It's a good old-fashioned quest this year! Rumors of Count Cynrain living mad and naked in the Perilous Forest draw our heroes north, but beyond the Castle of Gloom and the Bower of Thorns lie much stranger mysteries indeed.
Featuring:
Des
Jen
Renae
The campaign's wiki can be found here.
So, you realise that tree was actually deadlier than the Castle of Bones given that it had four attacks, and there were only three skeletons there? And people weren't even warned that going for the outlying thin branches could result in bloody, horrible walloping by the whole tree apparently. That was like a classic D&D "Surprise there's a Sphere of Annhilation in there" death trap.
ReplyDeleteAnd they didn't even find Cynrain! You monster!
I'm not familiar with the adventure, but I would guess that it might be an easier fight if there were multiple knights involved. Even as is, I could imagine Tathan surviving if he hadn't taken any crits.
DeleteOn the whole, what a great adventure! I was thinking at first that it might have been more appropriate for the Romance Period, but ending on the contrast between undertaking a deadly adventure to reunite two lovers and then spitting on the idea of reuniting with the Orkneys makes for some nice dramatic contrast.
Well the timing of the adventure precludes Twilight, as this is pretty Faerie heavy, and that stuff should be gone. It might be hilarious for Grail Quest if the reward is said to be the greatest prize... and it's true love.
DeleteIt might be survivable with 2 knights, but that's versus I'm guessing 9/10d6 opposed by an attribute that Knights don't put Glory points into, and can't be impassioned. And apart from one peasants mad ramblings (and it wasn't even a crone! How can that be believed?) there's no evidence or roll to be made to let you realise this might be a trap.
Tathan: A knight so nice, a swamp killed him twice.
"Well the timing of the adventure precludes Twilight, as this is pretty Faerie heavy, and that stuff should be gone."
DeleteDon't conflate Faerie and good-old-fashioned magic--this was a simple case of a magic curse through and through.
Now, Old Bole the tree *did* have Faerie connections as written in the adventure, but that was only if he ate you. (Yeah, we didn't even touch on *that* attack.) That being said, this definitely fits better as a Romance or Tournament-era adventure, generally. But hey, I didn't get a chance to run it then, and really wanted to fit it in before we ran out of years!
As for Old Bole, he's not written as a trap per se, but he *is* effectively a god. You don't go plucking leaves off of gods, as a rule. At least not without proper propitiation or something.
Oh, and for folks who want to run it (it's called "The Adventure of the Perilous Forest" and is found in the book appropriately titled The Perilous Forest), I had to trim the hell out of this thing as-written to fit it into a three-hour session (and even then we ran over!). It could easily span 5-6 hours otherwise.
I had thought the closing of the worlds meant a disappearance of magic, although that wouldn't explain why the Round Table still knows the status of its occupants, nor all the other Merlin miracles I suppose.
DeleteIt was a very good adventure, but that was still a really brutal trap. One day away from Round Table, in front of his son and hairdresser, on his birthday (possibly)!
I'm sad the group didn't just stand well back and fire flaming arrows into that tree. Not like the villages were around to complain anymore.
But the tree wasn't a "trap." It was an ancient and creepy thing you just scuttle on past, whispering prayers of gratitude you made it through without it attacking you.
ReplyDeleteNow that was an adventure!
ReplyDelete