Shard Saga – Frightful tremors part 2

[There's a part 1]

My DM had a trick up his sleeves. He’s going to frighten all of us into insensibilities. No, he’s not wearing a mask. No, he’s not waving a sword threatening us into cowering. He’s going to inflict attack roll penalties.

I pause for the collective gasps of incomprehension and outrage.

“How could he do that?”
“That’s not fair!”

Did I mention it was a minus 5 penalty to attack?

“WHAT?!”
“Alright, he’s going down. Where is this DM of yours?”

Oh pipe down. And stop cracking your knuckles. My DM gave out a red crystal to the player who felled some particular monster. Using the red crystal allowed the player to negate the effect. And the red crystals cannot be passed around. So it’s in the players’ best interest to either get one of those by furiously mauling the living daylights out of the monsters, or staying away at nuclear safety distance. Besides, the penalty only affected those who attacked certain monsters.

I wonder if this is the only way to get tactical players to listen to you. You know, mess up their character sheet and numbers. I get intrigued if I’m given a silver wand that used to be clasped tightly by a skeleton, and the wand appeared to have no special use. Yet.

Because I’m frightfully behind (no pun intended) on writing about these gameplay sessions, I can’t remember much. Luckily, I take pictures. The DM made this particular leg of our campaign “old school”. Judge for yourself. Breezing along from our last encounter…

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Kepler saw two tunnels in front of them, one to the left, and one straight ahead. At the end of the left tunnel, there was a faint glowing light. And as any self-respecting RPGer should know, that’s the side quest.

And at this point, the invoker used the Hand of Fate ritual. In summary, the Hand of Fate ritual allows one to ask a simple question to a selection of options. The Hand will point towards the option with the “best” result or risk/reward ratio.

The Hand pointed left. Kepler thought the invoker really wanted to plod on ahead. The rest of the party wanted to go towards the light. The Hand kinda overruled the invoker (unhanded by his own Hand, so to speak. Excuse me while I go laugh outside).

The left tunnel was long and dark. Any natural means of illumination attempted by the party were snuffed out by the enfolding darkness. Kepler kept way back near the entrance of the tunnel.

“Vincent, roll a Perception check.” said the DM.
“Huh?”
*rolls d20*
“Hmm… You see a blob of darkness descending near the light at the end of the tunnel”

Then my DM took a miniature and simulated a gently descending blob of … MAYHEM!

“Oh WTF”, “$&#*” and “What the $&#*” rang out from the other players.

“Oh yeah, and THIS!” said the DM.

The fight went on. Kepler continued to stay at nuclear safe distance.

Then Kepler knocked the blob of darkness prone. How does one do that? But hey, it’s the rules.

The blob of darkness was defeated and the magical source of light was obtained. If I remember correctly, it allows one to dispel fear in a radius of 5 squares. I think. Then the party went to the straight-ahead tunnel. And encountered this:

I have no idea what those are. But did you see the Jack Bauer picture used by the avenger player? Awesome.

The monsters were defeated, and the party proceeded on. And faced another choice: left tunnel or straight ahead tunnel. And that was when the DM unleashed his most powerful trick.

The DM said we could hear some hissing and slithering sounds from the left tunnel. That wasn’t the frightful news. What the DM said after that chilled the blood of (most) grown men. I had never seen such fear reflected on the faces of my friends.

They gasped in horror.
They swore in flair.
They rasped in terror.
They tore their hair.

Frankly, I think they’re too melodramatic. And I don’t find what the DM had prepared that terrifying. Kepler agrees, and was wondering what the fuss was about.

And I’ll tell you about the “horror” next time…