I have been struggling a little with my gaming over the past few weeks. I have had some great games on a whole but overall I think about gaming and I feel I am in a little bit of a rut and I need to change things up a bit. Some of this frustration has come from my in-person game and that it seems to be floating along, largely due to my own fault. I needed to do something about this to reinvigorate myself for my games, especially as I head into another semester of Uni study and I will need the release.
When I started working on the high level characters again the natural point to pick up from was to have them find a way to destroy the skull of Ydersius that the group had inherited at the end of the Serpent Skull adventure path. At the time I had a few ideas but as we began to play it I realised that it was not the adventure I wanted to run. It was like the unofficial 7th module and although I allowed the players a lot of freedom and came up with some great hooks I could see some of the players becoming disengaged with the game as they felt they were still being lead by the nose module style.
So, last night I decided that it was time to do a shake-up and a play test. I decided that the adventure to destroy Ydersius’ skull would come to an end in the game last night and it did in a mythic battle that utilised some of the material I have been working on in the blog to do with the temple of time. The players had news that to find the hammer of Torag (I invented a plot hook where Torag’s first hammer had been stolen and the church suppressed the information) was delivered to a mountain top at a precise time, date and moon phase. The players arrived there and were met by a Clockwork Goliath. This threw the players a bit especially when he recognised them as the “God killers” and that they made his master nervous. He asked their purpose and went away.
On returning he advised his master has said that he would talk to them if they could pass a test. The top of the mountain had transformed into a massive clock dial and the players were asked to walk along the minute hand until they were at the centre of the clock. when they did I hit them with a massive, mythical battle. The following list of foes form from the hands of the clock (which are made from clockwork gears and the like) and as they did the clock sprang into motion. The players had one minute to win this battle (10 rounds of combat) and they took to the task with relish.
- 1 Clockwork Goliath
- 3 Clockwork Dragons
- 4 Clockwork Leviathans
- 20 Clockwork Mages
- 40 Clockwork Soldiers
I will let the pictures tell most of this story…
Round 1 Setup
 |
| The long shot |
 |
| The hour hand |
 |
| The minute hand |
 |
| The central section |
 |
| Close up of our players in the beginning |
The players soon learned (from the sorcerer casting chain lightning) that these blighters are vulnerable to electricity. The sorcerer (Cisco) rid the table of all of the clockwork mages before they were even active as well as one of the Leviathans too. The monk attacked the Goliath, the alchemist breathed dragon electricity across some soldiers and the Cavalier cleared a bit of the central area. The clockwork Goliath caused some serious damage to the Monk, the Leviathan’s put some breath weapon hurt on the central portion as did the clockwork dragons before moving to attack.
Round 2
 |
| Seleca takes on a Dragon |
 |
| A Dragon and the Leviathan’s crowd Cisco |
 |
| Hank finds himself in the thick of things with Creepy (Seleca’s cohort) |
 |
| He mirror dodges into trouble |
 |
| Kaleb gets set for a pounding |
Second round saw Cisco take out the remainder of the Leviathans and begin to clean up some of the soldiers. Kaleb mirror dodged away from the Goliath and went in search of healing and Seleca destroyed her Dragon. The Goliath did some damage and the Dragons that remained were doing their fair share of hurt on the group.
The final rounds 3-5
 |
| The Goliath blew up and mainly damaged his own crew 🙁 |
 |
| The dragons proved to be the longest stayers in the battle. |
With massive amounts of electrical spells and abilities the group managed to nearly exhaust themselves of mythic power but also rid themselves of the clockwork menace. The dragons and the Goliath proved the most difficult but the players came through in a mythic battle. This battle gave me a great level of enjoyment and managed to reinvigorate me, drag me out of the negative place I had been in.
The players are mythic and I allowed them to express that in a fight the likes of they had never seen. Masses of enemies that with the concentrated usage of mythic surges they cut through like a hot knife through butter! The players then met with my reclusive god of time and received the hammer that they needed to destroy the skull with! At the end of the night they shattered the skull and earned the rightful title of god slayers.
Next week we will have a night of board games to refresh me and the players as we slip back into piracy in a fortnights time. Keep rolling!
