Jason recaps the events from Three Ring Adventure S3|22: I Am Runk Runk.
There are moments when I hate this show.
I was in the grocery store this morning, picking up dog food and a few other things. I looked for the muffins I like to buy for my breakfasts in the morning, and they were sold out. Standing there in the middle of my local grocery store, I swear I muttered a disappointed “Runk runk” to nobody in particular.
MOTHERF…
I’m torn on Runk Runk as a whole. On one hand, the idea of a big hulking golem having such a delicate hobby is kind of interesting. It zigs when you’d expect it to zag. One would’ve expected a strong-man act out of a golem, so juggling and beast mastery makes for a direction I didn’t expect this to go. And OK… the banter with Riley in particular was adorable. Though given this group’s dedication to the scatological, a prime opportunity was missed for Riley to mark his territory by peeing on Runk Runk.
On the other hand, we’re gonna have to figure out some sort of way around the language barrier or I’m going to lose it and runk someone right in the runk. There’s a reason the Smurfs movie got a 21% on Rotten Tomatoes. PLEASE someone figure out what language this hunk of rock speaks and learn it. My sanity demands it.
We’ll get back to Runk Runk and the circus later, but meanwhile, our party manages to… not save the day, because I guess the stone wasn’t actually in any danger. Well, that’s just a little bit anti-climactic, isn’t it? I guess that’s on me and my assumptions, though: thinking back on it, our heroes are supposed to visit the tower and get the blessings, and from that, we’ve extrapolated that all the stones would be under attack. But I hadn’t really stopped to consider the possibility that some of the attacks might have been unsuccessful and the stones would be unharmed. So I’m willing to take that on me, though the unintended side effect is that the big takeaway from this tower visit was another performer for the circus. (It also KINDA makes the golems the good guys, if they repelled the xulgaths, but let’s just move along, shall we.)
The blessing actually turns out to be a pretty useful one: stoneskin. That’s much better than raising and lowering water in a room. Or at least more useful for combat. I almost guarantee there will be a puzzle later in this AP where raising or lowering the water in the room is the solution for obtaining the Macguffin. Right now, I’m specifically looking at combat effectiveness.
On paper, the duration of the spell is 20 minutes, but since it goes down by one minute for each hit, it’s probably best to think of it more like charges. If an enemy hits you with every attack every round, it’s gone by round 7. Still, that means it has the potential to mitigate 100 damage over the course of the spell, and the upgrade is just around the corner at the Level 6 version (the party hasn’t been using their boons much, but I’ve been assuming Aroden boons auto-scale like cantrips or focus spells). This is probably obvious, but just to say it anyway: the damage reduction only applies to physical damage. Magic damage still goes through as normal, though the silver lining to that is those attacks don’t consume a charge either. Fair’s fair.
Also, note to self: definitely worth picking up for Edgewatch. Basil is an archetype caster so he doesn’t get his Level 4 spells until Level 12, but stoneskin is definitely going on the list. Either that or just start scolding Seth to take it.
One thing I found unclear: did touching the aeon stone dispel the haunt? On one hand, it doesn’t feel like it would be directly connected to the dwarves or their backstory. On the other hand, the darkness dissipated, and I was assuming a semi-permanent darkness field was related to the haunt. Also… we are talking about deity powers here. Pretty sure Aroden doesn’t have to roll checks to deal with stuff like this.
So our troupe comes back to town, and among other things, makes an out-of-game decision to streamline the circus mini-game. At first hearing of this, I was briefly disappointed, but the more I thought about it, the more I think it’s the right move. The heart of the circus was the show itself and describing the acts, and they’re still going to do that. Rolling to see whether their fliers attracted enough people, or deciding between buying beer or new tent canvas… I’m not sure that stuff really held together after the second or third time they did it. For that matter, rolling 15 rolls to determine whether they made 8g or 10g feels like low stakes compared to saving the continent.
(Also, I think a lot of the circus drama was more interesting when they still had the Celestial Menagerie to play against. Now that that situation’s resolved and they’re the only show in town, the whole thing is a little deflated.)
The other place it might be useful is that it keeps the earlier acts viable, creating more options for the roleplaying of the show. If you stay wedded to the system, it means the DCs get harder and the lower-level acts eventually become untenable. But if they’re going to abstract it, they can use all their acts to construct the roleplay of the show. Snake Lady, for example. She was one of the first acts. In a rigid system, she’s probably done. In an abstracted system, OF COURSE Runk Runk can juggle snakes.
(OK, just spitballing here… since there are people listening live on Patreon, how about letting the Patreon listeners vote on how good the performance was and give the party their gold reward based on that? AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION FOR THE WIN!)
So with two towers down and the people of Castinlee duly amused, it’s time to move on from the land of cabbages to the land of lumber. The final tower, the Old Forest Tower is off in a wooded area outside Turpin Rowe, so I’m calling a “morning wood” joke by the 20-minute mark of next week’s episode. Similarly, there’s a feature on the map marked “The Distillery”, so… Al’s Ales? Pete’s Pints? Where are we headed with this? I guess we’ll find out next week.
As always, 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 runk.