Kingbeast's Lair

A friend of mine, Alex Sheikman, is finishing up work on a new graphic novel that tells the story of the Count Of Monte Cristo but in Stalinist Russia. The working title of the project is Kristo. Alex and the writer, Sam Roads, funded the project using Kickstarter. As part of that effort I pledged to get a page from it. Here is the page that I chose and some sketches that Alex gave me for being such an ardent supporter. If you want to check out more of Alex’s work here is a link to his blogspot account.

Dual Page Spread From Kristo – Shows his time in prison. (Click on the image to get a larger version.)

Sketch Used In Kristo – Sketch that was used as a replacement for one of the pages. (Click on the image to get a larger version.)

Sketch Not Used In Kristo – Family portrait that needed to be redone for the book. (Click on the image to get a larger version.)

A couple of months ago I was contacted by my cousin Paul. He wanted to have me teach his two sons, Dave and Andrew, how to play role-playing games. I was delighted to get chance to bring a second generation of gamers into the hobby. When I was very young I actually taught several advanced placement students how to play Champions. Over the years I have taken many people into the fold but it had been a while since I worked with teenagers.

The Prep

My first question was what system I would use for the session. After much thought I decided on Savage Worlds from Pinnacle Entertainment Group. To folks who know me this selection may be a surprise. Aren’t you a Hero junkie? 🙂 I decided that Savage Worlds’ ultra-fast learning curve would be perfect. It also uses the funny sided dice and cards which add to the fun for new gamers. I used the free Wizards & Warriors material from Pinnacle as the adventure. (Here is a link to that free material.) This made things easy as they provide sample characters, figure flats, and nearly everything I would need to run the session. Another advantage to Savage Worlds is the price of entry. The Explorer’s Editions are extremely inexpensive at a $10 cover price.

Now that I had the system, adventure, and all of the characters done I started thinking about how I wanted to run the actual session. To this end I created an outline of what I would discuss. Before I started the actual adventure I wanted to discuss a bit about the hobby to give them a feel for where it has been and where it is now. I wanted to make sure this introduction was short and sweet so we could get to the fun stuff (aka the adventure). I also thought my cousin Paul might be interested as he has not gamed in many years.

The Session

When I arrived they has setup a nice table with plenty of food and snacks. To my surprise two of Dave and Andrew’s friends turned them down at the last minute. The good news was that my cousin Paul and his wife Shahrzad decided to play. This gave us a nice number of players (i.e. 4). In the long run I think having Paul in the session really helped. Having role-played in the past he could take the lead at times to show the other how things work.

I started by talking very briefly about the history of the hobby. I made sure to hit only the highlights so I could go quickly through the material. After that I went over the main companies in the market (WOTC, Paizo, White Wolf, etc) and the new indie games that are hitting the market. I ended the intro by going over some basic terms. For example, player, NPC, PC, GM, dice abbreviations, etc.

Having gone through the introduction I briefly reviewed the characters then handed them out. Paul played a necromancer and the thief. Andrew and Dave played a barbarian and an archer. Shahrzad played a dwarven priest. After giving out the PC I went over the various parts of the character sheets carefully. As I went I asked if people had questions on the various sections or on specifics on their sheets. I also highlighted various parts of the sheet and how they pertained to each characters. For example, Agility is how quick the character reacts and represents hand eye coordination. The elven archer has a very high Agility. I also intentionally asked Paul to play one of the characters with magic as they are a bit more involved than the other characters.

At this point I started the session. The opening scene involved the PC returning to a small village after saving it from a hoard of goblins. After entering the town they head towards the inn. Once entering the characters are acknowledged by the bartender. Not being sure where to start the players paused. That is when Paul took the lead and in character as the necromancer talked to the bartender about getting rooms and some food. It worked out really nice having Paul take the lead and throw out advice during the run. Often he might give the other minor advice on different things that they might do. It really helped having him play that inside angle during the session. I definitely plan to keep that in mind if I ever conduct sessions like this in the future. One really great scene happened when a small girl comes into the bar looking for help. When she became scared of the necromancer one of the other players stepped up and did a great job talking with her. I actually changed this lead from one of the junior priests in the village to a little girl to make it more approachable and really drive the PC to help. Who can resist a scared little girl who is looking for help?!? It ended up being a good change.

Initially there is a tiny mystery for the PC to figure out revolving around the little girl’s guardian, a local priest. It is up to the PC to gather clues about what might have happened to him. This worked out really well as it let the characters use some of their skills and helped ease them into the role-playing.

At this point the adventure started rolling until the first fight scene. The adventure has a great opening fight to get the players warmed up. It was against some zombies. Although it started kind of slow it quickly picked up speed. It was not a surprise when Andrew playing the barbarian started flying all over the place with his axe. Leave it to teenage boys to get into the hack-and-slash.

It ended with a climactic fight against a large skeleton and the corrupted priest. The battle was climactic and turned several times. Everyone had fun in the spotlight during this scene.

The adventure closed with the little girl asking the PC who will take care of her. The conversations were great with various players throwing out their thoughts. It allowed me to highlight how it might play out over a longer campaign where one adventure might affect the next.

Overall I consider the afternoon a resounding success. I had tons of fun and I know they did as well. Hec…that is what this amazing hobby is all about…having fun with your friends. 😀

[Author’s Note: This is the log for the 9th session. Note that the order of the events in this record may not be in the exact order that they occurred during play. The narrator is shown in italics.]

In this hair-raising adventure of Tesla’s Power Corp you can follow the exploits of the following heroes:

Shocking Development

As the story picks up the characters are figuring out how they can safely scale a gigantic Buddha statue so that they can enter the secret tunnel behind it’s head. While the current members of the Corp figure out the details Jared Caesar stares on in disbelief. These strangers are definitely not archaeologists and they seem very ill-prepared. After the rest of the characters enter the tunnel Jared approaches and climbs up the statue.

Inside the members of Tesla’s Power Corp find a vast hidden chamber. The chamber is filled with wooden walkways suspended by chains over what appears to be a nearly bottomless pit. Along the walkways are statues that act as pillars to support the roof. On the far side of the room is a glowing golden coffer.

As the current members of the Corp decide how to proceed Jared knocks loose some dirt and is spotted. After explaining the fact that he is after the same thing as the group and that he has useful skills, including the ability to read Mandarin, they begrudgingly accept him.

With some prompting from Tommy, Johnny rigs up a hook like extension that can be used to move from one chain to another without touching the walkways. This allows Tommy to carefully examine the walkways and coffer.

At the coffer Tommy takes the lead by examining the platform on which it rests. By inspecting it from the underside he determines that it is rigged to swing out on a pivot dropping anyone on the top into the bottomless pit. With this knowledge Tommy and Johnny wedge the platform into the upright position. Next Miles reaches out with his mystical senses. He determines that the coffer is magically tied to the room and sets up a dampening circle around it. Once done Jared reads the writing which tells of an immortal dragon whose heart is split into three pieces. After unlocking and opening the coffer the group finds a piece of the jade amulet. Sensing great power Miles carefully reaches into the coffer to pick it up.

At that moment there is a crack of lightning and the group sees a man in a blue gee appear! After summoning martial art minions he orders them to attack in Mandarin. With this the heroes jump into action! Miles cuts loose with devastating lightning bolts. Callahan lets loose with his twin Colts. Jared takes out some minions with some well placed rifle shots. After taking some terrible damage the second talon falls. Unexpectedly villagers rush in with guns blazing to help out the group. In moments the chaotic melee is over.

Back at the village the group is treated like heroes. Miles and Jared take some time to examine the amulet. It matches the description and photograph of the first piece but is a different segment. When Miles stretches out with his senses to examine it his vision changes to a city on the water with a beautiful domed cathedral. The scene moves down a waterway then under the famous Rialto Bridge. It is Venice! Finally his vision focuses in on a white washed stucco wall then a statue of a cherub that is clutching another piece of the amulet.

Hedge Maze

After touching down in Venice the group is met by Luigi Giovanni. Luigi owns the Palace Hotel and seems to know Miles from a previous visit. He offers the group an executive suite at the hotel. The group asks Luigi if he can protect their bags why they are in town. He confirms that it would be his pleasure to watch their valuables.

The next morning Miles starts asking around about the cherub statue from his vision. He eventually finds an art dealer who has seen it. The art dealer directs the group to a piazza that has a hedge maze that incorporates several fountains that have cherub centerpieces.

Just before entering the hedge maze the group spots several Chinese men wearing trench coats entering from another alley. Using Miles’ mystical senses and their own quick wits the Corp quickly navigates the maze. As they approach the cherub status they find a man in a red gee grabbing another pieces of the jade amulet! After ordering his men to attack in Mandarin he launches fireballs at the group! Acting quickly Johnny orders SAM to protect Miles. This acts to keep the flames away from Miles allowing him to cut loose on the fire mystic. In the meantime Mike rushes forward into the fray sending martial artists flying backwards into Tommy’s spider amulet swarm. In seconds the Chinese thugs are down and the final talon has fallen.

As the group turns to leave an image appears before them. The image is of an old Chinese man with a long black Fu-Manchu mustache. He informs the group that his name is Lo Peng and that he has kidnapped Mike’s army buddy Eddie Chang! He tells them to bring the pieces of the amulet that they possess to the Great Wall in four days so that they may trade them for Eddie’ life.

Don’t turn your dial or you may miss the spine tingling climactic battle between an immortal dragon and the heroic might of Tesla’s Power Corp!