Technical Issues Abound

Last nights Reign of Winter game was meant to be the first “On Air” event that I had hosted and posted to YouTube after the game.  Unfortunately it appears that through a slew of technical issues means that it has not happened.  This is unfortunate but hopefully we will have everything ironed out by next week.

When the time came around to start the hangout the promised “Start Broadcast” button did not mystically appear on my event.  My phone received a loud alert that it was time to start but my computer could not even see this.  It took me ten minutes to decide to create another hangout and put it “On Air”.  At this point it told me that my YouTube account was not upgraded to accept longer than 15 minutes and got me to fix this problem.  I am assuming that this was the problem initially and I am hoping that those permissions now sorted mean that we will be “On Air” next week.  Though I am still uncertain as to why the “On Air” hangout did not appear after the end of the game last night.

Almost the only thing that worked correctly was roll20!

The other technical issues that occurred last night was with one of my players sound and video.  I sit in a room with one of the other players and he spent a good half hour before the hangout trying to get his headset to work at the same time as his webcam.  By the time that the game started the only way anyone could hear him was through my microphone and he had to continue to play with it for a further ten or fifteen minutes before he had both working.  And then a few clicks of his mouse later nothing was working so he had to have no video and I had to move closer to him so other players could hear him through my microphone.

And just if you think that was not enough, we went through a power outage which of course shut down our modem just as we were getting into game.  Then one of the other players computers had a meltdown and he was unable to join for the rest of the game.  Bugs, bugs, bugs!  However, roll20 performed like a trooper while we were gaming and we managed to cover a lot of ground when we finally got into running the game!  So lets move on to what happened.

There was some discussion at the start of the game that the party should turn back as there were wounded and the mages were out of spells.  The paladin and the alchemist banded together though and suggested camping out in the snow, which was a risky situation but the accompanying Survival and Heal rolls saw the party set for the night.

Unfortunately, early in the night an uninvited visitor alighted into the camp, completely making it past the watchful eyes of the fighter and the paladin who sat by the campfire on watch (the mages had blackened the flames of the fire with prestidigitation to avoid unwanted attention).  The fighter and the paladin knew nothing was happening until they heard a noise amongst the alchemist’s bags.  The fighter (a Dwarf) then spotted a raven with one of the alchemist’s flasks in its talons and the paladin moved forward to shoo it away.  The raven turned to face them and told them to “Bugger off!”  which took them a little by surprise.  The paladin took a swing and the bird took off flask in talon.  The fighter hurled a dagger and collected the bird who in frustration turned and swore at the Dwarf cursing her with ill fortune.  Luckily the paladin then hit the bird with a bolt and it dropped the flask and flew off into the darkness.

After destroying the elementals on the river

The next morning they headed down to the river and found a snowman.  Luckily the mages detected there were a couple of magical effects on them, one an illusion and the other an evocation.  They wisely avoided it and crossed a little further to the South.  On the way across the frozen river they were attacked by two ice elemental spirits.  With a handy Grease and Enlarge Person spell the spirits were dealt with efficiently and the party managed to cross the river and find a dead farmer from Heldren who had fallen foul of the elementals in the river.

The campsite dealt with…

Soon after crossing the river the group heard arguing in the distance and snuck along the trail until they came across three bandits arguing how they were going to split up some treasure from a successful raid a few days ago.  The party had some ghost lights appear in the distance to distract them from their own presence and then took the group down easily in a round with bows, crossbows, force bolts and a charge from an eager Dwarven fighter.

Following the trail before them the players climbed up a small trail that lead up a steep hill and they finally came to the site of the rangers High Sentinel Lodge.  The Paladin was keen to take the direct approach and charge the front doors.  Travelling with a fighter and two mages (the alchemist unfortunately was the player whose computer had a meltdown) I thought there was no chance of this plan getting up and was alittle gobsmacked when everyone agreed!  The combat mage spotted a trip wire just in the knick of time that would have set off a crossbow trap and alerted the bandit residents of the ranger lodge to their presence.  The group moved carefully up to the door and the Paladin and the Fighter tried to smash through the door.

With a resounding thud the doors remained unopened and the party realised they had just alerted everyone to their presence.  The Fighter attempted simply to open the doors to find that they were locked.  The combat mage used an open/close spell to swing open one of the windows and sent Jake her Raven familiar in to get some kind of empathic sense back from the familiar as to what was present.  She found that there were five bandits mobilising for attack.  Her other elven mage companion stepped back and shot one of the bandits with a longbow taking him down.  The paladin again tried to kick the door open failing again on his check (they were two sturdy oak doors).  The bandit closest to the door unlocked it and swung it open.  Arrows shot out and around from three of the bandits but none of them found their target.

The state of play on roll20 last night at the end of play. The players were victorious!

The next round saw some more ranged combat from the elven mages who managed to collectively take down another bandit and the Paladin rushed in using his two handed hammer to take out a third opponent.  The Dwarven fighter managed to clip one of the others but next round had the Dwarf and the elves take out one of the bandits and the Paladin quickly dealt with the final one who was rushing to get up the stairs.

That unfortunately was where we had to end it.  The party had come crashing into the building and are looking at the scene I have displayed here.  There is a balcony above with a door exiting and a door exiting below.  The room stretches further back and they know they have not seen the last of the bandits just yet.  What will happen next week?  Who knows but it will be fun finding out!