Play Report #3 | Downtime & XP
Running my dungeon23 project using ERRANT continues to be a smash hit!
The roster of PCs so far:
- Carné
- Halfling Deviant | Proficiencies Anatomy + Stealth
- pronouns Yes/Chef
- Carmen from The Bear, ready to cook monsters and chain smoke
- Bog the Toad
- Frog-folk Violent
- Topsis
- Jellyfish-folk Zealot of a Sea God
- As to the custom nature of the Zealot, we came to an agreement that her Blessings were a) she can take half the damage of an nearby attack and b) a pool of 2D6 Healing Dice. They leaves visible scars since she's literally a jellyfish!
- Humphrey
- 6'3' Humpty-Dumpty Egg-folk Violent
- Died at the beginning of a session from an Escape the Dungeon roll, and I took pity on the player allowing him to continue as a shell-less egg, basically becoming an ooze
- New goal: either become basically a gelatinous cube, or get baked into something
- Filroy the Bold
- Gnome Occult | Snake-Oil Salesman
- The snake oil is piss. Getting jug of genuine wolf piss instantly created character and profession, piss salesman.
- Boots
- Monkey Deviant | Proficiencies Sleight of Hand + Stealth
- From the exploration-themed cartoon. Killed the fox bandit, creating a space-time rift into the 3rd dimension for his transgression.
- Recall #1
- Defective Wooden Chair Violent
- "Can I be a transformer, but wood, who failed at being a chair?" Yes, yes you can, Jim!
- Created by the sorcerers of Myr Regath, so we've got at least 1 PC with a tie to the dungeon in terms of language/mythology. Yay!
So what happened last time?
We had three players, Filroy, Boots & Bog. In one of the first rooms of the dungeon is a giant hole, which they (for the second time) decided to scale down via rope. In that deeper part of the dungeon is a tiled roof, a remnant of the ancient city's outer wall. In a previous session they had skirmished with the zombie guards patrolling it, now returning to plumb its depths.
They get a random encounter and witness 6 bandits fleeing from another fight, having a tense conversation. Filroy's player really considers blowing them up with his Malfesience, but the other players tell him to save their resources. As the bandits continue away, the players get a good look at what's chasing them: a giant bear with eight legs and eight eyes.
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| Luis-Salas on DeviantArt |
They had encountered this in the very first session, since the well in the starting room of the dungeon descends right into its lair. They have found the other "primary" entrance to its cave, opposite the roof of the city gate, extinguishing their torches to remain hidden. The monster huffs, returns to its cave, and they light some more torches.
They hear banjo music and find a wandering dark elf merchant chilling to the side. They make friends with Nazir Bae-Nurden - even as he's offputting and Clearly Suspicious - but don't have enough money right now to trade. They continue into the depths of the wall, finding a long hallway guarded by an armored mini-boss called The Lion of Myr. A powerful zombie knight with access to Grit, Smite and a form of Parry.
They tasted their second real brush with death: getting their attacks parried and blocked was harrowing, and when they finally felled the thing it kept going from its zombified brain. For their trouble they get a sick-looking metal helmet in the shape of a lion's head.
They explore the nearby rooms, finding a key to progress, coming to a dining hall with 15 zombies eating at its table. I rolled Reaction (partially since there were only 3 players) and I got an 8, so I had them be neutral and continue eating. The players were vary wary to just walk in, even considering the fight when they noticed the zombies were stuck eating some gold-plated cutlery.
In the end, cooler heads prevailed, and after scouting the next few rooms, they decided on a hasty retreat with their loot run through one more Downtime Turn.
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| More art by DiselShot |
Filroy the Bold spends his money on infrastructure and hovel investments, successfully perpetrating the cycle of poverty based violence and becoming Knell's first slumlord. That's the well-thought-out fantasy economy working as intended, folks!
Now that players have acquired some real wealth, they're more willing to engage in conspicuous consumption. Boots is sinking money into a sick-ass treehouse, while Filroy and Bog are essentially expanding business networks with their downtime.
Their tendency to want to create businesses is interesting. They've faced such danger in their handful f dungeon-delves that they're desperate for other sources of income, but fate has made them Errants and it will keep them delving down. So rather than punish them for their choices, I've been toying with the idea of Errant's Downtime activities resulting in XP.
Levels in the game are specifically Renown. Your popularity/fame goes up, you're all around more powerful. Downtime Actions are meant to result in concrete bonuses to your character. XP is technically a concrete bonus! Filroy and Bog have both bent their efforts towards expanding a network, which on 1 success has netted them some XP.
I plan to gate this by making the clock longer each time. There'll be a sufficient chunk of XP for their time and effort, but the next time "building their network" will take 3 successes, 5 after that, then 7. Understanding that level is not just power but social power (i.e. fame) is beginning to sink in.
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| Cocky Man by DieselShot |
During the session I started to think that I might need to develop some new language to distinguish between conspicuous consumption versus Downtime Activities. Mechanically there are very clear differences, and you have the option every turn to do both (which I think is very fun and useful!) but I've had a few situations with the newest player(s) saying "I wanna work on X". No that's your consumption, what else? And that leads to confusion, because it almost sounds like I'm saying you can't work on X, when in fact you can (and should!) do both...
This may also be something that system mastery will solve, so I'll give it more time before I start mucking around with power thesaurus (my most faithful soldier in ttrpg design...).
Bog engages in the first animal training, trying (with a setback) to train a dragonfly. I really like this idea, as a dragonfly can act as a kind of scout for the party without providing too much detail (one blink for safe, two for danger?). And after a google search dragonflies have an approximate 6 month lifespan, so there's a reasonable clock on the dragonfly's use before another one needs to be trained. Running the crawl for almost 2 months IRL, we've already hit 5 or 6 months (each downtime turn / 1 month) of in-game time, so that should be useful without being overpowered.
Exciting! I like the idea that the frogfolk character is starting to raise and train dragonflies, and his descendants may even get to serve future PCs as a kind of living drones!
We closed with Kaleb asking about multiple characters, which is very important. Our roster is beginning to expand even beyond the number of players. Closing the session with him rolling 4D4 down the line was really fun, even as we left off before getting any further.
Takeaways:
- They're beginning to wrap their heads around downtime and wasting, getting more creative now that they see the bounds of their creativity.
- Emergent storytelling is working. Next time they have tentative plans to try and tackle the spider-bear, which they named 'Winnie' this session. That'll be a really fun mini-boss :^)
- I put enough treasure into the first level to completely waste from Renown 1 to 2. With all the costs of supplies, items and investments, perhaps it should be way more? Time will tell on the treasure economy.
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