Gathox Session #8 Play Report - A Truly Epic Session

 Our hobos began the session by scoping out the flow of traffic into the back rooms of the casino. Eventually, mutant Thla made psychic contact with the floor boss's mind, gleaning some information and then accidentally spamming his brain with psychic effluvia, causing him to convulse on the ground. Additional guards rushed into the office to investigate the commotion, which provided the excuse for cosmic doctor Sergio to enter the room under the pretense of aiding the screaming boss. Casting a sleep spell which overloaded, Sergio silently dropped all the guards in the room and caused the floor boss to disappear from this plane of existence.

The team ransacked the office, finding complete floor plans for the casino (including the location of an ominous pit), and subsequently finding a secret safe room. Sergio cracked the safe, only to be crippled by a poison arrow trap. Brother Saget, the spider-headed faith healer, began to set a fire trap on the main office door while the rest of the party split between guarding the room and exploring the dormitories of the employees.

 Pictured: A common tactic, but add fire.

Fake elf and blood crusted martial master Amadeus began exploration with Mangleface Steve and newcomer stink-mutant BullChevy Picklefarts, raiding footlockers and kicking over bunkbeds. Two guards met their end at Amadeus's hand, and a third was smothered in his sleep by Steve.

Coming to the boss's suite, the three teammates found the door barricaded by three elite smokeroom attendants. Steve muscled the barricade open, only to have an attendant hurl a deadly accurate dagger which severed her left arm and left her bleeding out. BullChevy was subsequently knocked out by a well-placed blow to the chin, leaving Amadeus to duke it out in a desperate bid for survival. Three dead attendants and a brainpunch later, Amadeus exited the room rich with additional plunder.

Regrouping and waking up unconscious teammates, the gang made a plan to arm the fire trap barricade at the office door and enter the sub-halls of the casino in a fast and furtive push to locate Jiang Mua. Diverting guards in the dark halls with a clever ruse vis a vis Sergio's silver tongue, the team made it to a rough hewn pit where the casino dumped bodies. Mutant Thla felt the psychic call of something immense and terrible below and volunteered for the spelunking.

Pictured: A good idea. For reals.

Making his way down 80' to a dank cavern floor, he found the place overgrown with a carpet of moss and bioluminescent fungus. In the distance, a great glowing winged entity, pulsating with psychadelic colors, hovered over the body of Mua, tendrils of energy engulfing the young man as well as extending into the casino floor above. Thla retrieved Mua, hefting the man's body while waging a dire psychic battle. The mutant finally escaped, but not before feeling the long term effects of mental contact with one of the Zhezhn of Gathox.


With the boy and the Trepanator retrieved, the gang needed to make a quick and dirty exit. The guards and employees finally burst down the office door, only to fall prey to Saget's fire trap, while the team detonated a stick of dynamite to enhance the confusion of the scene. They escaped through the cashier's door, where stink-mutant BullChevy hocked a paralytic loogie directly into the cashier's mouth, silencing her.

With the casino burning and half in ruins, the team escaped into the free air of Kermen territory and returned to Bao's antique shop. Bao paid in a timely fashion and with deep thanks, but desperate to wake his son from his psychic torpor. The team surreptitiously kept the Trepanator for the time being, returning to Dohjak territory to settle in for hospitalizations and carousing.

The Highlights:

*Amadeus brain punching attendants to death' covering himself in their blood, and writing the team's new gang name, Firestarters, in blood everywhere.

*Sergio's incredible luck in overloading the sleep spell, which teleported the floor boss to destinations unknown. Also, his charm with guards and elderly casino regulars alike.

*Mangleface Steve's epic accidental quest to roll more times on the Death and Dismemberment table and lose the most body parts out of any gang member.

*Saget's prudence, both in hanging back from battles and in strategic trap construction.

*BullChevy's magnificent powers of stench overwhelming guards, and his incredible aim when spitting.

*Thla's investigation of the psychic and psychadelic, leading him into contact with entities from beyond the physical plane. Also, his dangerous gambit to rescue Mua.

*Finally, FOUR Death and Dismemberment rolls, miraculously without a single PC death!

The Take:

*11 dead or defeated guards
*3 butchered casino attendants
*1 plane-banished floor boss
*1 missing person rescued: Jiang Mua
*1 artifact recovered: the Trepanator

GP per PC: 640
XP per PC: 719
RP per PC: 1

The Firestarters have expressed their desire for more serious dungeon delving, but would first like to solve the issue of Jiang Mua's psychic torpor. We'll deal with Mua next, which will allow me time to develop the next dungeon (a megadungeon, perhaps?).

Gathox Session #7 Play Report

Our team, deciding to make a missing person un-missing for money,  met with Berling the Pusher for a quick round of funfetti cake, lengthy paperwork, and some investigative Q&A.

Interviews and some good old fashioned gumshoeing ensued at Jiang Bao's place, where our hobos acquired a cypher, a burnt key, and some eyeball tokens. Bao needs his son, Mua, to return so he can enjoy a fat cat retirement with the family antiques business intact.

Jiang Mua's childhood bestie, Laddy Birkenauer, copped some attitude and received a talking to, but ultimately managed to recall some key facts concerning the final known whereabouts of Mua.

The team made their way back into Kermen territory, where they encountered some Kermen street thugs who soon became street detritus.

Dead.

In the Den of Dreamers, PCs played blackjack and craps, courted elderly gambling addicts, had crazy trips on Sho-Maht, and scoped the place out.

Highlights:

*Amadeus tagged the casino's outer wall with Kermen blood, ensuring the notorious future of the team's upstart gang.

*Mutant Thla became a seasoned psychonaut after swimming into the depths of a Sho-Maht hallucination and finding strange presences there.

*Sergio gathered intel by catering to the impulsiveness of an old gambler from the Craw.

*Brother Saget made like Sherlock with the clues - his self-banter getting closer to the heart of the mystery than even he realized.

The Take:

*4 Kermen Street Thugs

*30 gp

*Each player receives 15 xp, 7 gp, 5 sp.

The Analysis:

This is where the players really began to ramp up their hate for the Kermen, making overtures of war against the one-eyed aliens. Also, given that these players were still quite new to gaming, they were of course testing the borders of acceptability in play. I managed to accommodate most of those impulses in a fair manner, providing natural consequences for most of it. Those kinds of understandings between players and referees are another emergent property of play, concurrent with narrative.

Will the players solve the mystery and return Jiang Mua to his home? Find out next week!

Gathox Session #3 Play Report

Having escaped the Mudling Mansions, our intrepid protagonists hocked their ill-begotten wares and made plans for leveling the property. They delivered Relka to the Dohjaks, but not before setting fire to the tower in an attempt to collapse it.

Being a volatile, oil-laden structure, the neighborhood caught fire.

What that looks like.

After considering quietly slipping away and retiring in the countryside, penniless, the team instead spent their efforts, and a great deal of cash, in rescuing slum tenants and collapsing the building.

Highlights:

*"Elf-man" Marmaduke got high with a group of furtive dock workers, rolled a casino, and bumped off a couple of Sinbad-costumed bouncers . . . . while everyone else tried to fight the fires.

*Steve the Psychic, resplendent with missing nose and cheek, held a gun to a child's head, and later confirmed the essential goodness of the idea.

*Sergio rescued a deaf gongfarmer with pantomime.

*Griff the Grunt managed to convince the mob of the entertainment value of battering rams in the midst of fire.

The Take:

*748 xp for hitting improvised goals and rescuing tenants

*500gp each for fulfillment of remaining terms of contract; initial funds blown on solving problems created by the attempt to solve problems.

Analysis:

 The endgame for this scenario changed drastically from what I had envisioned, because of course it did. A surprising non-surprise, one might say. My initial design for "Mudling Mansions" never fully accounted for demolition of the building, let alone the most obvious and logical choices available to players, which involved arson and wholesale property destruction. I suppose we playtest things for reasons, so there you go. The final written version of "Mudling Mansions" contains a variety of endgame options as a result. I call that a success.

The actual surprises included one character choosing to take a child hostage at gunpoint to get the attention of an apathetic crowd of rubberneckers, as well as one player simply slipping off to go screw around with nearby, less dangerous parts of the city. A damn lucky die roll saved the former, and the social relationships at the table corrected the latter, so it was truly enjoyable to watch the party simultaneously test and set boundaries through play.