Mage

Old School Essentials: Ioun City’s Olde Time Religion
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Old School Essentials: Ioun City’s Olde Time Religion

tl;dr: The crew gets out of the abandoned river temple with a duke’s ransom and procures the the services of a River Acolyte to solve their Water Weird problem; also old Mrs. Cottonswald gives kitty-treats to a Spotted Lion at the mercy of the Monster Reaction Table.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2014/06/17/tuesday-map-dolems-spire/

We hadn’t gamed in a while and it was just great to see everyone’s faces. I didn’t realize how much I missed them. It was really nice to get together, catch up and play again.

Baska made up a Mage named Muffin St. Dymphna II, who is everyone’s hippy-dippy roommate from undergrad. As I described the abandoned temple that had been the previous Dullgray River Crew’s HQ, Baska mentioned that Muffin had partied there back in the day.

The crew worked well together as Tomoe recovered from nearly drowning. Ocean picked up the treasure while the Mages used their staffs (special power: In the hands of a mage, a normal saff can harm creatures that are immune to mundane attacks, from Carcass Crawler #1) to beat the creature into submission. But they couldn’t really kill it. They decided to count up their gold in a different room (8000 gold! with more in jewlery!) and left the temple for now. Gavin read oen of the books about the River Goddess they had found and discovered that “turning one’s well water into a fell serpent” was one of the River Goddess’ curses and the water needed to be calmed by a priest.

They hired Atbara, an elderly river priest who overlooked a shrine from times before the Ioun City Mercantile Consortium (ICMC) came to power. They paid him five gold and a ten gold tip and the old Acolyte was thrilled to get that much. They have unlocked the Shrine Acolytes of the Olde River Goddess as character options and plan to bring one with them as a retainer.

We had a few minutes left and discussed a bit about what to do for the next session and Anthony was excited to hire an animal trainer in hopes of taming the Spotted Lion. The discussion of where to hire someone led to Baska mentioning Mrs. Cottonswald, a local bad-ass cat-lady. We laughed while she shook kitty-treats at a monstrous lion that was gnawing on some kind of river rodent it had caught. I rolled her Charisma and asked Baska to roll the Monster Reaction table, 2d6 minus 1 (her CHA was not good). The lion was uninterested as Mrs. Cottonswald approached with a container of treats. She threw a few treats at it and it ate them.

“We’ve established the treats. We’ll try again tomorrow,” Mrs. Cottonswald said. I was shocked she had survived.

Next week the crew is going to clear the ghouls out of the temple so they can call it home.

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Old School Essentials: Starting with just Mage, Thief and Fighter
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Old School Essentials: Starting with just Mage, Thief and Fighter

As we start our Ioun City campaign, I asked that we start with only the Mage, the Thief and the Fighter on the table, using the d6 rules and alternate Fighter rules – all included with the Mage in Carcass Crawler #1. We’ll add classes and other kindred slowly but surely. This got us started quickly with simple characters who could gain depth with time as the world’s lore was learned and things got stranger and stranger.

We’ll add more character options through play, like downloading DLC, whenever the players make significant contact with another group and enter into some kind of agreement with them. Maybe doing a job for the kobold construction workers in Crown Town would open up kobolds as a playable kindred. Taking a job or making some kind of agreement with the local Temple of the Arcane Trinity will open up the Acolyte (also in Carcass Crawler #1, linked above). It will give us a fun result after make contact with factions and encourage us make new characters for the fun of it.

Posted to the FB group for this game:

So, I’ve got this idea on the Ioun City game and when Anthony asked if he could play a Halfling, I realized I had not explained it. So, we unlock new character options by interacting with the world. So, if you go do a job with the Anvilless (The Dwarven Crime Syndicate) who you met last week – you can hire Dwarven retainers and/or make Dwarven characters to play.

That way the gang gets stranger as you make more and more contact with the strangeness of the world around you. If we make contact with something without a clear character option we’ll either see if someone else has made something out in the internets or make it ourselves.

Sound like fun?

Message to FB Group

There is totally a place for a game that starts with a robot, a devil-person and a scrappy thief venturing into a monster-haunted hole. I dig those games. That just isn’t this game (at least not yet it isn’t; the night is young).

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Welcome to Ioun City
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Welcome to Ioun City

Tonight’s Band of Blades game wasn’t going to happen and so I sent something about rival thieves’ guilds at war. I posted three Dyson Logos maps and we chose this one:

We decided the city’s big money-maker is the polishing, charging and activation of Ioun Stones in the 3 arcane-industrial castles. Each castle is held by a different faction who, all together, sell the Ioun Stones through a mercantile consortium.

Other details:
Long-term stone use causes some kind arcane mutations
Adventuring is profitable because it keeps the gem mines clear
Ioun mining brings out the strange monsters
City Watch called something like Order of the Spindle; focused on defending trade

The group is made of a Mage (fresh out of Carcass Crawler #1), a Thief (with d6-based skills, also out of CC#1) and a Fighter (perhaps with the optional mechanic flourishes). They are known as the Dullgray River Rats, having grown up skipping rocks on the river – went their seperate ways for training and such.

Other classes and heritage options will open up through interactions with the setting. I’m picturing a tepid trinity of arcane saints as the main religion – the Saint of Wizards, the Sorcerer Saint and the Patron of Warlocks. Magic drugs for kicks and performance enhancement. Lots of scrolls hither and yon. Lots of magical treasure for the taking.

Going to write up tables for coming up with quick jobs (looking at you, Blades in the Dark and Swyvers) and encounters/treasure, looking at you, Dolmenwood. Jot down a few outside-the-city hexes and populate ’em. Daydream a bit about the political pressures in the city (oh shit, maybe a Hex Flower for that!). Write up some factions and see how things shake out.

Welcome to Ioun City.

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