Jason recaps the events from Roll For Combat: The Fall of Plaguestone, Episode 08: Murderous Disco Dancing.

This week’s theme on Roll For Combat is Making Friends With The Dice Gods, as we face a pair of fights that could’ve been difficult but became easy because of fortunate rolls of the dice.

First, let’s talk about the (emotionally manipulative) fight with the dogs. This is a fight that feels like it could’ve been a disaster – four enemies that have a pack attack (mentioned by Steve but never seen), and a slippery section of the floor right in the entrance to create an added challenge. If you believe in quantum realities, there’s an alternate universe where we played Slip-N-Slide while the dogs chewed us to pieces.

But right out of the gate, Cade gets two hits at close to max damage, and now it’s two dogs instead of four. Oops. From there, the fight never gets better for the pups. None of the party members fail the save on the “Slippery When Wet” trap, Prue gets to break out her angry face, and we make astonishingly easy work of the remaining dogs. Steve can throw all the guilt trips he wants at us, but I know he’s enough of a Stephen King fan to be familiar with Cujo. “#SorryNotSorry”, as the Young People say.

There are crates to loot scattered throughout the room, but with the possibility that the dogs raised the alarm and Hallod could be waiting nearby, we decide to not to waste time searching the room and continue the pursuit. Further exploration reveals that this is definitely Hallod’s base of operations, but so far, Hallod himself is nowhere to be seen.

The exploration is not fruitless, though. First, we find a lockbox that both contains a crap-ton of money and fleshes out the details of the business between Bort and Hallod a little further. We also find a bottle containing something nasty and part of a larger shipment. Since we don’t have anyone with Alchemy skills, it’s hard to say EXACTLY what it’s being used for, but to hazard a layman’s guess, maybe it’s what’s being used to make all the local animals crazy and rabid. For the moment, file it away as a mystery to sort out after we catch up to Hallod.

The main hideout is abandoned – the only other “clue” is discarded vials with the residue of a silvery substance: not the nasty substance, and not the poison used on Bort. Again, without someone with Mad Alchemy Skillz™, we can’t really sort out what it is, but to again speculate: since it’s part of his “normal” trash and there are quite a few of them, maybe some sort of consumable he uses in his work… healing potion, buffs, something like that?

The other thing I’d like to point out: we finally learned from our mistakes and found a trap without setting it off! After a face-full of crossbow bolt and a collapsed roof, we ducked the poisoned dart mechanism on the lockbox. See? You CAN teach an old dog new tricks.

After clearing out the main hideout, the pursuit continues. After a long passage, we arrive at our second unintentionally easy fight of the session. (Well, maybe not so much if you’re Celes, but for the rest of us…) ELECTRO-SNAKE! We didn’t get to see a lot of this guy, but it seemed like a pretty cool concept from what little we got to see of it.

Once again, it’s Cade getting us out to a strong start with multiple doses of sneak attack damage. (Not sure how you sneak up on a snake in a pool of water, but we’ll table that for another time.) This time, the dice rolls also help us on defense: the creature actually lands a breath weapon attack, which could’ve been devastating (2d10!), but instead, it does close to minimum damage. (Steve was joking about using a Villain Point. I swear.)

The only time things briefly take a turn for the worse is when Celes enters the room unawares and runs headlong into one of the few creatures in the game with attacks of opportunity. Not only that, but the snake lands a crit, which is enough to one-shot her. If this had happened earlier in the fight, it might have been more of a momentum swing; unfortunately for the snake, Brixley’s next hit is enough to put it down anyway, and Celes’ dying status becomes a moot point.

(As an aside: credit to Vanessa for roleplaying that fairly. It would’ve been easy to just roll into the room, meta-game the snake’s presence, and move around it. Or maybe she just got overconfident that it DIDN’T have an attack of opportunity available.)

After the fight, we get to play around with the new dynamic of Lay On Hands a little bit. As mentioned in a previous Talking, Lay On Hands now run off focus points, which regenerate on a 10-minute rest. So we basically took four 10-minute rests and fully healed up. I’m still getting used to that… it still feels a little cheap around the edges… but can’t argue with the results.

The chase resumes. We follow another long stretch of boring passage, after which we arrive at the end of the chase, both physically (exiting the cave and getting outdoors again) and in terms of finding Hallod. Something tells me this ISN’T going to be the third easy fight of the day, but that’s where we bring the curtain down for today, so we’ll find out next week. We’ll see you back here for that next Tuesday, but in the meantime, feel free to drop by Discord and let us know your thoughts on the show. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time.

Jason recaps the events from Roll For Combat: The Fall of Plaguestone, Episode 07: Traps R Us.

It’s time to settle this once and for all.

It’s “Phinick” the goblin. As in “a possible distant relative of the Phillie Phanatic”.

We – ALL of us; I want to be clear I’m not just busting Steve’s chops here – have been going back and forth for three or four episodes now between “Finnick” and Pinnick”, and it’s been giving me a low-grade migraine when writing these wrap-ups. So I can only imagine how you listeners might feel about it. I thought about just wildcarding it as “*innick” or using that symbol Prince used to use, but I finally gave in and threw an impromptu strike – told Steve I wouldn’t write another word until he told me the correct spelling. You’re welcome.

So we begin this episode with a rollicking chase through the streets of Plaguestone, as we spy PHINICK trying to sneak away with some of our hard-fought BBQ. You can kill Bort… hardly knew the guy… but do NOT abscond with my swine! Personally, I thought Steve should’ve ditched the usual fantasy-themed score and pumped in some funky Starsky and Hutch-inspired 70s wah-wah guitar, but that’s just me.

And after all the low-grade humiliations Brixley has suffered up to this point in the adventure (falling mud, getting punched during bar fights, bees), it turns out this is one thing Brixley is built for – he’s a jock at heart. STR 16, DEX and CON 14… this is right in his wheelhouse (helped by some timely rolls, but still). I lucked out insofar as at no point in the chase did Brixley have to read street signs (INT) to continue the chase.

To be fair, it’s Short People Parkour, as Cade also handles the task with aplomb, while Prue and Celes have their share of struggles. Celes was probably to be expected, but I would’ve thought Prue would have the stats and skills to hang in there with us. One lively chase later, we have our leading suspect in custody… except that he’s less of a suspect and more of a bread-crumb. It turns out Hallod was the one who put Phinick up to poisoning Bort, by telling him it was just a practical joke.

Thanks to Phinick’s confession and the documents we found at Bort’s cabin, the picture starts to come into clearer focus. Hallod and Bort were doing side deals no one knew about for weird alchemical goods, and either the deal went bad or Hallod wanted to make sure to leave no witnesses behind (that part’s still a little fuzzy). Cop shows on TV always throw out “means, motive, opportunity” as a trope. We’ve got means and opportunity nailed, and as far as motive, it’s more a question of picking which one rather than not having one at all. And we even have a lead on where to find Hallod, thanks to a now-cooperative Phinick. Abandoned shack at the edge of town. So we’d better hurry up and get after him before he finds out we’re on to him.

Aside: I find the “no, not THAT abandoned shack, the OTHER abandoned shack” dynamic amusing. We’re up to like 3 or 4 different quests that involve visiting abandoned properties. Sir Kent’s rumors about undead people. The question of Celes potentially being related to the mayor. Now, finding Hallod’s hideout. “Welcome to Plaguestone: Abandoned Shack Capital of the Inner Sea.”

The second half of this episode is broadly summed up as “What’s the point of having a rogue in your party if you’re not going to use him?” as we manage to set off not one but two different traps. Now, you can probably excuse the first one just based on stereotypes: Hallod has basically been described as a walking side of beef, which is not the physical archetype for a rogue. But you’d think we would’ve taken a bit more caution after the first trap got us. And you would be wrong. Gloriously wrong.

First, after doing a fairly cautious reconnoiter of the house, Prue kicks in a door – a very Prue thing to do – and gets a faceful of crossbow bolt for her troubles. In fairness, Cade did find the (safe) way to get in, but it’s a few seconds too late to help Prue. And for all that trouble, the whole place looks like a bit of a dead-end. Until… footprints leading away in a different direction.

We follow the footprints which lead to the beginnings of a smuggler’s hideout, where we shortly encounter trap #2. This time, it’s Brixley trying to be bold and take the lead, and I end up bringing part of the passage down on our heads because I miss a tripwire. Meanwhile, Cade… I dunno… snacking on beef jerky or something? Whatever halflings do in their spare time.

Now, it’s possible this was all karmic punishment for inflicting my Bee Gees impression on all of you, and if that’s what happened… OK, that’s totally fair. I’ve been trying to behave myself and limit my random outbursts of pop culture minutiae, but that one just got away from me. I totally blame Steve for using the phrase “strut your stuff” – that Travolta strut from the opening of Saturday Night Fever popped into my head… and then right on out of my mouth. I REGRET NOTHING. (OK, I regret missing the trap, no on everything else.)

We shortly get the passage cleared again, and resume our pursuit of Hallod. Eventually, we come out of the passage into a safer and more developed portion of the Bad-Guy Lair. A ladder going down to a lower level of the complex. We descend the ladder (having FINALLY learned our lesson, Cade goes first), find and open a door… and it’s time to defend ourselves against angry dogs. FANNNNTASTIC place for a cliffhanger.

Will the party survive the dogfight (pun fully intended)? Will they bring Hallod to justice? Will they reach Level 2? Come back next week and join us as we explore more of the mysteries of Plaguestone. In the meantime, feel free to drop by our Discord channel or other social media and let us know what you think of the show. Thanks again for listening, and we’ll see you next week!

Jason recaps the events from Roll For Combat: The Fall of Plaguestone, Episode 06: Swine Dining.

It’s been a hectic few episodes in the town of Plaguestone – three combat encounters and a fourth that could’ve blown up if Cade hadn’t landed his stealth rolls – so this week we slow it down a little. In fact, we slow it WAAAAAY down, spending half the episode just socializing and relaxing with a good meal. We do still manage to fit in a little movement on the mystery of Bort’s murder, but it’s good to pause and catch our collective breath. Right until the cliffhanger at the end, of course.

It dawns on me: did we roll dice at all this episode? Maybe a Perception roll at Bort’s cabin, but that’s about it, I think.

Our first “duty” of the night was celebrating our victory and restoring a little bit of confidence in the kitchen staff of the Feedmill, courtesy of a good old-fashioned pig roast. Since we found the empty poison vial and there’s no sign of Pinnick skulking about, there are some pretty broad signals that Bort’s murder was a one-time thing. I don’t think we have to worry about any further danger on that front, so I think this is more about generating some goodwill amongst the townspeople. (But you’ll notice I still let Prue take the first bite. Just sayin’.)

During dinner, we actually do a little more (re-)introduction of the team, since if you want to get technical we never really formally got to know each other. Things always seemed to come up, whether it was wolves, bar fights, murder. You know… the usual! I have to admit (out-of-character) that I didn’t really get the memo about tying my backstory into the Whispering Tyrant like the others did. I feel like it’s OK though because I kind of planned on Brixley being a little little bit sheltered and naïve – think of him as “the cop fresh out of the academy”. Having been on the front lines at Lastwall and seen death up close would’ve undermined that a little bit anyway.

Though I’m chuckling a little bit at the general tone – you’ve got three people who’ve Seen Some Serious Shit, and then there’s Brixley bouncing around like a doofus. The Burt Ward Robin of Second Edition. “Aw shucks, fellas! This Whispering Tyrant sounds like a real piece of work!”

The next, unexpectedly light-hearted interlude was watching Celes get all flustered dealing with the idea that the mayor thinks they’re related. As a roleplaying thing, Brixley generally likes Celes and has built some initial rapport with her, but his mischievous side can tell this is a bit of an awkward situation for her and he wants to see how this all plays out. (Coincidentally, my own motivations as a player.) I have to admit I don’t think they’re REALLY related, but this might be a hook to something else – maybe more general information about why the town is the way it is or something.

(It also dawned on me during this interaction – a couple of episodes after the fact – that this feels like the setup to Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom. Plaguestone has that pedestal in the town square that seems to be missing… a magic rock, perhaps?… and they’ve been having bad luck ever since. WE MUST GO TO PANKOT PALACE!)

Similarly, the drunken soldier – I don’t think we’re supposed to take him literally that the undead are invading Plaguestone. Heck, if it were undead, they probably wouldn’t hide in an abandoned house, they’d probably just start attacking people. If it’s good enough for the local wildlife, after all…. But I do think he saw… something. Maybe Pinnick is holed up there. Or perhaps there are other co-conspirators involved that we haven’t been introduced to yet. It’s still a little hard to believe Phinick is some criminal mastermind.

After dinner, it’s time to get the mystery going again, and that means a trip to Bort’s cabin to look over his paperwork. There’s not a lot to go on here, but we do learn a few things. In addition to his more innocuous contributions to the turnip-based economy, Bort has been running a side business delivering “reagents” to someone in town. Someone with the initial “H”. I mean… that sounds like Hallod to me, even if he himself doesn’t seem like the magic-using type. He certainly fits the bill as a bad and imposing dude who would make a formidable adversary… much moreso than a fairly meek goblin bar-back. So we’re starting to bring the picture into focus… perhaps Hallod and Phinick are working together, and maybe there’s even someone else of a more magical bent involved. And (taken with the dinner-time revelations) maybe some of them are using that abandoned house Sir Kent saw as a base of operations.

And as we leave Bort’s to head home for the night, answers present themselves in the form of our wayward goblin friend. All that we have to do is catch him!

Buuuut… that’ll be an exercise (figuratively and literally) for next time. Heck of a cliffhanger, huh? We’ll see you back here next week when the chase gets underway. While you’re waiting, feel free to drop by our Discord channel or other social media and let us know your thoughts on the show. Until then, thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week.

Jason recaps the events from Roll For Combat: The Fall of Plaguestone, Episode 05: Boars and Bears and Bees! Oh My!

This week’s visit to Plaguestone is brought to you by the letter “B”, apparently.

We return to the investigation of Bort’s murder, with a few decent leads to follow up on. We’ve ruled out the cook, Amora, but there are two people left who handled Bort’s food that night – Phinick the goblin who helped prep the food, and the waitress Trin. It’s also going to be important to check Bort’s body because of the strange floral scent we found in Bort’s bowl.

We start with our first real examination of Bort. We confirm that Bort’s whole body now has the same floral scent that was in the bowl, but initially we strike out on finding anything else. It does dawn on me that we’re not being particularly cautious about this – there’s always a possibility that whatever killed Bort could be communicable, and we’re just sniffing around his orifices like it’s no big deal. It also dawns on me that we haven’t ruled out Bort reanimating as some sort of undead. But for the moment, nothing like that happens, so on to our next clue.

In the barn, things are a little more fruitful, as we find an empty vial with the same floral scent. Since the barn is Finick’s preferred off-hours hangout, that tends to elevate him to the top of the suspect list. Never did trust goblins.

While at the barn we’re approached by the stablehand with a good ol’ fashioned Side Quest! Our horses have fleas so we have to go gather herbs to cure them. And ohbytheway, the bushes we need are guarded by a big nasty (but sleeping) bear. (There’s something almost MMO-ish about this.) We basically decide to handle this as a stealth mission, with Cade sneaking up on the bear, but part of me wonders after the fact if we should’ve eliminated the threat to the townspeople. I mean the next time someone needs rosemary, there’s still a bear out there. But no, we decide to go with the stealth mission. After a few tense rolls, and Cade burning a Hero Point, we successfully get our rosemary. Huzzah!

This is also our first real exposure to Hero Points. Basically, Hero Points are one of those things that used to be a house rule but have been codified in Second Edition. They basically serve as rewards – either for hitting certain progress points in the story, or they can be rewards for good roleplay – but you can only hold up to three at any one time, so there’s no stockpiling 20 or 30 of them. Their two main uses are stabilizing from dying (which we hopefully won’t have to play around with any time soon), or to take take a re-roll. Here Cade takes a re-roll on a stealth roll, and whether it’s actually true or Steve was just humoring us, it saves us from a face full of an angry bear.

With the sidequest out of the way, we now have three main leads left. Trin, Phinick, or visiting Bort’s house and seeing if there are any clues there. To me, Phinick seems like the next most obvious choice, but we don’t actually know where he is at the moment. Bort’s house might be useful, but it’s presumably not going anywhere. So let’s go visit the waitress, Trin. Among other things, she’s reported to have a bruise on her face, and she fled the inn in the immediate aftermath of the bar brawl, so even though the goblin is Suspect One, she’s not totally in the clear.

But before we can talk with her, we have to protect her from being killed by a wild boar. Seriously, between the wolves on the way into town, and now stirges, bees, a bear and this boar, it’s like nature is out to put a foot in this town’s collective ass. This turns out to be a fairly quick fight – the boar hits hard but a four-to-one numbers advantage wins out. To me, Celes was the MVP of this fight, both hitting the boar with her flame attack AND healing Brixley after he took a big hit. Brixley was a mixed bag – he got the eventual kill-stroke, and being able to matador away from the piggie’s charge attack was kinda fun, but he did also take a 15-point thump and was going to have to Lay On Hands until Celes intervened.

Speaking of which, as an aside, I’m very glad that entry-level heals are 1d8+8, given all the 1s we rolled for healing in our Starfinder campaign.

Boar dies. Now it’s time to interrogate Trin, and it becomes quickly obvious she had nothing to do with Bort’s death. She got hit with a flying mug during the fight (hence the bruise) so she got the hell out of Dodge. That might actually make her the most normal person in this town. Furthermore, she hadn’t been back to work yet, so she didn’t even know Bort was dead. Personally I find that a little surprising – you’d think news like that would get around town faster than that – but she does seem genuine in her confusion. So… one more suspect eliminated unless she’s a much better liar than we’re giving her credit for.

By process of elimination (for the moment – there’s still Bort’s house to check), I guess that leaves Phinick the goblin as the center of suspicion. But since we don’t know where he is anyway, we decide to take our slaughtered piggie back to the inn for a celebratory pig roast! A feast fit for kings, and more importantly, not another turnip dish! And as a side benefit, it might get people to start trusting the food at the inn again – not explicitly in our job description, but still a nice thing to do.

We’ll get back on the trail of the killer after we fill our bellies, and that’s a good place to leave it for this week. Hope you’re enjoying the show – feel free to drop by our Discord channel or other social media and let us know what you think. In the meantime, thanks for listening, hope those of you in the US have a nice holiday weekend, and we’ll see you back here next week.

Jason recaps the events from Roll For Combat: The Fall of Plaguestone, Episode 04: Ghost Bee Gone.

It’s a fun week on Roll For Combat as it’s a mostly combat-oriented episode with a pair of encounters. Granted, the whole adventure did kick off with the fight against the wolfpack, but that one was over pretty quickly and was mostly straight melee, except for Celes casting a few spells. This time, between the stirges and the bees, we got to explore a few more situations and got a little deeper into our powers.

Brixley, in particular, got to test out a couple of his champion abilities. The first class feature to get the spotlight is Liberating Step. The short version is basically what I described on the show – if someone within 15 feet gets grappled, I can use a reaction to give them a free chance to break free. It’s actually got a few additional wrinkles that I didn’t cover. It can also confer damage resistance (2 + my level) and/or can let the target take a Step. So, it’s actually a pretty neat and versatile little ability, even if it’s a LITTLE bit situation-dependent.

(As a side note, the Paladin equivalent lets the champion take a free swing in return when an ally takes a hit, and the Redeemer can either nullify damage entirely or confer an enfeeble effect on the enemy.)

The other class ability to make it into play is good ol’ Lay On Hands, the staple of the first-edition class. First, yes, all flavors of Champion get Lay On Hands; it’s not just for Paladins anymore. It’s the same basic concept as in first edition, but with a few new mechanical wrinkles. Within the action economy, it’s just a single action – nice and simple. Next, the damage healed is just a flat 6 points per level – no randomness. (However, if you use it as a damage spell against undead, you still roll for damage.) The bigger change is that the number of uses changes – it used to be a flat number of uses per day (half your level + CHA modifier); now it’s based on the mechanism of focus points, which can be regenerated with a 10-minute rest. Cliff’s Notes version: the first-edition paladin can use it more in a single encounter (especially at higher levels) since you can have no more than three Focus Points, but the second-edition champion can replenish them instead of having a finite pool. After-heals galore!

So the stirge fight went fairly quickly, leaving only a little residual guilt on my part that Brixley was the only person who didn’t take any damage. (Sorry, everyone!) We roll the Grumpy Old Man back to town, collect some experience, have a little lunch, and it’s time to get back to the murder investigation at the heart of the story. Our next lead to follow up on is the cook, Amora, who has been absent since Bort’s murder, so it’s off to her house.

And greeeat. Not only do we have a battle against a swarm – one of my least favorite things to fight (it’s either that or incorporeal creatures) – but Brixley continues his gradual descent into slapstick comic relief by stumbling into the bee swarm unawares. Falling in mud, getting punched in a bar brawl, stumbling into a bunch of bees… Brixley is gradually becoming a Warner Bros cartoon character. Which may represent a good career change for him, because he’s totally useless in this particular fight. (I mean, I guess I “did some damage” by letting them sting me? Does that count?)

Fortunately, Prue and Celes manage to be FAR more useful. Statistically speaking, Celes’ fire fingers probably ended up doing the most damage but you have to admit that Prue killing bees with ghosts wins the battle for style points. WITH GHOSTS, people. We also get to see Hero Points in action. I’m going to be honest: I’m not sure how I feel about random do-overs as a game mechanic (seems kinda cheap), but if they’re part of the system, I’ll find a way to get comfortable with them sooner rather than later.

Finally, as we kill off the bees, Amora comes out of her shack with the tools that would’ve been far more useful for the job. Amora invites us in, which leads to both a snack that Winnie the Pooh would envy and a lead on the mystery – it turns out Bort’s bowl has a floral poison-y scent that Amora doesn’t recognize. Presuming we believe her, that means we’re narrowing things down to one of the kitchen staff – either Finnick/Pinnick the goblin who plated it, and Trin who actually served it to the table. Full disclaimer… first edition habits die hard, so I’m blaming the goblin until further notice. As a side mission, we (but mostly Celes) convince Amora to return to work, thus saving turnip-based cuisine for the people of Plaguestone. Yay?

The one thing I probably should have asked a lot earlier is if the woman who has all sorts of beekeeping equipment had any sort of remedy for bee-sting poisoning. You’d think someone who keeps bees would cover all her bases. Does the world of Golarion even have the equivalent of an EpiPen? But unfortunately I don’t think of it until the poison has already cleared my system, so oh well… opportunity missed.

And that’s where we break for the session. We have two new suspects to investigate, a dead body to scrutinize more closely, and Celes has an inside track on special turnip-and-honey concoctions that the general public can only dream of. Brixley? I’d just settle for not enduring some low-grade cartoonish humiliation, thanks. Hope you’ll join us next week to see where the mystery leads; in the meantime, feel free to drop by our Discord channel or other social media and let us know what you think of the show. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week.

Jason recaps the events from Roll For Combat: The Fall of Plaguestone, Episode 03: Murder By Death.

This week we have one of those transitional episodes – there’s no combat (until the last 10 seconds), but it’s also not a full-on social skills challenge either. It’s mostly just setting the table – fleshing out the story points, introducing most of the major NPCs, delivering a little bit of plot exposition and setting. You have these moments, particularly early on in a story. The weird thing is the tonal shift in the middle – we start with a very well-defined murder mystery vibe going, and then – kind of abruptly, frankly – shift into this more folksy “Prairie Home Companion” vibe where we’re pushing the old guy around and getting a history lesson about the town.

First things first, I was a LITTLE worried the sheriff might try to pin the murder on us and the thrust of the campaign would be to prove ourselves innocent. Unless there’s one heck of a plot twist coming, that doesn’t appear to be the case – John Law just feels a little overmatched (or… lazy) and wants to deputize us to do the heavy lifting of solving Bort’s murder. Certainly, Brixley is up for that; despite being more chaotic than lawful, he’s still got that do-gooder gene going for him. You can’t live free if you’re dead.

I do have to admit the idea that we couldn’t leave the town for a month until the judge gets back is a bit contrived, and would also annoy Brixley as an alignment thing. It’s not like they have a large standing militia or walls that would… you know… stop us from leaving. For half a second, I thought about staging a mutiny and seeing what would happen if we tried to leave… after all, except for the town bully, who would stop us? But I think that would’ve just pisssed Steve off, and sometimes you just roll with things to keep the story moving. Episode 3 is a little early to be peeing in the punchbowl.

Going back and listening, I feel like I sound kind of stupid asking “are we sure Bort was poisoned” but I more meant it as “should we check the body for bite marks on the off chance he got bit by the wolves and got some sort of disease, but we didn’t notice?”. So it wasn’t a COMPLETE reach, but yes… I do recognize poisoned porridge is the 99^th-percentile answer to this puzzle. I’m not a complete moron.

Or maybe it was a severe turnip allergy. But wait… if he’s been coming here for years, he probably would’ve had an incident before now. Never mind.

So we participate in the impromptu wake for Bert… errr… Bort (OK, that amused me when Vanessa did that) and Cade takes some very cursory first steps toward investigating the murder itself. But then we go to bed because we’re tired, wake up the next morning, and our murder mystery has morphed into that really clunky reboot of Are You Being Served? where they move out to the country farm, and we’re doing chores, including pushing the latest iteration of Mister Grace around in his wheelchair.

As we do this, we get a lore-dump on the history of the town… there’s a witch that may have put a curse on the town, a PowerPoint on their turnip-based economy, all the good stuff. We finally arrive at a shrine to Gozreh, where… oh Celes… OF COURSE you don’t go walking up to abandoned shrines. Yup, time to fight some Things We Used to Call Stirges. The official name is “bloodseekers” now. And that’s where we pick things up next week.

My personal unofficial side mission this episode was to start to figure out how Brixley is going to relate to the rest of the party on a roleplay level. I fully admit it takes me a few sessions to figure out where my character fits, especially when playing with mostly-new players.

The relationship with Celes is taking shape most quickly. Initial positive vibes built by the fact that she chose to trust him with the secret of her magic use, but he kind of sees the naivete and “fish out of water”-ness and will probably feel like he’s got a little bit of an obligation to watch her back. (I mean, Brixley’s naïve too in his own way, but nobody tell him that.)

Cade… there’s probably going to be a little battle between the Chaotic and the Good sides that has to work itself out in Brixley’s head. On one hand, another affable short guy to help close the bar is a good thing; on the other hand, Brixley might take a dim view of things like picking pockets during a bar fight. Some of that will also depend on the choices Rob makes, but for right now, it’s superficially friendly, but with a little bit of internal “better keep an eye on that guy” vibe. Never take your eye off the guy with concealed daggers.

Prue? There’s probably going to be a little bit of “top dog” competitive tension as they’re the two heavy fighters of the team. There’s some basic level of respect for the fact that she’s a formidable warrior, but between his noble background and some level of (over-)confidence that his deity makes him right about stuff, I could see there starting to be some tensions if/when this (in his view) “scruffy barbarian with sketchy ghost magic” starts bossing him around. Or it could turn into a Legolas-Gimli thing where they’ll start keeping score of body counts. I guess we’ll just have to see.

The one thing I think I’ve been doing “wrong” the first few episodes is that Brixley is reasonably high-Charisma, and also a bit of an idealistic crusader. So he should probably be stepping up and taking charge a little more (or at least assuming he’s in charge) than I’ve been doing, and I’ve been a little more passive these first couple episodes. Something to work on for future episodes.

So… bit of a transition episode this week, but we’ll get back into the thick of combat next week and try to keep our blood from being sucked out of our bodies. Feel free to drop by our Discord channel or other social media and let us know what you think of the show, and we’ll see you back here next week. Thanks for listening!