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Thursday, April 14, 2022

Black City Session 3

 




After a couple of weeks off due to unavoidable issues, we played again last night. One of the regulars was missing, and none of the irregulars made it either, so we had just two players, so they each took two back up characters with them as henchmen.


We started late, mainly because we were chatty after a couple of weeks off, but also because we were all trying to remember exactly what had happened three weeks ago when we'd last played, parsing it all together from our collective notes and memories.


Joe's character Sigurd the daring has taken over the leadership role, since Jason's character, whose name I can't recall now, who had been their chief, died in session one. They decided trying to enter the towers was too deadly, and going underground seemed like a death sentence, so they were just going to explore the ruins and scavenge, while avoiding any other Northmen. A decent plan, but they ran afoul of some moaning shamblers (kind of Zombies, almost like on “The Walking Dead”, except not as a virus), they mistook at a distance for other Vikings.


The combat went well for most of the party, although Joe's Berserker Angmar got pretty mangled. He survived, but only because we used the Death & Dismemberment chart for fighting at 0 HP. He ended up with a couple of broken bones and was stunned and prone at one point, saved by the rest of the party. A couple of party members had nasty bites, and were pretty grossed out that the undead were actually eating their flesh.


The party trekked back to their ship and dropped off Angmar, grabbed Knud Frisk the beefy (Joe's Magic-User) as a replacement and heaaded back to the city, with the same game plan. They searched their way through a couple of hexes before finding an intact building that turned out to be a home base for some bandits. They went in assuming it to be abandoned and searchable, tripped a trap near the entryway (gas, poisonous, but merely incapacitating and vision obscuring), Sigurd failed his save. Everyone else made theirs, and most of them surged into the main room, and into a fight. A pair of archers shot at the party as they emerged from the cloud of gas.


The next round a spearman in a strange helmet moved to attack, more arrows came at them from the archers. The party's counterstrike killed the spearman.


I won initiative the next round again, and another group moved into range, a guy carrying a “strange trumpet looking thing” (Atlantean Lightning Gun), and two men with swords & shields moving clearly in front of him as a shield wall to protect him. The lightning gun fired, killing Knud and wounding Sigurd, whom Knud had dragged from the gas cloud. I did make the ruling then and there that magic/tech that drops you to 0HP or lower is a kill. The D&D table makes no sense against those types of attacks.


Unfortunately for everyone involved, the Atlantean Lightning Gun exploded on use, killing the user, and his two guards instantly, and depriving the party of the coolest treasure there. The party took down one of the Archers, and the other surrendered, offering to show the party where the hidden loot was. Magnanimous in victory, the party offered to take the Archer on as a henchman, and the adventure would have continued, but it was late in the evening, so they returned to their ship and we called it quits for the night.


All in all, it was a good evening of gaming, despite the poor player turnout. I had fun, and I am pretty sure Joe and Jason did too.


I do need to go through and populate the hexes ahead of time, as it is cumbersome to do at the table during play, which was also noted in the original Black City campaign. I may also prep some wandering monster encounters ahead of time.

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