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Monday, January 14

Chapter 22: Madness in Freeport - Introduction

This is the third in the Freeport series of modules, "Madness in Freeport," written by Chris Pramas and (loosely) set in the Arcanis setting. You can read more about Arcanis at http://www.onaraonline.org. Please note: This adventure contains spoilers!

Our cast of characters includes:

· Dungeon Master: Michael Tresca (http://michael.tresca.net)
· Beldin Soulforge (dwarf fighter) played by Joe Lalumia
· Kham Val’Abebi (val rogue/psychic warrior) played by Jeremy Ortiz (http://www.ninjarobotstudios.com)
· Ilmarė Galen (elf bard/fighter) played by Amber Tresca
· Vlad Martell (human fighter) played by Matt Hammer

We played this adventure immediately after “Terror in Freeport,” in an 10 hour marathon gaming session. Tiles were used, miniatures were used, music was used…it was great.

This adventure consists primarily of four scenes. The first is a fancy ball, heavy on role-playing. It was very interesting, actually, as Kham, Vlad, and Ilmarė were able to get themselves into (and out of) quite a few sticky situations. Mostly, Beldin chased around a frog (trust me, it makes more sense in the story)

The second scene takes place in flooded caverns. This part was long and painful because Quintus wasn’t with the party. It’s also the beginning of Beldin getting seriously messed up, as his stats are drained. And drained. And drained. Kham, our resident pirate, boater, and sailor, tries hard but doesn’t really do much besides let people take on traps. As I’ve mentioned before, our party isn’t all that good at standard dungeon crawls.

So by the time they got to the third scene, the underwater temple, everybody was pretty cranky. The quest was standard “find widget A to get widget B,” which can be a bit boring. That, and Beldin was still a mess. And killing ghosts is hard.

The fourth scene is the payoff though. The battle to the top of the tower was great, especially because we used e-Adventure Round Tower tiles. Ironically, the main bad guy was much less of a threat than his bodyguard N’Tal, who nearly killed the party off by pounding them with evocation spells.

Still, we get a cinematic finish…and you gotta love any adventure that ends with a bang! [MORE]

Labels: arcanis

posted by Mike Tresca at 7:46 AM

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