Building Bhakashal - Travel, Randomness and Sandbox Play
After today’s session I felt compelled to post. It occurred to me as we finished tonight’s game, that a recap of the last three sessions of the Tuesday game would give someone a real sense of how the game plays at our table. If you ever wanted to get a taste of what Bhakashal has to offer as a setting and in terms of recommended playstyle, this should do it.
The party finished a job a few weeks ago, and went to their patron, Quin Faal, with the item they had retrieved for him. I checked in beforehand asking the players if they wanted to continue with homebrew content or do a module. We play until the end of June, so if they wanted anything like that, it would have to be soon. We spent some time discussing it, and they wanted to do something “gonzo” (I swear I didn’t tell them the word), with sci-fi and fantasy.
Barrier Peaks it is! They are a bit low level for it, most of them are 8th level, and I let them know that, but they are a confident bunch. So I took out the map, in my Tuesday game Bhakashal is located in the Pelissio swamp, and the party was headed to Barrier Peaks
That was an 8 day journey by sea, and a 3-4 day journey by river. They commissioned a ship, they have enough wealth now that they can charter a crewed ship for just themselves, and off they went. I roll for weather each day, and day 1 started out overcast and windy, it drove them Westward at a good pace.
Every day of travel I ask the players if they want to do any RP / actions or just roll for encounters.
Day 1 they asked for just the encounter rolls, and the evening saw a ship of pilgrims pass by at twilight. They approached the ship and I rolled to see what the pilgrims would do, and they invited the party to pray with them. The party was down with that, so they tethered ships and transferred to the pilgrims ship, they were all Malu (fish folk), followers of Sithasial, god of the Oceans and Waters.
The party was directed to stomp the deck of the ship in rhythm as the pilgrims threw a severed manticore’s head into a pool of barracuda, chanting their prayers, deep and rough up there in the air, while the barracuda devoured it. The pilgrims gave the party a charm, depicting a silver bodied figure with a squid head, carrying daggers in each hand (Sithasial). This charm marks them as prayer bonded to the pilgrims, and will bring them goodwill at nearby ports.
Day 2 came up with a storm to start, they asked for RP, they were stuck inside with the storm and gambled with the crew, mostly saan (lizard folk) and a bawdy, mountain of a Chitin (insect man) named Goramuna the Brazen. They started shooting dice. I rolled an encounter reaction roll after a few rounds of high / low, and it came up positive, so they asked the party if they wanted to wrestle. Every member of the crew had tried to wrestle Goramuna down while the crew bet on it, but he was the reigning champion. They asked the party to try. The party fighter took him on, and lost, as Goramuna has 4 arms and mad grappling bonuses, but it was good fun. And as the party lost some of their gold to the crew, who bet against them, spirits were high. I give a +5% morale and loyalty bonus if the PCs do stuff like this with the crew.
There were no rolled encounters on day 2. If one had been rolled while they were doing the RP, then it would happen in the middle of it.
Day 3 weather calmed down and winds were low, so the crew hit the oars for stretches of a few hours over the day. The party fighter and the two priests joined in the oaring too. The Bard took an oar and sang songs to boost morale and get a rhythm going.
During one stirring rendition of “Off With Their Heads Said the Giant-Slayers” in mid-afternoon under the blazing sun they rolled an encounter with a merchant ship. The ship was uninterested in them, and the party decided to just let them pass.
Day 4 saw rain and high winds all day, then just winds through the night. The party asked for RP and spent the evening having dinner with the captain and discussing recruiting some of the crew for the upriver travel ahead. They wanted Goramuna to come along, and even offered to take on his wages. They discussed return times, and asked if any crewmembers heard rumours about Barrier Peaks, none had.
At night time, at 3 am to be precise, they rolled a random encounter with sea serpents. The party Bard was on watch, along with one of the priests and a small cadre of crew. Fortunately the serpents did not get surprise, the party and crew got first shots with missiles and spell, targeting and slaying one serpent outright, and the party bard played, successfully charming one into attacking the remaining others, this led to a failed morale roll and they left.
The party demurred on following them back to their lair, as they were big, dangerous brutes and only one had been damaged. They headed on.
Day 5 the weather was sunny and windy, and the party phantasmist (illusionist) asked to spend time sketching (all phantasmists in Bhakashal are artists as well) the crew, giving away the portraits when done. He even drew some caricatures of the boatswain, whom everyone disliked, which got them some deck cred.
There were no encounters on day 5.
On day 6 they didn’t ask for any RP, and they rolled an encounter with 8 kopoacinth (marine gargoyles) in the evening. These things are beasts, they propel themselves through the water with huge, powerful wings, in the air they are super fast, and they do terrific damage.
They manage to take down a few of them and the rest flee. Then they have to decide what to do about it, let them go or follow them back to their lair.
Remember, they are headed to Barrier Peaks, so they could just go ahead. But there is the possibility of loot… We broke last session with the creatures fleeing.
They spent the week planning, and returned today ready to rumble.
The party has a Malu (fish-person) phantasmist so it just so happened they could chase the creatures, they were faster, but the phantasmist could follow from a distance. In order to reduce the odds of being noticed, the phantasmist decided to follow on his own, and the rest of the party waited behind on the ship. This is the classic, “don’t split the party” situation, and they decided that sending one PC would be less likely to draw attention.
Bold move.
The phantasmist swam after the creatures, and maintained distance. We rolled to see if he was noticed, I treated it as a surprise roll with a bonus (as the kopoacinth wouldn’t expect the sailors to follow them into the water), 3 in 6 odds, and he was successful, managing to follow unnoticed.
When they got to their lair and entered he decided to wait outside. The plan was that they would eventually leave to hunt, and he would sneak into the lair while they were gone. I rolled and the kopoacinth waited 12 hours before leaving. I asked the phantasmist every hour if he wanted to leave, and every hour I rolled a d12 to see if a wandering monster came by. The phantasmist had been up at this point for a full day plus 12 hours, so he had to roll a save to avoid falling asleep!
He toughed it out and watched them leave, with no random encounters in the mean time. He then swam up to the cave and entered. Unfortunately there were three giant eels in the cave, two asleep, one awake. Surprise was rolled and the phantasmist was surprised. Honestly, I thought that would be the end. The phantasmist only has 21 hp, and a bite from the eel does 3-18. I rolled to hit… and missed, the eel shot past the phantasmist. Now the phantasmist decided to cast Fear as the other eels woke and also came towards him.
I checked the DMG and Fear can be cast underwater, so it was all down to who went first. The three eels charged the PC, the phantasmist cast fear, it captured the three eels, but only one failed its save and fled. The two remaining eels shot forward, both attacked… and missed. I was rolling terribly today, so the PC got a break. He cast Fear again, this time one failed and fled. When that happened, a morale roll had the last one fleeing.
So now he was alone in the cave. But he knew the fear would only last for so long, and the kopoacinth would eventually return, so he got to work fast. He had a 1 in 6 chance per turn of locating the cache of treasure.
First turn, nothing, then he stopped. He was concerned that the eels would return when the Fear spell wore off, so he swam out of the cave and hid nearby, waiting to see if the eels would return. When he spotted them in the distance, he cast an illusion of the cave entrance covered with rubble as if caved in. The eels approached and I decided to give them a saving throw to see if they would investigate the “rubble” or swim away. They failed and left. Now the phantasmist went back to searching. He didn’t know if the eels would return or when the kopoacinth would come back from the hunt.
The tension was delicious, alone he was very vulnerable, but he didn’t want to give up the chance for loot!
Decisions, decisions…
He went back to searching. One turn, nothing, two turns, nothing. They were squirming, waiting to see if any monsters would show up.
The next turn he scores a 1 on a d6, and finds the cache of treasure! We roll live for loot, treasure type C, they rolled 4000 gp, a 1000 gp bracelet, a 500 gp ruby and a 50 gp sapphire. Then they got to the magic column, they had a 10% chance. They rolled an 8! Much screaming and jumping around. If you roll on the tables RAW, magic items are comparatively rare, they have rolled plenty of empty caches or caches with coin/gems only, so when magic comes up, it’s a BIG DEAL.
They found a potion bottle and a sealed canister. Now the player had a decision to make, they couldn’t take the gold (4000 gp is about 400 lbs of coin in AD&D), so he reluctantly left that behind, taking the bracelet, the gems, the potion bottle and the canister
Then he booked it back to the ship before the kopoacinth showed up. He was gone for around 13 hours, so I rolled for two possible encounters on the ship while they waited, but nothing came up. Once on the ship they tested the potion (potion of treasure finding - IRONIC) and he opened the canister to find 12 +2 arrows. They were super stoked about that, dividing them up between two party members with bows. There was much rejoicing, they LOVE IT when they find loot, and they were extremely excited about finding what they did, even though the items were temporary. I have to remind myself that players will love things that you might not think are a big deal. Yet another reason to roll for treasure rather than picking it.
They continued on to Port Torvin and transferred to a riverboat, heading up the Javan river towards Barrier Peaks. On day 1 there were no encounters and they were content with no RP, but on day 2 they rolled an encounter in the evening with a Shen Lung dragon. There was no surprise indicated, and the party saw the Shen Lung’s head emerge from the water up ahead of them. They have encountered wingless dragons before, and knew they were intelligent, so they decided to parley with it.
They hailed the creature, and it demanded to know what they were doing on “my river”. They indicated they were heading to the mountains for adventure.
Short pause, then the dragon asked “if they were after its treasure”. It was a tense moment.
The party Jugyi (turtle man) bard told the dragon they didn’t want its loot, as they were heading to the mountains to slay terrible, stupid giants. However, he offered to play the dragon a song as “payment” to pass unmolested. The bard played a song on his lute, retelling the tale of the attack of the sea serpents from several days ago “The Balladeer of the Brine”, including the grizzly death of sailors swallowed whole, and how he charmed the mighty sea snakes into leaving them alone rather than harming them. I rolled an encounter reaction roll, and with the bard’s CHA modifier it came up strongly positive, so the dragon was entertained, and agreed to let them pass. Since it was a strong positive result, the dragon also gave them information about the threats up river, I ruled that this shifted their random encounter die for each segment of the day up one, so the d6 became a d8, the d8 a d10, etc.
They headed forward and eventually the river entered the Oytwood Forest. In the evening they rolled an encounter with 8 giant water spiders, all of which dropped on them from overhanging trees, that’s where we stopped. The spiders got surprise, and they dropped from above, which I treat as a charge, landing on party members before any of them could respond. We’ll start there next week.
Observations
So many things I see people saying on Twitter fade like the evening sun when I sit at the table and play.
First, the “swingy” and binary nature of dice rolls in AD&D are often cited as a bug, “there is too much variation”, and “it’s all or nothing”.
Here we see that these things are features, not bugs. The party phantasmist tracked the kopoacinth undetected with a successful surprise roll. He was surprised by the eel, but it missed him with a failed “to hit”. He rolled low enough initiative to get a fear spell out, but two of the eels saved against it. They both missed him again with “all or nothing” to hit rolls, and one of them saved against fear, but the loss of more than half of the eels triggered an “all or nothing” morale roll, which led to the last eel fleeing.
The search for the loot was excruciatingly slow and full of tension, each failed roll produced screams of terror. All “pass/fail” rolls. Then finally loot was found, but not all could be retrieved. And rolls were made for the kopoacinth to show up. There were 8 of them (4 more were in the lair), they would have slaughtered the lone phantasmist if found.
The encounter with the dragon showed the awesomeness of encounter reactions, the PCs gained information, a form of currency that pays rich dividends in the game, and they talked (and sang) their way out of danger. A bad roll there could have went south fast. They met pilgrims and got a taste of some of the culture of the game world. They gambled and wrestled and inspired the crew. The players understand the importance of courting factions and gaining loyalty bonuses, they know the social game is as important as the stats in a sandbox setting, so they put in the time.
And I get to role play over the top chitin (insect-person) wrestlers.
And for all the talk of fail forward mechanics, consecutive pass / fail rolls do not feel limiting, they propel the game forward in ways I could not foresee. How many times would a referee that “tweaks” the dice have been tempted to do so in all of these cases. Note the days when there were no encounters. Some refs would force an encounter as you should have one every day. Some ref’s would have tried to give “everyone a chance to shine” rather than letting the phantasmist go off on his own, “don’t split the party”.
Nonsense.
That loot raid was absolute madness at our table, even though only one PC was “acting”, every player was engaged, shouting advice, hooting and hollering. They planned it for a week outside of the game for heaven’s sake.
Just let it happen, that’s all you have to do.
There were near deaths several times, they lost two crewmembers too, and had a service for them before docking. I could have placed treasure, but rolling it was far more exciting, and they ended up with treasure they ADORED. Finding a Treasure Finding potion after excruciating rounds spent NOT FINDING TREASURE was perfect. That was rolled. When you place something that on the nose players just roll their eyes, when it comes up on it’s own with a random roll IT’S MAGIC, and the players are blown away.
The magic arrows produced squeals of joy from the party archers, even though they understand that they aren’t permanent magic items. That was rolled. All the loot was randomly rolled. And they felt like it was totally worth the risk.
The random encounter tables produce potential conflict and potential alliances, sources of information and sometimes even treasure. It is not an “endless series of fights”, though fights are of course a risk. It’s not loot, loot and more loot, though sometimes there is loot to be found. I run the AD&D treasure tables as written and the actual amount of magic given out is comparatively small, and randomizing it makes it exciting. Rolling on the treasure tables is one of the most enjoyable experiences my players have.
And all of this is ON THE WAY to the dungeon. The players take the time to experience the game world, they gather intel, form alliances, find loot, and build their power while heading to the next task. They aren’t passing through the game world, they are diving into it, and wrestling out what they need to succeed.
The journey is the destination, it isn’t just a space between points, the PCs LIVE THROUGH THE SPACE, this is how they engage with the world, this is how it comes to life. When they arrive in Barrier Peaks they will have earned their arrival at the gates of the unknown, and the distance will feel real.
NONE of this involved backstories, “making each player shine”, ensuring there were a certain number of encounters per day, working to keep everything “dramatic”, or connecting the events to some larger plot or story. None of it. Instead, the PCs go out into the world, do stuff, and the world pushes back.
Exploratory play and emergent story.
Adventure awaits.
No comments:
Post a Comment