Holgard Campaign Session 22 - The Thropsford Fight Club

Session 22 - The Return

Foreword: This "session" ended up being 8.5 hours of catching up and downtime adjudication... For one group of characters.

Timekeeping: The campaign was on hiatus for approx 3 months, so for simplicity we went with 3 months downtime.

Characters: Evil PCs: Bale Tyrannus, Half-Orc Fighter 2 (capped at XP, trying to get money to level up), Finin O'Conoghain (Half-Elf Cleric 1/MU 1 - capped at XP for Cleric, needs money to level up), Jerry Narg (Half-Orc Assassin 1)

Session Report: We open up with a list of everyone's requests for the 3 months hiatus. Bale Tyrannus is doing security guard work around dodgy areas in Thropsford (the capital city). We discuss what each PCs ideal outcome or total failure would look like, and extrapolate from there. I then roll percentile dice for each week to see what category they land in - the table looked something like this:

d100	Result	Outcome
1	Critical Failure	Arrested, robbed, attacked
2-60	Failure	No yield/work
61-99	Success	150gp/week
100	Critical Success	300gp/week

I cannot attest to how effective, accurate, or fair this is. It worked though. I decided the work Bale was undertaking was dangerous, but due to his exceptional strength I gave him about 40/60 success/failure chances. He ended up with 750gp over the 3 month period. Not bad! Would've got XP too but he was capped. Hilarious!

Finin was hoping to develop the Cult of Globulah (religion him and other PC invented so have to build it up from nothing) and he rolled a whopping critical success! The net result was that he established a stall in Thropsford, gained 18 followers there, earned 200GP doing miracles/prayers for the peasantry.

Note Cult of Globulah Status
Underland Stall - 8 + Guru (lost 7 members over downtime due to both Clerics being elsewhere)
Thropsford Stall - 18

Finin also performed some magical displays and made 176GP demonstrating spider climb.

Now, Jerry Narg. He wanted to do some assassin work. I abstracted this out by using the spy rules on DMG p18/19 based on the level of the target for the job, and let Jerry pick his jobs. He failed heaps of them, got caught, almost killed, yet somehow weasled his way out of the consequences. His failures ended up with him losing a finger, nearly dying, but being revived by a pedestrian. He suffered permanent scarring and lost all his stuff. The Underland Assassin's Guild looked after him and gave him an ultimatum - a special in-house job - to eliminate a Curate who is building a following speaking out against the existence of an Assassin's Guild. Jerry scopes out the sect, views the movement patterns of the members, and succeeds in getting into position. He lunges for the holy man, who avoids the assassination attempt and tries to calm the crazed assassin and convert him, to be a turncoat against the Guild. Jerry runs away, steals a horse in the night, and flees Underland. He then signs up for the Unionised (and very bureaucratic) Thropsford Assassin's Guild, who offer him a new contract with a blood-binding, with the understanding that he will submit himself to the Thropsford Guild, who demand a hefty 50% income for all training, plus other Union member benefits. He's totally a pawn. Jerry suggests they open up a Fight Club for the important hostages they have that nobody wants to pay the ransom for. It's a total success, as we will soon find out...

Before that, Jerry tries out another assassination mission. He fails. The guild sees it might be better for him to join their "Young Assassin's" Program and get a bit better at his job, when it become obvious that Jerry's strong suit is infiltration and disguise-work. (This PC has a list of disguises with names. None of them are sensible names, but they are all legitimately different disguises. DM NOTE I need to check the disguise failure rules better for how int/wisdom affects it. Also the nitty-gritty of how much a disguise might weigh, how long it takes to adopt it etc. since it's a bit of a silly trump card atm)

New Patron?

He gets a spy mission. There is a merchant alliance developing in secret, and there seems to be some sort of shady dealings taking place which is subverting the majority of the merchants. A third party wants to know who is running it. Jerry's player gives me some good ideas about how we wants to approach it - so I don't bother using the abstracted rolls since we are playing it out. He scopes out the market square, and notices several stalls closing down within days as their clientele departs and their stocks disappear. Jerry ends up tipping one of these defeated merchants some money and beer at the tavern, and learns that three primary merchants are using thugs to force competitors to sell their stock to them for horrible prices. The head of this is Barrick, a large bald merchant. The Assassin's Guild informs Jerry they will be in touch with him once this information is given to the informant.

The net outcome for Jerry from all his downtime was 300XP, 100GP, and his debt for being re-geared by the Thropsford Assassin's Guild repaid.

Now, an off-the-cuff suggestion from Jerry ended up being brought up by the other PCs who liked the Fight Club idea. So it happens. It's the first time it's ever been run - it's in a derelict warehouse with hardly any people - a few assassins knocking off work, some scruffy people, and Winston Churchill with well armed guards besides him. The fighters are Big Boris Borgstrom and Little Lenny. Both are literally the extreme ends of the DMG random height/weights. It's an unarmoured match. The bets are on, and the DM (me) who has no idea about what is sensible, decides Little Lenny is 5:1 and Boris is 2:1. The players all bet on Little Lenny (Bale - 100GP, Jerry - 98GP (he paid for entry fees), Finin - 50GP). I let two PCs roll the stats for these guys and play them. Little Lenny gets annihilated from a lethal charging Overbear. Bale Tyrannus calls out to join, reckons he is a champion. I'm an idiot and make the odds 3:1 Bale Tyrannus, 5:1 BBB (Bale is a bit shorter but even heavier). So the players all bet on Bale (including Bale who puts 300GP on himself) and that's how the DM gave the PCs a free tripling of the money. What happened was both BBB and Bale charged to Overbear. I didn't know how to adjudicate this at all, so I just decided that since they both have 100%+ chance of success, I got them to roll their modified Overbear outcomes, and the loser would subtract it from the victor. Maybe I should have used dex to determine who gets the first overbear? I am also not sure how the follow up attacks are meant to play out but it didn't matter. Bale killed (yes, killed) BBB instantly. Then he stomped his head and ripped his femoral artery so blood blew everywhere. Winston Churchhill was very impressed, and asked if Bale would be interested in enacting violence in future for money, as he found it very rewarding. He also hinted at being something of a collector - potential wilderness work to recover items!

So now the evil PCs (minus a couple who were not present) are caught up. There was also some campaign events I divulged that had occurred over the downtime:

Campaign Events

The County of Burnett has withdrawn from the Iron Kingdom. The road between Thropsford (the Iron Capital), and Burnett is now totally un-patrolled.

The County of Halford to the south-west portion of the Iron Kingdom is reporting southern raids.

Warton, to the south-east, has been invaded by Goblins and is now "Goblin Town". No steps have been taken by the King, presumably because he is preoccupied with issues with Burnett. However, rumours are that the Goblins leader is amicable and communication is taking place.

The road between Underland and Thropsford has more bandit activity than usual. Mechanically, it is sparsely populated with more-or-less no-name settlements. 

A bizarre celestial event was seen in the western sky.

Local Events

Villages NW of Underland are suffering from a slew of abductions by Lizard-Men. Presumably the Lizard King is returning to his old ways.

Sunland has been expanding - a military force has been enlisted by Lord Bryne with work being done on a ditch and rampart around the town. The design is larger than what is currently inhabited to accomodate growth.

There are reports of raids on villages on the outskirts of Underland's borders, towards the southern hills.

Treasure & XP: Bale - 750GP, no XP due to cap. Finin - 376GP, with 88XP for MU, none for Cleric due to XP cap. Jerry Narg - 300XP plus (probably) some for assassinating level 0s but I doubt it's much. Will need to calculate at some point.

Player Performance Ratings: All Excellent

Downtime Requests: Downtime is caught up for Evil PCs (except for a few other players). The Good PCs also had their downtime set up but not resolved this time. I'll be doing that before next session.

Comments: Not much of a "session". I was hoping to power through downtime and actually play a game but it didn't happen. We had a lot of IRL catching up too, so was definitely more of a "campfire D&D" session. Bale's player said the ridiculous betting odds and having random observers enter is a good representation of the Fight Club's early kinks being ironed out. My one issue with this session was confusion with the ruling around two opponents charging to Overbear, and how Overbear follow up attacks work. Got some bedtime reading to do!