Iron spikes, 10 foot poles, and lots and lots of rope!

Well we did it. We played in Jim Raggi's (LotFP - Lamentations of the Flame Princess) online Labyrinth Lord game, session #2 in this case for a couple of the guys.

And we lived! Well, most of us did....sorta.

A couple of my adventuring comrades have already posted on the fun that was had, so I'll send you over to The Dwarf and The Basilisk for Matthew's (Sunniva the chaotic dwarf) take, and over to Running With Dice, where jerm (Cerran, our curious thief) also discusses the session.

As noted in both of those great posts, we were playing (playtesting?) through some of Jim's own personal creation, which will be published very soon. Thus the details will be very few, as to not give away any of the coolness.

Three members of the crew were returning vets from last week's session, and jerm and myself joined up in a return to the ugly. In full force we were as follows:

• Sunniva - chaotic female dwarf
• Cerran - neutral male thief
• Vander - lawful male cleric
• Roland - neutral? male fighter
• Beechum - lawful male halfling

and of course the doombringer... err... storyteller/gamemaster himself (Jim):


Sunniva and Cerran have been described a bit by their players in the blog links noted above, so I'll let you check those out for yourself. For a description of my little guy Beechum, I will refer you to this Jim Holloway drawing, which is what I had printed out next to my character sheet last night as inspiration. This is almost exactly who Beechum was/is to me:
...well, except for the armor and the axe at his side. Beechum wears chain mail and a shield, or at least he did until he had to beat-(hairy)feet, running for his life.

Additionally although he does in fact prefer the sling as a weapon, being graced with a nice talent at missile attacks, he also carries both a spear and a silver dagger for up close and personal scuffles, whenever they might present themselves. The spear, of course doubling as a throwing weapon if need be.

The silver dagger is more for show than for any real practical use (ie, lycanthropes, wights, wraiths, etc), as Beechum falls victim to his race's characteristic weakness for a finer thing or two. He can often be found twirling it between his fingers and thumb, grinning with pride and complacency. Don't get me wrong though, if such a fiend would happen to wander upon him, he'd whip that baby out as fast as you could say "roll for initiative."


In typical 1981 fashion, and as the title of this post implies, our brave group of adventurers took to:

• spiking doors - both open and shut
• brandishing 10' poles - as door openers and floor testers
• collecting and testing strange unknown liquids - if you don't have any hirelings, just have the thief stick his pinky in it
• minor dentistry - no comment
• keeping the local rope maker in business - with about 200' of the stuff in our collective packs, we had no qualms to using it at every juncture, securing certain objects as well as a certain thief
• tossing torches - as a distant light source and the occasional act of arson
  

We actually rolled very few dice, spending nearly all of our time exploring and having fun role-playing our crew. In fact up until the last few minutes of the session, the only rolls were for thieving skills, stonework checks by the our resident dwarf, and opposing STR checks, IIRC. In our full-on retreat to seemingly nowhere, we did have to make CON checks, which we all did....wshew!

We did however, spend a massive amount of time worrying about our (incorrectly) presumably-charmed/cursed thief friend, Cerran. As noted and commented on in the other blogs, we were darn sure he was out to get us (not of his own free will, mind you), and we were contemplating tieing him up (we did have the extra rope, that's for sure), knocking him out cold, or pushing/tripping him grade-school playground style over Beechum's back (wouldn't even really have to kneel for that move). It got so bad, that someone nearly accidentally let him drop into a very, very deep pit/hole!


But that's not quite a deed of lawful nature now is it? Sunniva?!? Feeling a tad goody-good, Beechum reminded a couple party members that although we were certain that Cerran was no longer on our side, he was still "one of us" and we needed to find a better way of dealing with him than watching him fall to his doom. But then again, he wasn't holding the rope now was he? MUUHAHAHAHA!!!!!

In the end things got so hairy that it didn't quite matter which side Cerran was on any longer. We needed to get the F outta there! So we did.

After the session was over, Jim answered some questions we had about certain points in the adventure, and also offered up quite a lot of info on the rest of his very cool creation. I will not reveal any of those details, but I will relay the interesting fact that Cerran was... in fact... absolutely... NOT charmed or cursed or otherwise affected in any way. He was just roleplaying a different take on something that had happened to him during the crawl, and totally hammed it up. OMG!

Well sadly his peculiar behavior was a bit costly, as he was the chosen one to be left behind. It was all about encumbrance and time, Cerran. Honest.

Oh and a massive amount of undead!


In summary, it was a total blast! Jim, thanks so much for creating, hosting and running us through your new project. It is very, very cool...creepy as hell, and a very fun crawl for anyone looking for something a little different than your average hack-n-slash adventure. I highly recommend it.

To my comrades, you guys were tons of fun! So we doomed everyone..big deal, right? Just think how much XP we're gonna get killing all of that crap. Job security, baby!

It was a pleasure to meet and adventure with each of you and I sincerely hope we can do it again sometime soon. Hit me up here or shoot me a message any time you like.