Post-Game Report: After the Wave

Uncertainty in the wake of a tsunami. The vague feeling persists that the party has missed something (and they have). When in doubt, seek out Magical Orders for answers. Renin’s prophetic dream is better appreciated post-disaster. Riches fallen from the sky are on everyone’s mind—but how to get to them? A ship is needed, but in a devastated port, none are available. Old enemies in the criminal underworld are approached, and agreements struck, but sea transport isn’t one of them. A detour to haggle with a magic-monger proves fruitful. On the other hand, smuggler kingpins are busy men and difficult to contact through strangely-accented intermediaries. A chance encounter offers a ship for hire within the week, and reveals the troubling history of the destination.

Sunday's installment of our Warriors & Warlocks campaign, freely adapted from Paizo's The Second Darkness, featured the usual cast: Zarac the acquisitive veteran, Renin the psionicist with the troubling dream, and Brother Gannon the thief in monk's clothes.  Apearances were made by the half-elf mage Samyrantha Bel-Tanis, their friend in the Esoteric Order of the Cryptograhers, and their enemy, crime boss Clegg Haddo, who's now their business partner in the gambling house they "inherited."  The party's new employer was introduced: merchant speculator Tavrem Kalus.

This session revealed one of the problems inherent in the the whole "adventure path" thing. The player's missed out on a major story reveal at the end of the first module, which was no big deal there--advice was even give on how to handle that--but module two begins with assumption that the player's got all the pertinent information from the last one, and offers no alternatives. It wasn't terribly difficult to work around--after all, the total of modules I've gamemastered in my whole career being somewhere short of ten, I'm used to making stuff up--but it seems an oversight.

So left in the limbo between the official end of the last module, and the vague beginnings of this one, the player's got a little time in the "sandbox" of the city of Raedelsport, which I worried might bore them, but apparently didn't.

Despite the over a month gap since we last gamed, the player's are actually beginning to remember stuff about the city's locations and personalities (or at least getting better at remembering where to find them in their notes). Everyone seems to be having a good time, though the two more novice players (one of them just started playing with this campaign) are a little tentative at times.

And we've finally arrived at a system to ensure the economic burden of the traditional game pizza order is shared fair and equitably by habitual cash carriers and non-carriers alike, so there's that.