Making plans...

 Right before I left the old country, we finished playing through the first book of the old Dragonlance campaign. 

The Playing D&D In Ukraine gang are cool. They're always eager to try out new stuff (as long as it's not FATAL), they're thinking that rolling badly and losing in a game can be as much fun as folling well and winning, they're diverse (now that I've left, the straight white guys are actually a minority), they're good playtesters (which is why I mentioned them on the first page of All Dogs Go To Hell).

Also they like their characters and their adventures. They're cool with one-shots, but they like to get XP and level up their characters and keep on exploring and adventuring.

And Dragonlance is a long campaign. Book One is barely the beginning. 

So we're going to play online, and we're going to play this. 

Hello again, Douglas Niles. Long time no play. 

 

 

And this needs some hacking. A) We're using LotFP rules, so that's something to adjust for, B) it was funny to get through the five-feet staff hidden in the barbarian girl's clothes and libraries without any books and treasuries where the only treasure was a draconian captain (very drunk). But it's been done. We want treasuries with treasure, we want libraries with books, we want crumbling scrolls with new spells written by mad wizards.

 And C) in our campaign, the Innfellows are not the heroes, they're doing something else, the heroes are a kender bardess, an elven mage, and a dwarven cleric. Putting Laurana and her brothers into this trio's adventures was fun, so I need to think of ways to bring in more NPCs and make a bigger mess out of their relationships. Did I mention that the kenderess transformed into a fireshadow and went to explore the Abyss in the end of our last session? I have no idea what new friends and enemies she made on the way. Neither do the players, yet. 

So, the adventure starts in Tarsis. Tarsis is a big city. If we're in a city, I want to use the city, I don't want just "The inn, the palace, and a couple NPCs with plot hooks", I want stores and sewers and nobles and intrigues and the whole shebang. 

So I'm taking this, and I'm hacking Tarsis with it. 

 

 Praise Vorn, y'all. 

I'm not telling just what I'm going to do because the players don't necessary need to know just yet. But I got plans. Oh, yes. 

And now for something completely different. 

What people say about All Dogs Go To Hell?

Thank you, person from Reddit. It did get a release somehow. 

Still available for whatever you're willing to pay in here.

Dragons of Desolation

 

That's all, folks! 

Tracy Hickman and Michael Dobson put a lot of work into this one, and so did the rest of the creative team. Like Larry Elmore and Jeff Butler who did the art, and Keith Parkinson who made this cover that, contrary to what I always believed, does not depict a Flying Citadel, and Dave LaForce and Billy Clemons who worked on the cartography. 

Like this little bit here. 

The adventure starts with a dream. It's pretty nifty, I'd say, in how it's done. The first part of the dream is simple, the players are in control of their characters and they know that it's a dream. Then, when things are about to get wicked, you say "And you wake up". 

Huh? Just like that? Well, that's how dreams work - just when something is about to happen, you wake up and it all ends. 

Or maybe not. Because later you get to say "Oh, yes. Now you remember what happened in your dream after you opened the door". 

And this part, the players don't control, because this time it's a memory. You tell them what their characters did in the dream, and what they have forgotten until now. It's a fun trick where you can incorporate what you know about the characters and what motivates them and what the players like to do when they play. 

Another cool metagaming trick is the water. Several times in the adventure, strange things happen that might make the players think that the drinks are responsible. Since we had a kender in the party, both times the other characters yelled "No, wait, don't drink this!" and both times the kender won the dice roll, taking a good sip of the water before the others managed to stop her. 

And Tracy Hickman grins and winks. "Yeah, it's just water", he whispers, "but don't tell them that. Roll the dice and look relieved and tell them they made their save". 

At some points, it feels that the adventure was left unfinished. A dark-haired warrior woman accompanies Verminaard but we never get to know the details - is it Kitiara? What's she doing here? What's her agenda? Too bad, you'll never know. 

 Our little merry band of adventurers did their best to make things even more chaotic than they were supposed to be, using propaganda to confuse the poor minds of the derro.

The skeletal mammoth never got his chance to shine. Things were just too hectic. 

In the end, there was (barely) enough dragons to keep everyone happy, the kender bard transformed into a fearsome creature of the Abyss, and the First True Cleric of the dwarves received over a hundred invitations to date, meet the parents, inspect the mines, and have a dinner from the local dwarven residents of every gender. 

I cannot confidently say where did the Qualinesti wizard go, but Laurana seemingly got over their weird relationship. 

All in all, it was a good campaign. 

To the very last roll of the dice.

 

Dragons of Hope

As we move on to the end of the First Book of Dragonlance, things are getting messy. The heroes - Qualinesti red mage, Kender bardess, and Hill Dwarf cleric, the first true cleric on Krynn, actually - are gaining power, and at the same time attract the attention of more powerful evil beings. 

In Dragons of Hope, the characters are supposed to enter the ruins of Zhaman, a magical fortress that was created and then destroyed by the great wizard Fistandantilus. 

My one main problem with this adventure is that you bring them to the home of Fistandantilus - you even lead them to the man himself - it is stated in Dragons of Mystery that Fistandantilus created many spells himself... and there is not a single magic book or spell scroll. No books at all. 

This is not something that I want when the gang is raiding a wizard's lair. There had to be at least some light reading for when old F-tilus wasn't busy trying to conquer the world!

So I pulled out Vornheim, and we rolled some results on the library table. The kender found a book in Goblinese, dedicated to the political system in the goblin society, and a collection of kender non-fiction essays. Both proved surprisingly useful. 

The encounter with Fistandantilus himself is... dependant, I'd say, on the players' choices. The build-up is good, there's a series of magic traps that make the visitors much less capable of harming mister F., and the characters can avoid some of those traps if they're smart. 

And then, weakened as they are, they meet the most powerful wizard in history, who's also a demi-lich. I appreciate it that Fistandantilus doesn't hurt the characters if they don't attack him, but what if they do? Again - there's no spells. Apparently you were supposed to pick some for him - which is nice, but he's the bloody Fistandantilus, he's supposed to have some unique spells that he created himself! The self-absorbed braggart of a dragon has more spells! 

On the other hand,  there are some nice moments like the answering stone that only answers three dwarf-centric questions daily. The cleric spent all the daily questions trying to figure out a way to make the stone be useful, which was hilarious. 

It is funny how the amount of dragons per module grows here. The first adventure had one dragon. The second had two. This one had three. 

We'll see how many we'll encounter in the final module. 

The good things about Dragons of Flame

The second adventure in Dragonlance campaign, Dragons of Flame, kind of has the same advantages that Zak's Cube World adventure Castle Terravante does. You have your dungeon with giant slugs, zombies and long-dead kings. You have your heist - sneaking dozens of children from under the nose of a crazy dragon lady. And you have your drama - the young and spoiled elven princess is madly in love with one of the characters, and her brother has to be your guide through the dungeon. 

Perfect. 

It's also playable if you're lazy/hateful/depressed and want to skip large parts of what Douglas Niles had written specifically for your enjoyment. Like I did. Sure, returning to Solace makes sense for the Innfellows, but our party was made up of a dwarf, a kender, and a Qualinesti elf - why not go directly to Qualinesti? 

The slave caravan part still worked - just with the adventurers outside of the cages. Their elf guide (Porthios, in our case) was captured by the draconians and kept in one of the cages, which is why it made sense for the party to mess with the caravan. 

And since Porthios, quite in character, was not amused by the idea of his sister falling in love with an outcast adventurer; and since our kender bardess, also quite in character, had composed a long and naughty ballad about Laurana's love to our mage; and since the mage was not amused either by the ballad or by Porthios, interactions with the NPC were fun. 

The magic sword that shines and buzzes when dragons are nearby is a beautiful weapon, but I got a little bit tired saying "No,  it is not a lightsaber!" 

Though now I'm thinking about giving one of the villains a red sword, just to make the players happy... 

Fewmaster Toede is still here, and everyone loves to hate him. Poor hobgoblin commander. 

Before we played it, I never noticed how the amulet you can find in Dragons of Despair turns really useful when you get to the giant chain room in Dragons of Flame. 

Next, we travel to the dwarf kingdom of Thorbardin. With eight hundred refugees. And a very angry Highlord Verminaard following us. Not to mention a certain couple of special agents of Takhisis. 

Things are about to get interesting.

Dragons of Flame

 

 

When a kender walks in on a kinky threesome, 

you know you're playing it right. 

I hope things are going well in your part of the world, Dear Reader. Even if you are healthy and unharmed, listening to explosions at night and then looking at buildings that were hit by russian missiles during the day is something you can do without. 

Sadly, we can't. So we do what all normal people do, we play Dungeons and Dragons to distract ourselves and raise our spirits. 

The Dragonlance campaign fits well, because the people of Krynn have to deal with an invasion of cruel murderers and monsters, and that's something we can imagine easily. It shouldn't surprise you that the draconians and hobgoblins in our game all speak russian, or at least with a heavy accent. 

As a lazy Referee, I skipped some parts that looked boring to me, so the party moved straight to Qualinesti. A little family reunion, some plot-required meetings, and hey, looks like you're all going to the ancient fortress of Pax Tharkas to free the slaves and distract the dragonarmy while the elves evacuate from their forests! Sounds like fun! Sounds like treasure and experience ahead! 

I think the most fun was playing with Laurana. 

Why, yes, we do have a male PC elf from Qualinesti. 

By the way, Laurana is described by Douglas Niles as having skin of "a rich woodland brown" colour. Qualinesti elves in general have darker skin than their Silvanesti brethren. So why didn't Larry Elmore do her justice and paint us a beautiful brown-skinned princess? 

No idea. Shame, really. 

Anyhow, Laurana at this point is a naive young girl who's hopelessly in love with a figment of her imagination that, unfortunately, shares a name and face with our wandering mage of the Red Robes. On the plus side, she's fiercely defensive of him, and protests against any attempts to smear his name. On the minus side, she believes they're soulmates, and it's exactly as annoying as it sounds. 

"No one respects the wizard..." 

"You know who respects the wizard? Laurie". 

"Laurie doesn't know him at all! ... Which actually fits the canon". 

The players, however, seem to think that the most fun was kicking Fewmaster Toede's butt. And shooting him with bows and crossbows in the butt. And casting Magic Missiles. At his butt. 

I think there's some kind of fixation there.

After their adventure with Onyx in Xak Tsaroth, the dwarven fighter suddenly realized that he is now a true cleric. After consulting the Disks of Mishakal, he decided that he now worships Kiri-Jolith, the god of war and strategy. 

That, and the fact that the wizard made a lucky roll on Zak's Random Advancement Table and ended up with a powerful Army Of One spell, spelled doom for the fourty zombies of Sla-Mori. 

The lucky zombies obeyed Goldmoon's "Turn Undead" command, locked themselves in their stone coffins and refused to crawl out again. Several were destroyed by our glorious kender bardess ("She's a girl! Stop miskendering her!") and by Laurana's boring brother. The rest - dozens of them - were crushed into paste by an Army-Of-Oned dwarf. The dwarf had three battleaxes at the start of the fight, but all three broke, lacking their wielder's unstoppable strength. 

Now the heroes need to sneak into Pax Tharkas, free the slaves, somehow deal with the dragons, and save Laurana who was kidnapped by Fewmaster Toede. 

Piece of cake.

Not much news

We've had missile attacks, I think, five nights in a row?.. Civilian apartments, schools, a cathedral from UNESCO list hit by russian missiles. 

But hey, Olivia Hill says it's okay because apparently there were members of "Azov" hiding at the cathedral that, ironically, belongs to moscow patriarchy. 

And that's a little bit different than her earlier claims about "Star Wars being rightwing power fantasy", because now she makes claims about real wars and real death. 

Anyhow, we played the second Dragonlance module today. I guess it's the only kind of psychotherapy I can participate in. 

More about it later.

Dragons of Despair. The end

 

So last week we finished playing Tracy Hickman's Dragons of Despair, the adventure that started Dragonlance. 

And before talking about the fun we had, I'll nitpick a little more. 

Previously... 

Alignment and colours and stuff... 

And some earlier nitpicking...  

So, here we go. 

Personally, I had some trouble with the formatting. Maybe it was just the way TSR did it back in the day, but I had to spend precious minutes trying to find where do the characters end up after they jump into the big iron pot that brings them down, and also the stats for the ancient black dragon that they face in the end. Both are kind of important - you need to tell the players where their characters are and what they can do there, and you need to be able to describe how the dragon is about to destroy them. 

Then there's stuff like this. 

 All nice and well until you check out the description of the crystal staff itself. 

 

Goldmoon has a really peculiar way of folding her clothes if a 5 feet long stick can just fall out of a fold. When my players asked me how did it happen, and how did the staff fit into a fold of her robe in the first place, I was unable to provide an answer. 

Then there are little moments like this one. 

It's a fun situation and we enjoyed playing it out, but then the players said "Okay, this is the treasury, what sort of treasure is there?" 

And there's absolutely nothing in the room description about that. Only the hungover draconian officer and the gully dwarves with wooden spears and oversized helmets. 

You don't call the room a "treasury" and then skip on the treasure, mister Hickman. That's not something the players forgive. 

Despite all that, we had fun. 

The adventure, strangely enough, ended pretty much the way it was intended. One of the unexpected heroes destroyed the dragon, the crystal staff, and seemingly himself and the Disks of Mishakal, but was rescued by the grace of gods. Now the party has a grumpy, highly sceptical dwarven cleric. I still don't know who is his deity. 

And speaking of gods - the one problem I had to struggle with a lot was trying to make the gods look less like total bastards. If you know the Dragonlance lore, things happened like this: a powerful lawful good priest decided to destroy all evil on Krynn and called out to the gods to lend him the power to do that. And the gods dropped a fiery mountain on him, killing the priest, killing thousands of people, destroying cities, changing the climate, causing chaos and countless suffering. And all the true clerics disappear for hundreds of years.

Then, as the adventure unfolds, the gods tell the characters: "No, the gods didn't turn their back on you! You turned your back on us!" Uh, no, that's not what happened, you dropped the bloody asteroid on us. Why would we want to deal with you again? 

I never understood why it was supposed to be okay. The priest was channeling the gods' power. Why not just cut him off? 

Religion, eh. 

Anyhow, I changed this a lot - once again bringing in the Colours, having the gods explain that the priest tried to destroy all the Colours except for proud and noble White, and this is what caused the Cataclysm, despite the gods trying desperately to prevent it. Without Black, there would be no crafts, without Green - no healing, without Red - no passion. The Kingpriest's perfect world would be lifeless and pathetic, but he failed, because the sheer amount of White energy he gathered was too much for him to control, and the magical explosion destroyed the Kingpriest and changed the face of Krynn forever. The chaos brought to the Colours prevented the gods from making contact with the mortal races for many years to come. Which, in my opinion, makes more sense. 

I think the epic ending of the adventure is exactly how such things should happen.

"The huge black dragon screams as the light from the broken staff envelops her! She falls back, and you can feel her dark aura weaken and tear apart as she dies". 

Elf: 

"I tear a single scale off her body". 

Kender: 

"I pull the magic ring off her talon". 

Dwarf: 

"So I exploded? Wait, I was carrying the Disks! Did they explode with me?! Oh, man, we lost the Disks..." 

Next: Dragons of Flame.

Dragons of Despair, pt 2. Realigning the alignment

The old Dragonlance modules used the D&D 2ed rules (or, as Zak calls it, D&D Type 2), with some differences that we'll mention later. 

The character races are mostly the same, the magic is mostly the same. 

And the "Law-Chaos, Good-Evil" alignment is the same. 

Which is one thing I always disliked. 

Lamentations of the Flame Princess had alignment simplified - you get "Lawful" for clerics and "Chaotic" for mages and "Neutral" for just people who don't really care, and all it effects is how some spells affect you. It's simple and elegant and not enough for me, because I want alignment to be richer, with more variants, I want it to say something about the characters besides "following the will of the supreme power or gazing into the abyss of lovecraftian horror". I want it to be a whole rainbow of variants. 

Preferably colour-coded. 

I guess Tracy Hickman has a soft spot for colour-coded alignment, too, because how else can you explain the "white robes good, black robes evil, red robes swing both ways" and the "moons of corresponding colour" thing? 

So, in Krynn, alignments matters in more than just "how do some spell affect you". Alignment places you in a specific magical order, alignment means that some magic items let you use them and some hurt you badly when you try to touch them. 

How do I make it work, though? Red, for example, stands in my alignment rainbow for aggression, bloodletting, and passion. Works fine for, say, the Red Wizards of Thay, but in Krynn, red mages are supposed to be neutral. 

Let's think. 

White colour is poetry, nobility and heroism. Yeah, Solinari and his white mages are fine the way they are, no need to fix them. 

Black colour is strength and power. This is what Nuitari's black mages are after - morals are unimportant, gaining knowledge and power is what matters. 

And Red... Red colour is conflict, constant struggle. And this is what Lunitari's red mages support. Never the victory of good or evil, but forever war, the balance between struggling forces that leads to progress, to further development of magical arts. 

(This is not even an issue in Dragons of Despair as written, but since my players have all read the novels, the coloured robes matter) 

Then there's the first magic item that appears in the module - the blue crystal staff of healing. 

I just changed colours and said that the crystal staff is green. Green is the colour of nature and healing, so that's the colour I give to Mishakal and her divine staff. 

Furthermore, Green's opposing colour is Red, so the staff gives our red mage a shock every time the wizard touches the holy item with his greedy magical hands. Which is fun for everyone, and makes more sense for me - it's not the conflict of "well you're bad and I'm good, so you can't touch me" - the characters are supposed to be heroes that will save Krynn from the dragonarmies, what do you mean they're not good enough to touch the staff? - it's the conflict of "You're pro-violence and I'm pro-healing, we have opposing views on how the world should work. It hurts when you touch me". Wait, I'll write it down - touching a magic item of opposed Colour drains it of some charges, and might break it if it's discharged. I like that. 

So, in our campaign, we have a Red (conflict-means-progress) mage, a Yellow (happy-joy-adventures!) kender lady (Yellow is the natural Colour for the kenderkin, they're the Children of Krynn and absolutely fearless, they really dig the joy of life), and, I believe, a Yellow-Blue dwarf (either he's a patriotic Ukrainian dwarf or he's all for freedom and having adventures with his friends, which explains why he's currently exploring the ruins of Xak Tsaroth and not working at some underhill with his clan - and also gives him an opposing colour to Thorbardin's powerful Black). 

To be continued...