Castles and Crusades Campaign– Play Report Catch Up
OK, so I’m getting caught up on my play reports for the sessions that have already passed. Today we are going to cover what happened during the last two sessions of the Castles and Crusades campaign.
I had a one-on-one session with each player, and we roleplayed why and how they got from their hometowns to The Grand City of Roses. Each player got to name the hometown that the character came from since this is a shared storytelling environment and not just “You’re playing in Carl’s made-up world”. It’s less stress for me as a Game Master this way. I had a basic idea of how I wanted the world to be set up. There are coastal kingdoms that are primarily human (mostly unnamed) and The Grand City of Roses smack dab in the middle of them all where a massive trade river meets the sea.
The Grand City of Roses has been a city-state for more than 100 years. It is run by a ruling committee in conjunction with the Grand Mayor. This Grand Mayor is elected by votes from each of the city sections called “Petals”. If someone were to see the Grand City from the air, they would be looking down on a series of islands in the mouth of the river called the Stem Islands. Some of these islands are the oldest sections of the city. On the banks are walled city sections that looked like petals on a rose. Hence, the name.
Each section catered to either a racial group or a particular trade or service. So, think of something like the Little Italy, Chinatown, financial district, warehouse district, etc. that are commonly seen in big cities. All of the races had trade delegations and their own sector in the city including elves, dwarves, halflings, goblinoid races, humans, etc. As you can imagine, keeping the peace was both difficult (old grudges) and easy (we don’t want to lose our trade rights in the city).
What the players did not know is that during their trip to the Grand City, or just entering it, they were drugged, stripped of their weapons (if it wasn’t hidden) and thrown into a basement dungeon near the docks. They had been observed doing something good and were selected by a secret group of concerned leaders called The Purple Petal.
They wanted to see if the characters could work together and get out of the prison without killing a bunch of people. The characters were placed in two different cells with an NPC (one of the testers) in another cell. They observed a jailer bringing them food using a mechanical pulley system with levers to open the doors. The PCs were able to get out of the chains, and the magic user cast Magi’s Reach to pull one of the levers. They wisely freed the NPC prisoner who accompanied them on their escape attempt.
Going through the lower levels of the dungeon, they found various equipment (not theirs) and additional prisoners (more civilians and kids). They also encountered a pack of dogs held in a pen (keeping them trapped) and eventually the jailer who had brought them food. To get past the jailer, one of the characters freed the dogs and led them to the jailer’s quarters where he was storing food for both the animals and prisoners. In the confusion they were able to knock out the jailer and escape while the dogs tore into their food packs.
On the next level up, the players discovered the “mad wizard and his cult” and quite literally ran a scene from Scooby Doo where they distracted the “cultists” one way and ran through other doors. Stealing the knockout potions (that had been used on them) and using some of them to escape.
When they got to the last room in the dungeon, the NPCs they had “rescued” then revealed that they were observing the party actions to see if they were worthy of being hired on as a member of a “Thorn Team” to help troubleshoot issues that the Purple Petal had identified. There were special teams that the group could use to discreetly resolve small issues before they became big incidents that affected the delicate balance of the city. A few characters were concerned with the recruiting methods, but the money and benefits were too good to pass up (free room and board with their “cover jobs”, etc.) thus ending session one.
The basis for this first adventure was The Madhouse Meet, originally developed for Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar and published in the Goodman Games Free RPG Day 2016 book. I altered it from being captured by an actual cult to the secret society test.
Between sessions, I had sent out emails to the different players letting them know how their characters had settled down in the Grand City. This included some hint drops for future gaming sessions. I’ve been also doing this for the Star Trek Adventures campaign with the USS Magnanimous crew. I’ve enjoyed coming up with the different items to send out (and wondering if the players would find the hidden nuggets of information within them).
Session two is currently being played in two parts. This is an original adventure and is set a week after the first adventure. The members of the Thorn Team were given special instructions to show up at a hidden rendezvous point (The Violet Ledger). There they met their handler (Master Corvin Hale) who informs them that their services are needed to prevent a guild war from breaking out in the streets of The Grand City of Roses.
Everything that is brought into or out of the city is subject to a fee. This includes the garbage collected by the two goblin refuse hauling guilds. One of the guilds, the Iron Cart Consortium is starting to suspect that their rivals, the Green Barrel Collective is illegally disposing of the garbage they have collected instead of hauling it out to an approved burn location (far away from the city where it won’t be a nuisance) and thus avoiding the same amount of fees that the Iron Cart is paying. The Purple Petal knows that if the two guilds responsible for hauling the garbage out of the major city start fighting (instead of removing the waste) it could be dangerous in different ways. They also know the numbers don’t match from what Green Barrel has picked up to what they are taking out of the city, but they don’t have proof to take to the city’s leadership. Thus, they wanted the team to leave immediately to an entrance to the sewer tunnels under the Human Petal (city-sector). A member of the town guard will “be on his lunch break” allowing the team to slip into the sewers without being noticed. Their mission is simple, get into the tunnels, get between the barriers that separate the sewer tunnels between sectors and find out what is going on and report back. All without making the situation even worse.
The characters easily get into the tunnels (a magic token was given to them, which Master Hale wants back) and the party works their way towards the goblin sector. Along the way they hide from a tunnel surveyor, avoid a guard patrol, spot a giant alligator (confirming the rumor that it had escaped from an animal sanctuary in the city), stumble across a hidden smugglers shrine (look at all of this stuff we can’t carry), and discover a hidden kingdom of rats. There was one encounter with some tunnel maintenance workers that required the use of the knockout drug the players had acquired in the first adventure.
When the players find the gate between sections, the magic token allows them to shut off the magic wards guarding them. But they discovered that one of the needed cogs to mechanically open the old tunnel doors was missing. Upon inspection it appears that the rat kingdom had stolen the cog, so they head back. At the rat kingdom the players are brought to King Scritch the Burrowed. A wererat who commanded the hidden kingdom. He had taken the cog to prevent goblins from crossing over and hunting his rat subjects for food. He would be willing to temporarily loan the cog back to the party in exchange for a service. For some reason the giant alligator had been content with hunting rats and small game in the goblin section of the tunnels. However, it had recently moved to the human sector and started feasting on Scritch’s subjects that he had sworn to protect. Find the gator, take care of the gator (Scritch didn’t care how) and he’ll have the cog returned for 48 hours.
The hunter had now become the hunted. The party was able to track down the gator to his new lair in a cistern (these forgotten tunnels had hundreds of them). After a pitched battle and receiving some wounds, the party was able to slay the alligator. They discovered that it still had its tag from the zoo it escaped from, some of the rats it had eaten, and some partially dissolved rats that it refused to touch.
Upon delivering the body of the alligator to the rat kingdom, Scritch provided them with the cog, and the players were able to finally open the door to the goblin sewer tunnels. This is where the game ended for that session. What awaits them on this side of the door, the players will find out soon.
OK, I’ll try to make sure that these play reports come out quicker. (I had to ask the players to remind me how they escaped from jail). I’ve also started putting together my own Campaign OneNote document to keep track of all the NPCs and minutia that we’ve used in the game.
Do you have any questions (that I can answer publicly) about the campaign? I’ve even set up special channels for the two campaigns on my Discord server. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.