tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1958522416503442248.post2678072942352745617..comments2024-03-28T01:02:01.844-06:00Comments on Coins and Scrolls: OSR: Boss Fight: The BasiliskSkerpleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06393779599461560431noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1958522416503442248.post-58435306674279151732020-06-27T05:35:37.428-06:002020-06-27T05:35:37.428-06:00Well, kinda both.
They had the "back entranc...Well, kinda both.<br /><br />They had the "back entrance" excavated to make it wider, then put the cart at the threshold with the open cage mounted upon it and its wheels wedged tight. The chain was pulled through the cage, one end harnessed to the team of four elephants. While part of the crew created noise in room 36 to attract the Basilisk to the eastern doorway, one man sneaked into the Hall from the South and hooked the other end of their chain to the one holding the beast. The party than gathered near the bottom of the stairs in area forty and a messager was sent upstairs to signal the elephant drivers to start pulling. The job of drawing out leviathan with a fish-hook has begun!<br /><br />In a real world. an engineering endeavour like this would be preceded by countless meetings, negotiations, material and procedure tests, specifications, training sessions, labour safety measures, etc., generating mountains of paperwork. Here, in my home version of Yoon-Suin, everything was improvised on the fly, directed by a trio if overconfident murderhobos. Not having much in terms of mechanical support to adjudicate the attempt, I called for a single d20 roll to see how smooth the things went.<br /><br />1.<br /><br />And then I did one of the lamest things in my almost 30 years long GM'ing carrier. I described the consequences as one of the elephants loosing his footing and falling down to his knees. So all in all this totally failed roll resulted in a few moments of high tension at the table and maybe a quarter of an hour delay in the operation, nothing more. And there could have been a maddened giant petrifying lizard tumbling head over heels upon the party downstairs!<br /><br />Anyway, the leviathan was captured and locked in the cage which was promptly curtained to block the prisoner's petrifying gaze. After which the PCs turned to their second goal: the revenge on Xiximanter. They had a little altercation with him during the previous foray into the dungeon, burning down his precious lab and miraculously escaping barely alive (with a series of some very lucky rolls).<br /><br />Not wishing to risk their zamindar's people, they used the Crown to recruit local goblins and send them in successive kamikaze waves towards the snake-man's lair. As badly burned and wounded survivors of one attack emerged running from a corridor, another group, mustered and instructed in the former Basilisk's hall was sent in.<br /><br />In their self-confidence, they never bothered to watch their rear (or the front, for that matter). As they were busy herding together suicide squad #4, the irritated Xiximanter quietly slithered into the hall to see what all this fuzz was about and cast a fireball from behind a column, instantly incinerating the entire party and their goblin minions. A TPK and hour and something into the session.<br /><br />And after that my players suddenly realised that old-school was not quite their cup of tea. One of them stepped in to run a "roaring 20-ies" Savage Worlds campaign, which was quite fun at first but started to feel somewhat linear after a few sessions.Dmitry Gerasimovhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04870509986491401701noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1958522416503442248.post-66799990784716732772019-03-20T10:11:31.934-06:002019-03-20T10:11:31.934-06:00Oooh, exciting! Hope it goes well... or if not, I ...Oooh, exciting! Hope it goes well... or if not, I hope it goes disastrously wrong in an very interesting way.Skerpleshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06393779599461560431noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1958522416503442248.post-88304628363771678202019-03-19T06:35:01.766-06:002019-03-19T06:35:01.766-06:00>The basilisk doesn't have any treasure - i...>The basilisk doesn't have any treasure - it is treasure.<br />Precisely why my players' characters have just camped near the Tomb, accompanied by some 30 retainers, 4 elephants, a huge cart, a really big and stout cage and a mind-bogging length of chain.Dmitry Gerasimovhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04870509986491401701noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1958522416503442248.post-59591559108228471212017-06-08T18:55:07.051-06:002017-06-08T18:55:07.051-06:00This is what I want to see in a monster descriptio...This is what I want to see in a monster description! Stat block, who cares, give me gameable detail! <br /><br />I'm particularly a fan of the multi-round gaze attack. Takes the petrify ability from cheap-feeling and op to seeming fair yet potent.<br /><br />Really good stuff.Charles Ahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00941603544547428940noreply@blogger.com