Az Iz Recap

 

 

 

This is a writeup in more detail about the game mentioned in THIS post.

Thanks!




Excerpt

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So then I wander around the booths and my dad heeds the call to referee a 5E game with no prep to substitute for someone who was sick.

I walk around with my roommate for a while, then they leave and I sit on a bench - and I go, "ok, now is the time to make something up"

I go to the LotFP discord, because I have loved Zak's blogpost about Jeff Rient's halfling stew game for ages and Aleksi Soukka had just recently done a version of it based on that post. 

Here is Aleksi's instagram, it has lots of cool art, and the halfling stew map and play reports are on the LotFP discord and facebook, you should go give them a look!

So I looked at the map made by Aleksi, copied it for the most part - then added my own setting specific ideas and changed some of the room layout - namely:

There is a ice troll - the place is filled with ice - there is a system for slipping on ice - there are spikes and pits and things that make noise - and there are moths that drop snow and try to slip players into pits.

For the convention, my idea was to have all the players be dwarves - and I thought "I should give them each one item of their choice, one item that they managed to smuggle in their beard"

I also thought, "wouldn't it be cool if the ice troll has frost breath, and has stuck them to the roof with it like the Wampa on Hoth?"

So I sketched those details on the map, made 6 dwarves while I sat with Nik later on - talking about Raggi and Zak - and the issues with Patrick Stuart and the problems with the OSR as a whole - then the game began after some people arrived.

Three people that were scheduled show up,  and one player from a previous game shows up, so I just give em' all a sheet and we are off to the races.

I have them each pick one item to smuggle in their beards, then tell them - "You all are traveling through a cold and icy land on the way back to your home fortress - one night when the wind is howling you all start to drink in your tent, then disaster strikes. Something smashes the tent and in your drunken state knocks all of you out. Each of you were prepared, and have managed to sneak one item in, you each carried something in your beard. You awaken, feeling like you are hanging from your feet - it is pitch black."

So they start in the pitch dark, feet stuck to the ceiling by icy outcroppings.

They talk a little, and feel at their feet - one has a shortsword, one has a grappling hook, one has a crowbar, and one has a sling.

The dwarf with the crowbar starts smashing the ice at his feet - falls down - and begins walking around - feeling in the dark. As he leaves the room, he turns back and they all talk a little, he passes the crowbar up and they all start breaking out - each hit rolling on the encounter dice.

They feel around the chamber, one grabs chunks of ice for his sling, and a couple of them grab femur bones as weapons.

The one dwarf feels down the corridor south a little - then they all start walking around and go and feel the black iron gate, then turn and go north - passing the troll chamber.

The troll is sleeping, and snoring, which sounds like falling boulders in a strangely rhythmic way.

They continue upward, and go into the room with the wind to the north.

They enter, and turn to the left - bumping right into a cairne of precarious stones with a shield atop it - this causes enough noise for the troll to awaken.

They hear it crunching down the hallways - smashing a door and entering the room - it comes in as they scramble around the room - and they repeatedly hear it smash near them - which sounds like gigantic falling rocks - they start rushing over the slippery ice towards the eastern doorway, and one of them gets hit flat like a bug for 5 damage, and I think one other person gets hit for like 4.

In all the scuffle, they do manage to escape - it is quite slow - and they then slide into the room to the east and down around the spikes, that they do not even see - eventually going through the doorway to the far east and feeling how narrow it is.

They all get inside and hear the creatures hands feeling down the passage  - then it gives up and leaves.

They breathe a sigh of relief, and begin searching the small chamber - it contains the one exit/entrance which is very narrow - and 5 crates.

They begin prying open the crates with their crowbar, revealing their contents - Horrible Black Rotten Potatoes, Hay, Lard in small tins, Horeshoes, and Torches.

They celebrate, and for like 20 minutes keep trying to light the torches - and I remind them a couple times that they have no means to set them aflame, but they do take the crate lids as shields - and after being informed about how resting works - I allow them to do long rests - so they leave the injured dwarves in the hay and two set off to explore.

They go into the room, and find the spikes - in there are bodies and they find something, I am not sure what.

They then go up to the north in the spiky ice chamber and open that door - and search that room, in which there are more bones and a small chunk of ice - they break it in the darkness and numbly feel around its' remains - finding a big chunky iron key.

They go back to their companions, and wait two days - eating straight up lard and chewing on ice.

All four dwarves set off - feeling in front of them with femurs, in a party order that is new (I made sure they set up a party order right at the start of the adventure) and feeling their way back to the gate, passing the boulder sounds.

Throughout all of this, I have been having them roll architecture to know the slope - and as they pass the troll's room, I have them roll languages - one succeeds and I tell him "it is snoring, ice trolls sounds like boulders falling when they talk"

So they put the key in the lock - it creaks like crazy, they go through - they put their lil' dwarf handeses through the bar and re-lock the gate - the troll does not wake up.

They go southward - entering a room, feeling around, they find two piles of bones and refuse - and a TINDERBOX!

It has enough to light a torch 3 times, they light a torch and look around the room.

They see the garbage, and the two exits to the east and west, and I clearly drop a hint and say "you can see the ceiling reflected on the icy floor"

They freak out and look up, and in a corner of the room is a large pair of white shoes - at least that is what it looks like.

They try to knock it down with the sling - but miss and it flies over them, they roll initiative and the moth goes first - flying overhead and dropping magical snow - they all make a save vs breath, and the one or two that fail fall over.

It flies down, towards the right-hand passage - and combat is over.

They then walk around, finding a room filled with blocks of ice containing stuff like a shovel, a sled, and silver coins. then they so south and suddenly when it starts to slope down the snow moth swoops overhead, attempting to have them slide right into a pit - enough of them save vs breath to not fall into th' pit.

Memory starts to get hazy here - mostly they poked around and eventually went into a room with blocks of falling ice - they realized that some of the blocks were covering an exit - so they slipped and climbed up and broke through the top and crawled down the hole - realizing that it was a slippery slope - they slid and realized they were headed right for a wall of ice - and stuck weapons and bones down as makeshift brakes.

 Then they broke through - walked around the room - saw that there was an exit - and saw that there was a gap.

So - someone I don't remember who - was like "Lets use our crate lid shield as a sled and sled down the slide and hop the gap that way"

And I was all like "hell yeah"

So they did that - hopping the gap, but not realizing that there were multiple gaps - so they hit the second gaps far side corner and the lid broke in half - they clambered up and were in the middle of a pit trap filled hall.

um, This is where my memory completely fails - but I recall some points of note:

I think there was a moment where they planned - and then executed the plan

They eventually got the hay and lard - and basically firebombed the Ice Troll - this was after they poked around more and realized that the door out needed a key - and the key was extremely likely to be in the troll's quarters

So they fought the troll - figuring out that fire dealt triple damage, and melting it - then getting out of the caves.

 one of the players was really jazzed to have used the lard to kill a troll

 Some notes.

 

  Az Iz Stats

 

Rudimentary Map

Dwarf Character Sheets - Missing one

 

The Base dwarf stats and some notes

 

The entire concept worked very very well.

I learned about tracking light, and time, and equipment -

I got to see firsthand players making a good idea, one so good I just had to roll with it, TWICE - Once was a lard firebomb, the second being a unwise sled ice ramp method to bridge some pits -

I learned that saying "Seemingly, It Appears, and You Can't See" are all useful tools -

I figured out just how little is needed on paper, just a clear map and choreographing and telegraphing certain things - 

I saw how important items can be in the right circumstances, some ways to suggest manipulating and altering equipment, and what kind of equipment is fun - 

I learned that Index cards for character sheets are all that should be needed - 

Here is a cleaner version of the map, and a elevation map:

 

Some details: Wind blows out torches, snow moths drop snow which makes the floor slick and triggers footing checks, blocks of ice fall at a rate of one every two minutes in a row going 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 and repeating (these slide down because of elevation and go from room to room, bones and garbage contains supplies, narrow hallways room is non traversible by the troll - there are lots of other details - which will be fully written and detailed in Glass Eyes of God eventually, if this makes it into that book.

 

 

 

 Elevation map, for checking footing or architecture, and for figuring out which direction slipping people would slide.