Date: Lapin 18th
Weather: Overcast
Party:
Aria (Priest / Duelist)
Cedar (Warrior / Beastmaster)
Celica (Necromancer / Skinshifter)
Laguna (Elementalist / Healer)
Mars (Healer / Thought Noble)
Cohorts:
Jenny
Raymond (Axebeak)
Rex (Wolf)
Zord (Zard)
Summary:
After a bit of time away from the party, Aria comes into possession of a deed to a mansion in the town of Tarryfield. All the party had to do was exorcise the spirits within and it was theirs. Of course, things rarely work out that way.
The party arrives at the mansion, starting to poke around. One discovers a ghostly apparition playing piano, and after some questioning they feel a bit more at ease... Until three people come running through the front door, with a giant chasing after them.
Helmut Halfsword, Apocalypse Ann, and Lisbet Grund, at your service.
The party is confused, until the giant catches up. After learning that the adventurers stole the goose of this giant named Bonebreaker Tom, they set out to try and find the thieves before this giant brings the roof they just got down on their heads! After splitting up to search through a few rooms, Aria finds a small locked chest underneath a bed, Laguna and Celica get ideas to fashion dummies to distract the giant, and Cedar goes off searching the upstairs. Aria eventually opens the door to where two adventurers, Apocalypse Ann and Lisbet Grund. Celica catches up, and while Lisbet tries to explain the situation the goose Ann was holding bites her and runs off.
What follows is a wild goose chase.
 |
| Honk. |
The party is split once more attempting to locate this goose. Cedar even tries to communicate with it, but is told by the goose to, in no uncertain terms, "Feck off." Aria, distrustful of the two adventurers, brings them to the main hall by sword-point, about ready to push the two out into the giant's mercy. Cedar and Celica find the last adventurer, Helmut Halfsword, but they're stopped by a death knight rising from its tomb. A fight ensues, but they're forced to run as the knight cackles and begins raising more skeletons to fight for it.
Amidst the chaos, Lisbet and Ann go missing. So does the goose. The party forces a whimpering Helmut to help them look for the other two, but Helmut ends up meeting the business end of a rather angry-looking owlbear.
The party decides to take their chances with the giant.
Incredibly enough, with some choice poisons, they actually succeed, felling Bonebreaker Tom. Amidst the chaos, Ann escapes with the goose and kills Lisbet, but the party, weary, is glad they only have to deal with an exorcism now.
Treasure:
-A golden egg worth 300 sp
-Set of traveler's clothing
-Grappling hook
-4x bombs (3d6 damage in 10 foot radius)
-A red alchemy book
-Xanthippos' Incontrovertible Proof of Diagonal Commesurability
-A pigeon nest with three chicks
-Fist-sized ruby worth 2000 sp
-A magical blade with "Patricia" etched into it
-A stolen church bell
Rumors:
-Odd cultists are gathering in the nearby forest
-A hole has opened up in a large oak tree, with a lot of strange things within
-There's a strange bottle being sold with a sandy coastal beach trapped inside
Crafting:
-Quick-Draw Mechanism for Aria's Sword (Progress: 4/14)
-Hurlant Repair (Progress: 5/7)
Experience:
Aria (lv 3, 8 xp)
Cedar (lv 4, 13 xp)
Celica (lv 3, 7 xp)
Cloud Nine (lv 3, 6 xp)
Firion (lv 2, 4 xp)
Laguna (lv 3, 9 xp)
Mars (lv 2, 3 xp)
Mia (lv 1, 2 xp)
Nanashi (lv 1, 1 xp)
My Thoughts: This was a chaotic session. The party split multiple times, with lots of different actions being taken and lots more details being forgotten. The time limit Bonebreaker Tom inflicts pressed the players into urgency, so they didn't really seem to have much interest in checking out any of the fun things the mansion could offer. WWN PCs definitely have a higher power level than straight B/X PCs, as they managed to shred the giant in two rounds.
The adventure itself, The Waking of Willowby Hall, was fairly fun to run, though I kept getting mixed up on details such as when and where the giant would move when he activates. I feel the PDF would have benefited greatly from bookmarks, though the room numbers being page numbers and the spacious layout helped quite a bit with "at a glance" information. I'd be confident in running this module with no prior reading done at all.
With my attention split three ways and a lot of different things going on, it was hard to have the NPCs assert their own agency, and thus they were threatened to submission in short order. Additionally, the PCs even tried to negotiate with the giant, though that didn't go quite as well. The goose was a lot of fun to roleplay, and I used her to hint at various things the PCs could also do (going down chimneys, grabbing one of the black candles, poking at secret passageways, etc). Were the giant not their greatest concern at the moment, the hall would have provided a lot of fun puzzle-solving, and I believe I will be using it in a follow-up session as well!
Additionally, I felt like some of the magic items seemed a little bland. I spiced up the staff Apocalypse Ann carries, if you'd like to use it for your own WWN game:
Apocalypse Staff. As a Main and Move action, charge the staff by taking a minimum of 3 System Strain. It then fires a high-impact blast to any point in sight within 60', exploding in a 20' sphere of hellfire. This destructive force deals 1d6 damage per system strain committed (Evasion save for half), and can even punch through structures lesser than solid stone. As a consequence, this also knocks the user back an amount of feet equal to the damage dealt, requiring an Evasion save to avoid being knocked prone by the blast (and taking the resultant fall damage). For battlemap grids, round up to the nearest 5 feet.
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