Two sessions, one post.

Wonky Business: When last we left off, the crew had retreated from the Sky Tower to lick their wounds and gather strength for a second attempt. So they did not return to Oakhaven, and the Militia captain sent out two fresh adventurers to investigate their fate, and potentially retrieve the dead and the horses. These two new faces were two fighters, a spearman in chainmail called Hans and a platemail-wearing swordfighter called Gerta.

As luck (or GM fiat) would have it, Hans and Gerta met and joined the resting party just as they were healed up and noticed two giants stepping out of Sky Tower! One of them wore plate mail, and they seemed happy and content to touch grass and take deep breaths while stretching.

Giant Friendship

Delf the Thief stepped forward to make contact with the two giants and attempted nice conversation and making friends; the rest of the team backed him up, but all tried to be non-threatening.

The Reaction Roll was an 11, +1 for the general friendly atmosphere = 12. This was going to be a big pile of Experience Points, overcoming a major threat with diplomacy.

So the giants spoke with Delf and explained that they had been captured in the tower for a long, long time, all the while seeing their possessions dwindle, and only now finally discovering the exit again! They explained that two more giants were inside, whom they would fetch forthwith, and that they had quite enough of this tower.

Decision Issues

Delf decided based on all the information he had gathered so far that this tower was really not worth the effort. He suspected that the Lord of Oakhaven had sent the party here to die, and suggested to leave the tower, take the giants and bring them to the Baron of Stonehaven, Aita’s boss.

Meanwhile Eldric wanted back into the tower to continue the dungeon exploration; Aita wanted some action to happen right now so that, ooc, the two new players would not get bored and decide that this was a lame server where nothing happened. “Send us down a railroad, now!” he demanded, “or the new players will leave and never come back!” [Keep that in mind, it will become important down the road.] Hans and Gerta felt that as new players it was not their place to make a decision. The rest of the players were not present.

GM-ing crisis

I really wanted to let the players make the decision, because I started this campaign with the explicit goal to make a Sandbox with free decisions work on this server. That we do not need a Railroad with linear quests like in popular video games.

But as the party was frozen in a standstill I started to wonder if my fellow GM was right. Maybe popular video games are popular for a reason. Maybe it is only a special combination of circumstances that allows a player-driven Sandbox game to thrive, and maybe these circumstances are just not present here.

Or…. (a flicker of hope) …maybe I just needed to change the situation? Change one variable?

The consensus to explore the tower had evaporated when the giants came out. So I tried to get rid of them: I let the NPC archers Grace and Redmond offer to bring the giants to the castle, eliminating the need to herd them and freeing up Delf.
But the players would have nothing of that: Delf actively wanted to stay with the giants, to recruit them, and Aita wanted to keep the archers with him.
Another standstill, the party standing in front of the tower undecided, and Aita was shouting: “Boooooring!!”

I was unsure how to provide action: they were literally standing a couple of feet in front of “the dungeon”, but nobody was going in, nor was there a consensus about leaving the tower and go.

I was at the brink of slashing this gordian knot and let the party be attacked by a horde of kobolds out of nowhere. Combat is action, and few people can complain about boredom when they and their friends get shot at.

But at that point Aita managed to get Gerta to admit that going into a Dungeon would be interesting; Hans agreed, and so the party split:

Split the Party

Eldric, Aita, Hans, Gerta, and the NPCs Grace and Redmond went into the Sky Tower and continued to explore it beyond the first three rooms.

Delf and his retainer Lisbeth stayed outside and talked with the giants.

I parked the absent players’ characters at the camp/with the horses. Light, camera, action:

Team 1: Tower exploration.

The players who had been there on the first delve explained details to the new players, and they moved forward to check out more rooms. Soon they realized some weird magical effects going on, and discovered some sort of system in the madness: Yes, the tower did not adhere to the normal laws of physics, but it did adhere to particular laws.

It also had denizens: A young pelican shuffled down the corridor and hissed and squawked. The party hid in a room with a narrower entrance and let the angry bird pass. Then they followed it … and discovered the nest: Pelican central, with at this particular point in time, three adult and one young bird.

The party attacked, and Grace and Redmond took down one adult bird with their first volley. Aita cast shield on himself, then pulled his dagger. The fighters joined melee, but had little luck. Neither had the pelicans.

The party won initiative in every round, but the birds were hard to hit. Eldric got hit by the young bird, and Aita, after storming in and stabbing an adult creature, gut swallowed whole!

Luckily, Grace and Redmond took down this bird too, and then the tides turned: The melee fighters scored solid hits and and cut down the third adult pelican, wounded the wee one, and so the small pelican threw itself out the window, squawking in pain.

The explorers rifled through the stinking, dirty pelican nest and found some loot, including adventuring gear. And they decided to invest their healing scroll to patch up Eldric, then ambush any pelicans who would return from flying out over the lake.

Team 2: City of Fire

In the meantime, Delf held a barbecue with his new giant friends and discussed payment to win two of them as retainers. He felt that it would lend him a particular nimbus of greatness if he was to return to Oakhaven with two giants as bodyguards…

The giants were generally on board with the idea, but wanted serious money as fixed pay, not some vague option for shares of treasure that may or may not materialize.

They also discussed the giants’ origin: they came from a totally different place, a “City of Fire”, where one of them was an important person, and had been transported here by magical means, then lost their way in the tower. Two of them were mainly interested in going back home.

And Delf was wondering about the goals of Lord Maldrak of Oakhaven, and Baron Erengard of Stonehaven, about their plans, and what his role in them may turn out to be.

Fallout

And here we ended, with literal giant XP, albeit shared around among those present … and at the brink of exterminating the annoying angry birds — next time.

Only… without the two new players.
Remember Aita’s warning that if I did not railroad them right this moment they were going to leave and never come back?
Well, after the session they hinted that it had been a good session and that they would come back next time. But then they slipped off the server and disappeared in the void.

The railroad vs. sandbox issue seems pretty much settled, and I am wrong.
Dedicated “Questgivers” are the future.

The Wonky Business Sandbox Experiment

Fast forward two weeks, and the next session rolled in.

Team 1: Ruffled Feathers

The abandoned characters Hans and Gerta were swiftly turned into henches of the party, Eldric drank his magic healing potion and was good as new. And soon enough, two more adult angry birds came home to roost.
“This is where I die,” predicted Aita darkly.

The first one landed and squawked, the second one was only a round behind it.

That single round was enough for the party miss with some arrows, but then quickly lob off the animal’s head before it had the time to even set foot into the dirty straw. The mangled body of the bird dropped down to the hard ground next to the tower.

The second bird landed and hacked at Gerta, got turned away by the armor. Hans questioned the wisdom of continuing: “We should give up! There is no end to these beasts!” (taken over by Delf’s player and inheriting his doubts about this tower.)

Grace missed, Redmond scored a shot, then the melee fighters in the form of a maximum damage crit (decision: damage x 2: maximum damage rolled: one-shot), a won initiative and some well-placed arrows did the bird in.

A look outside: skies clear for the moment. Although we know there are two more of those animals out there, and then some of the smaller ones.

The party wondered if they should wait for more birds or explore onward, and finally decided to go on to the right for now.

But here the players of Eldric and Aita had to leave due to RL reasons, so that has to wait for the next session.

Team 2: Camo-Goblins

Outside Delf organised that now that the giants were our friends the hireling Floss and the cleric Sir Galehir should fetch the horses: no need to hide them further.
The horses were brought, and talk was done, and suddenly eight goblins, all in blue robes, with shortbows showed up, clearly unhappy to see the giants out in the fresh air and carrying their treasure. They were magically hidden from the giants, but the party members saw them.

Delf offered them jobs as even more henchpeople on his team, but they didn’t bite: they wanted the giants’ treasures! No working for humans when glittering gold was right there ripe for the taking! Not even Delf’s insistance that he was not full-blooded human could sway them. But he promised them to get something underway, distract the giants and so on. That sounded much better to their pointy ears, and he returned the handful of yards to the giants to talk — however, instead of distracting them, he warned them of the goblins’ presence and of their intentions.

Blood

“You bastard!” yelled the lead goblin, as he noticed the giants growing more alert instead of less so, and he shot at Delf, wounding him gravely. One other arrow found young Floss, wounding him as well. Sir Galehir’s armor caught the next arrow. The rest of the goblins shot at two of the giants, but with no effect.

Delf’s henchwoman Lisbeth charged at the goblins and yelled their positions to the confused giants, so they also stomped at the goblins, who had lost initiative and found themselves on the backfoot quickly!

Lisbeth decapitated the “Bastard!”-yeller and one of the other goblins was accidentally crushed under a giant’s foot. The rest of the goblins lost morale and ran away in random directions. The party decided to let them run and focused on first aid.

(STRICT TIME RECORDS: everything from this point on is in the future of where the tower-explorers were left)

Lisbeth experimented a bit with the blue robes and the giants and finally packed the two captured robes in a sack for later investigation. The two fallen also had gold with them, which turned out to be giant-gold, stolen. The party decided to return it to its rightful owners.

Scouting

Once the wounded were at camp under the cleric’s care and guarded by the giant brothers, Lisbeth rode on Faroch the giant’s shoulders to range through the surrounding landscape and seek tracks of the goblins and find out where they went. They managed to find a small footpath that did not look quite natural, followed it slowly and silently, and discovered a distracted guard, this time not in a blue robe but in normal goblin gear.

Faroch the giant grabbed the little goblin and they retreated with their captive, took away all his gear and a tied him up to question him.

Delf requested weakly that should the party in the tower show their heads through some window, someone should call out to them to break off the expedition and come back out. It was not worth the effort… he had said so all along.

He also discussed the idea of starting a revolution in Oakhaven to topple the Lord — to unite the population behind the towns underworld and resist. Young Floss doubted that this could work: the underworld was not much loved by the law abiding citizens. They spitballed ideas how that could be changed and how the thieves’ guild could become an inspiration instead of a threat to “Joe Normie”.

———–

And here we ended once more; with Aita safe and sound despite his pessimism, and instead Delf laid low by a goblin arrow. This time smaller enemies and little in the way of loot, so fewer XP. But I have a feeling that next session may bring in some good amount of treasure.

The Wonky Business Sandbox Experiment