BSSS - Session 4

 This weekend I resumed my weekly game, after a few weeks of off time around the holiday season. As usual below will be a quick recap of what happened, and my observations and thoughts. 

Summary

The group heads north to find the lost temple of the Sword God, runs into some refugees, a duel breaks out between two of the fighters and they manage to drive off a midnight raid by bandits through magic.

Characters

• Athra - Fighter
• Gal-Naha the Giant Gecko
• Esho - Sorcerer
• Shimsusa the Archer - level 1 Fighter
• Maru the Witch - Sorcerer
• Enlil Kishar - Fighter
• Apsu Kishar - Fighter

The Session Recap

With the start of the rainy season in the Fertile Lands the party had multiple choices on where to go. They knew at least two different locations that were of interest, and after the downtime carousing of a party member, they learned of a third new one as well. None of them seemed interested in returning the infested temple in the ruins near the Undying City. Finally they decided to pursue the lead of a lost temple (how does one "lose" a temple?) of a Chaos god of swords upriver from where they were. 

Preparations were made for travel, as the journey would take several days, even if it actually took them a few days of just sitting around in town before they could head out, a torrential rainstorm just beating against the city and making any travel a fool's errand. After the weather calmed down to a more manageable rain, they were on their way! The first day of travel was mostly uneventful, until the party decided to camp out for the night.

A horrible dog-like thing, the size of a horse and with feathered wings and a twisted skull-like beaked face swooped in from the rainclouds, falling upon the Fighter that was currently on watch, luckily the commotion allowing the rest of the party to get up and get armed so they could swarm it and kill it. The party's giant lizard wanted nothing to do with this thing though, neither did some of the mercenaries one of which simply stood her ground, another outright fleeing the fight and coming back later a bit sheepish at his reaction. 

On the second day of travel the storm picked back up, making marching even along the old imperial road miserable and slow. What was more interesting was the giant group of some 300 ragged looking people walking from the opposite direction. After some greetings and exchange of information, the group learned that these were refugees from one of the cities further up the river, who were fleeing an attack from some strangely armored and powerful warriors which had burst through their city gates and started slaughtering everyone.

The party had some thoughts on how to handle this situation, especially as they learned that these people were heading into the already overcrowded and Undying City. One of the mercenaries from earlier, a female skirmisher, also declared that she was going to leave her contract, handed back the silver paid to her and requested that she go with the refugees to help them out. An argument among the party on how to deal with her broke out, ranging from "give her extra money to spread the good word about us" to "I will publicly execute her for reneging on the contract as a warning to our other mercenaries". The argument got heated enough that two of the fighters ended up having a duel to determine how to proceed. The result was that the merc was allowed to leave with the refugees, who kept going down the road towards the city, with the party heading towards the river to look for this lost temple.

In the evening they were attacked again, this time by a rather large group of bandits who were shadowing the refugee group and were looking to grab whatever they can off them, but had decided to go for an easy detour and rob the party as well while they were in the area. Negotiations didn't go great, so a fight broke out, the party and the bandits fighting in almost pitch blackness, until one of the Sorcerers released a lighting trapped in a copper rod, frying 12 of the bandits on the spot and blinding everyone in the area, which routed the rest of them, save for their leader, who the party took captive. 

Pictured: An accurate rendition of the fight against 60 bandits.

Observations

The session ended up being mostly downtime, prep and then overland travel, which was honestly fine. For the overland travel rules, I ended up using a mix of what Yochai Gal has been writing up for Cairn, along with the movement speed rules from Wolves Upon the Coast. It's rough and quick, but it got the job done. 

Encounters were quite interesting - two fights, one very easy for the party, one in which they were distinctly outnumbered, and then a very interesting social dilemma in how to deal with these refugees. The duel in the middle of that whole thing was also great and a very nice organic action arising from the party's differing opinions. 

The fight against the bandits worked okay enough using my current combat system (it still only lasted 4 rounds total!), but I suspect the better way to do it would have been to use some kind of wargame set up using squads and warbands and whathaveyous. I am already eyeing the Warband mechanic in Errant and I need to figure out how to adapt that to OD&D combat, but I think it will make fights go even faster in real life time, which for me is always a plus! Overall I am quite happy with the session, the players enjoyed themselves greatly and it showed how a properly used ability or item (in this case, a copper rod with a trapped lightning in it) can swing even what should be a nearly unwinnable fight into a win! 

Oh yeah and the party got exp for ALL of those 60 bandits. Because as far as I am concerned routing the enemy absolutely counts as defeating them, so this was a good 7000 exp for the party, and they haven't even gotten into the dungeon yet!