Ci riprovo?

 Buongiorno a tutti, sempre che ci sia qualcuno che legge.

Sono tornato in Italia in pianta stabile, ormai da nove mesi e, dopo poche settimane, ho ricominciato a giocare di ruolo con due gruppi che avevo lasciato qui quasi 10 anni fa.

Uno e' il mio gruppo piu' "serio", tutti giocatori esperti, con cui ridiamo e scherziamo (la base del GDR), potendo comunque fare campagne impegnative e lunghe, tendiamo a giocare a giochi piu' moderni e un filo piu' complessi dei classici di una volta.

Il secondo gruppo, quello piu' "leggero" si trova in genere una volta ogni due settimane e con esso giochiamo esclusivamente a D&D vecchia scuola.

Prima della mia partenza giocavamo al base (BECMI), ora siamo passati ad Advanced D&D seconda edizione, con ambientazione Dragonlance.

Con questo gruppo e' un po' piu' difficile avere costanza e portare avanti campagne lunghe e gloriose, ma ci proviamo lo stesso.

Uno di questi giocatori si era offerto di scrivere su questo blog per raccontare le avventure del party, ma alla fine non si e' sentito di prendersi l'impegno, allora provero' a farlo io, vediamo se questa ennesima incarnazione del blog riesce a portare qualche risultato duraturo.

Stiamo ormai giocando da qualche mese con cadenza piu' o meno bisettimanale, quindi siamo riusciti a macinare un discreto numero di avventure.

L'inizio della campagna e' stato un po' inusuale: La storia incomincia alla fine della Guerra delle Lance, i giocatori hanno tirato le caratteristiche base di tre personaggi a testa, senza avere un nome, classe, razza, livello o equipaggiamento. 

Questi personaggi rappresentavano un gruppo di progionieri in un campo nei pressi di Neraka che tentavano la fuga durante il caos che ha seguito la sconfitta dei Signori dei Draghi.

La fuga e' risultata, ovviamente, molto difficile e pochi dei personaggi assegnati ai giocatori e' effettivamente sopravvissuto al tentativo.

Dai pochi rimasti sono poi emersi quelli che sarebbero diventati i personaggi di primo livello che i giocatori avrebbero usato per la campagna.

Durante la fuga il gruppo di superstiti ha incontrato un mercante che ha offerto loro aiuto, cibo ed equipaggiamento in cambio di un "favore", il recupero di un libro da una torre diroccata nel pressi della capitale dei Signori dei Draghi, un diario contente gli appunti di un mago scomparso decenni prima.

Per questa parte di avventura ho modificato un modulo della TSR che trovai tanti anni fa, "The accursed tower" di R.A. Salvatore. Originariamente il modulo e' ambientato nei Reami, ma io ne ho preso unicamente il dungeon e l'ho usato per i miei scopi.

A questo punto e' necessario fare una precisazione prima di andare avanti. I giocatori che ho al tavolo sono famosi per essere enormemente penalizzati dai tiri di dado, la maggior parte di loro ha delle medie di tiri per sessione terribili (ne tengono traccia), quidi e' molto difficile tenerli in vita, soprattutto essendo di primo livello. 

I personaggi coinvolti erano: un mago elfo, un paladino umano, un chierico nano, un ranger mezzelfo, un giovane aspirante cavaliere di Solamnia, ed un ladro elfo.

Il primo a perire fu l'elfo mago, ucciso dal morso di un ragno velenoso nascosto in un comparto segreto di un libro che i pg credevano fosse quello da loro cercato.

Dopo aver preso un sacco di botte e perso un mago, il gruppo e' tornato da Peddywinkle, il mercante che li ha ingaggiati, per cercare aiuto. Un giovano umano studioso delle arti magiche, si e' aggiubnto al gruppo ed il mercante, dopo aver saputo del ritrovamento della torre e della concreta possibilita' di ottenere il libro ricercato, ha acconsentito a fornire qualche arma in piu' e del cibo.

Ha inoltre lasciato indietro un suo aiutante, mentre lui e la sua piccola carovana, si allontanavano dalla zona della citta' che stava ormai diventando sempre piu' caotica e pericolosa.

Al suo ritorno alla torre, il gruppo ha proseguito l'esplorazione che si faceva via via sempre piu' pericolosa, ma anche ricca di tesori, equipaggiamento ed oggetti che potevano anche sembrare magici.

Purtroppo, pero', in un giorno nefasto, il gruppo, soprattutto grazie ad inesperienza e mancanza di saggezza nelle sue decisioni, imbattutosi in un singolo ghoul, e' stato sterminato nella sua quasi totalita', con l'eccezione del Ranger che, rimasto fuori dalla torre (il giocatore non era presente alla sessione) ha deciso che entrare da solo a cercare gli altri sarebbe stato troppo pericoloso.

A questo punto, nella frustrazione generale, abbiamo deciso di tenere gli stessi personaggi, cambiarne il nome, e ricominciare con una nuova campagna.

L'unico sopravvissuto, il misterioso Mezzelfo ranger, conosciuto come "biondo", si e' diretto a ovest in cerca di nuovi compagni e nuove avventure.

Nel prossimo post iniziero' il racconto della "nuova" campagna dal titolo "Il braccio di Theros"

In da club - session 2

 The second session starts with the party discussing their options with Dakota, while the Steel Vacheros (the nomads she is working for) start going through the ambulance and sorting the supplies available in it.

After a few minutes one of the nomads points out that the ambulance still has a tracker pinging in a fixed spot, it looks like the yellow jacket is still, randomly, emitting a signal.

The party decides to follow this lead, even if the day is getting old and everyone is tired after fights and car chases.

The signal brings them to a diner in front of which the edgerunners find an active crime scene with NCPD agents taking notes and asking questions.

The party starts asking questions themselves in and outside the diner with Thronen approaching a cop that almost shoots her, luckily for the rocker the cop's partner knows her music and happens to be a fan, so she can get some precious information regarding a hit happening shortly before at the diner.

In the meantime Maven manages to access the memory of a nearby camera and sees that a biker with red and blue hair on its way to the diner was shot, his bike was hit and crushed close by on the sidewalk. He stumbled to a car parked nearby and broke into it before driving away, while the assailant, showing the "V" tattoo of the Valentinos gang on his neck, kept shooting, killing the two nomads whose car had just been stolen, coincidentally members of the Steel Vacheros.

Checking the tracker device the party sees that the location of the jacket is now in the Glen, an area south of Corpo Plaza, so under the directions of Bluescreen, who is actually just pretending to be able to check the image of the stolen car in the highway camera circuit, with a rental car they go to El Coyote Cojo, a bar known for being neutral territory and therefore safe from shootouts and gang war.

There the party leaves Maven with her sniper rifle to cover the door (just in case) and gets into the bar, Thornen starts talking to Jackie Wells, the son of the owner (Mama Wells) and Bluescreen with Pepe, the barman.

Between them they discover the name of the biker who is in possession of the jacket, Dalton and that he has a girlfriend who busks at a trains station not far from the bar.

While waiting for the others, Maven is approached by a woman who looks very much like a solo, she introduces herself as Maria Torres, she apparently has some beef with Dalton and asks to have him delivered alive to her if the party wants to make some good Eddies. 

The party decides to go to the trains station to look for Dalton's mainline, since this is the only clue they have, they'll hopefully find from her some directions to find the biker.

Here ends the second session.

The adventure begins - session 1

 Welcome to the beginning of this adventure, I would like you all to bear in mind that English is not my native language and that I'm no pro writer, so be forgiving and enjoy the ride.

It is 2076 and we are in the outskirts of Night City.

A fixer by the name Dakota is hiring a group of edgerunners to find and retrieve a specific item that one of her customers is looking for.

A group of young misfits has gathered and is ready to go on this job to make some Eddies, the only thing that matters, besides rep, in Night City.

Wrench's van is humming idle while the group gets the last details on the job, they are to visit a man called Falco in a storage container lot and retrieve from him a yellow jacket.

The job should be easy enough, but is it ever?

The chumbas pile into the black van, a quite unassuming vehicle, if you don't consider the red band running diagonally on its sides.

Upon arriving on the site of the exchange, the group hears gunshot and, getting closer, see a R.E.O Meatwagon ambulance parked between some of the containers.

A cowboy looking man is busy shooting four figures dressed in yellow jackets that are trying to encircle him.

Bluescreen and Thronen jump off the van and start circling around the containers to reach the ambulance, while Wrench comes to a skidding halt and backs the van into a container squishing one of the yellow clad shooters.

when the van comes to a halt, Maven start targeting people with her sniper rifle, while Insurance engages in close with another attacker.

The firefight is short and brutal, between the party and Falco, three of the assailant are put out of action, while the one stuck between the van and a container passes out.

At the rear, the Netrunner and the Rocker are going through the ambulance trying to get some clues and intending to steal the vehicle for themselves move it further to the back.

Since the other members of the group seem not to have any trouble in the gunfight, they take their time and Bluescreen finds a shard in a case on the passenger seat, jacking it in he finds out that this hit squad is was supposed to recover the same yellow jacket they are after and it seems like all these jackets are equipped with a tracking device. 

When the situation calms down, the group enquires with Falco about this attack, and learns that the jacket in his possession was actually stolen by some biker with red and blue hair that actually run away just minutes before the party showed up.

After inspecting the ambulance and finding a tracking device in it, the party decides to split, Bluescreen and Thornen will head back with the ambulance to the meeting point with Dakota, while the others will try to find something interesting in the remaining containers, while Falco gathers his stuff and gets out of this place.

While driving back Bluescreen and Thornen receive a call from the R.E.O. headquarters and the netrunner has to put up a little acting show to pretend he is one of the ambulance crew. Doing so he learns that two more squads are directed to the storage container lot, so he cuts the communication and calls his friends to tell them to get out of there as fast as they can before the new ambulances arrive.

In the meantime the other half of the group has been scavenging the storage lot, they found a sealed door that seems to be leading into a bunker protected by Militech mines which Maven has removed and plans on selling for big bucks.

Suddenly the edgerunners hear the roar of engines and get on the van and leave towards the desert to the outside of the city and two new R.E.O. start chasing them and shooting at the van.

Maven and Insurance try to shot from the back door of the van with little success and Wrench is busy driving while being shot from the second ambulance.

Thornen and Bluescreen, being aware of the situation, ask Dakota if she has any help to send the others' way and she calls a merc solo by the name of Hardpoint which appears moments later charging with her motorbike in one of the ambulances, jumping off the bike at the last moment and slashing the ambulance crew with her mantis blade.

Shortly after, while the second ambulance gets dangerously close to the van, Wrench receives an armed mine from Maven and chucks it in the ambulance that, after a moment of swerving uncontrollably does up in a giant ball of flames.

After this very intense chase, Wrench drives back into Night City and the party is reunited at Dakota's base, which happens to be the temporary camp of a nomad family she is working for. 

The party decides to "donate" the ambulance and its supplies to the nomads, to possibly get some favor later if needed.

While the nomads check the ambulance, one of them notices that the tracker device on board is pinging with a signal indicating the position of a jacket, very likely the one the party is looking for.

It is then decided to follow that signal quickly to avoid loosing the trace. Everyone gets ready to go, except for Wrench who needs to take Delila (the van) to his garage and get it fixed after the numerous gunshots it received.

This is where we decided to interrupt the first session, with the party renting a car and driving off to the location indicated by the tracking device in the jacket.

Delila

Resurrection

 Here we are again, after six years of silence, I'm giving this blog another try.

In the past years, I've kept running RPGs with a group of friend I managed to get together here in Canada (See previous posts), but with work and life happening, I barely had time to prepare games and run them, let alone blog about them.

In recent weeks there's been a crucial change, I am now playing in the games and not running them (at least for the time being).

This gives me the opportunity to start trying to chronicle our games, let's hope this time I manage to keep up with the sessions and take decent notes to be able to write these little reports.

We recently started playing Cyberpunk, we had a few one shots in the past using the 2.0.2.0. version of the game, which everybody loved, but we never played enough to really get familiar with the rules and play smoothly, until recently when Ronan (the current GM) decided to purchase the new Cyberpunk Edgerunners Mission Kit, which is based on the anime that came out a while back.

Ronan is a big fan of Cyberpunk 2077 (the videogame) and volunteered to run us through the introductory adventure included with this set titled : The Jacket.

We are using the pre generated character included in the set (which seems to be really powerful), and the party is composed as follows:

- Bluescreen: Netrunner, played by me,

- Thornen: Rocker, played by Matti

- Maven: Tech, played by Doyle

- Insurance: Medtech, played by Max

- Wrench: Nomad, played by Diego

- Hardpoint: Solo, played by Jameica

We are three session into the adventure and I decided to start blogging about it, so I'll have to make a recap post about the first two sessions and a following one for the third session.

I have sparse gaming notes for the first two, so the post about them will probably be relatively short, but I'll try to include all the important events, I'll follow with a more detailed one for the third session and will try to keep posting right after the game so that I don't forget any interesting event.

Wish me luck.

Technical difficulties

Unfortnately I have to admit that I don't have time to keep up with this blog, I tried, but the amount of writing required to make it good is too much for the time I have available.

For this reason I'm sad to have to let the few of you that read it, know that I won't keep posting here.
Maybe in the future I will have more time and drive to get it going again, but for now that's it.

I apologize and leave you with a few pics from our recent sessions.

See you soon.
GinzioMaster

We moved to Toril, new Forgotten realms campaign

So, tonight the second session of the new campaign will take place.
We already met twice for this new adventure taking place in Toril, the first time was just to roll characters, the second was the first bite of  this new world to see what it tastes like.

I had a few experiences in the past with the forgotten realms, mostly as a player and once, a couple of years ago as I was telling a few posts back as a DM.
 So I started familiarizing with the setting, I red a few novels in the past, always useful to get the feeling of the place and I have been reading a sourcebook that came out in 1990 to update the setting to the 2nd edition of AD&D, its title is Forgotten Realms adventures and it contains a mountain of information about religions, spells, cities, magical items and all the rest that can give the game a more "forgotten realms" flavour.

With the informations of this book, especially those about speciality priests, we rolled the characters and the party is composed by the following characters:
- Paddy Byrne O'Shay, a half elf bard played by Doyle
- Floggin, a human fighter with a hint of barbarian, played by Will
- Rootin, Floggin partner, a huge female fighter, occasionally played by Taryn, otherwise a NPC
- Aref Sayyad, a speciality priest of Gond from the southern lands played by Cyrus
- Aurelius, a specialist wizard, a conjuror, played by Max

The party should gain a new member tonight, so I will introduce a new character in the next post.
I will also try to get figures painted for everyone and take a group picutre soon.

The adventure I decided to start with is "Doom of Daggerdale", I already played this adventure in my previous Realms campaign and I very rarely have the occasion to play an adventure twice, it is very interesting to see how differently it plays with a different party.

The adventure started with the group on the road to Dagger Falls, most of the would be heroes already knew each other after a little bit of adventuring together (everyone starts the campaign with 1.000 XPs), except fot Aurelius, a dalesman from Shadowdale, met on the road who was going to Dagger Falls to help his cousin who got  strange sickness called the "dream fever" and can't seem to wake up.

The group, almost at destination, met some freedom fighters on the run, but managed to briefly talk to them and learn that their leader is Rendall Morn, the rightful leader of Daggerdale, who is fighting agains the usurping constable Tren, a servant of Zenthil Keep who took his place in town.

After an uneventful night in the inn the party was summoned, the next morning, by an emissary of the constable and led to his tower where everyone was enlisted to solve the problem affecting the town by investigating the ruined local temple of Lathander.

The group decide to tale care of some personal business before starting the investigation and Floggin, Rootin and Paddy went to by some suplies and to fish in the river, while Aurelius decided to go visit his sick cousin, accompanied by Aref.

When the night came, all the heroes met back at the inn and all but Aref decided to have a fish barbecue in the woods in order to save a bit of cash.
Unfortunately they were attacked by a strange couple of creatures with the aspect of dwarfs with brown skin, dry leaves and twigs in their hair and beards and wearing kilts and vests made of vines.
Not without a few problems the adventurers defeated these creatures and managed to get back to the inn.

It is at this point that the session ended, so until next time for the next episode of the story.

Chapter 2: Disaster and end

Here I am again, with more stories for you.
Unfortunately, before I could get up to date with the posts, my players screwed up and the campaign came to an abrupt end.

Last session was disastrous, some very very bad decisions were taken and followed past the point where me, as DM, could try to save the whole thing and the party ended up being FUBARed.

I will briefly report where the campaign had gone until now and then, next time, will start with the chronicling of the new campaign that will start tonight with the generation of characters and a brief introduction of the new setting we will be using.

Continuing from where we left the story last time:
the party went to Nolivari, a small town east of Darokin city, to find the city had just fought off a Norker's invasion.
The characters also found out that the invasion had been lead by Grakhirt, the true identity of Peddywinkle, a wizard that disguisde himself as the merchant that hired the party to find the tower.

The town Prince asked the party to find the wizard and capture or dispatch of him with the help of Ainz, a pries of Halav that helped in the defence of the city (Doyle's new character).
After exploring the norker's lair the group found the wizard and confronted him in a fight to the death and then returned to the village.

Here the heroes were appointed as "wardens", given a house and a new mission.
They were supposed to reclaim an abandoned temple of Chardastes near che village, but they failed miserably, Bill died and they were stripped of their title and sent away from the town.

On the way back to Darokin city in search of a job and some more fortune, the party ended up saving a "girl in distress" who asked to be brought to Orb lake.
On the way of the lake the group met Stephen, a halfling thief (played by Will) who joined the heroes on their way through the forest to the mointain lake.

Once at the lake, the lady disappeared in its waters before flying out and fading into another plane as a white spirit stag without saying a word.

Close to the lake the characters found an ld abandoned dwarf mine that they tried to explore with little success and losing the newofund halfling who was dvoured by some giant beetles.
Just after this a tio of dwarves, a priest of Kagyar named Yarvin Tombhammer (Will's third character) and his assistants "the brewer" and "the butcher" appeared at the lake and joined in the exporation of the cave where they found a magical blacksmith hammer that they had to bring back to rockhome.

After this the characters decided to split and meet again in a few months, so that everyone could get some rest and deal with personal business in their respective places of origin.

When they met again, the heroes were unwillingly transported by some weird mists into a swampy unknown land and they spent few days in a village cursed by the walking dead and a zombie lord.

This adventure was actually played on boxing day as a one session affair, it took about 10 hours, but worked out quite well.

Returning to Mystara from the demilane of dread, the party followed Magnus in his search for the lost valley of Hutaaka in order to stop his recurring nightmares, but found the way blocked at the town of Threshold by an army of orcs trying to overcome the city and its defences.

In an effort to help, the group agreed to be polymorphed into orcs and infiltrate the orc citadel of Kirimba-Hai to recover a captured general and a mysterious megilac object called the Silver Key.

Unfortunately this is when disaster struck, the party managed to get the the city and enter it, but the sheer chaos of an orc citadel revealed to be too much for them to handle and some poor decisions spelled doom and death on half of the party, with no chance for the remaining members to get back to civilization without their mind succumbing to orciness and despair.

And so ends the second attempt of a long term campaign with this goup of players.
Tonight we will start a new one, from roughly level 1 and set in the Forgotten Realms, let's see where this one go.

Wish the players all the luck you can, they definitely need it.
Until next time