Goodman Games

Greetings all,

On Monday, Jan 3rd, my gaming group will be starting Shrine to the Fallen Lama and playing it every Monday until we finish it. For your enjoyment or curiousity, I'll be posting session reports here (and at our groups website, http://www.meetup.com/TheEdgemont/ )

Of course, If you plan on playing the module, you may want to avoid the thread. Until then.

Cool. Thanks for the heads up. I think I recognize a couple folks in your Meetup photo from some of my LA game sessions. Hi Louis!

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Joseph Goodman
Goodman Games
www.goodman-games.com

Hi Joe. Looking forward to giving this one a try.

The Edgemont Roleplaying and Adventurers Club is the companion group to the Dead Gamers Society, it focuses more on D&D and fantasy RPG's, while the DGS is more White Wolf and Horror RPG's.

*Spoiler alert, minor details of the module to be revealed*

With the first session of Shrine of the Fallen Lama under our belt, here's a update on our opening session.

Before that, I kit bashed the module some. Let me explain. The premise of the adventure is that the heroes are intent to free a shrine complex of the evil that has taken over it. The once center of good, the shrine has been taken over by all manner of evil things. So, the heroes explore the buildings of the complex, learn what and how it happens and dispatch the evil monters.

Yet, underneath the, accessable via a well at the shrine complex, is a series of caves, where a necromaner and his minions are kidnapping innocents, so to speak, and experimenting on them, for their nefarious reasons.

For my taste, thematically speaking, the above ground shrine complex adventures and the underground cave adventures don't really fit together and they are only loosely related. I like my adventures to have a strong narrative and I don't think that these matched up as well as I would have liked. So I mixed things around.

I had the underground kidnapping storyline serve as a prologue to the freeing the shrine complex from evil storyline. The heroes where hired to rescue kidnapp victims and in the the process, learned that one of the kidnapp victims is a monk from the shrine and according to his divine knowledge, the heroes where "destined" to rescue him and free his shrine from evil. There you have it, the heroes rescue the prisoners and them travel to the shrine and deal with evil.

With that explained, on to the first session...

The adventuring group.

Plus-Warforged/Barbarian
Zazenna-Wilden/Druid
Benoit-Genasi/Warlord
Garial Kai-Genasi/Sword Mage

The heroes arrive at a cave opening into the ground after having previously hired to help free a innocent kidnap victims. The heroes are brash and confident and decend down stairs leading down. Garial Kai leads the group down the stairs and at the last moment, discovers his foot tangles around a trip wire, a trap is sprung and a large stone near the top of the stairs topples down and knocks three of the four adventurers to the bottom and injuries them in the process. Not a good start.

The land in at the bottom of the cave, which has no openings or pathways in any direction. Being clever, they search the space, discover a secret door and Plus proceeds to loudly bash it open.

On the other side, they find a large cave space, a wood door is on the far wall of the cave, the place reaks and litter is all over cave floor, in three dark alcoves, they hear the stirring of some type, emerging from each alcoves are orcs. Oh great! Next time they should be more quiet. A pitched fight begins. One orc appears to be the ring leader and he proceeds to cold cock Plus and Garial Kai with his warhammer and he knocks them out, unconcious. The other two manage to hang on a couple of rounds, while Plus and Garial Kai wake up and join the fight. The fight goes back and forth, but eventually the heroes get the upper hand and force the orc ring leader to surrender.

The question the orc and he tells them that is master, a great necromancer, will be glad to have them as part of his experiments. The heroes want to know were the prisoners are, they threaten the orc with his life and the orc folds and goes to his alcove, gets a key and takes the heroes to the wooden door, which when open, leads to another space with another door. He opens the next door (which was trapped, but the orc bypassed it, such a nice orc). On the other side of the door, another cave space...and a fat, well dressed goblin pointing a wand at them!

What will the heroes do? Read on and find out...

The heroes get the jump on the fat goblin (he rolls poorly on his initiative check and goes last in the order). The fight goes downhill fast for the gobin, he soon finds himself surrounded by the heroes and he attempts to flee down a trap door hidden underneath his work table. The heroes catch him before he does and the fat goblin surrenders.

Inside this cave space, are two doorways that lead to two different cell blocks. After shaking down the fat goblin, the find a set of cell keys and then they tie, gag the goblin and proceed to the cell blocks.

In the cells they find eight prisoners. Three dwarves, who are in a state of malnutrition and shell shock and act angry to the heroes. The open their cell doors to the free them, but the dwarves don't leave, they distrust the heroes and accuss them of playing mind games with them, suggesting that the heroes will cut them down if they step out of the cell.

The heroes proceed to the next cell and meet two tieflings. On their cell door is a painted arcane symbol. The tieflings promise them riches and knowledge if they open the door. The heroes are distrustful and leave the cell door locked. The tieflings hurl a string of obcenities at the heroes.

In the other two cells they discover a teenage boy and girl, the boys has been badly beaten and the girl is pregnant, and seems close to birth. The heroes learn that the boy and girl are together. They free the boy and the girl.

In the final cell, the meet a monk, the object of their mission. He cryptically tells them that he has been waiting for them and they are here to free him and is place of worship, is shrine.

After a while, that heroes escort the prisoners, not including the tieflings, up to the opening of the cave. But they have unfinished business before they help the monk. The trap door that the fat goblin tried to escape into, remains unexplored. Who is the necormancer that the orc ringleader mentioned? What treasure might be below the trap door?

The monk says he'll remain above, wait for the heroes if they want to explore below the trap door and offer them need prayers in the process. They'll need it he says.

The heroes decend below for more adventure. What will happen? Next week we'll find out.

What? No TPK? Louis, I'm ashamed of you!

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What do you mean no?

Ok, today we get two updates in one, yesterday (1-17) and last Monday (1-10). Got busy last week and didn’t have a chance to give ya’ll the low down.

Yesterday's session will be posted in a couple of days.
Let’s begin.

Monday 1-10

When we last left off, the heroes decided to descend into the trap door below the jailers desk. This being after they defeated the jailer and freed the prisoners.

So down they go. The enter a chamber which looks to be the jailers personal quarters. In the chamber is a sleeping area, stores of food, both fine ingredients and simple hard tack and sets of clothing. Score, the party goes into loot mode, they take some food items and the Gerial-Kai, the Genesi Sword Mage helps himself to one of the nicer robes in the closet. That done, the heroes move on.

Beyond the jailers chambers is a corridor with a door at the other end. The heroes are paranoid and begin looking for traps, finding none, the proceed to the door on the other end. It’s look. Zezenna the Wilder Druid tries and fails to pick the look. Plus, the Warforged Barbarian, tired of all this sneaking around, proceeds to break the door down. This creates a loud racket.

Once the door is broken down, waiting on the other side is a wizards lab and two strange creatures and a wizards await them and each gets off a attack before the heroes can react. After that, the heros jump into the fight. The wizard and the large splintery skeletal monster, called the Splintered One, move to the back of the chamber. The heros coverge on the big fat monter, Gorgor, and gain combat advantage on him. Intent on taking out Gorgor, the heros spend much of the time concentrating on him, but soon enough, the Splintered One moves in and covers most of the heroes in it’s Aura. Meanwhile, the wizards takes ranged attacks from a distance.

The fight goes in the advantage of the monters when Gorgor unhinges his jaw and swallows Zezenna whole. While Zezenna is still able to do some basic attacks from inside Gorgors stomach, the party is unable to take advantage of Zezenna healing powers. The heroes redouble there efforts to take Gorgor while Gerial-Kai engages the Splintered One and the Wizards, in hopes to take some damage from hitting the others trying to take down Gorgor. The plan pays off, Gerial-Kai withstands the large amounts of damage from the wizards and the Splintered One, while the rest defeat Gorgor and free Zezenna from his stomach.

The fight now tips in favor of the heroes. Soon enough, the heroes take down the Splintered One and now start heaping the damage on the wizards. When bloodied, the wizards starts begging for his life. He almost convinces the heroes to spare his life, but at the last moment, Plus the Warforged decides to behead the wizard. The evil wizards will now longer be a problem.

The heros take a short rest and proceed to the surface and the young monk awaits them. He give them a blessing of thanks for ridding the world of the evil wizard and tells them there work is not done, they are to rid his shrine of the evil that has overtaken it. The heroes agree and proceed to the monks shrine.

To be continued…

Monday 1-10 -continuing.

The heroes make it to the monks shrine up in the mountains, when they get closers, they notice the shrine is a compound with a tall stone wall surrounding it. The shrine complex has taken much damage and his is a considerable state of disrepair.

On the approach, the heroes decide sneaking up is the best way to get closer. At the gateway just before the walled entrance, is a gatehouse, quietly approaching, the heroes see a group of 5 ogres standing guard. Gerial-Kai gets the jump on one (with an extraordinary roll of the dice) and pushes him off the hill the compound is sits upon. One down, four to go. The fight is joined. One ogre is a big one, acting as the leader of the group, is a tough one and causes lots of trouble. This fight turns into an all out brawl with the heroes focusing on the leader ogre. During this fight, the heroes make great use of the Sword Mages marking ability to get a few extra basic attacks against the leader ogre to take him down. The remaining three fight to the death, but eventually are no match for the heroes.

After the fight with the ogres a new menace appears. Out of a nearby barracks, just outside of the compound wall emerges a group revenants. The monk lets the heroes know that they were former monks somehow corrupted to evil. The heroes decide they must go down.

Three of the five revenants monks close in and engage the heroes at close range, while the other two pepper the heroes with arrows. The close range monks are poorly positioned (much to my distress) and the heroes are at the advantage. The hero’s friendly ex-prisoner monk is watching nearby, no engaged in the fight, when the revenants decide to use him to their advantage. They move to attack him, therefore negating the heroes position advantage. Advantage: revenant monks. The heroes reposition to protect the young monk, move him out of the way and continue the fight, but take loads of damage in the process. There Healing Surges take a hit, but as heroes do, they perceiver and defeat the revenant monks.

The compose themselves, a rain begins to fall , a dark mood hangs over them. and proceed to the opening in the wall and move into the shrine compound.

What happens inside. That is for the next session, which was yesterday (1-17) game. That write up will be posted on Wednesday.

Until then.

I like how you've changed it to unify the theme of the adventure. When Nigel and I wrote the adventure up as a DCC it was based on one that we wrote for our own world, in which there were meta-plot things tying the different styles of evil at work in the place, so it made more sense in light of the larger picture. Although we realised that the themes didn't mesh together as well outside of this context, we thought it actually made for a nice adventure as there was such variety of challenge in the adveture with the different types of creature faced - I don't know enough about 4e to know whether this makes as much a difference as it did in 3.5 (which was what we originally wrote the adventure for - some other guy converted out 3.5 adventure to 4e). If only we'd had your inspired idea when we were adapting to as a DCC!

Cheerio,

Ben