The Raven's Loft Game

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Julian Grimm
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The Raven's Loft Game

Post by Julian Grimm »

This will be the thread for the Aihrde campaign I am running at the Raven's Loft in Lebanon MO. The game is set in Aihrde and is roughly based on the A-series though there are changes in locations and events. The game is played every other Wednesday from 3pm to 9pm with 5-6 regular players and a couple of players that come in and out of the game.

The regular line up of classes are: 2 Elven Rangers, 1 Elven Druid, 1 Human Ranger and 1 Gnome Illusionist. In order to speed along introductions I had the regular group be a part of a disbanded crusader unit that has moved on out of New Aenoch to the recently established crusader states near Blacktooth Ridge.

As for the campaign itself we have started with A0 and are moving toward A1 where, after A1 is completed, the players will have more freedom to choose where they go after. This allows for some other storylines and plot threads that I have been laying down to develop naturally rather than railroad the players through the series.

This thread will include not only play sessions but house-rules and information on my own version of Aihrde. As well it will be connected to a new blog I am creating for the campaign to hold other information.

My next post here will give you the story thus far and show how I am changing the world and series for the campaign.
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Re: The Raven's Loft Game (Aihrde)

Post by Julian Grimm »

Session 1 of the game was more about character creation, explaining the rules and deciding on the world. We did a small scouting mission to get a few of the concepts down. Everyone who played was excited and seemed to like the rules. Though there were some 3.5/Pathfinder players who were confused by the lack of certain options. After explaining how the SIEGE Engine can emulate those options they were more open to trying it. I did make the decision to go with the 12/15/18 option from the CKG.

Session 2 saw actual play in Aihrde with A0 being the framework for the adventure. There were changes made to the module to reflect the direction I want to go with it. The first being that the first few adventures of the A-series would be based around a singular base which became the town of Hart's Grove. The map was also altered to bring some of the dungeons closer to the town so that the home base could be used.

Hart's Grove is a town that is part of a confederation of Crusader States that have arisen from the past two crusades in New Aenoch. There has been recent tension between New Aenoch and the states which has resulted in a push for independence from the nation. These tensions will be played off later in the campaign but for now the players have only heard rumblings of them.

The game began with the players being a part of a crusader unit that was ambushed on their way north. The survivors made their way to Hart's Grove seeking others that may have survived. They found that there was no record of the unit being moved and that they were now on their own. While deciding what to do they began hearing rumors of raids in the area and on the town. After some investigating they were invited to meet with the governor who hired them to find the raiders.

The party agreed and were introduced to a guide who was a paladin of a secret order. Upon leaving the town they searched and found two camps used by humanoids and fought one group of raiders. While tracking them they stumbled upon a creature that none had seen before. Somewhat like an ogre it was covered in dark magical ruins that one character recognized as a break-away sect of his clan.

Evidence was also found that there may be a spy in Hart's Grove. Upon this discovery the party returned to the town to try to root out the spy. When returning to their rooms they searched what they found and discovered a mysterious note that had been dropped into their belongings. The note pointed to secrets held by the Governor and their paladin guide as well as a warning about Duke Kane.

The rest of the session saw the party doing some hard investigating into these rumors with roadblocks being thrown at them. They also saw a mysterious elf following them and were warned to leave her alone. The party split into two groups to check their leads and found that the town was filled with secretive folk and that many were hiding something. They also found that any question about Kane lead to the words "Kane's dead, forget him" followed by fearful 'crossing' of themselves.

Information was found on the local elven ruins and a lost elven kingdom as well as on the governor's past. A standard legend of Kane was also given to them. However, the investigation dead ended when the party began chasing every lead and shadow they could find. The whole time they kept missing the mark and ended up more confused. As well, they got lost in the town and ended up in an abandoned section of it.

While in the area they were captured by a group rogues and came face to face with the elf that had been following them. This was where I left it off until the next session which will be posted soon.
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Re: The Raven's Loft Game (Aihrde)

Post by tylermo »

That's a game I'd like to be in, but I'm down here in Southeast Missouri. Still running a game in Cape Girardeau at Gameknights. It's pretty much been part of Dark Journey, followed by They Call Him Guff, Lure of Delusion, and will continue into Dwarven Glory, Mortality of Green, Shades of Mist, and Upon the Powder River. From there, I have no clue. Who knows when any further expansion of the C series will take place. Either way, some of the players have picked up C&C. :D

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Re: The Raven's Loft Game (Aihrde)

Post by Julian Grimm »

Thanks for the kind words, Tylermo. If you do get a chance to be in the area hit me up, we may not play but we'll do something.

Anyway. . .

Session 3 begins with the characters being taken to a secret location in some abandoned buildings to meet with not only the elf that had been tracking them but the governor himself. The elf introduced herself as Yslar and began to fill the party in on what they had missed in their investigation. She points them to an old dwarven outpost that may be a key to finding out what is going on with the raids in the area.

The governor offers the party a charter to become a semi-freelance crusader group in the area. This would not only give them needed connections but keep them from being labelled deserters if their old unit came looking for them. However, the charter would only be given upon the completion of the mission. The party agrees and heads out to the location of the outpost.

(Note that this outpost is the Baleon Nacht dungeon from Rising Knight and that the true Baleon Nacht has not been found yet.)

They raided the area but soon learned that Unklar's presence still remained in the outpost, which had been used as a minor temple. The party was in a running fight with the goblins until the dungeon took over and trapped them on the second level.
They witnessed a vision of a preist executing an elven king and then moved deeper.

Finally they reached an area filled with orcs and a very powerful Ungern which were packing the chapel up for movement. The fight was intense with the dungeon dropping walls and healing the orcs forcing the battle against the party. Finally the gnome illusionist pulled off an influence spell that had the ungern leave and show them the way out. However, the ungern took one crate with him and the party left him alive.

Back in Hart's Grove, the party worked on healing (One character having a broken leg and the others infected with a disease) and resting while transferring the info they found to the Governor. The location of Baleon Nacht was found and plans were made to move on it after the party healed.

My thoughts from this session are that the players are gelling into a party and forming a team. I also got to see the C&C Illusionist in action and was impressed with the class. For the first time ever I feel the Illusionist is a decent class and that C&C made it viable.

Tonight is session 4 where I will be moving away from a dungeon crawl as far as the temple is concerned. While there will still be exploration I am trying a new idea to make it less a crawl and more an adventure.

The party will also find that some things have changed in town since they had to rest and will have to deal with that as well.
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Session 4: Be Careful Who You Trust

Post by Julian Grimm »

With the party recovered they decided that it was time to go check out Baleon Nacht. They had noticed that the town had changed some with new troops moving in and at least three new businesses opening up. Governor Hidel had left to confer with two other states about the independance movement. After noting these changes they decided to leave town.

At the city gates they were met by Ysalar who said she was going with them because there were things she wanted to see. The party took her in with no questions with one member trying to win her trust. Ysalar showed them a faster way to get to the temple and they took a path through a portal outside of town. Upon reaching the outer temple they found that there were no guards and that something was not right.

Exploring Baleon Nacht showed that the place was once and elven temple to both Wenefar and Mordius that was desecrated by followers of Unklar centuries before. While not encountering much but ghosts and an apparition that called all the elves in the group traitors and kinslayers, the party focused more on their companion than the dungeon.

[Aside: there was a near power struggle among the players over who was the group leader. This culminated in the session going from a dungeon crawl to a near story session as there was enough disruption to lead me to want to see if they would sort the mess. They didn't. So the following is what I did in place of the planned adventure.]

Questioning Yslar they found that she was far older than she appeared and fought in the Winter Dark Wars as well as the crusades in Outremere/New Aenoch. She then told a story of how she was one of the elves who left Aihrde and came back and was wracked with guilt over the whole episode. Continuing in the dungeon they finally found the original occupants dead and having to fight some Holobane Orcs of a different faction.

Finding a map of Blacktooth ridge they found that there were three factions fighting for control. Yslar looked at the map and left the party. They party returned with little more than some cash and a story. Thus session 4 ends.

[Aside 2: The problems with the players led to this being a shorter session and bogged down in dialog and speculation. The biggest mistake they made was forgetting what they were told about Yslar. That she could not be trusted, not what she seemed and had her own agenda. This is going to come back on them in a very bad way and, if the arguing continues, they will find themselves in a bad situation]
Lord Skystorm

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AD&D per se is as dead a system as Latin is a language, while the C&C game has much the same spirit and nearly the same mechanics. --Gary Gygax 8/16/06

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Re: The Raven's Loft Game

Post by Julian Grimm »

This week's session was postponed until next week due to having a few things at home that needed to be done. However work on the campaign continues with a few changes coming to the overall structure of the game. This is to end some confusion among the players over the rules and to fix some issues I am having.

First off, I am going to be showing off the more AD&D aspects of C&C rather than the D20. Many of the players keep going back to 3.X for ideas and I keep telling them not to think of C&C as a D20 game. Therefore I am going to showcase why C&C is an updated AD&D rather than a stripped down D20. Hopefully this will help.

Second, the campaign setting is being switched to Greyhawk to run a campaign based off a few of the older modules. This should help cement the ideas of the game being more AD&D in nature. Getting them into a classic setting with classic modules hopefully will drive the point home.

Finally, there may be a change in the roster coming. I have yet to post a player roster in here since the group is still a bit liquid. Now with one player going back to school and another maybe dropping a couple of slots have opened up. When it looks like the group will gel together a true roster will be posted.

Sorry there are no game details this time.
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Session 5: Boom!

Post by Julian Grimm »

How to begin this one? While on some down time I had decided that things were not going the way they should. Players were not interested in the world, the storyline had broken down to a mess and there were other ideas that had been bandied about. Idea that I want to say that I was more comfortable with. The decision was made late last week that things were going to change and in a big way. Once I hit on the idea of how to change them it was just a matter of playing them out. Sadly, this lead to a session that was a bit more linear than I liked but one that served it's purpose.

The players awoke to a world in chaos. Storms, fiery hailstones and extraplaner invaders were chipping the world away. Amid this they were met by a Mimir and a few of my bigger NPC's in a new incarnation to save them from the destruction. After fighting their way out of town it was explained to them that reality had been destroyed by a fight between Vecna and The Lady of Pain and that they were witnessing both the death and birth of a new universe.

What followed was a series of running fights through a dying and war torn background where they met with shifting landscapes, fought orc versions of themselves and learned that everyone had multiple incarnations. They also learned that the first ripple on Aihrde of the coming chaos was that their Aihrde incarnations had died and changed place with their Oerth incarnations. This somehow helped the chaos along and sped the end of Aihrde.

At the end the party, and their companions, fought their way to the last portal off Aihrde and left just as the world went into its death throws. They watched from a demi-plane as not only Aihrde but other worlds were torn apart, merged or ceased to exist. Other worlds were spun into their own universes or just blinked from existence. Gods ceased to exist in front of their eyes and were forgotten.

They then saw a new Oerth form in front of them and were taken back to where they belonged forgetting their time on Aihrde and the reshaping of the universe. They awoke in an inn with a dream fading from them and went back to sleep due to having to set out for a small village near Verbobonc that was having trouble.


Behind the Scenes

Why did this happen?

To put it bluntly Aihrde was not working for the group. No one could get into the setting and while they liked the game they felt that Aihrde was not for them. As well many of us were or are old AD&D players and we would constantly be talking about one setting or another and how we liked them. In the end everyone seemed to want to change settings but no one would speak up. I made a decision that I hope was for the best and symbolically put all my experimenting with Aihrde behind me and moved to Greyhawk.

As well, this campaign has been a bit of a restart for me. I felt I needed a clean slate of sorts to start with and needed to remove over a decade's worth of campaign material, npc's and other stuff that I held on to. Getting rid of multiple NPC copies, half finished dungeons and notes just needed to be done. With the entire universe reshaped I could begin anew and give the group the game we all wanted.

How was it received?

Better than expected. Everyone liked the idea and was comfortable with the switch. They also had the same issues I was having with some things seem to like the way things ended on Aihrde. They are excited to be going to Greyhawk (Pre-war) and running some classic AD&D stuff with C&C.

What's Next?


We will be beginning with T1 and running Hommlet and the Moathouse and go from there. Maybe the TOEE and maybe something else. I have a ton of Greyhawk stuff that needs to see use and everyone is receptive to the idea. One thing that is certain is that I now have a clean slate to run this campaign with and the sky is the limit.
Lord Skystorm

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Re: The Raven's Loft Game

Post by alcyone »

Glad it worked out, but I am curious how Aihrde and Greyhawk are much different in practice? Do they make a lot of use of the familiar places or people in Greyhawk? Is it the deities that didn't work out? Or just the whole Unklar/Winter's Dark thing was hard for them?
My C&C stuff: www.rpggrognard.com

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Re: The Raven's Loft Game

Post by Julian Grimm »

It was the history factor mainly. Only having 67 years between the end of the WD and the beginning of the campaign began to bother them. Again, adding in that not only the group but the gamers at the store are big AD&D players left the fact that Greyhawk would come up eventually. It was a natural flow from there. Also a couple of the AD&D DM's have been looking at my C&C books and really like it and could be almost ready to convert.


As an aside, the owner of the store has reserved us an area to play in that is right up front so people can see the game in action.
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Re: The Raven's Loft Game

Post by Julian Grimm »

Between Session Work

The 'reality shift' has allowed me to make some changes that I have needed to for some time. The majority of my old house-rules have been purged and I am only keeping a few things like small class adjustments and my own resolution system. I purged a few other things like my massive NPC lists. The idea is to get a fresh start and get rid of a couple decades worth of accumulation that will never be used.

I have also been drawing from AD&D (1e) for inspiration for adventure writing and some other ideas that I want to use. The desire is to show some of the more Old School players how close C&C is to AD&D so I am playing off that aspect of the game. With the amount of AD&D players at the store this may turn into a good thing for C&C as a whole.

The purge, as I call it, has actually been a good thing for me as I can focus much better on what I am writing without consulting binders six different books. This has opened up new creative channels for me and has been quite refreshing. The next session should show that.

Our next game begins Wednesday at 3pm.
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Re: The Raven's Loft Game

Post by Julian Grimm »

Session 6: Yggsburgh and a Player is Banned

The session began with a decision to dust off Yggsburgh for a run. This was no issue as I have made Yggsburgh part of my personal Greyhawk. Part of this decision was for a project I am working on that I will unveil as it progresses. After seeing it and getting and explanation of Yggsburgh the players wanted to play in this area and were very interested.

For the most part this session was investigative as they learned about the castle, environs and situations in the town. Learning that not only was the castle becoming active again they found that there was a war between thieves guilds brewing that may break out soon.

Unfortunately, this was all that was accomplished due to a disruptive player who had been a problem for a couple sessions. The ultimate result was a unanimous decision by the other players to eject him from the game. Giving the nature of how this player was acting it was also decided that he would not be allowed to return.

After the session it was decided that there would be a soft reset to the session as well as writing up of a campaign guide to help get everyone back on track. Hopefully the next session will go better.
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Re: The Raven's Loft Game

Post by Julian Grimm »

Well, after some shaking up and minor turmoil we are finally getting this back under control. There was a brainstorming session last night between myself and the store owners on an idea that is crazy but, if it works, would help the store and getting C&C out there. While the details are not set yet we are looking at a mega-campaign that will consist of multiple CK's running an area of the world. This would allow crossover between campaign by players and the occasional event that would merge groups together for world shaking events.

Stay tuned.
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Re: The Raven's Loft Game

Post by Julian Grimm »

Mods,

Could you delete this? The campaign in question has dissolved and I have a new one coming.
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AD&D per se is as dead a system as Latin is a language, while the C&C game has much the same spirit and nearly the same mechanics. --Gary Gygax 8/16/06

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