Dark Souls: Initial Report Session the Last

 

With their mission clear ("find the dragon and stab it with the magical spear, so you can whittle it down"), Hazbil and Fizbun come into a large room, filled with pillars and a vaulted ceiling. There's a wooden bridge at one end of the room, leading out into the utterly frozen wasteland, with another tower across the way. There's holes in the ceiling big enough for "their" dragon to poke his head and roast them alive.

I announced the DC for Stealth to go check out the wooden bridge: 24. Hazbil and Fizbun about burn out all their Position passing the check.

They get to the bridge, which is exposed to the cold that killed them almost instantly earlier. I make them a deal: they burn enough Position, they can cross the bridge, but it destroys their Stealth Check.

The dragon comes up behind them as they cross. They roll Initiative, and fail just closely enough to where they can burn the Position necessary to go before the dragon.... and thus roll for their combat Position. Hazbil has a higher Strength than Fizbun, so he lugs the spear right at the thing, and passes the thing pretty easily. With the spear that keeps the dragon's Position from resetting firmly lodged in it. Normally, I would make the rest of the campaign about them leveling up for this one boss fight. I certainly could have prepped that.

But the guy playing Fizbun really wants to run some Pathfinder, and I don't get people wanting to run games for me terribly often.

So.

We skipped that part.

We guessed it would take about eight tries to take the dragon down. The dragon began to disintegrate under the influence of the Flame. Fizbun, being a pyromancer, volunteered to take the Flame on, as he had some Flame resistance. But he needed help getting up the stairs to the Kiln. So they stumbled up to the Kiln, and Fizbun, the asshole who closed doors, fell into the Kiln at the top of the tower.

Hazbil looked down from the tower. The ice was starting to melt... and there was a ton of it. He would need to move fast if he wanted to get to the nearby mountains.

Thoughts on the System

By the end of this session,  the players had come to a different appreciate of the Position system. At any point in time, they could pass a roll. It was a question of whether or not they had the resources to do so. This means that the game becomes a series of rough calculate risks.

Or it could.

Could.

But, if you're not running the game as an old school mudcrawl.... this system just isn't going to work. Period. If you're not pitting the time against the Position of the players... there's no tension. The usual railroading 5e is known for just won't work here. You have to present real choices that require constant dice rolls for the system to function.

Will We Run This Game Again?

Fuck yes we will. It's not perfect (I made up the encounter dice), but my goodness it does mudcrawling so well, and I will happily draw up another map for it. However, I would do a few things differently:

Assign more random tables to different parts of the map. I only really used two, and that was a mistake. Players need more zones, where they can go and hide, or grind and level up. Things like that.

I would want to actually come up with a good boss fight "mechanic". Not sure how to do that, yet, but the core choices in this game  warrant some extra work. I think I would set up a BOTW/TOTK style map, with factions set up and whatnot. I can't really get other players to do faction play in the world, due to physical constraints, or I would.

I'll write a bit about Pathfinder 2e next. I have my own very loud and snooty opinions on that game, so we'll see how that goes.

Dark Souls: Fourth Session Report

 

Real Life Sucks

It's been a few weeks, because real life caught up hard, and we just couldn't play. Today we got:

Hazbil, level four knight

Fizbun, level three pyromancer

I pull up a new "location" from the Core Book: Archdragon Peak, page 269. I wanted to make the place feel different as they got close to the dragon. No, I haven't talked about the dragon yet, but I will in a minute.

Play!

Hazbil and Fizbun return to the door from last session, with the purple sign right in the doorway. Hazbil, as  has to burn Position to pass  the Wisdom Save that's permanently on him, to touch all bad summoning signs. With Fizbun granting advantage, Hazbil passes. They jump the sign and enter the room.

Standing across from them is a figure. "You are now in the Dragon's Keep, why should you stay?" Hazbil and Fizbun feel a compulsion to walk over the Purple Sign as they leave through the door they just entered. Both of them, knowing the summoned knight would get a free attack, burned a ton of Position to pass the save.

The figure seemed impressed at their resilience. "Very good, why should you stay?"

"And walk over the purple sign again?" both Hazbil and Fizbun asked, scoffing at him. He smiles at them, and vanishes. It's a Large Soul, 20,000 souls apiece! Hazbil and Fizbun went back to the previous bonfire, and are both now level 5! Hazbil has 3,400 Souls, only 10,600 to go! I cackle. The resetting of the souls counter is honestly amazing, especially since you lose the souls upon death.

There's a door, which they check: wooden, unlocked, not trapped. They open up the door, and burn the Position to make the Perception check: two wyverns, sitting on the roof! They manage to sneak into the large room, and take up positions. Fizbun realizes the wyeverns are immune to fire, so he decides they'll try and make a distraction, and then bottlneck the wyverns. He shoots off a fireball at a nearby pillar.

The wyverns look down, and don't see what made the fire. They jump into the air... and then land on the roof. Both Hazbil and Fizbun barely evade, getting back into the previous room. Fizbun runs up  the purple sign and touches  it, planning to lure the summoned knight into combat with the wyverns, who charge. Hazbil preps his greatsword, and  gets three swings. And he puts his back into it. He puts almost every bit of Position he can into taking out one of the wyverns. 

Hazbil barely bruises the wyvern, with three hard hits: 20+ damage a shot. And it just isn't enough.

The first wyvern sticks its mouth through the doorway and spits fire. Even making the save, Fizbun and Hazbil die immediately. They both wake up at the bonfire. Fizbun fails the Wisdom save, -1 to his Strength. Hazbil also fails the Wisdom save, gets a -2 to his Charisma

As far as Hazbil and  Fizbun can remember, there's two options: attack the lizards who stomped on them a few times, or go back after the wyverns. They have no idea that it's actually the same difficulty level... but I know! And I try not to laugh.

They sneak back down to the wreckage where the giant lizards were... and Fizbun fails the stealth check. The lizard charges, hits Hazbil, 1 shots him! Fizbun rushes up the stairs, getting away from the lizard and resetting time. Hazbil comes back to at the bonfire, and  gets a -1 to Initiative. Honestly, people are just laughing, almost helplessly, at the death spiral that's in this game. It's so blatantly unfair that my players are almost pissing themselves laughing at times.

They go back, get a sneak attack in on the lizard, getting two full rounds of wailing on the one lizard. They know if they let live, they die. They get it to 75 damage. Which is... not enough. It just isn't.

The lizard takes a quick breath in. Breath weapon. Dead.

Hazbil -1 Passive Perception

Fizbun -1 Wisdom

They realize they just don't have the firepower to go after the lizards... or the wyverns. Just as they're about to take a passage to the right, I reminded them they have another way they can go too: back where the scythe had come down and they'd gotten jumped by their first summon. They'd just run out of their without really checking the room.. They decided to retrace their steps, running past the lizards successfully. 

They meet another person named Ghorm, who has a spear he says can pin the target in time, and he has a target in mind: there's a dragon in this castle, who holds The Last Flame.  If they kill it, the frozen world outside will thaw, and they'll be able to leave.

After convincing Fizbun that being able to leave the castle is good idea, they decide to go for it! Unthawing the world sounds like a great idea, even to Fizbun.

Reflections

It's here where "encounter balance" starts to rear its ugly head: Dark Souls is about combat, and you have to be willing to let differing areas have different difficult levels. I didn't do this, so I thought I'd throw that time-sticking spear in to even the odds in finishing the adventure. When I next play, I'll put multiple tables into the levels, allowing for farming in certain areas, and risks to be taken in others. It's a learning process, but a very enjoyable one.

Dark Souls: Third Session Report

 

This third session of Dark Souls went really well! We have:

• Hazbil the Knight. Starts at level 2, ends the session at level 4.
• Fizbun the Pyromancer. Starts at level 2, ends the session at level 3
• Onely the Deprived. Starts at level three, ends the session at level 3.

Throughout this session, Onely donates all of his souls to Hazbil, to try and get him to level 4, so that he can start wielding the Astora greatsword.

Also: my exact memory is fuzzy. It's been a long week. I remember what happened, but my connective tissue may be spotty.

The Adventure

At the end of last session they were all shredded by a mysterious red spirit, and reappeared at the second bonfire. The door right in front of them will lead back to that They go down the door to the right. A ghostly spirit stands there, and says "Tell me why you're worthy." They answer, and the spirit likes the answers. It vanishes into all three of them, and they have a bunch of souls now.

There's two doors, left and right. Fizbun goes right, finds an open portcullis, which leads out to a world of utter ice. Onely goes to the left door and finds a golden sign. Onely makes Arcana, and realizes gold is good. He touches it, and out comes a knight, who offers his service.

They go back to the room with the red sign, jump the red spirit that comes out, and chew right through him. The golden knight vanishes. Hazbil and Fizbun now have enough souls to level up, so they go back through the door and Fizbun is now level three. The tension of not being able to spend souls to level up is discussed.

They go back up to the door with the golden knight to see if the sign reset. It has. But standing there is a freakishly tall, gaunt figure, who smiles hungrily at Onely... who smiles back. They stare at each other a minute, and the tall figure introduces himself as Ghorm. He asks if they can look for someone whistling a tune, to a song he can't remember anymore. The players say they will.

They go where they saw Ghorm come from, and find a door to the right, and a staircase to the left. Fizbun checks the door, and when he finds that it's fine, he opens it up, to find the Pyromancy spell Fireburst: damage in a cone, no Position needs to be spent to activate it. He equips it immediately. He goes goes round the corner to find a huge door. He calls the others to him, and they just... open the door..

And freeze solid. The wind blows the door open, and they die instantly. Lose all their souls... and that hurts. They realize they never actually checked the door, they just opened it, without a second thought. I smile cruelly.

They go and close the door to keep the wind from getting into the rest of the complex, and succeed. There's a stair to the left, and they go up... and Hazbil starts hearing a voice to touch the purple summon sign up there. He doesn't. They go beyond it, and find another spirit who asks them to tell them why they're worthy. They give different answers, the spirit approves, and now they have a bunch more souls... and Hazbil goes and touches the purple sign. They kill the spirit who comes out, and now Hazbil has enough souls to get to level four, which would let him use the Astora greatsword they picked up for him in session two. They go and cash in. 

When they go back to the staircase with the purple sign, they find another stranger: Nebt, who wants to put a soul to rest with a  gift of his favorite whip. Which Fizbun happens to have. Fizbun gives it for a ton of souls.

They manage to keep Hazbil from touching the purple sign again, and go beyond it. There's another staircase to the left (leading back to where the red sign was) and two doors to the right. Fizbun checks the rightmost door: it's trapped, designed to put in more of that freezing cold air. The other-right door leads to a place where there's just a bunch of wreckage and a 60 foot chain. They manage to jam the trap on the rightmost door, and get through.

Sitting next to other side of the door, biting his nails, was Touless... who was looking for a flower. A rare rare flower. He thanked them for opening the door, because he didn't know how, and started to walk through. Onely tried to stop him. Touless drew a knife, and gently asked to be let loose.

Fizbun went beyond, and found a larger area, with three doors, one at the bottom of a flight of stairs. He opened that door.

Onto a crystal lizard's ass.

Fizbun gently closed the door.

He checked the other two doors, and found one had a purple sign right up against the door. Onely, wanting a fight, went and stepped on it, against everyone else's wishes.

The materializing spirit was hit with wave upon wave of steel and a newly discovered fire spray... which almost killed Onely. Fizbun told Onely he ever did that again he would kill him.

Takeways

Three sessions in, and they're learning the game. Fights are now heavily one-sided affairs when they're engaged in, and avoided at all costs otherwise.... except when Onely wants just a few more souls. The addition of the NPCs from the random rolls made the tone here a lot different, but it was a welcome break.

This game is showing depth. And we're having a blast.

The session ended with a clash of steel and ego. Against the party's wishes, Onely triggered a purple summon sign. The resulting spirit nearly claimed his life, leading to the first real crack in the party's facade: Fizbun’s fire-laced threat. The honeymoon phase of the campaign is officially over."

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

Dark Souls RPG: First Session Play Report

 

So we ran a test session of the Dark Souls RPG Saturday. Two players (Billy, Sir Hazbil the Knight, and Nate, Fizbun the Pyromancer). It had been awhile since I had played this game, and it was a blast! We laughed, we laughed, we cringed hard, and laughed more. Despite me having all three books in the line, we only used the core. Mine's shiny. It's so nice. We made characters and played for a little while. I grabbed a random map off the web, printed it off, and resolved to use my encounter dice to populate it as we went. I grabbed the Cathedral of the Deep from page 248 of the Core Book for the random monsters and other stuff.

Character Generation

This was a breeze. The options were "lacking", in the sense that you just had prepackaged stuff that you picked from, with a lot of illusory choice, but it sure makes character creation quick. 

Random Encounter Dice

Now, there are two ways that the book sort of presents prepping an adventure: make a site or a typical "trad" storygame. I cannot overemphasize how poorly the book serves both approaches, and if I had a true and actual criticism of this game, it would be this lukewarm support in lieu of "figure it out yourself". Fortunately, I have designed my own games and have read tons of OSR stuff, so I just took a few ideas and ran with them. I had some ideas on how I might do that.

I figured out quickly that my initial ideas on random encounters for Dark Souls wouldn't capture the full scope of the game. At all. I also hate the fact that there isn't an easy way to just randomly generate equipment. That's going to trip me up later. 

But, for now, I decided to go with two dice - d8 and d20 - rolled every other turn, in areas you have not explored.

Step 1: The Danger Check (d8)

Roll	Result
1–2	Monster: Roll on the Cathedral of the Deep table (p. 248).
3	Trap: Electric doorknobs, mimics, or pressure plates.
4	Soul: A Fading Soul or Large Soul of a Deserted Corpse.
5	Item: Random equipment or "rubbish."
6	Bonfire: Only if you confirm with a second "1" on a d8.
7–8	Nothing: Eerie silence... for now.

Step 2: The World Tendency (d20)

Roll	Result
1–3	Summon Sign: Roll for Purple (Mad), Red (Hostile), or Gold (Sunbro).
4	White Sign: Restores one player and one ally to full Position.
5–7	Shopkeep: A hollow merchant with overpriced Moss Clumps.
8–20	The Dark: No cosmic interference this turn.

The Adventure

Sir Hazbil and Fizbun came to around a bonfire, in a room that was locked from the outside. Sir Hazbil attempted to pop the doorknob off with his sword and managed to just get clear in time to not get the full electric shock: the door was trapped! Fizbun refused to spend position to set the wooden door on fire.. so Sir Hazbil hacked the door open. They found a room filled with rotting furniture. Sir Hazbil opened the next door, only to find himself staring up at huge two cavern lizards... who were leering at him. Sir Hazbil charged, connected with his longsword... and the cavern lizard didn't even flinch. He squashed Sir Hazbil without even trying.

Fizbun gently closed the door. 

And went back to the bonfire. Sir Hazbil was somehow feeling hardier (his Position/HP max had gone from 13 to 16). Only to find the door had restored itself as soon as he went in. They rehacked the door open, and started checking around... only to find there was a secret door in the same room their bonfire. They came out into a chamber with two doors, one to the front and one to the right.

Fizbun opened the door onto a lovely view of a cavern lizard's ass.

Fizbun gently closed the door.

They tried the other door, and found four undead hounds were minding their own business... and somehow they hadn't disturbed them. The hounds stood between them and another door to the front and a staircase to the left. So Sir Hazbil charged! Fizbun actually threw flame this time! They were putting up a good fight... until an unlucky crit took Sir Hazbil down. By that time there were two hounds and one of them was badly injured, so Fizbun figured he could finish them off.

Fizbun was wrong.

They both woke up at the bonfire. This time Sir Hazbil was weaker... and could no longer wear his armor. His respawning had weakened his Strength score by 1, making him unable to wear the Knight's Armor! Fizbun managed to get a -1 to his Charisma score... which is what he uses to cast spells.

We laughed our asses off.

And called it a session, coz Billy had to go.

Gameplay

The people who say this game doesn't play well are lying. They just are. There's more than a few reviews of this game that claim to have direct play experience that are absolutely lying their asses off, or are filled with players so impossibly stupid that I worry for their ability to walk and chew bubblegum at the same time. And I say this because this game ran really smoothly! Again! With a completely different group!

So Position is used for three things: improve your d20 roll, 1 for 1 (no limit), improve your damage, 1 for 1 (minimum of 5), and improve speed, 1 for 5 extra feet (can't do more than double speed). 

If your Position drops to 0 you die and go back to the last bonfire... where you have to roll to see if something random (mostly awful) happens to you. It's a DC 18 Wisdom save. You're gonna fail it a lot.

Burning Position/HP to improve rolls is an incredible thing to do. Each failed roll (and there were a lot of them) the question became: given that getting hitting by a sneak attack right now would send me back to the bonfire, do I burn the health now, making a future possible hit worse, or do I whiff and hope the monster misses? Not all the monsters can burn Position like the Players can, and I didn't throw any of those at the Players, so they didn't have to balance that out. Yet. But each Player roll was intense. And this is the only game I have ever played that has justified a passive defense for the players: you can't spend Position on the GM's attack roll, so it's a genuine guess as to what could happen! The players intuited this problem immediately and had a great time measuring risk. We'll see what happens as they go through the dungeon. They're worse off than they were before, mechanically, but now the shock has worn off. 

We will see what the players do next week. But we had a blast. Especially Billy, who now is walking around naked, with a shield. His AC is now lower than the pyromancer's.

What could go wrong?