Blog for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil

Castle Xyntillan Session 2

  • Bentley Rumbold (Thief 1)
  • Marthe (Magic User 1)

28

  • Blerot the woodsman swore to avenge his murdered love who disppeared the in castle. He never returned.
  • Wearing red keeps the Red Spectre away… for a while.
  • Vampires roost in the donjon
  • Lots of libraries and labs
  • Talking tree in a forest (according to Blerot)
  • Silver knife (25 gp)
  • Alchemist book 4 recipes:
    • Necrotic dust (mummy powder to animate dead)
    • Slow Silver 10x as heavy as regular silver
    • The Great Transformation converts 5k copper into 5k gold (basilisk powder)
    • Perfect Ploink spit with unerring accuracy and impressive distance, until you drink something.
  • 3 potions, apparently of the same kind, 1 is marked “for healing.” (1 from the priest in Tours-en-Savoy and 2 from a CX lab)
  • Silk pouch (9gp)
  • Many alchemical ingredients and their containers
    • tung
    • obdirium
    • yellow mould (dried)
    • brown mold (dried)
    • lots of zinc
    • quicksilver
    • slow silver
    • pickled bats
  • black silk gloves (20gp)
  • the king statue’s orb of experience (weighs 1400 coins and grants 1 level of experience)
  • Morella seems attracted to Bentley
  • Scouted ~18 rooms

Marthe returned from the previous session and Bentley joined for the first time.

They went to the church to pray to the Unknown God and seek a holy water blessing from the priest. They conspired to steal the holy water.

Bentley quietly followed him downstairs to the underground church to steal holy water. He stole a different potion instead, since it was not on the father’s person and he didn’t want to attempt to pickpocket.

The priest was clearly suspicious of their manner and words but didn’t act against them.

They decided to try entering CX from the bridge.

Bentley tried climbing but fell after only 10 feet. He used a grappling hook and rope and they climbed up to the bridge, only to hear a large splash, look over the edge of the bridge and see a very large serpent head rising from the water toward them.

They scurried in to the west in fear.

An undead horse that appeared to have just been dead stood on only its hind legs and asked for food in a demanding, insane manner. Bentley gave it fruit which it did not like. They fled, and it didn’t follow.

They saw a death statue across from a door and entered the door. It was a lab full of books.

They collected the giant tome and alchemical ingredients from the lecturn and table and then did quite a lot of searching the room for more. They destroyed a lot of books (which disintegrated on touch) with the help of their hires while their bowman, Pete, held the door open to keep watch. As they were trying to uncover the mystery of the seemingly not-unlockable door behind the drape (which they tore down to steal to pack the jars of alchemical ingredients more carefully), Pete called out a warning that someone was approaching. Pete quietly closed the door and joined them, bow drawn and aimed at the door.

A woman asked who was there. They didn’t reply. She came in asked them again, with an entourage of 12 whispery shadow-forms. She was welcoming and friendly and intimated that she was in mourning. She offered them help. They requested information about Blerot the Woodsman. She knew little other than that he was being punished for misdeeds, but offered to take them to him. They agreed.

She guided them through many rooms of CX to Blerot’s cell on the opposite side of the castle. Along the way, her presence allowed them to avoid an unpleasant encounter (Hubert Malevol the Huntsman) and to largely skip past a strange encounter with Frederic Malevol in which Pete felt something unnatural akin to the shiver customary to an overstrong need to pee. Then, bored with them but happy to plan a second rendezvouz with Bentley (due to a very positive reaction roll + flirting) during his next visit, she gave them a very general indication of the nearest exits. (Not really more than what they already knew.) She told Bentley to wait for her in the Rose Garden in the basement or to speak with her portrait in the lounge near the ballroom.

They met Blerot and were uninterested in his pleas and offers due to disgust with his limb-chopping habit. They promised to report his situation to Tours-en-Savoy authorities, which pushed him to despair.

They then sought to exit as directly and quickly as they could, ignoring all temptation of interesting object and room, entertaining no distraction until they entered the courtyard.

Along the way, they passed through a neat, clean kitchen that transformed into a place of strange decay and large mushrooms which caused a hired hand whose name they didn’t ask about to pass out as the rest of the party un-stuck the door and escaped. They pulled him through the door and revived him.

Bentley climbed to the king statue and reached for the orb the king held. The king threw it at him, and he caught it, causing him to gain a level. It’s VERY HEAVY.

Then they left.


I didn’t make Morella especially interesting. I was too busy describing all the rooms wandered through. I probably should have acted on her motivations constantly, possibly resulting in a deviation from the intended destination.

I always have regrets about the values I assign to treasure like silk gloves, a silk bag, or mahogany shelves. I want a consistent procedure for doing this.

Castle Xyntillan Session 1

Unnamed thief (1) Unnamed fighter (1) Marthe (Magic User 1)

8

  • Blerot the woodsman swore to avenge his murdered love who disppeared the in castle. He never returned.
  • Wearing red keeps the Red Spectre away… for a while.
  • A medal
  • 6 portraits of Malevols from the portrait hall near the Grand Entrance.
  • Scouted 3 rooms

[We started in media res at the entrance they chose: the Grand Entrance]

The party (a magic user, thief, and fighter with no retainers) circled the statues, then went into the castle.

James the Butler wept and then offered them directions or to inform the lord that they’ve arrived. 

They claimed to need guidance to the lord’s chambers because they’re police investigating the woodsman’s wife’s kidnapping or murder.

The butler did not like this. He pointed out that his lord was also their lord and that he’d need to consult with him first. They continued to insist that they held authority and his irritation grew.

The magic user cast charm person with a scroll. (She opted for 3d6 gold instead of random equipment so she could scribe one scroll prior to the session.) It failed. James called out, “There are hostile guests!”

Headless footmen arrived, were dubious (after a reaction roll), asked questions to verify why the PCs were there, and were satisfied by revised description given of official police business. They scoffed at the butler (after a reaction roll.) They guided the party around the corner to the stairs and pointed them in the right direction when they asked for guidance toward the Lord’s chambers.

They looked at each Malevol family portrait and looked behind them for hidden stuff. The flying arrow from the portrait of the huntsman missed the fighter (who was wearing plate armor.)

They immediately felt suspicious of the dragon statue at the landing and of the feast. They prepared to grab the silverware and run. They checked the silverware, and it disintegrated. Disappointing.

They excitedly smashed the statue with hammers and opened the coffin within. The thief hid to prepare to backstab whatever might be inside. The fighter waited over the coffin as the thief raised the lid from back to prepare to backstab.

Marcel the Malnourished was inside. He begged for a crust of bread. Marcel fought them a bit. Round 1: They missed. He missed. Round 2: He missed. They hit hard but he didn’t seem to notice. Round 3: They recognized Marcel as possibly the fellow they’d tried to give bread to in the painting. One of them grabbed food from the table to give him but it turned to ash. Expecting this to be the case, the fighter had a ration ready and put it to the skeleton’s mouth. Marcel was grateful and sat down to eat at the table. (20xp. “All monsters defeated by the party (i.e. slain, outsmarted, captured, scared away, etc.) grant XP based on how powerful they are.")

They searched the coffin and found only a medal worth 1gp, which they took.

[The players now needed to leave my house.]

They hurried downstairs to the portraits, grabbed 6 of them, and left.


  • I pre-generated their characters (using this fantastic thing that exports a superb character sheet at the end) and gave them random equipment using the tables in Carcass Crawler 2.

  • I determined who would be encountered before the game started and read each entry. I also did encounter rolls and wrote when encounters would occur on the Old School Essentials Time Tracker.

  • I read ahead (and missed the stair problem.)

  • I read 12 of the very helpful Vague Countries sessions.

The players were my wife and a couple. (Emily, Katie, and Sam.) The couple had never played a TTRPG before. No one named their character.

They brought their two kids to hang out with my two kids. All the kids are 6 or under. This means many interruptions as people leave the table to communicate with, feed, or comfort their children. The kids played together fantastically, yet we still had to prevent them from accidentally hurting each other, and there were two self-injuries anyway. I think we spent about 2.5 hours of real time and got about 2 hours of actual gaming out of it, which is surprisingly good.

I spent a few minutes trying to understand the stairs that SEEMED to be in E3. I couldn’t tell if they were coming from e20 or e3. The first step appears to be right at the door of e20, which doesn’t make sense. I eventually decided that they were just outside of that door, in e3. This was incorrect, but at least I guessed the right room! They are in e3.

Marcel the Malnourished is skinny in his portrait, but his actual undead skeleton is described as having “a fat bulk.” That was confusing to me. I couldn’t figure out how to describe a fat skeleton, so I didn’t try. I should have tried. His bulk was meant to convey his unusually high HP, I think.

Whoops. I should have told the players that their characters understand that people don’t want to buy magic things because they’re just too weird and ooky. They also don’t count for XP. Oh well. We were out of time anyway.

Not much happened. They only played for 8 turns. I did everything I could think of to speed up the game except skip mapping. I should have skipped mapping.

I suspect they won’t play again. But maybe?

1d6 Newbie RPG Takeaway
1-3 Momentary Mild Exhilaration
4-6 Ennui and Permanent Aversion