Dark Souls: Second Play Session Report

So the players agreed to play through a short game of Dark Souls after the utter joy that was the first session! We rotate GMs, and the other GM had a campaign in mind, but he was having a good time, and said he would be happy to wait a few more weeks as we finish this up. I realized I had forgotten to include the summoning signs in my first session (which are in the core rulebook as an option rule) and thus fixed that as well.

Today we added Onely, the Deprived! Deprived is a special class in Dark Souls: you start with pretty much nothing, but can basically build your own class as you go. Obviously, the further along you go, the more broken this becomes, but... let's be honest... you gotta make that far. And given that you can go hollow and just lose the character... it is actually a risk.

Hazbil and Fizbun reappeared at the first bonfire, and their way back to the room before the undead hounds that had killed them. They realized they'd never really searched this room, they'd just gone through the door. Searching, they found a secret, third door! How about that! Fizbun checked the door, found it was unlocked and trapped. He realized there was a counterweight system, so something was going to swing through the door at him. By this time Onely had shown up. After some short introductions, Fizbun told everyone to get clear, and he opened the door. Down came a huge scythe, which would assuredly have cut any of them in half. 

Hazbil and Onely stepped through the door, around the scythe. Hazbil stepped onto a purple summon sign... and out stepped a purple warrior with a scythe. In one swing Hazbil was dead.  

Fizbun slammed the door, trapping Onely with the mysterious attacker. The scythe  swung back in into place with the close of the door. Onely pushed it into the scythe, badly wounding the attacker... and was almost killed by the returning swing. Onely hit the creature in the face, and stunned it with a shout. He pushed it back into the way of the scythe. 

Onely reopened the door. 

The attacker was cut in half.

Onely looted a sword and smaller scythe off the corpse, and went back to the bonfire. Hazbil got his Strength back and then some from the bonfire warp. Hazbil and Onely had also gotten a bunch of souls from the death of the purple scythe-wielder, more than enough to level up. Fizbun... nope. You don't get souls for shutting the door and running away. Sorry. Not part of the combat. Hazbil took the sword, which granted bonus damage on the next hit against an attacker, and Onely kept the scythe, which allowed him to add damage onto an attack.

It was here that a rule point was clarified to me: you spend the souls to level up. While this is accurate to the video games, it means that leveling up in the Dark Souls TTRPG is a lot harder than in its 5e forbearer. And, since the blood stains were removed, if you die, you just lose the remaining souls, outright. I decided to run that rule RAW for the moment, but it is a curious change. Does make everyone more cautious though! Once you get a good amount of souls you need to find a bonfire and cash them in quick. The fact that it cuts out farming by grinding combats and boring everyone to tears is a plus, even if accuracy is lowered as a result.

They went back to the room of dogs, burst through the door, and earned the surprise round. Fizbun shot off a fireball... which did almost no damage. At all. Hazbil killed two of the four dogs in that opening round. He went before everyone else in the next round, and killed another dog. The remaining dog missed. Onely killed the dog in one shot. Revenge was sweet. They found a door, Fizbun rolled a nat 20 on the roll to check it... only to be told there was nothing wrong with it.

There was a staircase to the left, and a long hallway with alcoves to the right... which had a mysterious voice, ringing in their heads. They went to the right, and found a greatsword that Hazbil was ALMOST qualified for, so he kept it, along with a whip... and the soul of a lost maiden fighter, who gave them her souls. Fizbun kept the whip.

They came to a fork in the complex: left, towards a large staircase, or right, to a door. They went left, wary of doors. Who can blame them?

"Hello, fellow travellers." A creepy corpse stood up, with a large pack on his back. His name was Telvro, and he was now stuck in this "Keep of the Dragon" with them. He sold them stuff...

And that's when the players asked if they could sell each other stuff too, thus gaining souls from it. I didn't see why not, it's not that big a jump from the video games, where you can buy weapons for souls. They swapped equipment around, so specific people could level faster... and then Onely made Hazbil a deal. If Hazbil gave Onely his extra longsword, Onely would give him 100% of all souls necessary to get to level three. See, selling the longsword would allow Onely to level up. They asked me if this was kosher and again, why not? The longsword is gone. They can't use it. That someone levels up means their souls are spent. I don't know if anyone else would allow this, but I mean, the gamebook keeps telling me to make this thing my own! So here I am, doing that!

The group went up the stairs  and found a bonfire. Hooray! They also found another staircase to the left, with a door before them and to the right. They decided to go back down the other staircase, and opened that door they had avoided before.

Aaaaaand they found those cavern lizards from the first session. They slammed the door hurriedly, but the lizards rammed the wall... and brought the ceiling down. See, now that little piece of unfairness was adapted from The Tome of Journeys, where it says you can bring walls down for extra damage. Didn't seem like that much of a stretch to rule that the cavern lizards could just blow right through the wall and bring the ceiling down. Onely tried to argue that he could ignore the first killing blow in an encounter. I told him in the chilliest of tones that that was stupid: it was a caved-in ceiling, not a sword swing. No. Absolutely not. Everyone else laughed. Onely laughed and shrugged.

Everyone woke up back at the second bonfire they had just found. They checked the other staircase, only to find that the cavern lizards had broken through and were stomping around. They ran back up the stairs, but were followed by the cavern lizard. Desperate, they went through door on their left, praying this wall would hold.

It did.

But Hazbill accidentally stepped on a red summoning sign. And out stepped a red knight, and tore through them in an absolute whirlwind of death, as this knight could spend Position... and did. And just annihilated them all. 

They all reappeared the second bonfire.

Updated Encounter Rolls

So I realized I missed a few things, and edited the table. If you're using this, lemme know how it goes! 

Roll 1d12 and d20 every other turn:

**d12 (Events):**
- 1-2: Monster
- 3: Trap
- 4-5: Soul
- 6: Item
- 7: Bonfire chance (reroll d8; 1 = bonfire)
- 8-9: NPC (core book)
- 10-12: Nothing

**d20 (Signs):**
- 1: Purple Summon Sign
- 2: Red Summon Sign
- 3: Golden Summon Sign
- 4: White Summon Sign
- 5-20: Nothing