A short distance down the coast from the mighty city of Horizon, the town of Eldolan has its own problems. Students of the town’s three rival wizard schools constantly feud and create trouble for the town guard, the Silver Shields, who must clean up the wizards’ messes. The Council of Mages—who truly rule the town—involve themselves with stints of political one-upmanship that keeps any true political progress from moving forward. And rumors of people going missing have been on the rise, keeping the common folk close to the magically lighted streets when they go out at night. But a darkness has been growing in Eldolan, and those who seek old power have set plans in motion to remind everyone what true fear is.
The RPPR crew tackled Shadows of Eldolan but it took more than one session to complete. The finale will be posted on the 20th. Enjoy!
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Aw yeah, some High Fantasy goodness. I feel like whenever a sort-of standard fantasy game comes along, we get to see the players’ most stereotypical characters. Tom plays a crit-rolling dragon-man, David plays a purple-clad pun-spouting bard, Caleb plays a jaded veteran who solves problems with elaborate social engineering. And Aaron plays a robot paladin. Good times.
Ethan, in my defense that’s me in EVERY game. Also real life…
Anyone else get some serious (and Awesome!) Terry Pratchett’s Discworld vibes from this?
as one of my favorite systems, I get nervous when some rules seemed to get messed up, but you corrected them pretty fast through out the game. Though Caleb still should have rolled his initiative twice and chose the best. As that is the human perk. Or… was 11 the best he got. Anyways Happy to hear you are having fun with the system
… in the last encounter with the dealer, did we get a preview of the negotiation rules for Red Markets? Where you’re constantly arguing with Objectivist disaster capitalists??
omg the irony of derailing into Ayn Rand I almost lost it in public
this was less D&D and more A Dirty Dungeon World, which is all to the good as far as I’m concerned
Can Christopher Dolan please become a regular, canonical RPPR character? Using Aaron’s icon to force Dolan on him was brilliant. 13th Age is great about giving the GM and players opportunities for terrific character moments like that.
I do agree with Caleb, though. The 13th Age makes D20 (or I guess it’s called F20 by Pelgrane) more bearable, but it could really shine using a different core mechanic. It’s still fun and it still might be the best D20 game (5E is a close second), but I do wonder what it could be in a different system.
Surprisingly Forthright Objectivist Drug-Dealer displaces MarxistFishmonger as my favorite pleasant surprise in a d20 game (New Jersey Merchant Hawking Swords is a close third).
Caleb’s Sex Ed talk with the lovesick paladin was definitely the high point of the game for me. Line after line of pure gold. “Have you ever seen Dragon Syphilis, son? I have a book of drawings.”
Yeah, that poor paladin. Hope he got some sense talked into him.
Dragon syphilis was not nearly so terrifying to me as the breachling. That one got me thinking about tinkering wizards applying the same kind of skills that give us owlbears to diseases or parasites – horrifying to consider.
I enjoyed how the players grew more and more obstinate in their refusal not to give a demanding NPC anything at all (coin, equipment, even food) as the game goes on. And they become more determined to convince the difficult NPCs that they are being needlessly difficult, to their own long-term detriment. The Rand drug dealer does seem like the natural outcome of that approach.
Christopher Dolan is just the best way to treat a 5 on the icon die. If I run more 13th Age, I’m totally stealing that idea.
Now I want to hear about the adventures of the traveling necromancer who goes from bar to bar, animating novelty corpses.
“No really! This will be great! Much better than a bell on top of the door! The City Council will love it! Give you your own seal and everything!”
Bonus points for working Death of a Salesman into the plot somehow.
This is like the third AP I’ve listened to, in as many days and from as many sites, that mentions Ayn Rand. I was going to wonder if there is a reason gamers are so eager to reference Rand, and then I realized the answer is sort of obvious.
Listening to this again, I want there to be a future game of “Pawn Souls”. Doesn’t even have to be in this setting/system, it could be a parody (or dark humour thing?) of the Moon Beast activities in the Dreamlands?
“Hmmm, well you see I don’t think this Soul is really from a 20th Century Spaniard, more like one of those 18th Century Frenchman. I can probably give you half a blood stone for it? But I really cant go any higher.”