C2 Pre-summary

It's late, so I'll just give a quick rundown on C2 so far.

The group handled AD&D much better, this time. Or this group did. Out of five players, two were long-term AD&D vets (running the cleric and the thief), two had played in White Plume Mountain last year (the magic-user and the monk), and one was new but had been heavily briefed on AD&D by his dad (the fighter.) And of the two vets, one had also played in WPM. By "better," I mean they had a much better handle on the the consumable resources they had, the nuances of things like damage vs. S-M / L and initiative, the importance of ganging up, and the value of spells and using them appropriately.

We got through most of the module today, but we simply ran out of time. A lot of time was spent figuring out puzzles, and trying to find alternate solutions instead of pushing ahead with the first workable one that was found. We got to the "last" bit of the adventure with very little time to spare to complete, and put it off for another day.

We had some highlights:

- manticore trouble, again. This time, no one wanted to talk to it.

- a plethora of L-sized creatures - in fact, not a single S or M sized one yet - and the fighter chose a two-handed sword! Excellent choice.

- some clever puzzles that the PCs figured out, and some they did not but managed to solve eventually.

- lots of valuable contributions by our youngest member, whose dad wasn't even old enough to attend Wintercon VIII when this module debuted.

- the one non-tournament encounter that I used turned out to cost a good 45 minutes of time to resolve. Oops. We'd still have run out.

- a combination of proper caution saving people, and excessive caution hurting people. Got to love it.


As always, returning to play AD&D close to "by the book" was a lot of fun, and we'll finish C2 and then we'll certainly play AD&D again. If only to encounter over-written rules and stern admonishments to be strict with the players in the DMG!

C2 Pregen comments

We'll be playing C2 with the pregens from the module.


Some interesting notes:

- the party spellcasters are notably higher level than the rest. The group is:

Human Fighter 7
Human Thief 7
Human Monk 7
Human Magic-Users 10
Human Cleric 9

- they all have 18 in their prime requisite. The monk has no 18s, only the minimums for her class (but also Charisma 15)

- they all have maximum HP.

- they're all unequipped, and the party has 25,000 gp to equip them with magic items from a list plus mundane gear from the PHB.

- none have bonus-providing stats other than their prime requisite.

I don't think I ever really examined them that closely to note all of this (except for the equipping part, that is.)

Next AD&D on Sunday

We have a small crew on Sunday - looks like 4-5 players - so we're going with AD&D.

I'll be running the tournament version of C2 The Ghost Tower of Inverness.

The conceit of that one is there are four condemned but mid-level characters and a loaner monk from the local monastery, and they're sent to retrieve the mysterious and powerful Soul Gem from the ruins of the Ghost Tower.

I'll be running it straight-up, using the same rules we used for S2 White Plume Mountain.

It should be fun. Hopefully the players can find their way through to defeating it, but it's a tough adventure with players with varied levels of AD&D experience. That makes it especially challenging. May they roll a lot of 20s and apply the lessons learned from WPM!

Revised GURPS Magic: Death Vision

Death Vision is one of those spells that has an effect that seems a little outsized to what it costs in energy and time to cast.

I think it's a great information spell, but it's "mentally stunned" with no resistance is pretty easy to abuse. Don't agree? Have a Death Vision-25 foe fight the PCs along with a few allies to take advantage of the -4 defenses from stunning plus the ease of getting a -2 for flanking on a stunned foe.

There are two ways to control that:

Add a resistance roll. Simply put, an unwilling subject can resist. I'd go with Will-2, here, like Madness, because the effect is dangerous but minor, and it's a time-consuming spell to cast until your skill is 20 or 25.

Add immunity. Not everything should be subject to this. Limiting this to sapient or near-sapeint foes (IQ 6+) is a good start. Limiting it to such foes makes it dangerous against intelligent foes, but not an easy way to divert dire animals. I'd also blanket in Death Vision as a spell subject to Immunity to Mind Control Spells - demons, undead, etc. shouldn't generally be subject to this kind of spell.

In my own game, I'm considering doing both. The main intended use - figuring out what might kill you - is unchanged. Its main actual use - stunning foes as an attack spell - would be weakened without being nerfed. The Will-2 resistance means it's still very effective, but it's not automatic. So that's probably how I'll run it in Felltower.

Spells "On" Control on Bless

So dripton has a very interesting approach to the Bless spell.

As you can see in this summary, they treat it as an ongoing spell.

So, you have put a Bless spell on each of your five companions? That's a -5 to cast additional spells. That's a big penalty to eat up, especially since Bless isn't something you can casually cancel. You're taking a solid, lasting hit for keeping your friends protected.

I'm still not sure I'd use the spell - my experience with it has led me to ban it in my current game - but it does make it a lot harder to abuse!

Flooding Felltower?

One of the things I use in Felltower is the real local weather.

Heat waves, blizzards, unseasonal heat, early frosts, heavy rains, whatever.

If it's outside my window at game, it's outside the dungeon.

Today's weather is one I'm not sure I've deployed - flooding.

We had steady, heavy rain leading to flash floods and structural damage in the area. Sodden ground plus a lot of additional rain hasn't done well for some trees and lots of roads.

We're playing Felltower this weekend. Has the rain affected the dungeon?

On one hand, probably not. It's high up, and literally on the peak of the mountain. A lot of the local flooding is due to local topology, such as low-lying ground or slanted roads heading towards gutters and sewars.

On the other hand, probably. The mountain is well-placed to get a lot of rain. It's gotten a lot over time.

So I need to consider what all that rain will mean for the current state of Felltower.

Sometimes, the simple answer - whatever I see outside the window is the weather - implies some effect I hadn't planned for. So it goes.

Tried to give Tides of Numenera a go

Well, this was anti-climactic.

I decided I should finally start to play Torment - Tides of Numenera.

It's been a while, so I needed to update GOG Galaxy.

That finished, and I had to reinstall the game. So I did that, waiting for a long time as it downloaded and installed.

Then I didn't have any time to play, so I set this all aside and went off to finish my home work and then headed off to work.

I got home, and fired the game up and all I got was this:


"Switching to resolution 0x0 failed, trying lower one
Switching to resolution 0x0 failed, trying lower one
All resolution switches have failed
Screen: could not switch resolution (1366x768 fs=1 hz=0)"

So clearly I need to spend some time tinkering with my resolutions. The game ran once before, when I first got it, I just didn't feel like spending the time to play around much. Now it doesn't work at all. My enthusiasm was pretty much "I should play this, I paid for it" and that's not a good sustainable base for serious troubleshooting.