Session Report #3

New game again, this time with fewer TPKs. They made 2^nd level characters this time.

The PCs were American explorers in 1091 on an expedition to the South Pacific to study the indigenous peoples. End route, they hit a storm that crippled their ship. After spending several days trying to make repairs, they finally cobbled together their shattered mast.

They awoke to shouts on deck. The intrepid Jack Dawson woke from his slumber with the feeling someone close to him had just died. He chalked it up to an unremembered dream and went to see what the commotion was all about.

Land was sighted and as they approached, indigenous people came out to meet them in boats. Their accents were strange and the PCs had trouble understanding them. The gist was that the natives were happy to see them, because the PCs were clearly some kind of divine agents sent to deliver them from evil. Apparently the volcano god was eating their women, sending his children to the village once a year to collect the women folk. Tonight was the night they would come, and it surely couldn’t be a coincidence.

As George Anderson and Cletus Hogg organized the other crewmen, Jack tried sketching the volcano god’s children from the villager’s descriptions. While he couldn’t get it right, the villagers seemed to keep pushing his art towards darker and more vile depictions.

Finally they set off into the jungle to see what these superstitious natives were up in arms about. Obviously there was a logical explanation. The sun went down and things started getting spooky. A strange shriek emanated from the volcano top – the volcano god calling his children to battle. An hour later, they encountered those same children as they came down to the village – strange and hideous lizardmen (they lost some resolve). A battle ensued, many crewmen fled into the jungle, Cletus, their doctor, fell to the monstrous creatures, and the lizardmen tried to abscond with the fallen crewmen’s bodies.

Jack and George pursued and chased the lizardmen back to a lava tube, killing the last one as it entered. Within the tube, strange tribal drums could be heard. They scaled the volcano to peer into the caldera and found 2 drummers and someone dancing in front of a strange idol – all lizardmen. Jack and George exterminated them quickly, their guns and distance granting them advantage.

Jack inspected the fallen dancer and found it was not a lizardman, but a lizardwoman. Inspection of the drummers revealed the same (as did the inspection of all the other fallen creatures). The drums turned out to be built in the native style, though out of human flesh (more resolve loss). The rough idol represented some kind of fish god.

Second level, which allowed them another HP/Resolve roll (if you got 1d8+3 at first level, you got 2d8+6 at second) resulted in a substantial increase in number and survival. Possibly too much. But, the first 2 sessions have led to the players favoring constitution and willpower over most other attributes, so the difference was even more visible. This was unforeseen, but not a problem.

Combat took substantially longer and I found it repetitive and boring. The higher HP meant that there was less threat of death and the lack of options in combat really showed to me. I’ll have to fix that.