Sunday, April 10, 2016

How did the Felltower orc problem develop?

The players in my Felltower campaign have a big "blocker" in their way - orcs. An individually weak but organized group of orcs who:

- have an external base north of the dungeon out in the wilderness;
- control of the ruined but defensible surface castle;
- control of large portions of level 1 and 2.
- effective control most of the main known entrances to Felltower.

Why orcs?

I like orcs, and I have a lot of orc minis. So inevitably orcs were going to show up repeatedly in this game. But I didn't set out to put the orcs in as a major force the PCs needed to contend with. It could easily have been the lizard men (again, dozens of minis for them), or hobgoblins (maybe two dozen of them?), horde pygmies (many, many minis of them), and so on.

How did this happen?

A combination of PC action and PC inaction, really.

The PCs basically wiped out the orc's enemies. You can even see this come up early as they questioned a hobgoblin captured way back in the first delve into Felltower. They killed off the hobgoblins who held the entrance "pillboxes" but who didn't bother to secure the entrance against general traffic. They wiped out the slimes and trolls and disarmed most of the traps that blocked easy transit. They killed most of the gargoyles. They killed off the medusa. The flame lords. The lizardmen (to a lizard and a newtman). They killed a wizard and his corpse-golems and flesh golem guard and summoned monsters. They killed the ogre duo and their gnolls and apes. They wiped out the cone-hatted cultists who took over a portion of the dungeon. Pretty much, if it directly or indirectly threatened the orcs, they killed it.

Meanwhile, they found the growing orc menace was easier to deal with by paying a toll than fighting them. In fact, the PCs suggested the toll. They handed over money, weapons, and even the corpse of one of the six-fingered ones they know so little about. Not that negotiating is bad, but it did served to relieve pressure on the orcs as well as the PCs.

So the PCs created a void in the dungeon by clearing sections of it, but didn't significantly weaken the orcs who could fill that void.

So, the orcs did just that.

Here are some significant posts:

DF Game, Session 13 - Felltower 4 - 9/9/2012. The first direct encounter with the orcs, perhaps?

DF Game, Session 35 - Trigers, Wizard, and the Wardrobe - 0/27/2013, the PCs solved the problem of the orcs fortifying the entrance by negotiating with them for entrance. The PCs initiated this, and offered a lump sum, a per-trip fee, and negotiated escorts and so on in return for safe passage. Trip fee was 50 sp.

DF Game Session 39, Felltower 30 - 1/5/2014, the PCs bypass the orc-held entrances, get in their own way, and wipe out an orc guard post.

DF Session 46, Felltower 37 - Dungeon and Dragons - 7/13/2014, the orcs raise the toll to 1000 sp, or 200 sp to leave the trap the PCs let themselves be sealed in. The PCs paid the 200 and haven't tried to pay a toll to the orcs again.

DF Session 50, Felltower 41 - Orc Trap Counterattacked - 10/26/2014, the PCs come up at the orcs from below but get ambushed. It costs the orcs a lot, but it spooked the PCs out of bothering the orcs. I did a followup post about the orc tactics.

DF Campaign - Session 54, Felltower 45 - Raiding the Orc-Held Castle - 1/11/2015, the PCs attempt a raid on the orc-held ruined castle but can't followup on some initial damage.

There were some other encounters, of course. But those seem like they are worth highlighting - initial encounters, let's make a deal, avoiding the toll, the deal changes, the PCs and orcs fight.

And that's how we got to here.

Where to from here? That's a post the PCs will have to dictate next game session . . .

25 comments:

  1. I like that! Harkens back to the "monster restock" mechanics I recall from older D&D editions, but has reason behind it. Now that the players have demonstrated an ability to live-and-let-live with these orcs, will they need to engage them at all?

    I'll admit I haven't been able to read the Felltower Saga, so I'm not sure what the significance for keeping the titular tower "clear" (seeing as if it needed to be secure, it wouldn't have an orc problem now, right?)

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    1. Thanks. I was heavily influenced by the reinforcements rolls from WG4 and T1-4. In those, the denizens would get reinforcements as long as certain conditions stayed active. I liked and adopted that. Plus although the players don't know what the orcs want in Felltower's dungeons, I do, so the orcs took the logical steps to increase their security when the opportunity came up, consistent with that goal.

      The "live and let live" strategy broke down long ago - the last few encounters between the orcs and PCs have been hostile, with all-out attacking on both sides. The titular tower is long since fallen, thanks to the PCs actually, so it's a squabble over access to the dungeons and free passage around the upper levels. That seems to conflict with what the orcs want in some way.

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  2. Just speaking as a single audience member, I'm sort of hoping for an epic orcs vs party showdown. I've been waiting a long time for the session report that begins "This week we had a full house, and so the PCs finally decided to tackle the orc problem head-on...."

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    1. Heh. We'll see what happens, both of us.

      It'll certainly need to be a serious of showdowns. The PCs don't even know what would discourage the orcs. Killing them hasn't impressed them sufficiently to abandon Felltower or just let the PCs pass unmolested.

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    2. I've been sort of waiting for the same thing. It feels like a story is sort of coalescing from PC actions and your restocking. The Felltower Megadungeon may not have started off as Orc Hall, but it seems like it is heading that way.

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    3. I just want to clarify - I meant "series of showdowns" not "a serious of showdowns." There is no way it's going to be one big fight that settles it, if only because the orcs are deployed in depth (scouts, guards, etc.) across a stretch of dungeon.

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    4. Depending on the game I would allow we sneak in and kill the Orc Chief, his guards, family, nobility and as many of the powerful orc as we can in one masterful attack to cause the orc to withdraw and elect (fight for) a new leader.

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    5. Also depending on the game I'd allow we kill 5% of the Orcs each session over 10 sessions to work too. 50% casualties is a pretty good justification for withdrawing or surrendering.

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    6. Killing off the orcs through attrition might work, but even if they kill off 20% of them each time that's five solid sessions of just fighting orcs. If they want to whittle them down into a smaller problem, that approach could work. If they want them to go away, they'll need to find the orc center of gravity.

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    7. What's the approximate fighting force of orcs the PCs know about?

      I thought 200ish around the Dungeon. I dont imagine 50 being a difficult number for Vryce to take down himself.

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    8. Last time they had a rough estimate of orcs in the ravine to the north of the dungeon was in the probably ~300 combatants range. Could be more, counting the dungeon.

      The problem is they don't line up in 10' hallways waiting to fight the delvers with 3 orcs across vs. 3 delvers across . . .

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  3. A (dungeon) fantastic example of a vibrant villain-ecosystem. A wildfire clears out the incumbents, and a thousand new shoots grow....

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  4. Love this. Perhaps they will establish the orcs as a regional government. PCs need supplies? Tax the human village. ;-)

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  5. Unfortunately the players are split on it. I've wanted to keep hitting the orcs, but the high-end characters who would make this easier don't get much XP (if any) for doing it, so we took the water entrance, which led to purple worms, an evil cleric ghost, and troll mobs and a near-TPK.
    The orcs are smart and tough, there won't be much treasure, but it needs to be done. I've been playing for a year or two and I'm losing patience with Felltower, too many sessions of mapping and looking for ways to avoid the orcs.

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    1. I hear you. One downside to "decide what to do based on who shows up" instead of "decide who shows up based on what we're planning to do" is that you need a fair degree of unanimity to get things done.

      On the other hand, some kind of violent resolution with the orcs is all but inevitable. There simply aren't any other reasonable hopes of mapping, avoiding, exploring, or digging that can avoid that. It's fight the orcs or befriend the orcs, there aren't any non-orc related options anymore.

      Unless people want to keep checking the empty caverns to see if treasure re-popped, but that hasn't worked the last few times.

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  6. I'm all for either paying tribute or attacking them. We've exhausted all other options. The group doesn't trust the orcs enough to pay them (we're backstabbers, so everyone else is, too) so we have to attack, and not try to use spells as the Big Red Button that will solve all our problems.

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    1. I'm all for attacking them at this point. We're going to have to find up with some good tactics. It would also help if we had some kind of area effect that bothered them but not us.

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    2. You guys have pile of area effect spells. I think what Tom's getting at is the "if we cast this one spell, we'll win" approach. Searching for just the right Area spell - or tactic, or whatever - is likely to impede you not help you. Like the stirge hole, it's pinning everything on a hoped-for result. Better to go in expecting a bloody exchange, you won't get demoralized if the solution of choice doesn't work.

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    3. There probably aren't many adventuring parties with fans, but you guys have them. We are all rooting for you. Attrition might be the best way to eliminate the orcs, as long as you can win a replenishment race with them. If there are XP incentives that compel players to avoid the obvious conflict, maybe the XP reward system needs a tweak. Lots of campaigns start as "let's get rich" but evolve into "we gotta save the world (that's where my money is stored)".

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    4. Heh. I'll make sure everyone sees this comment, they'll appreciate it.

      We tweaked the XP system once because the players wanted exploration to count for a bit more. But I'm really opposed to shifting it to a "save the world" approach - especially here. It seems like a perverse incentive, in a way - let a problem fester and develop, then the GM will give you XP for solving it. I prefer the orcs as a obstacle to the real goal (explore the dungeon, get gold, and thus get XP) instead of potentially a direct source of XP (kill the orcs, solve the problem, and thus get XP.)

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    5. I steal your group's character names for the legends and distant (or not so distant) NPC heroes. Honus, Vryce, Nakar, and Jah Galoob have all been mentioned at some point in my group.

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    6. Jah Galoob is a folk hero, probably not real. Goblins are always coming and trying to break Jah Galoob out of captivity in human lands.
      Honus leads the Honus. He actually showed up, Raggi-style, for a while.
      Nakar might be here RIGHT NOW, listening.
      Vryce... hope we don't ever run into him. Every time you think someone is exaggerating, you find a bone yard with lizardman skeletons out to the horizon.

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    7. Heh. Vryce and Nakar's names are now in their third incarnation, then. Vryce is from a C.S.Friedman book series, and Nakar was originally Nakar the Abomination from Glen Cook's excellent The Tower of Fear.

      As far as I know Honus and Galoob spring entirely from the player's imagination. Or in Galoob's case, half-dormant memories of toy companies.

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    8. Honus Honus is from a band called Man Man (appropriately). I think he sings and plays keyboard, but I haven't listened to them in a long time.

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    9. That would make sense, given the player.

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