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Yes!
You know a session of gaming went well when no one notices its an hour and a half after the scheduled ending time,
So I ran the Jakandor game again tonight. So far one of my MOST experimental games to date in concept, and it has been TOTALLY rewarding. Originally I started it off with two alternating game nights. Each night represented a group from different sides of two warring cultures. We started this up at the Cabin back in September last year.
The two major societies as presented in the setting are the Charonti and the Knorr. For those familiar at all with D&D terms both societies are basically True Neutral with the Charonti favoring Lawful and the Knorr favoring Chaos. The Charonti are a highly magical society on the recovering from an apocalyptic disaster that nearly destroyed their whole society. They value restored knowledge and honor their ancestors who donate their bodies to society forming a labor force of undead. The Knorr are a spiritual honor bound society that favors personal status and the will of the spirits led by the great War Mother. They believe in doing things plainly, think undead are abominations, and consider magic the purview of religious leaders and healers.
A few weeks ago, just after the half year mark, I arranged a colission of the two groups. During a catastrophic magic backlash, both parties were scattered and (conveniently) intermingled. One was warped through a destroyed portal network to another world, the others were left in the devastation of the warp explosion left to find peace with the other survivors. So basically two players characters swapped night out of the four. This created two parties with similar goals, solid cultural identities, and more than a little internal conflict.
The warped party now found themselves to be small numbers of a human minority in a strange land, finding strange allies of there ancestors that had all but been forgotten. Essentially, from here on for a while they are all about getting home, but with the portal network destroyed they are months to years away from it. They will be touring the known worlds of D&D and connecting some of my metastories into a more cohesive whole. I get to use Spelljammers! Weee!
The left behind party is now trying to free the elemental slave caste of the Undercity of Uhron. Searching for the cities lost Binding Stones they are more and more enmeshed in millenia of conspiracy and conflict. Tonight they got their first Binding Stone. It wasn't easy though. They are exploring the ruins of the Tower of Life and Death, a tribute to the lost God of the Charonti. Falling into disfavor with the Charonti's scholarly ancestors the building was mostly civic in its last operating days before the Plague. The dual tower temple was divided into two funcitioning temples, the Tower of Death was in the end a home to necromancers and their deranged subjects given over for treatment. The Tower of Life was in turn used as a brothel, offering the services of talented clergymen for coin.
They chose the path of Life only to find that in time the Tower of Life had become home to the Eternal Ones, a cult of Vampires and other undead devoted toward the preservation of beauty at all costs. The party found that the Binding Stone was in the clutches of the High Priestess of life, a half-devil vampire Cleric of the Lost God.
The battle was intense.
And about two sessions early. Small pipeworks connected the rooms of the temple allowing the vampires to travel with ease in gaseous forms. They could retreat from each small skirmish to heal and return. What I didn't expect was a frustrated player to polymorph his witch into an ooze and follow the pipes to the Lair of the Priestess. After slaying many of the sleeping vampires, she awoke the Priestess herself, and a fleeing witch brought Uhron's High Life Priestess to battle the party before they even got to rest. Was pretty freaking cool battle. And tense to the last moment.
The student of an ancient order fought an unliving master of his school as the rest of the party fought to shield each other from the crackling spells and dark powers of the cleric. The pacing was on. From sword clashes and deft dodging to rippling waves of countermagic, the battle wore on.
One of my players said it was the best battle I had run in years, one of the best I'd ever run, and possibly the best he'd EVER played in D&D.
That made me feel good.
Almost like the rest of the seven day work stint before tonight hadn't happened. Almost.
So I ran the Jakandor game again tonight. So far one of my MOST experimental games to date in concept, and it has been TOTALLY rewarding. Originally I started it off with two alternating game nights. Each night represented a group from different sides of two warring cultures. We started this up at the Cabin back in September last year.
The two major societies as presented in the setting are the Charonti and the Knorr. For those familiar at all with D&D terms both societies are basically True Neutral with the Charonti favoring Lawful and the Knorr favoring Chaos. The Charonti are a highly magical society on the recovering from an apocalyptic disaster that nearly destroyed their whole society. They value restored knowledge and honor their ancestors who donate their bodies to society forming a labor force of undead. The Knorr are a spiritual honor bound society that favors personal status and the will of the spirits led by the great War Mother. They believe in doing things plainly, think undead are abominations, and consider magic the purview of religious leaders and healers.
A few weeks ago, just after the half year mark, I arranged a colission of the two groups. During a catastrophic magic backlash, both parties were scattered and (conveniently) intermingled. One was warped through a destroyed portal network to another world, the others were left in the devastation of the warp explosion left to find peace with the other survivors. So basically two players characters swapped night out of the four. This created two parties with similar goals, solid cultural identities, and more than a little internal conflict.
The warped party now found themselves to be small numbers of a human minority in a strange land, finding strange allies of there ancestors that had all but been forgotten. Essentially, from here on for a while they are all about getting home, but with the portal network destroyed they are months to years away from it. They will be touring the known worlds of D&D and connecting some of my metastories into a more cohesive whole. I get to use Spelljammers! Weee!
The left behind party is now trying to free the elemental slave caste of the Undercity of Uhron. Searching for the cities lost Binding Stones they are more and more enmeshed in millenia of conspiracy and conflict. Tonight they got their first Binding Stone. It wasn't easy though. They are exploring the ruins of the Tower of Life and Death, a tribute to the lost God of the Charonti. Falling into disfavor with the Charonti's scholarly ancestors the building was mostly civic in its last operating days before the Plague. The dual tower temple was divided into two funcitioning temples, the Tower of Death was in the end a home to necromancers and their deranged subjects given over for treatment. The Tower of Life was in turn used as a brothel, offering the services of talented clergymen for coin.
They chose the path of Life only to find that in time the Tower of Life had become home to the Eternal Ones, a cult of Vampires and other undead devoted toward the preservation of beauty at all costs. The party found that the Binding Stone was in the clutches of the High Priestess of life, a half-devil vampire Cleric of the Lost God.
The battle was intense.
And about two sessions early. Small pipeworks connected the rooms of the temple allowing the vampires to travel with ease in gaseous forms. They could retreat from each small skirmish to heal and return. What I didn't expect was a frustrated player to polymorph his witch into an ooze and follow the pipes to the Lair of the Priestess. After slaying many of the sleeping vampires, she awoke the Priestess herself, and a fleeing witch brought Uhron's High Life Priestess to battle the party before they even got to rest. Was pretty freaking cool battle. And tense to the last moment.
The student of an ancient order fought an unliving master of his school as the rest of the party fought to shield each other from the crackling spells and dark powers of the cleric. The pacing was on. From sword clashes and deft dodging to rippling waves of countermagic, the battle wore on.
One of my players said it was the best battle I had run in years, one of the best I'd ever run, and possibly the best he'd EVER played in D&D.
That made me feel good.
Almost like the rest of the seven day work stint before tonight hadn't happened. Almost.
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