The Fantastic Voyage (Introduction, Part One)

The Wedding of Sunaeco and Yasmina Al-Amara

At last the big day arrives for Sunaeco and Yasmina.

Sunaeco's party are Gated in by Cerys (who travelled there in advance to help get things set up having been provided one of the Amulets that permits transit to and from the Demiplane of Gloaming). The Amir temporarily lowers the plane's defenses allowing ingress without the amulets.

Sunaeco has had a new outfit tailored for the occasion in his favourite colours of blue and white, and wears a fine pair of boots. He also wears his platinum belt with sapphires.

He is a little nervous at the prospect of meeting all Yasmina's relations - so far he has met her, and her parents, and one of her cousins, briefly. He is glad to be finally putting down some roots after many years of gadabout itineracy, and be marrying into a prestigious family of geniekind.

To be sure, Yasmina's family are looking to benefit from this union as well. It is an unconventional match, but their eldest are already respectably married off to other Janni and so they are willing to tolerate its unusual nature. Sunaeco is recognised as a member of "Team Elysium" the winning delegation who brought the Janni the gift of the Waters of Elysium. (And by a startling coincidence, his name is like that of the sacred river running through Elysium, but reversed, which is surely a fortunate omen). So this marriage brings them a degree of prestige even if Sunaeco is not so very wealthy by their standards, though by no means a pauper. And, given that the Vizier to the Amir recommended this union to them, there may be other advantages, too. Even the occasion of this wedding here on the Amir's personal demiplane is an opportunity for them to mingle with a higher social class among the Hubul and forge connections. They will be milking this for every bit of advantage.

The Demiplane of Gloaming has been remodelled. The interior space is now entirely walled and roofed over in glass. The space between the glassy walls and the boundaries of the plane is filled with water. The Janni Vizier Rashid Al-Suliman has taught Cerys how to summon a type of aquatic Eladrin called a Noviere, from the plane of Arborea. He has sometimes had uses for them but they generally serve him grudgingly. Cerys can cast more summonings and be far more persuasive than Al-Suliman. The Noviere have a humanoid form, and also an alternate form, that of a shimmering golden dolphin made from luminescent water. A school of these playful creatures is persuaded to swim about in the watery space and put on a bit of a show, and make the aquatic guests feel at home. There is no gravity in the watery zone except for where the waters open out into the pools and fountains of an elegant water garden surrounding a gilded gazebo-like affair in the centre. The design is quite geometrically symmetrical and intricate.

Sunaeco has agreed to a Janni wedding service, not having strong views about such matters himself. He will not be converting to worship of Anumon the creator of geniekind in any formal sense, though he has of course agreed that he will respect the progenitor of his wife's race.

I think that for many of Sunaeco's wedding guests this will be their first trip to a plane other than Oerth. Certainly his family members; quite a few of his friends too, I think.

Echo has brought Quaenas along as her guest, though she pretty soon detaches from him and hangs about mainly with Cerys and Reynardia, until she discovers the Eladrin dolphins who she is definitely going to want to play with. Cerys has her two attendants, who will be Pumpkin and Tori (who are probably also going to wind up sporting with the Eladrin). It will be noticed that Cerys seems to be in high spirits and a bit more capricious than normal. Maybe just the excitement of the occasion, but her features look a little more elfin, and every so often a toss or flick of her golden mane will reveal a glimpse of a shapely, pointed ear. She can polymorph, after all, so maybe just her latest affectation. But there is something different in her gaze, too. Something potent.

Among the Janni guests, Jibran Barakas is there, together with Mrs Barakas. He shoots Cerys a look of guilty longing. Cerys tips him a saucy wink when his missus isn't looking and telepaths him an erotic memory of them together, laughing wickedly at his flustered reaction.

The Amir Utha Alzmed himself will conduct the service; he is authorised to do so and he certainly will want to in his own demiplane. Sunaeco waits nervously before the altar. Like all expectant grooms he naturally feels a moment's anxiety that she might have a last minute change of heart, to leave him covered in disappointment and shame.

But she does not. Yasmina will look truly lovely of course as she floats down the aisle (literally) in an expensive diamond studded wedding dress. The train and midriff are designed to be unlaced and detached so that it turns niftily into a two-piece diamond-studded bathing costume so Yasmina can go swimming with the groom's family in it later in the day if she pleases.

Sunaeco and Yasmina recite their wedding vows, repeating them in Janni and in the aquatic elf tongue of Oerth.

The wedding rings have been provided as a gift from Yasmina's grandmother, and Mumm-Rah produces them, having been entrusted with them earlier. (Someone warned him to keep his hand on them at all times as there were pixies about, and possibly more than were strictly invited might have flown in through the Gate spell)

Vows are exchanged, rings are exchanged and a jubilant Sunaeco kisses his bride as the Amir pronounces them elf and wife.

There are congratulations and the Amir declares that the bridal feast shall commence at once. He claps his hands and the wedding gazebo transforms into a wider affair with low tables and cushions set all around. Genasi ushers will show people to their places as other servants sweep in carrying platters of exotic food.

There will be speeches naturally.

<insert Mumm-Rah's speech hereabouts, hopefully delivered in lizardman so no-one can understand all the awful things Sunaeco has done and remember what happens on The Sea Ghost STAYS ON THE SEA GHOST>

After the feasting Janni musicians will provide entertainment and Yasmina shows off her dancing skills with her new man. Cerys will NOT be dancing as she is not such a meanie as to upstage the bride. But she will have fun in other ways. In fact there will be a bit more chaos than the Janni are wholly comfortable with. There seem to be a lot of dire bears about the place, for starters. Reynardia loans Cerys a use of her Wild Shape at one point - it's a thing she can do (later when the stuffy formalities are out of the way) and they both turn into dire bears and start frolicking and rough and tumbling in the water with the other dire bears. Then Cerys starts flying around in bear form. Jibran completely accidentally gets a cheeky slap on the rear from a flying dire bear paw. Later they turn into giant squid and go chasing the aquatic elf kids and the Eladrin about in the watery area.

Part Two is here.

The Fate Of UK Roleplayers

I thought those guys had been quite lately....

...wait, what, this happened 6 years ago?!

I must have been doing a PhD at the time or something.

https://www.geeknative.com/60702/uk-role-players-ukrp-closes/

A great pity, this was a nice site.  

Slowly one by one all the website-based D&D communities were starved of attention by social media, and more specifically, Facebook.

And so now we have this instead:

There is still Dragonsfoot, but they gatekeep ruthlessly against anything perceived as "Not Classic Roleplaying", which excludes 3.0 D&D onwards.

Maybe 3.X needs its own Dragonsfoot.

Rules, Referees and Reality

Foreword: I have discovered my old gaming blog on the Wayback Machine!  After attempts to data mine it out of my old backups produced no success (though admittedly I didn't try as hard as I might before resorting to Wayback).  Anyways...I shall repost some of my old content here.  'Twill be interesting to see if my views have changed.

This is post #1 from that blog...from 2008...but it's a repost of an earlier article I wrote for the Gamegrene forum in 2006.

The Coven Greyhawk

Session -1

We call ourselves "The Coven", for reasons shrouded in antiquity.  Our D&D campaign is set in the world of Greyhawk.

Canon is broadly adhered to but there are differences, so canonical history and geography should not be taken for granted; consult with the DM if unsure.

The campaign has been running for a long time.  According to some definitions of "campaign", what we refer to as a "campaign" might be referred to as "multiple overlapping campaigns run in the same setting."  In real time, the campaign began in 1994.

There is a large mix of player characters and character groupings, with a heterogenous level mix.  The highest level player character in the campaign is 24th level.  The lowest is 1st.  New players are not handed new-build characters of level equivalent to the highest level PCs in the campaign.  However there is not an insistence every new character starts out at 1st level, either.  Decisions are driven by situations.

We run 3.5 rules, but include such 3.0 material as is compatible and has not been subsequently replaced by a 3.5 version; and Pathfinder material that expands the range of possibilities, is reasonably balanced, and has no equivalent already existing in the 3.0/3.5 rulesets.

We are in principle liberal about multiclassing and sourcing of prestige classes though these must be DM-approved.  Often a rationale for a prestige class choice will be required; characters don't suddenly obtain prestige classes with weird abilities out of the blue.  Our approach to feats and spells follows a similar pattern.

On a No-to-Low-To-High magic scale of 0-10, personally I would rate us at about a 6.5.  Are there magic shops?  Y-e-s but not ones where you walk in and there are shelves and racks full of newly made magic armour, weapons, potions and scrolls.  More like, places that mainly sell alchemical stuff, maybe have a few random second hand trade ins for sale, and can make something to order, maybe depending on what it is, oh and you'll need to bring me the brain of a mind flayer if you want one of those.

The DMing style we have encouraged is to stick to rules and precedents unless there is a good reason to overrule the rules in a particular situation.  DMing by fiat is discouraged (though not forbidden).  This helps preserve fairness and consistency.  It does mean that the flow of play might be interrupted from time to time for rules checking.  It's understood that this is anathema to some RP styles but we have found that this has helped extend the longevity of the campaign and stopped things going off the rails as past experience running other campaigns has found.  Where there is a Rules-As-Written vs Rules-As-Intended contention, the tendency is to adopt a RAI approach unless the proposed interpretation would be adverse to game balance.  (As a DM, a stubborn RAW approach to spell descriptions is often a lifesaver against PC's "breaking the plot" of an adventure in an un-fun way.  Though we are not overly precious about our plots.)

Content Warning: our World of Greyhawk is decidedly non-utopian, meaning that sometimes bad things happen to good people and there is unfairness in life.  This is not to say that player characters can expect such treatment as a matter of course; DMs do not set out to upset players for their own cruel amusement.  But things like racism, gender bias, slavery, class injustice, ableism, emotional and physical abuse can and do all happen within the environment PCs find themselves in, in the interests of quasi-medieval verisimilitude.  If anything, to a lesser degree than one might find in a real medieval/renaissance culture.  Having said this, these behaviours are not continually thrust in players' faces.  Player characters, generally speaking, represent the more enlightened section of the populace who rail against such things; and DMs are (one hopes) sensitive to specific issues that particular players find upsetting.  But it is understood that some roleplayers prefer to avoid such settings altogether ("monster" slaying aside, perhaps, on which I make no comment) which is why I provide this fair warning.

There is a flip side to this warning.  Yes, characters can be "part of the problem" of such unjust behaviour, in principle, if this is understood to be an exercise in roleplay.  It is acceptable to roleplay a "flawed character".  But NOT if the player is deliberately using the environment of the campaign to give free rein to their own personal character failings with impunity, and particularly not if they are using this as a vehicle to harass or bully another player.

Sex: It doesn't happen all the time, but yes, it happens sometimes.  It can happen in ways that challenge social conventions, even, depending on the characters involved and their mores.  We don't go overboard on the details though.

Evil characters: within certain limits, yes.  You can play an evil character so long as you realise that you must be creative in finding reasons not to do harm to other player characters unless it is somehow warranted by circumstances that they can agree are sufficient justification.  PvP stuff has happened within the campaign but it is very rare and generally non-fatal.

DMPCs: we have a long and honourable tradition of DM's running a character in their own adventure, longer than this campaign even (some of us have been D&D players since the late 70's).  We know the pitfalls.  Trust us, we've had a lot of practise.  But in today's febrile social media environment it is evident that this is a fault line for some roleplayers, who prescriptively declare that this must never happen.  Hence - this upfront declaration.  It doesn't happen in every adventure.  And some of us are a bit famous for killing our own characters in our adventures!

Sandbox vs Railroad: Get thee hence, thou false dichotomy.

"Because Fireball":  No, we do not accept the premise that because magic exists then we should discard any and all attempts to depict a rational world.

We do love our crunchy character building (subject to moderation) but we love roleplay too.  Many of our characters have richly developed lives outside the dungeon.  Characters can have relationships, marriage and kids, buy property, boats, start up businesses, run monster zoos, make stuff, collect stuff.  Start secret societies.  Get ennobled.  Get involved in politics.  Visit their friends, give each other gifts.  They have opinions (sometimes strong ones) on each other.

Welcome to our roleplay playground of the past quarter-century plus.

Gilgamesh and the Golden Palace of Za-Hadrash: Complete Saga

This is not, sadly, an adventure journal as such.  

But it gathers together the pre-adventure build up story, the in-adventure infodumps (some of which may have longer-term implications beyond this adventure...) and a sort of rough albeit incomplete pictorial record of events.

1. Introduction, Part One
2. Introducton, Part Two
3. Introduction, Part Three
4. Introduction, Part Four
5. Introduction, Part Five
6. Introduction, Part Six
7. Introduction, Part Seven
8. Introduction, Part Eight
9. Introduction, Part Nine
10. Introduction, Part Ten
11. Gilgamesh's Band
12. Thorbjorn's Pre-Adventure Library Research
13. Dramatis Personae
14. The Janni Vizier's Tale, of the hubris of Ardishir the Magnificent
15. The Adventure Unfolds: Pictorial Account up to the rescue of Sunaeco
16. Sunaeco's Tale
17. Godratt's Saga
18. The Rakshasa's Tale
19. Scenes from the Golden Palace
20. Arlenoth the Incubus
21. The Adventure Continues: a Further Pictorial Account
22. The Court of Thezzakondrumas
23. Battle in the Court: Thezzakondrumas' Downfall
24. The Vanguard of the Chaos Horde
25. The Last Battle: Against the Dragon Spirit of Death
26. The Golden Palace: What If...

At some point I will hopefully get around to daisy chain linking all these together.

This was an extremely challenging adventure for players and DM alike (the latter of whom invested large swathes of time in preparing the various encounters and setting them up on Roll20).  I like to think it had quite an epic feel and for many of the characters involved a significant waypoint in their careers.

Miraculously, all of the PCs survived though at cost.  Revivifies and Fate Points flowed like water...

(The matter of Sunaeco's courtship of Mishari Al-Khalifa the wealthy Janni widow from the "Diplomacy" adventure which inadvertently dragged the heroes of two worlds into so much trouble was finally resolved and sadly for our blue-skinned hero, she chose Gilgamesh over him.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, some might say. 

All was not lost, though, as he was almost immediately propositioned by one of Mishari's attendants, Yasmina Al-Amara, also from a well to-do background among the Janni and who had taken a fancy to him, and so as one romantic door closes for our aquatic Casanova, another opens...

Meanwhile, on some distant world, the Rakshasa Maharaja Bruskamesthingas fumes at the thwarting of his plans.  Is Oerth now a place of interest to him?  What vengeful mischief might he be scheming next?)

The Golden Palace, Undressed vs Dressed

This adventure was based on DCC #32 The Golden Palace of Zahadran by Goodman Games, with various encounters upgraded to a greater or lesser extent.  (It's a frequent practice of mine to alter the name of an adventure slightly while in play until it doesn't bring up any page 1 Google hits).

Gilgamesh and the Golden Palace: What If...

Fun with counterfactuals

This is written as an address to the players, as it is a straight lift from the FB group posting

What if...the party hadn't used Diplomacy in the initial encounter?

The warring Daeva factions would have united against the "outsiders". You'd have beaten them, for sure, but you wouldn't have gained a more or less immediate lead on where Sunaeco was.

===================

What if...the party somehow screwed up and killed Godratt?

There was a tense moment when this almost looked like it might happen. Anyone who had actually read the Janni Vizier's tale at the start of the adventure properly and digested it should have been able to guess who the guy on the floor was, but when he auto-resurrected the party were still in a mode of seeing everything but Sunaeco as a threat. For a second there it looked like you might quickly try to kill him "before he gets a spell off" (actually, funnily enough that's exactly what the Rakshasa boss [in his Devourer meat suit] did).

Needless to say, that would mean the Mirror couldn't be destroyed. At least, not within the scope of this adventure.

===================

What if...someone had checked out the Sepulchre of Delir the Brave before going down the shaft beneath the Sepulchre of Ghalandar and freeing Sunaeco, or else a bit later when searching for the diamond?

For a moment, Baurig almost stepped into that place. He looked in and saw a couple of Aesma Daevas. Then he was afflicted by blindness when the Warped Ones attacked. Subsequently, there was no follow-up to "clear" that area properly.

If non-evil, non-chaotic characters had entered the Sepulchre the ancient programmed illusion would have been triggered. The Sword of Delir the Brave would have been obtained by its natural wielder, Jibran. Who would have subsequently dealt +4d6 damage to pretty much everything encountered in the adventure, afterwards.

In addition everyone in the Sepulchre when the sword is claimed by a worthy owner gets a Bless spell lasting 24 hours.

===================

What if...the Tombs of the Lesser Caliphs had been checked out?

Maybe slightly less probable due to the party's general clockwise exploration of the palace grounds. You might have decided to check the place out while waiting for the barrier to come down, as you had some spare time.

You might still have ended up passing it on to the Janni at the end of the adventure because "cultural treasure", or you might by then have felt otherwise, but you'd have had a +4 (+6 against evils) bow that did +2d6 damage to pretty much everyone in the place.

===================

What if...Jess hadn't had/used a Wand of Secret Door detection?

Your party are pretty much shit at Search. Even Sunaeco isn't that good - he's just not that kind of Rogue, really.

All the secret doors in the Palace are DC 30 to find. You might be able to make DC 30 with some "Assists" but it becomes likely that you wouldn't have found them all right away. The secret treasury would have taken longer to find.

Jess might have started by using the Wand in the first chamber beneath the Treasury instead of the second. You'd then have found the other secret door (that you never found, in the end) leading to...the west side of the Pyglock Warrens. The only exit from there the Pyglocks knew of was the way up into the Palace Kitchens (and fun with Ug'Thamus the huge hezrou chef).

===================

What if...the Palace encounter had gone differently?

Every DM when they plan an encounter has an idea of how they think it might go. With this encounter, I set it up with several possibilities in mind.

Thezzakondrumas' motives were - he wanted to keep the barrier up and keep control of the Golden Palace. He actually didn't want the invasion to happen at all because some other bigshot from Pandemonium would have usurped him. If he could present the Marshal of the Host of Eternal Night with evidence of the following - a dead Rakshasa, and the heads party of adventurers who killed him - he could claim that the barrier wasn't now coming down, but that it wasn't his fault.

In the event of the barrier coming down, however, and if it couldn't be stopped - both of which were true facts by the time you went into the palace to speak to him - he wanted to destroy the mirror (if he became aware that was an option, which would have been news to him). He would then "make for the hills" and slowly try to raise a new kingdom of his own and army to conquer this world, unopposed by any of his rivals in Pandemonium.

So ironically, his motives aligned with those of the party, and had he known this he would have given you the diamond - but after he'd "screwed around with you for a bit". He wasn't going to hand it to you in a private audience where you could jump him. But he didn't want to show weakness in front of his subjects, so he would have "tested" you.

That was my pre-thinking about it. So, essentially, I had several "most likely" possibilities in mind -

1) The party just attack in a frontal assault. I suspected this would be a bruising encounter. I wasn't wrong.

2) The party infiltrate and scout the palace to determine threats and plan for them or perhaps pre-eliminate them, then attack.

3) The party attempt Diplomacy with Thezzakondrumas and make a convincing argument why he should hand them the diamond, but because he doesn't want to look like a complete pussy he challenges them to "fight my champion" for the privilege. This is what he was about to do, but he didn't get the words out of his mouth before Thorbjorn attacked.

The champion fight would have been, I guess, Thorbjorn against Hignir the fiendish frost giant. There is a "moment" when Hignir looks at Thorbjorn and, though he feels strangely angered at the sight of this Norseman, he also wishes he did not have to fight him, because he is the closest thing to "home" he has seen in a thousand years.

4) Last but not least: "You have some mighty fine dancers, but I am sure your best dancer cannot compare to ours." Cue Berinanya / Cerys dance-off. Everyone loses their minds at Cerys' performance, per usual. Thezza too challenging to turn into a fanatic but he can be convincingly bluffed that Cerys will definitely want to sleep with him if he loans the party the diamond. (Which she wouldn't, in the end - she isn't above a little transactional intimacy when the mood takes her but she is discerning about who she is willing to grace with her favours).

HOWEVER there is something to be said for taking the palace-dwellers on in combat. If you hadn't taken them out when you did, some of them would have still been around for the final battle! They would see the dragon fly out when the barrier came down and realise that if they don't hit you and Gilgamesh' crew while you're off-balance then they'll be next. So they would have come out and joined the fight.

NOT ALL though, because a bunch of them "wink out" when the barrier falls.

• The blue slaadi
• All the dancing demons (except Berinanya)
• The hezrou
• All four lesser Indra daevas
• The dretches

===================

What if...the Mirror of Chinvat hadn't been destroyed?

Three ways in which that could have happened (besides "ooops we killed Godratt" as previously mentioned).

A) After Rescuing Sunaeco, the party had gotten what they came for, essentially. The party could then have holed up, waited for the Barrier to come down, and then Cerys could open a Gate back to Oerth.

B) The party could have tried to get the diamond, but failed.

C) The ritual to destroy the Mirror could have failed (a bit against the odds given the way the buffs stacked up on that but still not impossible)

As you saw, a massive Chaos invasion was going to pour through the Chinvat Gate. That started when you were already in there. General Mastopheles & his good old devil boys stopped the first thrust of that invasion - though without them in play you could still have holed up in a Magnificent Mansion. However, the devils could not have halted the invasion alone; if the Mirror hadn't been destroyed, the invasion force on the other side of the portal would have brought into play some more powerful assets who would blow through the Ice Devil's walls of ice in no time (Cerys' Wall of Force only lasted 20 rounds), and then eventually Mastopheles et al would have been overwhelmed.

Then, when the barrier went down, Gilgamesh and allies would have faced Azi-Dahaka at the head of a Chaos Army, rather than as a lone enemy, which would have put a whole different complexion on the final battle.

IT GETS WORSE. While the Mirror of Chinvat is still extant, creatures coming through it regenerate 1/4 of their starting hit points each round (on top of any existing Reg or Fast Healing they may have). The only way to stop this regeneration is for them to take damage from creatures who are from a plane other than the plane the Chinvat Gate is on. Azi-Dahaka for instance would have had Regenerate 146 (plus his Fast Healing 10).

You may not have immediately cared, of course. But once Gilgamesh' world is overrun, that becomes a bridgehead for a wider invasion of all the Prime Material worlds.

===================

Overall - though some of the things the party did (or didn't do) may have been sub-optimal, these were compensated for by some jammy / clever actions that swung things heavily in your favour. So, a job well done, in the end.

Gilgamesh and the Golden Palace of Za-Hadrash - The Last Battle

Our intrepid heroes battle alongside the legendary King Gilgamesh 
against Azi-Dahaka, the Three-Headed Dragon Spirit of Death!

...and send him back to the depths of Pandemonium from whence he came...

(Though some people hid out in a Magnificent Mansion!)

With the destruction of the Mirror of Chinvat and the slaying of Azi-Dahaka
Godratt's endless burden has lifted after 4000 years of entrapment

in

The Golden Palace of Za-Hadrash

and the land of Sumeria is safe once more

King Gilgamesh shall erect statues in the squares of Uruk 
to honour those who brought about these mighty deeds

And thus ends our tale.