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PROCJAM 2018: Photo Copy, Day 1

I’m participating in PROCJAM, a low-pressure game jam whose motto is “Make Something That Makes Something.”

What should I generate?  I like photography, and I had an idea for teaching an AI to generate photographs of landmarks in a landscape. The player would walk through the landscape to the location where the photo was taken.  Breath of the Wild and Skyrim both have sidequests where players try to find a location based on a drawing or photograph, and I enjoy them.  I also relish the chance to pass some of my photographic knowledge on to an electronic protege. The player’s goal in my game is to replicate the generated photograph as closely as possible, so I call the game “Photo Copy.”

I had uninstalled the version of Unity I had used last year to create Spaceship Wrecker (play in your browser, blog post), and thought I might as well get the latest version instead of re-installing that one.  So I downloaded Unity 2018.2 and set about trying to mock up some test assets: some terrain with landmarks on it.

I didn’t enjoy sculpting the terrain in the Unity Editor. I wanted vertical walls around the edge to keep the player contained, and thought it would be easier to make them by drawing a heightmap in an image editor.  Alas, Unity only accepts heightmaps in .RAW format, and my image editors didn’t output to .RAW.  I found a tool that could import a normal image (BMP, PNG, or JPG) and output a RAW, so I had to use 3 programs to get my terrain.  GIMP -> L3TD -> Unity.

I needed normal FPS controls for the player to move around on the terrain.  Surely something like that is included, right?  Forum threads indicated it was, but those threads were old.  Previous versions had “Standard Assets” included as part of the installer, but this version didn’t.  I would have to use the Asset Store to download them separately.

Last year I used MonoDevelop as my code editor.  Visual Studio felt like overkill, and it was another account to create, another EULA to accept.  Unity 2018 dropped support for MonoDevelop.  Visual Studio was my only option.

Because of this sequence of frustrations, I uninstalled Unity and looked at some cool photos from Burning Man.  All the art installations and quirky camp themes are fun and inspiring.  I started another Tracery project to generate some wacky camps.  I’ve used Javascript and Tracery a lot, so starting a new project and getting some output was quick and easy!

I considered using Cheap Bots Done Quick, to put the output in a Twitter Bot, but I don’t see many benefits to that format, so I kept it on a local webpage. What a fun distraction that is not at all related to my PROCJAM project.

Feeling much better, I downloaded Unity 2017. Now I had the First Person Controller and could write code in MonoDevelop. Once i had the landmarks in the terrain, I made the first photography algorithm: place the camera in a random location, high above anything it might collide with, and point it at a random landmark.

It is technically a photo!  That was enough excitement for day 1.

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Death and consequences

There’s controversy in the TTRPG world about character death.  Some don’t like it. Some say it’s part of the game. Some say, and this is the part I disagree with, that without character death, a game has no real stakes. So let’s talk about some of my characters, and how they won and lost important things that were not their own lives

Heathcliff

Heathcliff was a level 5 Halfling Ranger who charged lance-first into battle atop a mastiff.  In the climactic showdown with an undead Sorcerer in flooded catacombs, he was paralyzed and executed.  (Don’t worry, the dog was OK.) The rest of the party sold his gear to pay for his resurrection.  A level 5 character is a super-hero compared to commoners with no class levels.  Like, Daredevil or the Punisher, not Green Lantern, but still a super-hero.  I figured that he would excel as a town guard or a hunter even without his magical gear.  Death was a major setback, yes, but he could wait a while, save up some cash for new gear, and go adventuring again later.  It’s like when one’s first career doesn’t work out, and one has to move back to one’s parents for a while.

Cklypherrderrime

Cklypherrderrime (call him Cklyph) was a Gnome (later Suli) Wizard who started off as cheerful, mischievous, and curious. The party had no Cleric, so they often had to return to the capital city to remove harmful effects like blindness, negative levels, or death. Since Cklyph had not picked a god to follow, he would visit a different temple each time, and listen to the priests explain the virtues and benefits of following their god.

The campaign was long, and the party was always behind, always chasing another death cult, never able figure out the grand scheme that united all these villains.  No one could help them, because they were superheroes. Yet after the party defeated each scheme, they had to sit and wait for something else to catch fire.  No research or prevention was effective.

Cklyph lost his Good alignment in the pursuit of power to keep his party alive, because they were all that he cared about.  The rest of the world was either hostile or useless.  He used to eschew necromancy, and declared Cloudkill a spell for terrorists, but by the end, everything was on the table.  After defeating a powerful dragon, he raised it as a skeletal servant.  “I’m going to make this guy die for us twice.”

I mentioned that Cklyph was a Gnome and a Suli. Cklyph did die once, but he had prepared.  A younger, more fun-loving Cklyph had prepared a kit in case of his death and given it to the healer.  It contained material components for a Reincarnation spell, instructions to for contacting a Druid to cast the spell, and cash to pay the Druid. So when Cklyph was finally struck down, he returned to life in a new Suli body, not the Gnome body he was used before. That was a cool experience, and Cklyph did experience a bit of wonder getting used to the new, stronger, taller body.

The Bard’s friend from her hometown was turned to stone and shattered, and Cklyph did not help pay for the resurrection because he considered it a waste of resources.  The Bard, a much better person, bore the whole cost herself.  This same hometown had an election and an organized crime family was close to winning.  Cklyph didn’t care. The town kept getting attacked by giants and serial killers and whatnot.  Poor or unfair administration seemed unimportant.   He did offer to make a copy of the Bard so she could both be mayor and continue adventuring.  The party almost missed a plot hook because Cklyph couldn’t be bothered to leave his magical wizard fortress and check in on this town of weak, useless people.

So at the end of a year and half of constant fighting, Cklyph was callous, power-hungry, and paranoid.  The campaign fell apart, so Cklyph never got closure, but his options seemed to be death, or isolation in his own personal dimension.

Wally

Wally was a knight in shining armor.  He loved his city, even though he knew it was corrupt. He saw the good in it and was dedicated to making it a better place.  He and the party decided that they were going to clean up the town non-lethally.  During a riot he found some ruffians threatening to beat someone.  Wally stepped up, drew his warhammer, then dropped it and beat the ruffians down by slapping them with his armored hand. The healer dragged them to the curb, healed them a bit, then scolded them about being productive members of society. Criminals and low-lifes tried to kill the party and they would beat them down, stabilize them, and drag them in to the police.  Once a fight got really out of hand and the building caught fire, so Wally ran back and forth, dragging his unconscious enemies out of danger on his tower shield.

But then the archer critted a demi-human and killed it instantly.  Wally was distraught!  He stopped in the middle of the dungeon to yell at his own party!  He should not have blamed the archer, since crits are random, but he did. One party member argued that demi-humans weren’t really people, so it was OK to kill them. (Wally was OK with killing animals but not people.) Another revealed that he didn’t mind killing at all.  Wally almost left the party right then, but was convinced to do one last mission. Someone was going to be executed for assassinating the king, and the party was there to make sure there was no funny business.  Before the main event, the police brought out and executed the criminals that the party had captured.  Even those closest to Wally didn’t share his commitment to improving the town non-lethally, and the good he thought he had done was destroyed right in front of him.

Sure enough, someone disrupted the main execution. As the rest of the party leapt into action, Wally turned and left.  We walked out of the palace and out of the city without stopping or saying good bye. He’s out there looking for a place he can fit in, where he can do the right thing and make things better, a place that probably doesn’t exist.

Conclusion

In my games, for my characters, death has not been the only true failure, the one thing that could actually stop them from accomplishing their goals.  Yes, an unrecoverable death means the end of that character, but there are often ways to recover from death.  I think of the time we TPKed after skipping straight to the boss fight and think, “A perfect storm of nonsense.  What a great story.”  I think of the barbarian who almost died rather than ask for help and think, “That would have been a good way to go.” I think of Cklyph slowly sliding into the cruelty that he was supposedly fighting, or the utter failure of Wally’s idealism and I still get emotional.

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Narrative Scars

Like actual physical scars, traumatic events can permanently change people.  People marked by such events are always reminded of them.  Here’s a way to represent emotional or mental scars with physical scars in a magical role-playing game.  I use Powered By The Apocalypse jargon, since that’s the kind of RPG I usually run.

When you rest and heal after battle, consider how you earned your wounds. If a wound or the circumstances surrounding it are important to you, it does not heal like normal and you gain a Scar.

When you display a Scar to remind yourself or others of the lesson you earned with blood, everyone who sees it takes +1 forward when acting on your lesson.

When you decide that a Scar no longer holds power or significance, mark XP. The next time you receive magical healing, the Scar will fade.

Examples:

  • A bodyguard re-affirms her conviction by showing the wounds she took in her charge’s place.
  • Friends gleefully show the burns from that experimental hoverbike that almost worked.
  • The hero tears off his neckerchief.  “You should have finished the job, Warwick! I won’t make the same mistake!”
  • “We got in too deep on bad intel. I lost a finger and two comrades in that jungle.  Never again!”
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Fairmeadow Fair, session 7

← Session 6 | Campaign Summary | Session 8 →

When we last left our heroes, their past was catching up to them. Hobert, owner of the Brace of Pigs tavern, is famous for a special wine whose remarkable taste is due to special herbs he steals from Samantha & Ferdinand.  Gleador & Lucia had pressured Hobert into being nice to Samantha & Ferdinand by threatening to reveal his thievery.  Now he’s using the bottling ceremony for his wine to stir up a mob against all four of them!

The bottling ceremony, showing the crowd rushing from the stage to surround the Brace of Pigs Inn.

Gleador asks a crow to poop on Hobert, since it’s impossible to take someone seriously who is covered in bird poop. The bird declines.  Plan B is Lucia commanding Hobert to tell the truth!  He lets slip that the special taste of the wine is due to special herbs from Samantha’s swamp.  Lucia says that anyone could buy the herbs from Samantha and they could all make great wine.  Instead of a ceremony for how great Hobert is, there could be a whole wine tasting competition!  Some bystanders are so inspired by Lucia’s words that they run off towards the swamp to get the herbs immediately! This is bad because Samantha has set deadly magical traps around the swamp to keep Hobert out.

Gleador follows the runners out into the grain fields between Fairmeadow and the swamp.  When he’s out of sight, he transforms into a panther (the legendary Black Beast that put the town in a panic a few days ago).  Lucia had arranged a signal with Samantha ahead of time.  She speaks a magic word to the giant millipede that Samantha gave her and it glows a little.  The message has been delivered. Samantha and Ferdinand will arrive soon.  Gleador plans to follow the runners to the border of the swamp, then appear and frighten them away.

Samantha and Ferdinand arrive at the bottling ceremony. The crowd pushes them up on stage next to Hobert.  Hobert accuses them of injuring him, which is almost true.  Last night, he snooped on Samantha, who activated a magical escape spell that dragged her out of the room and dragged Hobert’s face into the door he was peeking through.  Gleador can see this through the eyes of the crow from earlier, so he decides to chase the runners back now instead of waiting for them to reach the swamp.  A panther suddenly leaps out of the tall grass and chases them back towards town.  They run back into the crowd, screaming about the Black Beast.  The crowd starts grabbing torches and other improvised weapons.  Gleador scrabbles up the back of The Brace of Pigs to make a grand appearance.  He emerges over the peak of the roof with a terrifying roar, then pees on the inn to show his displeasure.  Like a cat, he scratches afterward, sending roof tiles falling and splintering.  Then he disappears to the back side of the roof, turns into a falcon, and flies away!

It’s basically a riot now!  People have lit torches and grabbed shovels, brooms, stout bits of wood, and surge towards The Brace of Pigs to attack the Black Beast.  The stage that Samantha and Ferdinand are on shudders as the crowd surges against it and rips out some crossbeams to use as improvised weapons.  Lucia blows her town watch whistle and hears a whistle reply from the direction of town hall.  Pepe’s on the way.  Hobert runs to the door to keep the mob from entering and probably destroying his inn. There’s not even roof access from inside the inn.  But there is around the far side! Construction equipment used to clean up after Samantha’s violent escape spell is still there: ladders, axes, large saws.  Lucia runs around and convinces them that the Black Beast has fled back into the fields.  The mob turns from the inn and sets out into the fields.  It’s after harvest, so burning the fields (while still terribly dangerous) is less bad then burning a building in town.

High over the fields, Gleador has another plan.  He spies the carcass of a deer and lands by it.  He changes back into a panther and claws the surrounding grass and earth, as if there was a great battle.  He roars like he is in mortal pain, which alerts the mob to his position. A hunter in the mob says, “Careful, boys! That’s the sound of a beast in fear of its life! Very dangerous!”  Gleador attempts to turn into a gorilla, but fails, so he’s an Elf when the mob bursts into the clearing. He breathlessly describes a great battle between the Black Beast and an invisible creature that throttled it and carried it away.  They believe him!  Several people break off to escort the poor, shaken Elf back to town, while the rest spread out to search for, probably, the benevolent invisible gorilla.

Lucia meets up with Gleador coming back from the field and Pepe running in the from town hall.  Pepe hears that the Black Beast has appeared again.  Ferdinand is right there, and dozens of witnesses confirm that it wasn’t him.  Pepe runs off to take charge of the mob and assign proper search patterns instead of whatever disorganized thing they were doing.

Gleador’s helpers wonder if they can get him some comfort food from the inn, but Hobert isn’t letting anyone in!  A Dwarf woman named Marley offers to take Gleador back to her home and bake him some muffins.  Lucia is welcome too.  They accept and head to her house.  As they leave, they make eye contact with Samantha and Ferdinand, still on the stage, and give them farewell salutes. Samantha gives a knowing, respectful nod. Ferdinand waves enthusiastically.  Marley’s home, like most Dwarf homes, is set into the ground. The “negative porch” has steps going down about three feet to the front door. Her home is mostly underground, but windows around the top of the five-foot tall rooms are above ground level.  Lucia is only five feet tall, so she mostly fits, but Gleador has to bend down quite a bit.  They have a pleasant chat and some tasty muffins.  After a while, a family of Gnomes arrive.  Marley is hosting them for the fair, so Gleador and Lucia have to leave.

A map of the town of Fairmeadow, including the healer’s temple, and Marley’s house.

Lucia pulled a muscle fighting the statue last night, and doesn’t want to spend the three days of rest it would take to heal naturally.  She remembers that a deputy who was hurt worse was back on duty the next day.  They track Lucy down and she points them to Mother Tiffany, the cleric at the local temple.  Lucy didn’t have to pay for the healing spell because the town guard has good health care.  The temple is on the southern edge of town and has a small field behind it, where people plant symbolic offerings of crops for the gods to bless.  Mother Tiffany eats the crops that grow in that field.  Lucia tries to get free healing, since she was injured while acting as a deputy.  Mother Tiffany tactfully declines and charges Lucia 10 gold, which she gladly pays.  They return to their hosts, the Glazers.

GM notes: I can’t believe Gleador got away with everything! He hid his shapeshifting on a whim and started two urban legends (the Black Beast and the invisible benevolent gorilla) and set Ferdinand up to be framed as the Black Beast. I was sure he’d have to deal with consequences for this, but he schemed his way out of everything.

  • Gleador appeared as the Black Beast in front of a crowd while Ferdinand was there, clearly proving Ferdinand’s innocence.
  • Gleador says the Black Beast is dead. There’s evidence of a struggle, and many people heard a panther cry out in pain.
  • Gleador says the invisible benevolent gorilla killed the beast. I thought I had him here, since Pepe would notice that there were no tracks leading away from the scene of the fight. But Pepe has chased the gorilla before, and its tracks disappeared then as well, so this actually corroborates Gleador’s story!

So the Fairmeadow Fair is over, and when they leave, Lucia will be remembered as a hero who fought many battles to protect the town, and Gleador will be remembered as that guy who was with Lucia, had no special skills, and almost died a few times.

← Session 6 | Campaign Summary | Session 8 →

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Constant boom-town setting.

Many RPG settings have some calamity in the past that destroys old civilizations and leave lots of ruins for adventurers to explore.  What’s another way to have ruins without blowing up the world?

The world is really big compared to the population, so crowding is not a thing.  Civilization is kinda bad at infrastructure and conservation, so often towns will spring up, drain the nearby land of resources, then be abandoned as the inhabitants move on.

So there’s a linear progression of environments.

  • untouched nature
  • frontier towns
  • civilization
  • ghost towns and wasteland
  • reclaimed by nature

Some interesting side-effects:

  • Civilization is mobile. Everyone is always ready to move on.
  • Cities that are better at conserving resources stay in place longer and have sturdier buildings
  • Trade routes are always changing
  • Ruins are unstable because buildings aren’t built to last.
  • Traditions and history have to be able to move along with the town. No ancient libraries or graveyards.
  • The environment behind towns has a bit of a Nausicaa feel.
  • CIvilization has not filled the world. The world is much bigger than people.

 

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Silly putty dopplegangers

Hitpoints are a popular abstraction to represent injury to creatures. Their simplicity makes them easy to use, but the abstraction differs from reality in some obvious ways.  Characters usually perform at full capacity as long as they have any hitpoints left, so a character can be stabbed several times without being impaired, but the last stab knocks that character unconscious.

So let’s give that strange behavior a diagetic explanation.  How can a creature keep going at full power with an arrow through its body? Surely vital organs were punctured, or important muscles were torn.  Not if the creature does not have organs or muscles!  I propose creatures made of homogeneous, shapable goo.  If their bodies are bashed, pierced, or otherwise disrupted, they can reshape themselves around the damage.  Since they can reshape themselves, let’s allow them to shape themselves to imitate other forms. Thus, silly putty dopplegangers.

So at full hitpoints, a doppleganger looks like a normal humanoid.  As it takes damage, it is visibly damaged, but is mechanically unaffected, like a clay sculpture dropped and quickly reformed.  When it runs out of hitpoints, it’s mashed into a formless lump. When a doppleganger regains hitpoints, its form regains detail.

Some fun optional things:

When a doppleganger rests & heals to full, it chooses a new form to imitate.  It can imitate a generic humanoid, or a specific person that it has studied.

One doppleganger can transfer hitpoints to another by removing a chunk from itself and adding it to the other. Will this lead to doppleganger parties forming Voltron? That might be cool.

Dopplegangers can intentionally flatten themselves to squeeze through small places.

A doppleganger can conceal small items or weapons by jamming them inside its body. Retrieving an item from inside its body is slower than retrieving an item stored in a bag or on a belt.

A doppleganger can intentionally splatter when falling or being crushed. It takes half damage, but must spend its next turn reforming.

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Remixing negativity

Complaining comes easily for me, but I’d rather be positive and creative than negative. Here’s a strategy I try to employ when I see some art I just don’t agree with.

First, I must be very careful about how I use words like “good”, “bad”, “right”, or “wrong” to describe art. Someone decorating his house in colors I don’t like isn’t wrong. If he likes it, then it’s working as intended. If the artist’s intent is clear, I can point out elements that support or detract from that goal, or I can make a judgement on whether that goal is good or not.  For example, if a director says his movie is about the horror of random violence, but the movie has cool, fun car chases with lots of collateral damage that doesn’t upset the protagonists, he’s failed to make random violence horrifying, and it’s appropriate to use the word “failure”.  On the other hand, if a movie is set in World War One and doesn’t address the themes that I think are important about World War One, that’s not a failure of the movie. That’s a mismatch of expectations. I might make the argument, “It’s irresponsible to represent WWI in this way,” but I can’t say, “The writer forgot this obvious thing.”

I don’t have much to say about art that doesn’t do anything for me.  What really sticks in my mind and bugs me is art that does a lot of things that move me, except for That One Thing.  I’m more likely to pick a tomato slice off a delicious hamburger than I am to try to eat a salad made entirely of ingredients I dislike.

I’ll think something like, “That scene was so emotional, but she should have said this instead.”  How presumptuous to think that I know the character better than the person who plays her every week!  What I see as a mistake is a mismatch between the version of the character the actor knows & expresses through her acting, and the version of the character I’ve constructed in my mind.  My version of the character has gone through three lossy conversions:

  1. The actor doesn’t have the opportunity to express all she knows about the character in the scenes in the show.
  2. I don’t notice or remember everything the character did
  3. The mental model I build based on those actions is strongly colored by my own beliefs and experiences.

Not only do I lack the knowledge required to tell the actress how to play her character, but I don’t have the relationship to start that conversation.  She’s doesn’t even know I exist. So thinking about how to “fix” that “missed opportunity” in whatever art I’m mostly enjoyed is wasted effort.

Instead of complaining about someone else’s art and trying to fix it for him, I draw inspiration from the parts I like, and make a new thing that includes other things I like.  What’s my version of Character X?  What would this setting look like through my philosophical lens?  Understanding what I don’t like about a thing and how I would build it differently forces me to examine and explain my beliefs, which is great for life, not just art.

I throw out ideas that I’ve generated in this way pretty often.  If I’m applying my strategy correctly, they won’t sound like sub-tweets.

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Thinking about PROCJAM: Summer 2018

PROCJAM is back.  Last year I participated by creating Spaceship Wrecker. You can play it on itch and read about it on my blog.  I’m excited to create something new for the Summer jam this coming week.

What will I generate this time?  A more important question: how do I generate things?  What’s my approach to a generator?  I think of a procedural generator like an AI.  I don’t make artifacts. I make an artifact generator, and teach it how to make artifacts. The generator is an agent that should make good decisions, that is, decisions that lead to desired results.  A bad artifact is a failure of the algorithm.  The agent/generator also has to obey a list of constraints, rules of the space it operates in. This makes the generation similar to a simulation as well.

This way of thinking is evident in the generators I’ve made so far.

  • Level 1 Pathfinder characters made by the rules in the Core Rulebook, which fight according to those rules.
  • Bodypaint generator that imitates observed bodypaint patterns from the Fremont Solstice Parade
  • Spaceships with interdependent parts that break and take other parts offline.
  • Cities with supply chains, zoning, different species, etc.

Many generators leave the value judgement of their artifacts to human observers.  There are Twitter bots that generate artifacts constantly, and when one turns out to be funny or beautiful, its human followers will retweet or chuckle, thereby declaring that artifact good.  Building an algorithm to determine if something is “good” or “funny” is really hard, so omitting it makes development of these generators much easier.  But for some applications, quality control is necessary. For example, 90% of a video games levels had unreachable exits, it would be basically unplayable.

Eureka! I could make a game that’s explicitly about being a human and judging the quality of a procedurally generated artifact. The player is the leader of a group of thieves.  The player gets scouting reports about procedurally generated banks and museums and must decide if a heist is within his team’s capabilities.  After deciding, the player sees a simulation of the heist run by AI agents, and can see if his decision was correct.

This is similar to another idea (which I got from a Twitter bot) about playing as a D&D supplement writer. The player creates a dungeon, then simple AI agents play it a bunch of times and rate it. Was it fun? Did the agents win? Was it too long or too short?  The player and the game swap responsibilities for creating & judging artifacts, but other than that it’s the same.

So that’s my constraint-heavy style of procedural generation.  I now have even more ideas for PROCJAM than I did when I started writing this post.  The next nine days are going to be very interesting.

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Impromptu 200-word RPG

Since I didn’t have time to explain and set up Dungeon World, I invented a tiny dice-pool system and ran that instead! Can I write down the rules in 200 words? Not in time for the official 200 Word RPG Challenge, but that’s fine.

———– BEGIN 200 WORD RPG ———–

Aimee RPG

CHARACTER CREATION

Write name, class, species, three personality traits, three physical traits, three items. Everything except name is a Tag that helps you accomplish tasks. Double-edged or multi-purpose Tags are more fun.

HOW TO PLAY

GM describes situations. Narrate your character’s actions. Play to your Tags. When the GM asks, make a check.

CHECK

Add one coin for each of your Tags that helps with that task. Add one coin for each useful Tag on environment or NPCs. Other players may assist with their Tags, but add only one coin each. Does this Tag apply? Present your case. GM decides. Flip all coins and count Heads.

HOW TO GM

Present challenges relevant to players’ Tags.
Add one or two Tags to important NPCs and locations.
Ask for checks when players try risky things.
Heads >= Challenge, success! Extra Heads improve results.
Heads = Challenge-1, offer success at a cost.

CHALLENGE

  1. I could do that
  2. impressive for normal folks
  3. appropriately heroic
  4. hard even for heroes
  5. Songs will be sung!

———– END 200 WORD RPG ———–

My word processor counts 175 words. We had a lot of fun, but the players deserve most of the credit for that.  At least that indicates that the system was not getting in our way.  Sometimes adding up Tags took longer than I liked.

Finally, here are some sample characters:

Phil naga barbarian
flexible, fireproof, prehensile tail
stubborn, suspicious, perceptive
spear, horn, sacred charm

Tamyra half-elf rogue
bodacious, athletic, acrobatic
sneaky, greedy, charismatic
rope, dagger, cloak

Pablo human paladin
imposing, powerful, double-jointed
compassionate, fearless, quick study
crested helmet, shield, book of legends

Bonnie American gangster
wiry, iron stomach, tall
disarming, cruel, calm
trenchcoat, Tommy gun, jug of moonshine

Pablo cyborg smuggler
metal bones, sinks in water, high stamina
raconteur, puts folks at ease, determined
hidden compartment, silenced pistol, quick-change clothes

Xithben Icthyoid combat pilot
four arms, water breathing, deaf
social anxiety, good spatial awareness, thrill-seeker
environment suit, trans-atmospheric interceptor, magnetic boots

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Fairmeadow Fair, session 6

← Session 5 | Campaign Summary | Session 7 →

When we last left our heroes, they had to fight a statue that just wouldn’t stay still like a good statue should. Now, on the last day of the fair, they try to attend and enjoy it like normal people.

Lucia the Paladin and Gleador the Druid (who is concealing his shape-shifting powers) wander the marketplace at the fair. They see Lisa, one of the deputies injured in last night’s battle against the metal statue.  They are surprised that she’s back on the job, or even on her feet.  She was healed at the temple. Lucia’s not the only spellcaster in town.  She does pull her armor and tabard aside to reveal a gnarly scar.  Lisa hopes for an uneventful day and bottling ceremony to end the fair.  Oh yeah, Hobert bottles his stolen wine at the end of the fair every year.

Lucia and Gleador head to town hall to check in with Pepe, the sheriff. They go to the evidence room and check on the statue. Since it grabs metal, they no longer have padlocks and chains on it.  The cell is bound shut with coils of stout rope. Each limb of the statue is bound with ropes to heavy pallets of bricks.  Pepe takes at least a minute unwinding the rope that keeps the cell shut.  Lucia warns Pepe about the switch that turns the statue on and off. He gets close to look at the switch and notices some writing stamped on the arm. It’s Dwarven. Lucia recognizes the runes, but doesn’t read the language. There are some numbers and a word in all caps, which is probably a proper name. our heroes want to find out more about the strange coins.  Pepe pushes them out of the room, retrieves a coin from his secure storage, and gives them one coin.  He writes a receipt for it. He trusts them because they’ve fought for the town several town, but he also files the proper paperwork.

Our heroes wonder where to go next. Who can translate the Dwarven runes? Who would know about the strange coin? Samantha might know some things. They also need to clear Ferdinand’s name. They head to the Brace of Pigs. There’s a commotion outside. Workers are going around the side with big saws, axes, and so on.  Hobert is directing them and holding a steak over a black eye.  He complains that the Black Beast has injured him and destroyed his inn.  They look go around the side of the inn and see the wooden boards on the second floor bent out, turning into branches, and forming a tunnel that goes into the ground.  “Is that Samantha’s room?”  They go inside and upstairs. It was Samantha’s room.  The back wall curves out and forms a funnel.  The bed has been pushed to the back wall, and the covers are sucked partially down the funnel.Some workmen are in the room, preparing to chop up the unnatural wood structures.

Lucia and Gleador figure that this is Samantha’s escape plan, and tracking them down means going down the tunnel themselves.  They ask the workers not to chop up the tunnel before they can head down.  The workers in the room call down to the workers on the ground outside.  Lucia lights and torch and slides down.  It’s mostly dark in the tunnel, but spaces between branches cause lines and cracks of birght light to flash past Lucia as she slides down, past the workers on the ground, until the branches taper off and she’s in a dirt tunnel several feet underground.  Gleador slides down and joins her.  They instruct the workers on the ground not to chop up the tunnel until they return.  They walk along underground for a while until the tunnel curves up and they emerge in the grain fields outside of town.  The Brace of Pigs is still visible far behind them.  There are tracks leading from the tunnel to the east, so they follow them.  Another set of tracks crosses the first set, and they follow that to another set.  After a few minutes, they realize that there are many sets of tracks looping around each other, intentionally confusing pursuers.  Another trick from Samantha, no doubt.  The tunnel headed in the general direction of the swamp where Ferdinand and Samantha live, so Lucia and Gleador head there.

A regional map showing the towns of Fairmeadow, Sugar’s Crossing, and Templeton.

Clearly, Samantha is using magic to avoid pursuit, and the swamp is her home turf, so Lucia and Gleador don’t just barge in, lest they trigger some awful trap.  They pause at the border of the swamp and call out, identifying themselves and asking politely for an audience.  The call startles a small flock of birds, who fly around in a swarm, except for one bird that breaks away from the flock and flies in a straight line deeper into the swamp.  They wait for a few minutes, then call out again.  They wait again, and when they are wondering if they should call out again or just go home, Samantha arrives.  There’s a moss-covered log nearby, and the moss is tossed aside like a blanket.  Samantha is lying there where the log should be.  When she stands up, she reveals a hole in the ground, leading who knows where.

Lucia: “She’s terrifying!”

Gleador: “Samantha,what do you want right now?”

A very thoughtful question. Samantha wants revenge on Hobert, but she needs to keep herself and Ferdinand safe.  Her potion and alchemy business might suffer if she’s defamed in town, but her customers are already the type to sneak out of town and visit a witch in the swamp, so they aren’t the type to scare easily.  She’ll probably be fine.  Samantha has ramped up security in the swamp. Anyone who comes in and tries to steal herbs will spring a nasty magical trap.  Lucia mentions that Hobert could turn Samantha’s escape tunnel into an attraction and charge extra.  Samantha wonders, “Is there anything capitalism can’t ruin?”  Gleador says he has a way to clear Ferdinand’s name and get comeuppance for Hobert.  Samantha’s interested.  Gleador asks if she can make a drink that’s better than Hobert’s wine.  She can make a potion called Polypurpose Panacea, which cures hangovers, gives the drinker a nice buzz, etc. but it’s very expensive to produce. That won’t work.

Samantha recalls Gleador transforming when the two fought several days ago. “Are you the Black Beast?  This is partially your fault!”  Gleador counters, “You’re not the only one with secrets!  What about Dandelion’s sudden voice problems?”  Samantha heard about that.  Sounds like a Frogmouth potion, which wears off with no lasting effects after a week.  She maintains plausible deniability, never confirming or denying that she was involved.  Gleador says that they’ll work on clearing Ferdinand’s name, and that Samantha and Ferdinand should stay close to town and rush in when the time is right.  Samantha scoops up a foot-long millipede from the swamp, talks to it a little, then offers it to Lucia.  Saying a password to this bug will alert Samantha.  Lucia accepts, and the millipede crawls up her arm and hides under her cloak.

Lucia and Gleador walk back to town. The swamp is several hours’ walk away from Fairmeadow.  When they get back to the Brace of Pigs, they see the workers did not wait for them and are demolishing the escape tunnel.  They go inside to talk to Hobert, and drop several threats on him.

  • You better clear Samantha’s and Ferdinand’s names!
  • We know your famous tradition is based on being a thief & a liar.
  • If you try to steal more herbs for next year’s wine, you won’t make it back..
  • You have one year to straighten out or your tradition is toast.
  • You could have made the escape tunnel an attraction and gotten more money.

Hobert whimpers as the two armed adventurers get in his face and threaten him.  He promises to be good and will they please leave?  Before they go, they quiz him about the strange coin.  Nearby city-states issue their own coins, but they coordinate to make their currencies inter-operable. Gold coins should be round, but this one is rectangular, and it’s too big.

Lucia and Gleador leave the inn.  Gleador wants to find and mark a falcon, so he can see through its eyes and watch the fair.  There aren’t many falcons around, so he settles for a crow instead of waiting.  He bribes it with a gold piece, because crows like shiny things.  Lucia and Gleador enjoy the fair until the end of the day.  They plan to leave town after the festival, so they buy some supplies for the road ahead.  Gleador checks in with the crow and sees a crowd gathering at the Brace of Pigs for the wine bottling ceremony.  He and Lucia go there in the flesh.  Hobert is giving a speech about the wine and the fair and how it’s great, but he transitions into complaining about threats to the tradition and the town.  He’s stirring up the crowd into a mob!

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