Date: 4/11/2026
Weather: Mild and sunny.
Characters
Chop, human cleric (367 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (355 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (360 points)
Persistance Montgomery, human knight (347 points)
Rogar Thane-Blood, human barbarian (259 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (373 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (333 points)
The PCs gathered in town, swapped rumors, and commiserated over Thor's new shield being delivered tomorrow. They suggested wait a day or two before going into the dungeon, but decided not to [when the GM said, "Okay, see you guys on Tuesday, then!"].
The group used the well entrance, and made their way down to the "gate level." They noted the air was fresh, not the stale air they're used to.
A few rooms later, they opened up a door to a chamber with a black hemisphere on the ceiling. Inside the room, guarding a nest, where a pair of horse-sized eight-legged lizards, with bright blue hides tinged with white. Shock slorn! The slorn hissed, the PCs attacked, and a short fight erupted. Rogar and Thor rushed in, along with Percy, and Vlad and Hannari contributed ranged attacks. Chop and Duncan whipped Resist Lightning spells on themselves and likely targets. The slorn didn't last that long. A zap of lightning apiece and they got shredded. Percy and Rogar bashed one's skull apart, and Thor stabbed the other to ensure it was dead. A quick (and cheap) pair of Prepare Game spells left them a pile of hides, bones, and meat. They took the hides and a pair of eggs they found in the nest. The room was especially breezy, and the air felt light and fresh, if a bit ionized.
They noted the black hemisphere didn't shoot them, so they left it alone and headed to the "Will Wall" - an illusiary that required a Will roll to pass through. After a few tries and some Strenthen Will spells, they all made it through. There they deposited the shock slorn hides and eggs.
Next they headed down the second GFS, and into the door beyond the first landing. They were hit with two spaced out Dispel Magic spells which wiped out a lot of ligthstones, but they managed to get off their Walk on Air spellstones and moved into the rooms. The exits were blocked with a gossamer, smoke-colored but opaque material hanging directly from the walls and ceiling. Thor cut the first and second down with his sword as they moved to their left, a faint and low chime going off the whole time.
It was here they first encountered the enemy. From behind, four norker brutes charged up, yelling loudly. Vlad wounded one and the others continued on, as the party revered to face them. As they did, trorkers backed (way back) with a few "Gith" moved up to join them, coming from the corridor opposite the stairs. Then a half-dozen golden swordsmen appeared from the direction the party had headed originally.
They melee'd a few norkers and trokers down, right after Hannari put down five of them with a sleep grenade. Duncun put up a wall of earth, 1' thick, to cut the "rear" area down to a single hex width. Hannari rushed into the gap. But then a Gith tossed a blinding dust grenade and blinded Thor and Duncan, each for 1d minutes - Percy made his HT roll by enough to resist it.
Blinded Duncan turned his wall to stone, Vlad shot a golden swordsman only to have it parry his arrow with ease (the other missed with a 17, a rare normal failure.) Hannari deployed a flash nageteppo but it didn't bother the golden swordsman. The whole fight had gone earily quiet except for the sounds of metal hitting flesh or shields, as the norkers quieted down.
We ended there as it was 6 pm, our preferred cutoff time.
Notes:
- We knew this would be a multi-session delve. The new rules for multi-session delves, with a +1 XP per session after the first, has really taken the sting out of longer fights.
- Good rolling on a DX potion and high stats has put Hannari at DX 26. Yeah. Ironically, Chop was maneuvering so Hannari could fight Trokers - with Affect Spirits on one of his weapons - and Persistance could fight the golden swordsmen - with their swords, weak defensively against his flail, which currently lacks Affect Spirits. Oh well. His his DX will certainly help.
- Prepare Game is ridiculously fast and cheap, especially for a spell which completely eliminates the utility of a bunch of skills. Typical.
- MVP was Hannari for suggesting they stash the shock slorn hides and eggs "beyond the Will Wall" to ensure nothing bothered them that couldn't pass that. Good thinking, honestly. It could have been Duncan's player, for suggesting that "Sword of Slorn" is a great band name. I suggested that "Beyond the Will Wall" - their second album - was clearly SoS's best work, if a real departure from the standard death metal of their first album and a more lyrical, psychadelic rock opera approach. And yes, someone AI'ed up a logo for them and we all kind of want t-shirts for them. "Name three songs!" should be a fun exercise for that shirt.
Monday, April 13, 2026
Sunday, April 12, 2026
Felltower pre-summary
Full summary tomorrow, but:
- a crew of seven PCs entered Felltower
- they killed a pair of Shock Slorn and found some slorn eggs
- they made it through the "Will Wall" and down the second GFS
- they got into a brawl with norkers, trokers aka thorkers, Gith, and Golden Swordsmen.
It's going to be a long fight, so we ended it on time and we'll spend the next session(s?) resolving it.
- a crew of seven PCs entered Felltower
- they killed a pair of Shock Slorn and found some slorn eggs
- they made it through the "Will Wall" and down the second GFS
- they got into a brawl with norkers, trokers aka thorkers, Gith, and Golden Swordsmen.
It's going to be a long fight, so we ended it on time and we'll spend the next session(s?) resolving it.
Monday, March 2, 2026
What color is paut? Sigh.
I think when you've played with a group long enough, and they've asked every question imaginable, they imagine up new ones to torment you.
Actual question from game on Sunday:
What color is paut?
My answer? I don't know. And I don't want to rule on it because, somehow, this will come back to haunt me. It'll be a specific color and then people will ask if it's paut because of the color, is this paut colored, if it's paut colored is it magical, can I get poison that is paut colored, can I get food coloring for my paut so it's a different color . . . aargh.
Look, it's probably blue because of Diablo. But honestly, I don't care. It won't matter. If people really need to know the color - in this case, so they can tell the casters what color the paut is in their bag in case they're unconcious and the casters need to sort the paut from the other potions - they can just tie ribbons of a specific color on the bottles or label the freaking bottles PAUT in large, friendly letters.
But geez, what color is paut.
Oh brother.
Actual question from game on Sunday:
What color is paut?
My answer? I don't know. And I don't want to rule on it because, somehow, this will come back to haunt me. It'll be a specific color and then people will ask if it's paut because of the color, is this paut colored, if it's paut colored is it magical, can I get poison that is paut colored, can I get food coloring for my paut so it's a different color . . . aargh.
Look, it's probably blue because of Diablo. But honestly, I don't care. It won't matter. If people really need to know the color - in this case, so they can tell the casters what color the paut is in their bag in case they're unconcious and the casters need to sort the paut from the other potions - they can just tie ribbons of a specific color on the bottles or label the freaking bottles PAUT in large, friendly letters.
But geez, what color is paut.
Oh brother.
Sunday, March 1, 2026
GURPS DF Session 220, Felltower 139 - A brief foray
Date: 3/1/2026
Weather: Mildly cold and wet.
Characters
Chop, human cleric (367 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (355 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (360 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (373 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (333 points)
We started off in town, with the PCs hoping for Percy and Rogar but neither could be found - Percy was way and Rogar was sick.
They decided to head down to the beholder's cave area, and explore the humanoid-filled nearby tunnels.
That's what they did - they headed down, first checking to see if the Lost City gate was open, and then heading down past the fire gate.
They found the tunnel, hidden by a curtain of hide. A quick Glasswall spell at the curtain revealed noisemakers on the far side. They put Silence over it and Thor tore it down. Vlad moved past the rest of the group and into the narrow tunnel beyond. He moved around a tight bend sideways to fit through and saw and stepped over a cord at ankle height covered with noisemakers. Beyond was a small group - a pair of gnolls with bows, a pair of norkers with stone axes, and a distorted-looking orc with warped features. Vlad put two arrows into one of the gnolls, dropping it, and the norkers closed in. The other gnoll loosed an arrow at Vlad but he dodged, hemmed into place by the ankle-height cord he'd stepped over. He stepped over it and backed up as the norkers swung at him. A critical hit by one sliced him badly, and then a normal hit he failed to dodge crippled his left leg. He fell just in view of the other PCs, still standing in the Silence zone. They launched into action.
Hannari tossed a hatchet at the norker he could see but it deflected the toss with its off hand. Thor rushed forward. Chop healed Vlad from the back ranks. And Vlad, prone, shot the norker with a pair of arrows (Heroic Archer allows a lot.) One hit and the norker dropped back, onto the tripwire, and a deadfall fell on Vlad. He rolled away, just as the stones fell.
They gave up on the humanoids, also fearing the noise would bring the beholder and gargoyles. Not wanting to be boxed in, they fled to the stairs and back up to the level above.
They headed back to the gate level and around the level, lit with light stones but also - critically - Thor's flaming sword. They took a shortcut through a cave marked as having an "acrid smell." Vlad went in, Thor followed with his flaming sword, and FWOOOOOOSH! The "air" burned, inflicting 14 burn on Vlad and setting him on fire. A quick Resist Fire saved him, they had a big laugh, and headed on . . .
After that, they headed to the second GFS, and down to the level where they fought their last big battle with the Gith and Trorkers. They did a brief exploration and headed back (see below.)
Notes:
The raid on the 2nd GFS first landing wasn't supposed to be short. But the headed off the edge of the battlemap, and I tried to expand it . . . and this frelled up the whole map. The walls got moved off, the PCs dumped in a corner, ugh. I had to delete the whole map and re-do it. I couldn't do that during the session, so we ended early. I gave the players a choice - take a re-do, undo the expended potions and so on, and get back to town . . . or stay in the dungeon and do the whole "roll to see if people can join in" approach of a split session. They went with the leave and come back, since they can arm up and if we're delayed enough, get some ordered equipment. Fair enough. I shouldn't have been trying to play with the scene during play.
MVP was Thor for setting Vlad on fire.
Weather: Mildly cold and wet.
Characters
Chop, human cleric (367 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (355 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (360 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (373 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (333 points)
We started off in town, with the PCs hoping for Percy and Rogar but neither could be found - Percy was way and Rogar was sick.
They decided to head down to the beholder's cave area, and explore the humanoid-filled nearby tunnels.
That's what they did - they headed down, first checking to see if the Lost City gate was open, and then heading down past the fire gate.
They found the tunnel, hidden by a curtain of hide. A quick Glasswall spell at the curtain revealed noisemakers on the far side. They put Silence over it and Thor tore it down. Vlad moved past the rest of the group and into the narrow tunnel beyond. He moved around a tight bend sideways to fit through and saw and stepped over a cord at ankle height covered with noisemakers. Beyond was a small group - a pair of gnolls with bows, a pair of norkers with stone axes, and a distorted-looking orc with warped features. Vlad put two arrows into one of the gnolls, dropping it, and the norkers closed in. The other gnoll loosed an arrow at Vlad but he dodged, hemmed into place by the ankle-height cord he'd stepped over. He stepped over it and backed up as the norkers swung at him. A critical hit by one sliced him badly, and then a normal hit he failed to dodge crippled his left leg. He fell just in view of the other PCs, still standing in the Silence zone. They launched into action.
Hannari tossed a hatchet at the norker he could see but it deflected the toss with its off hand. Thor rushed forward. Chop healed Vlad from the back ranks. And Vlad, prone, shot the norker with a pair of arrows (Heroic Archer allows a lot.) One hit and the norker dropped back, onto the tripwire, and a deadfall fell on Vlad. He rolled away, just as the stones fell.
They gave up on the humanoids, also fearing the noise would bring the beholder and gargoyles. Not wanting to be boxed in, they fled to the stairs and back up to the level above.
They headed back to the gate level and around the level, lit with light stones but also - critically - Thor's flaming sword. They took a shortcut through a cave marked as having an "acrid smell." Vlad went in, Thor followed with his flaming sword, and FWOOOOOOSH! The "air" burned, inflicting 14 burn on Vlad and setting him on fire. A quick Resist Fire saved him, they had a big laugh, and headed on . . .
After that, they headed to the second GFS, and down to the level where they fought their last big battle with the Gith and Trorkers. They did a brief exploration and headed back (see below.)
Notes:
The raid on the 2nd GFS first landing wasn't supposed to be short. But the headed off the edge of the battlemap, and I tried to expand it . . . and this frelled up the whole map. The walls got moved off, the PCs dumped in a corner, ugh. I had to delete the whole map and re-do it. I couldn't do that during the session, so we ended early. I gave the players a choice - take a re-do, undo the expended potions and so on, and get back to town . . . or stay in the dungeon and do the whole "roll to see if people can join in" approach of a split session. They went with the leave and come back, since they can arm up and if we're delayed enough, get some ordered equipment. Fair enough. I shouldn't have been trying to play with the scene during play.
MVP was Thor for setting Vlad on fire.
Sunday, February 22, 2026
Felltower updates
I did a wee bit of Felltower work today.
- updating rumors
- restocking prep
- double-checking the maps
- and planning for our next game . . . on 3/1. Yeah, our pace has slowed down a bit. But we'll keep gaming.
- updating rumors
- restocking prep
- double-checking the maps
- and planning for our next game . . . on 3/1. Yeah, our pace has slowed down a bit. But we'll keep gaming.
Sunday, February 15, 2026
Thorker Research
The PCs captured and returned to town a thorker. They paid a sage for research on the critter, and this is what they got back.
Thorkers – probably more correctly called trorkers, are a form of hobgoblin with armored skin and nictitating membranes over their eyes. Their blood strongly resembles that of trolls. While they are definitely living creatures, they have traces of undead traits about them. The sages posit they are a strange mix of norker and troll, with infusions of the essence of wights.
- They are strongly magic resistant vs. wizardly and bardic magic. Sleep effects ignore this.
- Their touch paralyzes (resisted by HT), and direct skin contact isn’t needed.
- They’re exceeding hard to kill but sufficient damage will kill them.
- They shrug off a lot of injury (i.e. they have Damage Reduction) but this can be bypassed with fire, direct magical damage (like Dehydrate or Frostbite, for example), or using Affect Spirits.
- They regenerate quickly – slower than trolls, but only a little slower.
- They’re fearless and don’t seem to have any “human” reactions to anything – pain, included.
- They’re unaffected by poisons.
- They can see in the dark via Infravision.
Notes:
- Yes, they're inspired by Thouls from Basic D&D. I took them my own direction.
- The sleep effect was a thrown-in so they'd have some interesting weakness. I have a reason why that's the exception, but I doubt it'll be discovered. I always like the idea that you couldn't just get good mutations, you also get bad ones, in games like Gamma World. I like downsides to upsides.
Thorkers – probably more correctly called trorkers, are a form of hobgoblin with armored skin and nictitating membranes over their eyes. Their blood strongly resembles that of trolls. While they are definitely living creatures, they have traces of undead traits about them. The sages posit they are a strange mix of norker and troll, with infusions of the essence of wights.
- They are strongly magic resistant vs. wizardly and bardic magic. Sleep effects ignore this.
- Their touch paralyzes (resisted by HT), and direct skin contact isn’t needed.
- They’re exceeding hard to kill but sufficient damage will kill them.
- They shrug off a lot of injury (i.e. they have Damage Reduction) but this can be bypassed with fire, direct magical damage (like Dehydrate or Frostbite, for example), or using Affect Spirits.
- They regenerate quickly – slower than trolls, but only a little slower.
- They’re fearless and don’t seem to have any “human” reactions to anything – pain, included.
- They’re unaffected by poisons.
- They can see in the dark via Infravision.
Notes:
- Yes, they're inspired by Thouls from Basic D&D. I took them my own direction.
- The sleep effect was a thrown-in so they'd have some interesting weakness. I have a reason why that's the exception, but I doubt it'll be discovered. I always like the idea that you couldn't just get good mutations, you also get bad ones, in games like Gamma World. I like downsides to upsides.
Monday, January 26, 2026
Black Company Playtest: Summer of Riots
We playtested the rules for the Black Company RPG. This is the first, partial release of rules v.1, from 2025-11-26. As requested in the rules, I'll add:
"THIS IS A PLAYTEST, NOT FINAL, IT MIGHT CHANGE!"
Let's see how it went. SPOILERS FOR THE PLAYTEST ADVENTURE ABOUND! And for the first chapters of The Black Company.
Date: 1/25/2026
Characters:
Jumpy - NPC, controlled by all players
Pops (VL)
Big Dog (OL)
Princess (JM)
Lovebird (DC)
Redeye (ML)
We started when the Black Company was in the service of the Syndic of Beryl, on a hot summer day, not long after lightning had struck the Necropolitan Hill and possibly let loose . . . something. According to rumors (from Otto, who heard it from Tom-Tom), a demonic cat-woman-thing called a forvalaka was loose. Six of the company were hanging out with the remainder of their squad. Elmo, senior company sergeant, showed up and voluntold their corporal, Two-Hand, for a special mission. He voluntold the PCs they were in his group of men to for that mission.
They were led off to the Syndic's chambers, where a keen-eyed and sneaky member of the group (Princess or Redeye, I think) sidled up to a window and saw a quinquereme with a sail with a ruby-eyed skull on the sail.
They were assigned to escort Sabine, the spoiled teenaged daughter of the Syndic, 2.5 miles to her lessons at the Conservatory, where her tutor lives and works. They headed out with her carriage. The streets were tense, packed, and hot. Rumors of evil stalking the night, all too many signs of the Blues - rivals to the Syndic's Reds faction - were along the route. And the soldiers spotted coordinated looks between folks on the streets and in the upper floors. Meanwhile a bored Sabine tossed food to dogs following the carriage, in full site of angry, and hungry, impoverished folks. Good PR, Syndic's family.
(The PCs were marching in armor, in the heat - making it hot and miserable and impacting their rolls. BC RPG uses the Advantage/Disadvantage system. It also uses a group roll system where the lowest skill is rolled if numbers hurt - stealth, or forced marching for speed - and highest if numbers help - spotting things, for example. Sometimes it wasn't clear which case was intended. You can accumulate Stress, which slides you down towards loss of control, from some failures or from forcing a better roll.)
The PCs came across a barricade by the Urban Cohorts, who resent the Black Company, who in turn look at them with contempt. They wanted to know what was up with the carriage, and gave Two-Hand a hard time. Pops stepped in and intimidated the lot of them, warning them about the dangers of messing with them. The cohort decided to let them pass unmolested. (The PCs knew they wanted to get by without a fight, but it wasn't clear what mechanic to use. I offered up what the system allowed for in the adventure, and they picked that.)
Past their, they made it to the Convervatory but only through an angry mob of people who threw rocks, shit, and rotten food. Redeye was stunned, and the PCs kept their cool, and didn't kill any of the rioters. They made it in and set up patrols and bodyguards for the poorly fenced-in building. They knew they'd never get the carriage back out through the mob that was locked outside.
A few hours later, lessons were over - but in the meantime, a frightened scholar claimed to have seen something, and heard a woman's voice, and was unnerved. Forvalaka? Also, some Urban Cohort members came up and offered to the patrol group to escort them to safety. The Soldiers didn't buy it (no roll, it's stated to be patently false.) And the riotous mob had clearly turned into a full-fledged riot across the city.
Two-Hand consulted with the group and the scholars to find a way out. They wanted to get to the Bastion, rejecting getting to a nearby estate friendly to the reds. (They could have gone to the Rubbish Gate, but they didn't even consider it). Instead, they snuck out a back way, with Sabine and her servants, leaving the carriage behind.
The soldiers headed out into the streets. Along the way, they ran into a couple guys with a wagon full of corpses - blood drained and torn up, by a cat according to Redeye, the medic. No throats, little blood, no hearts or livers. Yikes. They made reasonable time - 6 hexes, 1800 yards, in two hours, dodging rioters as best they could. Next, another 1800 yards, and they found a group of Blues guarding a cat-headed statue. Lovebird tried to scare them off with tales of the corpses they'd seen, but the Blues attacked (Lovebird rolled about, oh, call it two or three successes and a Berylian assload of failures.) Their best trooper - Princess - risked Stress to seize the Initiative. They put down a large number of Blues in the first round, fended off a couple attacks from the remainder, and then put a few more down and the rest fled. Big Dog killed a few Blues still hanging around. (In retrospect, this was probably a chance to remove stress from him, but place it on others - see my notes.)
Things slowed down from there - as it got dark, they repeatedly rolled 1s to travel only 300 yards in two hours of furtive movement, avoiding crowds, and maneuvering past barricades. Things got ugly . . . and angry mob split them up (critically failed Soldiering roll to maintain order) and grabbed their VIP, Sabine. Two-Hand lost it and ordered them to kill everyone. They tried. They didn't succeed, but they killed a good number of rioters and rescued the girl. But Jumpy had gotten seperated and knifed badly (he went from fine to Wounded, two steps from dead.) They further ran into a vigilante squard trying to kill a merchant and his family (and killed a bunch of them to "solve" that problem, creating a lot of matryrs for the Blues and anger against the Company.) And they ran into the forvalaka. It pounced into a crowd, killed one rioter, and then tore open a screaming victim, drinking his or her blood and then eating the liver and heart to finish it off.) The PCs tried an orderly retreat and failed, turning into a bit of a confused escape that got them lost. They reformed, but almost all had picked up a lot of stress (see notes.)
In the end, they reached the Bastion, only to find a partial squad of fellow Soldiers stuck outside the stuck main gate, engaged with a bunch of Blues. The PCs blew an attempt to close with them by surprise but still got into a fight. A couple of fellow Soldiers went down and they killed a few Blues and scattered the rest.
From there, they set up a defensive line, got Sabine stashed in temporary safety, and turned to face a few hundred rioters in the waning hours of the night. The rioters came in waves. The soldiers gave up ground and lost a few NPC soldiers before breaking the first wave. The second and third broke as well, but they took a few more soldiers down.
In the end, the riots ended with a deluge of rain, cooling down the anger of the day and night. The PCs got chewed out by the Syndic, but not by Elmo, so who cares? They'd survived.
Notes:
- Some of the scenario was a bit hard to parse, like how the squad PCs are listed and 1st squad, 2nd platoon but the scenario calls them 1st of the 3rd. And it occasionally buries the lede - like telling you what someone's doing before you know what they look like. It made it tricky at times but I'm used to that. What was trickier was when it wasn't clear who was doing what - was the whole squad going? Just six guys? I split the difference by sending a larger group but the PCs did all of the actions.
It was also a railroad. So much so that there while you do have a variety of paths you can choose at one point, you end up needing to be at one specific place or adapting the adventure to another spot to make it work. In other words, it gives the illusion of choice - whereever you go, you get the same encounter at the end.
- The stress mechanic is excellent. It needs some getting used to, but it was interesting to see how much on edge everyone was, knowing that even though they could shrug off some combatants with ease they couldn't get out of everything without stress. Having to risk stress levels to get things done - or let a better person instead of the the worst person roll for some tasks - or as a result of failure meant that rolls felt important. It made even a successful fight with no injuries potentially a cost for having engaged in it.
I also love that almost all of the ways to remove stress are negative. You can complain to relieve stress, but you pass on it on to the one you complain to. You can brawl, or gamble, but they can result in injuries or money loss. You can attend a reading of the annals, but that's a monthly thing. You can't just take a short rest and recover fully. Add to the fact that you're always risking stress to get things done without potentially incurring injury or worse stress or bad outcomes, and it becomes central quickly. It's enjoyable even when it's not perfect.
- Combat is cheerfully quick and lethal. The PCs admittedly fought lesser foes most of the time, maybe all of the time. But they took it very seriously. Initiative and Morale are important, so the PCs risked Stress to gain Initiative, and cut down enemies as quickly as they could. Foes went down often appalingly quickly, but that suits Glen Cook's writing in general - fights are more often slaughters than battles. It was clear how quickly it could turn, though. Also, only the players roll - they roll offense when attacking, and defense when attacked. Makes you wonder how you'd resolve a fight between two PCs if one resulted, maybe as a result of some mind-bending effect (Spoilers: think Booboo's "Love Me" effect), or how major NPCs are handled. Still, it was fast. We had, uhm, four or five fights and then a mass combat, and played only 4 hours start to finish. GURPS with the options on it is not.
- Several times I just straight up listed some options to the players. Not great GMing, but it was clear people didn't know how to leverage their abilities to do things. It just wasn't clear what you'd use to do what, so no one knew what they were good at.
- Overall, the game is a lot of fun. I put in some concerns about issues that came up in play . . . but we liked it. I hope to see more, and I could see running a side game of Black Company if this remains the main core of the system.
"THIS IS A PLAYTEST, NOT FINAL, IT MIGHT CHANGE!"
Let's see how it went. SPOILERS FOR THE PLAYTEST ADVENTURE ABOUND! And for the first chapters of The Black Company.
Date: 1/25/2026
Characters:
Jumpy - NPC, controlled by all players
Pops (VL)
Big Dog (OL)
Princess (JM)
Lovebird (DC)
Redeye (ML)
We started when the Black Company was in the service of the Syndic of Beryl, on a hot summer day, not long after lightning had struck the Necropolitan Hill and possibly let loose . . . something. According to rumors (from Otto, who heard it from Tom-Tom), a demonic cat-woman-thing called a forvalaka was loose. Six of the company were hanging out with the remainder of their squad. Elmo, senior company sergeant, showed up and voluntold their corporal, Two-Hand, for a special mission. He voluntold the PCs they were in his group of men to for that mission.
They were led off to the Syndic's chambers, where a keen-eyed and sneaky member of the group (Princess or Redeye, I think) sidled up to a window and saw a quinquereme with a sail with a ruby-eyed skull on the sail.
They were assigned to escort Sabine, the spoiled teenaged daughter of the Syndic, 2.5 miles to her lessons at the Conservatory, where her tutor lives and works. They headed out with her carriage. The streets were tense, packed, and hot. Rumors of evil stalking the night, all too many signs of the Blues - rivals to the Syndic's Reds faction - were along the route. And the soldiers spotted coordinated looks between folks on the streets and in the upper floors. Meanwhile a bored Sabine tossed food to dogs following the carriage, in full site of angry, and hungry, impoverished folks. Good PR, Syndic's family.
(The PCs were marching in armor, in the heat - making it hot and miserable and impacting their rolls. BC RPG uses the Advantage/Disadvantage system. It also uses a group roll system where the lowest skill is rolled if numbers hurt - stealth, or forced marching for speed - and highest if numbers help - spotting things, for example. Sometimes it wasn't clear which case was intended. You can accumulate Stress, which slides you down towards loss of control, from some failures or from forcing a better roll.)
The PCs came across a barricade by the Urban Cohorts, who resent the Black Company, who in turn look at them with contempt. They wanted to know what was up with the carriage, and gave Two-Hand a hard time. Pops stepped in and intimidated the lot of them, warning them about the dangers of messing with them. The cohort decided to let them pass unmolested. (The PCs knew they wanted to get by without a fight, but it wasn't clear what mechanic to use. I offered up what the system allowed for in the adventure, and they picked that.)
Past their, they made it to the Convervatory but only through an angry mob of people who threw rocks, shit, and rotten food. Redeye was stunned, and the PCs kept their cool, and didn't kill any of the rioters. They made it in and set up patrols and bodyguards for the poorly fenced-in building. They knew they'd never get the carriage back out through the mob that was locked outside.
A few hours later, lessons were over - but in the meantime, a frightened scholar claimed to have seen something, and heard a woman's voice, and was unnerved. Forvalaka? Also, some Urban Cohort members came up and offered to the patrol group to escort them to safety. The Soldiers didn't buy it (no roll, it's stated to be patently false.) And the riotous mob had clearly turned into a full-fledged riot across the city.
Two-Hand consulted with the group and the scholars to find a way out. They wanted to get to the Bastion, rejecting getting to a nearby estate friendly to the reds. (They could have gone to the Rubbish Gate, but they didn't even consider it). Instead, they snuck out a back way, with Sabine and her servants, leaving the carriage behind.
The soldiers headed out into the streets. Along the way, they ran into a couple guys with a wagon full of corpses - blood drained and torn up, by a cat according to Redeye, the medic. No throats, little blood, no hearts or livers. Yikes. They made reasonable time - 6 hexes, 1800 yards, in two hours, dodging rioters as best they could. Next, another 1800 yards, and they found a group of Blues guarding a cat-headed statue. Lovebird tried to scare them off with tales of the corpses they'd seen, but the Blues attacked (Lovebird rolled about, oh, call it two or three successes and a Berylian assload of failures.) Their best trooper - Princess - risked Stress to seize the Initiative. They put down a large number of Blues in the first round, fended off a couple attacks from the remainder, and then put a few more down and the rest fled. Big Dog killed a few Blues still hanging around. (In retrospect, this was probably a chance to remove stress from him, but place it on others - see my notes.)
Things slowed down from there - as it got dark, they repeatedly rolled 1s to travel only 300 yards in two hours of furtive movement, avoiding crowds, and maneuvering past barricades. Things got ugly . . . and angry mob split them up (critically failed Soldiering roll to maintain order) and grabbed their VIP, Sabine. Two-Hand lost it and ordered them to kill everyone. They tried. They didn't succeed, but they killed a good number of rioters and rescued the girl. But Jumpy had gotten seperated and knifed badly (he went from fine to Wounded, two steps from dead.) They further ran into a vigilante squard trying to kill a merchant and his family (and killed a bunch of them to "solve" that problem, creating a lot of matryrs for the Blues and anger against the Company.) And they ran into the forvalaka. It pounced into a crowd, killed one rioter, and then tore open a screaming victim, drinking his or her blood and then eating the liver and heart to finish it off.) The PCs tried an orderly retreat and failed, turning into a bit of a confused escape that got them lost. They reformed, but almost all had picked up a lot of stress (see notes.)
In the end, they reached the Bastion, only to find a partial squad of fellow Soldiers stuck outside the stuck main gate, engaged with a bunch of Blues. The PCs blew an attempt to close with them by surprise but still got into a fight. A couple of fellow Soldiers went down and they killed a few Blues and scattered the rest.
From there, they set up a defensive line, got Sabine stashed in temporary safety, and turned to face a few hundred rioters in the waning hours of the night. The rioters came in waves. The soldiers gave up ground and lost a few NPC soldiers before breaking the first wave. The second and third broke as well, but they took a few more soldiers down.
In the end, the riots ended with a deluge of rain, cooling down the anger of the day and night. The PCs got chewed out by the Syndic, but not by Elmo, so who cares? They'd survived.
Notes:
- Some of the scenario was a bit hard to parse, like how the squad PCs are listed and 1st squad, 2nd platoon but the scenario calls them 1st of the 3rd. And it occasionally buries the lede - like telling you what someone's doing before you know what they look like. It made it tricky at times but I'm used to that. What was trickier was when it wasn't clear who was doing what - was the whole squad going? Just six guys? I split the difference by sending a larger group but the PCs did all of the actions.
It was also a railroad. So much so that there while you do have a variety of paths you can choose at one point, you end up needing to be at one specific place or adapting the adventure to another spot to make it work. In other words, it gives the illusion of choice - whereever you go, you get the same encounter at the end.
- The stress mechanic is excellent. It needs some getting used to, but it was interesting to see how much on edge everyone was, knowing that even though they could shrug off some combatants with ease they couldn't get out of everything without stress. Having to risk stress levels to get things done - or let a better person instead of the the worst person roll for some tasks - or as a result of failure meant that rolls felt important. It made even a successful fight with no injuries potentially a cost for having engaged in it.
I also love that almost all of the ways to remove stress are negative. You can complain to relieve stress, but you pass on it on to the one you complain to. You can brawl, or gamble, but they can result in injuries or money loss. You can attend a reading of the annals, but that's a monthly thing. You can't just take a short rest and recover fully. Add to the fact that you're always risking stress to get things done without potentially incurring injury or worse stress or bad outcomes, and it becomes central quickly. It's enjoyable even when it's not perfect.
- Combat is cheerfully quick and lethal. The PCs admittedly fought lesser foes most of the time, maybe all of the time. But they took it very seriously. Initiative and Morale are important, so the PCs risked Stress to gain Initiative, and cut down enemies as quickly as they could. Foes went down often appalingly quickly, but that suits Glen Cook's writing in general - fights are more often slaughters than battles. It was clear how quickly it could turn, though. Also, only the players roll - they roll offense when attacking, and defense when attacked. Makes you wonder how you'd resolve a fight between two PCs if one resulted, maybe as a result of some mind-bending effect (Spoilers: think Booboo's "Love Me" effect), or how major NPCs are handled. Still, it was fast. We had, uhm, four or five fights and then a mass combat, and played only 4 hours start to finish. GURPS with the options on it is not.
- Several times I just straight up listed some options to the players. Not great GMing, but it was clear people didn't know how to leverage their abilities to do things. It just wasn't clear what you'd use to do what, so no one knew what they were good at.
- Overall, the game is a lot of fun. I put in some concerns about issues that came up in play . . . but we liked it. I hope to see more, and I could see running a side game of Black Company if this remains the main core of the system.
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