lily, but I think Paul is going to be all right.
    GrumpyC: Yeah, that is a true crap DM. I've seen that well, and it is just manipulation (of something the DM should not be manipulating) of a player, not a character. In my case here, I gave the character a heroic and a non-heroic option (help the party, or help Xavier). Gotta admit though, PC vs. PC makes for some serious drama, I tell you what.

    ReplyDelete
  9. There's something about Night Below.....I ran this several years ago, and maybe it's the setting, but it tended to bring out some great roleplaying but really bizarre behavior. One (player) in character tried to kill another and was killed instead by his intended victim and another player (he had wanted to switch characters from a thief to a mage, so thought this would be a very memorable way to go out, as his character and the other player's character had never gotten along). Another player had his character gradually go insane, due to the environment (he was a druid)and he eventually killed himself on a suicide mission in the Kuo Toan city; another had his character run off with one of the rockseer elves that he had fallen in love with. All were the results of excellent roleplaying, to the extent they proceeded logically to a conclusion rather than just faked it to finish the mission.

    However, sadly, two players had developed an antipathy over the year and a half we gamed this campaign, and right at the shore of the Sunless Sea they finally had their characters go after each other (over a decision on how to proceed further!), with their henchmen joining in as everyone else dived for cover and sat back and watched. Basically both characters died in the carnage, and both players said they would never play with the other again, both stomping out and quitting the group! Kind of stopped the campaign dead in its tracks, terrible pity, as the group had so much invested in the game.

    Something about Night Below...!

    ReplyDelete