A Mountain of Gold - Session 4 GM notes
We resume finally!
I have been ill so I haven't been able to run.
Sticks has written the session report
No fights, just negotiating, receiving gifts, doing a silly fight with a dire wolf, figuring out the plans for assaulting Crassus the Black's Inverted Tower, and hiring a 3000-strong mercenary army.
I had a samurai prompt the dwarves and say that they could just hire mercenaries for the assault, cause I've been thinking this for awhile and idk if it occurred to them at all, so instead of fighting the dwarven skeletons themselves, we will assume the cannons and 3000 strong merc army can handle the keep and will have the ninjas, samurai, and dwarf commanders do a secret assault on the inverted tower itself.
I love this game and it really has my wheels spinning on the next game I want to run.
Because we didn't actually assault Crassus' keep, I am guessing we will have 3 more sessions:
- Assaulting the inverted tower
- Prep for the big siege
- The big assault and the siege.
As much as I want to run the big chainmail fight versus the goblin army and the dragon, it may not be necessary. The dwarves will have a strong keep, flak cannons, a 3000 troop army, a magic user or two, and tons of guns. Would it kill the momentum of the game to just say they win?
Honestly that's kind of lame, but we'll probably skip the chainmail fight by the mercs and just say they tie up X amount of the army, and the remainder will siege the keep, cause that siege will be awesome to run, and is kind of the heart of the game. It's what we've been prepping for.
I am glad the dwarves are making as many deals as they are, because it means they will enter the last fight with a stupid amount of tools at their disposal. Cannons, guns, Sapphire the wizard and her troops, flak cannons, maybe air ships, pegasi, the random assortment of magical baubles they've purchased, and all their magical arms and armor. Plus hopefully some samurai and ninja sick around cause that's just sick.
Highlight for me is Blizten the dwarf becoming a weeaboo. He wears kimonos, practices with his sacred 10k folded blade in the courtyard, and wears his hair in a greasy braid. We kept making jokes about how he would disagree with plans because it 'does not follow Bushido'.
Scheduling-wise, the game has been a huge pain. My migraines have been impossible to deal with and we've all had shit going on. We're finally back to our normal sessions though and I plan to keep with it until the game wraps up.
I can't recommend enough just giving your players access to tools. I've been so harsh in my games about making people fight tooth and nail for potions and scrolls and such and giving these to my players early means I can scale up the danger. Short-cutting to domain play has been so awesome.
I also have the numbers for the final assault written and the calendar is filled out for the rest of the game.
I am very excited for the assault on the necromancer's keep although I am not excited to run an combat with a high-level MU cause he's got a lot of spells to keep track of.
I've loved writing the artifacts so far. It's really fun to have the freedom to write dumb powerful shit. The Axe of the Dwarven Lords is my favorite but the Sacred 10k folded blade is a close second. It's a Lawful +3 Sword that grants feather fall, can cut through stone slowly, offers no surrender to chaos, and must be kept within 1 mile of it's creator Master Ogura Kagekane's corpse, which is currently interred inside the dwarf's fort. An acolyte will accompany them on their assault, so the corpse can be moved around.
I'm trying to be more open with npc's secrets. Hakim Sand is openly an agent of the Golden Riders, the rival to the Jade Throne. More fun is had when npcs openly state what they want. Secrets being revealed is the start of the fun, not the end.