Building Bhakashal - Trust the Process

In a sandbox style game, the referee leaves things open and the PCs actions drive the play. This concept is hard to explain to someone who is used to running a narrative focused game where the DM constantly tweaks things to keep the game going in the “right direction”.

I have no idea what the “right direction” is for the game.

So how do you adapt to this? When I am asked what the role of the referee is in Bhakashal, I tell people it is to interpret prompts, whether these be character actions, random encounter rolls, encounter reaction rolls, etc, etc. The beauty of this is that I don’t know what’s going to happen until the game starts, I have no expectations.

I think many DMs do not work this way.

This week’s session had an interesting moment that shows how this works at the table.

The PCs are trying to find the Forgotten City, located somewhere in the Sea of Dust, a gigantic desert. However, they don’t have a location for the city, they just know its out there in the desert somewhere.

Here’s the key part: I had no idea when we started how they were going to find it, and neither did they. It’s not my job to make this happen for them, they have to create opportunities. It takes a lot of faith to do this, there is a strong pressure on the referee just to tell the PCs what they need.

I have learned over the years to trust that things will either work out (they will find the Forgotten City), or they will pivot. There is no “fail state” here, in a fully sandbox game, you either find what your are looking for or start looking for something else. It doesn’t matter if I don’t know how they will figure out where the Forgotten City is, we just play and find out.

I know this would drive some ref’s nuts, “but what if they can’t find the city”.

But what indeed.

They have been travelling through the mountains to get to the desert. It has been a long journey, 5 days across the ocean, then 2 days to the mountains, and 6 days through the mountains to get us to the beginning of today’s session.

The last thing that happened in the last session was that a group of NPCs robbed the caravan warlock, Mahl Unoss the Puissant. Unbeknownst to the party, Unoss was taking a powerful crystal ball with ESP to another warlock to exchange it for another powerful item. Two NPCs created a distraction and snuck up on the caravan at night, then stole the crystal ball. They had planted a spy on the caravan to watch how Unoss handled the item, and to slip something into his drink so he would be sleeping at the time.

Just like a group of PCs would do!

The NPCs were a dual class warlock (magic-user)/phantasmist (illusionist) and a spider (thief). They fled into the night and Unoss eventually woke up and discovered the theft. He absolutely had to get this item back, and he asked the party Slayer (ranger) to help him track the thieves. Three party members went with him, the party Warlock, Mercenary (fighter) and Slayer. The Slayer took some time to find their trail, and the pursuit was on. The NPCs had mounts waiting in the trees and were quickly on their way.

Then the party made its only tactical error, their Slayer is a Garudin (bird-person) and flew into the air to find them rather than relying on tracking on the ground. People lament how flight is overpowered, but in this case it meant that the NPCs had a chance of spotting him, and they did. If he had stayed on the ground and tracked from there they wouldn’t have known they were being followed. Since one of the NPCs was a phantasmist, he made an illusion to confuse the party and it worked, they went off in another direction.

The party then tried to find the trail again, it took some time, but they did, however the NPCs were now quite a bit ahead of them. Eventually the NPCs made it to their base where the other party members were waiting, then one of the NPCs, Luxifal the Cerulean (the warlock/phantasmist) doubled back with his party and approached the PCs (as an illusion).

Now, both Luxifal and Unoss are Bhakashal warlocks, so they are haughty, arrogant and don’ t take any guff. Luxifal proposed that Unoss and the PCs leave now otherwise he and his companions would have to slay them all. I rolled an encounter reaction roll to see how Unoss would take this sort of threat. It came up very high, so it was my job to decide how to interpret this, why would Unoss react positively to a threat?

My job is to interpret this in a sensible way.

I decided that Unoss is a smart guy (17 Intelligence!) and that he didn’t think Luxifal would just show up on his own to confront the party, thus the rest of his group were probably hiding and ready to ambush them, so rather than pushing back, he would try to talk him down.

Unoss and Luxifal traded jibes for a while, Unoss insisting that he had to have the crystal ball back, Luxifal insisting that it was now his and that Unoss should leave.

Then one of the PCs asked Luxifal if they could offer him loot in exchange for the crystal ball.

That was unexpected. The party had recently scored a huge haul and converted it into precious gemstones. Each one had several thousand GP worth of gems on their person. They pooled their gems and made Luxifal an offer.

One thing I love about this style of play is that it isn’t obvious whether or not a NPC would take what amounts to a bribe. And I don’t have to make that decision, the dice will. The sum they offered was significant, so I added a small modifier and rolled, the result was strongly positive.

So Luxifal agreed to the deal. We spent a bit of time coming up with an exchange protocol, the party didn’t trust Luxifal and they didn’t trust him. Eventually the crystal ball was obtained and returned to Unoss.

You might ask, why did the party voluntarily give up thousands of GP in gems to get an NPC’s crystal ball back?

There are two reasons. First, over the last 6 sessions the party has travelled with Unoss. The party warlock spent time talking to the NPC about magic, they even exchanged scroll spells at one point. Also the party has had several random encounters with Unoss around, they were both impressed by his abilities and Unoss and the PCs had saved each other a few times. They felt a bond with him.

Good NPCs will do that.

Also, the party has learned over and over again that it’s not about YOU being the most powerful person in the room, its about alliances and networks of power. If a powerful person owes you, that’s a win. Unoss is a powerful warlock and they did him a HUGE favor.

However, this is Bhakashal, and a powerful warlock like Mahl Unoss the Puissant does not want to be owing the party a favor any longer than he has to. So I was actively thinking about how he could pay the party back.

On the way back to the caravan, Unoss and the party were talking about whether or not they should have fought the NPCs, and Unoss’ mission. Unoss asked them for more details about their mission, keen to see if he could help and pay off his debt. They mentioned that they were looking for the Lost City, and they didn’t know how to find it.

They were thinking of finding a sage and asking them, or perhaps looking for local guides who knew the desert well who might have stumbled upon it. The problem was, according to them, that any guide they found would claim to have found the Lost City, but the party had no way of knowing if they were telling the truth or just fleecing naïve adventurers.

That’s when the penny dropped for me, I instantly knew how Unoss could help them. I waited to see if one of the players would figure it out.

And they did.

The party mercenary (fighter) got excited and said that Unoss could use his ESP crystal ball to check to see if the guides they found actually knew where the city was. It would take time, many would genuinely think they knew but not actually have any direct experience. It wasn’t a guarantee, but it was a good plan, and it gave them a way forward.

I could have just given them a map (I actually rolled a map in a treasure hoard several sessions ago and rolled a 1 in 100 chance that it was a map to the lost city, it wasn’t!), but instead the game just dropped this into my lap. The possibility of Unoss having his crystal ball stolen was a random encounter option, it might not have come up, then the party wouldn’t have even known he was carrying it. The party helping out, so Unoss owed them a favor was also unexpected.

The lesson here is that I didn’t have to give them anything, the game eventually created the circumstances for success. The best part is that the players were proud of themselves, through their actions and clever thinking they had a plan to find the place they were looking for, and I didn’t just “give” it to them, it emerged organically from play.

This is why travel shouldn’t be “hand waved” just to “get to the adventure”.

Trust the process, and let it happen.

 

 

                                                    Building Bhakashal - Combat!

My Wednesday group started up again this week, and they were giant hunting. I’m going to recount the events, with some gameplay commentary along the way. We have a lot of non-combat time at the table, but this session was all fight.

Their caravan had been ambushed by fire giants, and they had lost a number of mounts, goods and people, but managed to flee. The players decided that the giants might pursue, the caravan was still big and slow, and tempting. So, they doubled back and watched from a distance, the party warlock (magic-user) got to use Wizard Eye to surveil their cave. Eventually two of the giant’s left to go hunting (or so the party assumed) and they came up with a plan. 

Initially they decided to attack the remaining giants while these two were out hunting, so their forces would be lessened. But then they decided to try and slay the giants out hunting first and come back for the giants in the cave. This was smart, smart as they were fighting fewer giants at each interval, smart as they were attacking the giants outside of their lair where they had fewer advantages, and smart because this was their first direct fight with giants (the last time they just fled) and they would learn from a smaller skirmish.

One of the PCs is a Garudin (a bird-person), he tracked the hunting giants from the air, and directed the party to an ambush point. The giants were heading to a forest, the party positioned themselves between the giants and a stream that ran through the forest, assuming they might hunt there or go there for water. They picked a clearing with no large boulders lying around for an ambush. The party tanks hid around the area and loaded up missile weapons. A lower level Thaumaturge (thief/magic user) prepared a scroll with Cone of Cold. The higher-level party warlock prepared to cast Sjin’Saar’s Corrosive Decay, a Bhakashal spell. The party Phantasmist (illusionist) prepared Pharin’s Sky of Bone, another Bhakashal spell. 

Then they waited. 

Given their concealment and the choice of ambush points, they had a 4 in 6 chance of surprising the giants, the giants had a 1 in 6 chance of surprising them. The dice decided, and the party did not achieve surprise, but neither did the giants. I have to interpret that result in a way that makes sense to the players, as they did set up an ambush. I decided that the giants spotted them from the middle of the clearing as the late afternoon sunlight reflected off of the metal of some of the PC's weapons. 

I tend to randomize everything in the game. The party had picked a clearing, and the giants were about 80 feet from the trees, so I rolled to see what the giant’s would do, given that there were an unknown number of attackers and there were no boulders around. I randomize this stuff as it keeps opponents unpredictable. The first giant took out a javelin to throw at one warrior he had seen, the second charged towards the woods nearby, targeting another warrior. 

We do individual initiative, and charging targets deal with missile fire and spells before they reach their target, depending on their speed and the initiative rolls. Crossbows fired. Crossbows don’t do that much damage, but there is always the possibility of a critical hit, in Bhakashal, just like Talislanta, any hit roll of 25 or greater (with bonuses) is a critical hit, and the attacker can choose their impact, pick a weapon critical effect or roll on a list of combat criticals. 

The first shot was a regular hit for minor damage, but the second shot was a critical, and the PC decided to disarm the giant, so the crossbow bolt hit the giant’s hand, causing the javelin to be dropped and the giant to howl in pain. Another crossbow attack missed.

The PC warlock, Borunn the Majestic, took out an iron rod with a drop of mercury on the end of it, whispered the words, “Fürödjön a vas tűzében” three times, and a swirling mass of dark green fire appeared at the end of the rod. The Warlock pulled back the rod and whipped it forward, the emerald sphere flew into the clearing, exploding when it reached the middle and filling the whole clearing with swirling dark green fire. The charging giant was about 30 feet from the trees when this happened.

Sjin’Saar’s Corrosive Decay hit both giants, the party had picked a clearing they could fill with the spell. The Corrosive Decay causes all ferrous weapons and armor in the AOE to save or disintegrate. Due to the nature of saves and the fact that you roll for each major item, armor, each weapon, that sort of thing, it almost always gets some objects, but rarely gets all. 

The javelin throwing giant lost its armor and a sword, the charging giant lost its battle axe and sword, so was now without weapons. When the giant was 10 feet from the edge of the clearing and was headed to reach in for one of the PCs, the party Spider (thief), the Phantasmist’s spell, Pharin’s Sky of Bone, kicked in. To cast this spell the Phantasmist (Josteloth the Gossamer) took out a bone fragment from a polar bear (this material component is EXTREMELY RARE in Bhakashal, so this was a dear spell to cast). The Phantasmist placed the bone between two flat palms and whispered, “Obloha z kostí, pokryje svět”, three times over, crushing the bone fragment to dust.

I was not rolling well, and each giant failed their save, the sky and surroundings went completely white as if in a furious snowstorm, they couldn’t see properly, they would get brief glimpses of their targets that would then fade to white. The weaponless giant near the trees reached in to try and grab the Spider anyway, and between the tree’s concealment and the hit penalty from the spell missed badly. The Spider then climbed up the tree a bit. Two of the party tanks sprung from the trees and attacked the disoriented giant. A two-handed sword and a wicked bardiche were wielded, one missed and the other did minor damage, as the giant’s wild gesticulations seemed to have kept it from harm. 

The giant in the clearing took out a new javelin, but the spell made it too hard to target anything. The giant threw its javelin where he thought one of the tanks was and hit the other giant instead (the spell randomizes all missile fire due to disorientation). Unfortunately for the javelin-throwing giant, its armor was gone. The party Slayer (ranger/assassin) targeted him, he got a critical and his choice was to have the giant lose its next attack. Criticals always have to be interpreted, in this case the crossbow bolt hit the giant in the shoulder joint, causing enough pain that an action was taken removing the bolt, this caused the loss of an attack. The party Spartan (monk) charged into the clearing as soon as the bolt was fired. An 8th level Spartan moves pretty fast, and due to the critical got to attack before the giant could respond.

The Spartan delivered a flying kick at its leg, which was another critical due to the modified AC of the giant. In Bhakashal, you can pick from a list of combat criticals, use the critical associated with your weapon, or make up your own critical, as desired. The Spartan picked toppling the giant as his critical effect, this both did damage and lost the giant a round getting back up. The Spartan then ran to the side, as the party Thaumaturge now cast Cone of Cold from a scroll, icing up the side of our now toppled giant. The giant made its save and took less damage, but this was followed up by another round of missile fire from the party as the giant lost its attack. The mighty fire giant was badly wounded, toppled, riddled with crossbow bolts, leg damaged and half its body covered with ice.

The giant near the trees was flailing around, weaponless, trying to hit the two party tanks, both of them landed hits, one for minor damage, one for significant damage. Still, Fire Giants are 10 HD creatures, I roll for HP, and this bad boy had 65 hp to start.

Then the party Spider leapt from the trees with a sword out for a backstab, what we lovingly call a “Crom”. 

That was sweet. 

Morale checks were rolled, the javelin-throwing giant failed and tried to leave, but the Sky of Bone spell had mixed up its perception and it fled in a random direction. This gave the party warlock a chance to cast Magic Missile, which did enough damage to slay the monster.

“Your bright missiles cut through the air and effortlessly reach the target, each one that strikes the fleeing giant racks its body with a shiver of agony and carries the stench of flesh burnt by lightning, a faint smell of ozone permeates the air as the giant topples, lifeless.”

The giant near the trees did manage to land a blow on one of the party tanks, sending him flying into a tree with a critical hit. Unfortunately, the combination of the backstab and the big damage attack last round left the giant vulnerable. One of the tanks finished him off with a cleaving bardiche blow, lopping off its head. Last session one of the giant's had lopped off a PC's head, so this generated a lot of shouting.

The party had a brief celebration then started to plan out the attack on the remaining giants. 

This group has been playing with me for 3 years now, and they really have absorbed a lot of strategy from past experience. They know the value of an ambush, of splitting up their enemies’ forces, and of using distance attacks and spells that do more than just damage. They have learned to sequence, e.g., not always cast AOE spells AFTER your tanks have charged in. They also coordinate missile and melee attacks to avoid friendly fire. Bhakashal’s combat rules allow you to run around between attacks, this mobility is important as it allows more tactical play, the players have absorbed that lesson.

I should add that these PCs are all in the 6-8th level range, so they get criticals regularly in combat, something that was not the case as much at lower levels. It has been rewarding to see the mechanics work as intended at the table. We also got to see some Bhakashal spells get a workout, that was fun. Initially the lads were enamored with the standards, Fireball, Lightning Bolt, big damage for sure, but they have seen the value of spells that disable, distract and otherwise disadvantage their foes. Removing armor and weapons with the Sjin'Sarrs Corrosive Decay made a big difference here, as did the disorientation created by Pharin's Sky of Bone.

Next session should prove to be interesting, as there are 5 fire giants in their lair, when we were wrapping up there was talk of summoning monsters and sending them into the cave to soften them up before the party gives it a go.

They are learning!