On the Defensive (Session 2)

The party heals up over night. We then notice a building in the middle of town that we hadn't seen before: the museum of natural history. We decide that we all need a vacation, and head to the museum. As Craw flies by the museum, he looks in through a window and sees several giant eagles that look familiar to him. He heads into the museum, not realizing that the window is closed. Amid a shower of broken glass, Craw descends into the museum and notices that his Uncle Fred is here, along with his baby brother. Unfortunately, Craw didn't notice the sixteen Birdhunters that are patrolling the museum. Craw begins to talk to his Uncle Fred, who is suspended in mid-air and not flapping his wings. Craw doesn't realize that Uncle Fred is stuffed. The same goes for his baby brother. Craw heads out of the museum as a barrage of arrows from the Birdhunters follows him.

As we head away from the museum, we hear the sound of the tromping feet of a few mobs. We head away from the mobs. The party then notices that there are 10 members of the Cleaner Club heading toward the haunted house, each of them armed with a mop.
As they spot Something Else and Trixie, two of them run off toward the Butterflies Anonymous building. Trixie and Something Else head back to the inn. Craw heads off to the woods.

Back at the haunted house, Dusty arrives at the front door. Inside the haunted house, the rats have Gatling gun-like udders. That is, they look like cow udders. Meanwhile, the members of the Cleaner Club are rising to arms. For what? we have no idea. Trixie and Something Else head to the Cleaner's Club while the cleaners are out attacking the haunted hosue, to see if we can find any information as to what the Cleaner's Club is up to. Luck is with us, as the Cleaner's Club is empty. So, Something Else and Trixie head inside and search for information. We find a closet with a big word etched on the front of it: “War”. Inside is an armory of buckets and mops.

On a desk within the Cleaner's Club, we find a book that talks about cleaning up the haunted house and setting it up as the “Cleaner's Club Other Place #2”. We head back to the Cleaner's Club to see if we can foil their plans. Battle ensues. We win. Yay!

Trixie, Dusty, and Something Else head over to a building that isn't really a building. (there was a big smudge on the battle mat that all of us thought was a building)

We head to the Blacksmith's Shop. But, there's not much going on there.

We then head over to the forest, but there's nothing on there. Se we decide to had to the Cleaner's Club. There are 35 members there. As we enter, one of the members gets up and runs out of the building, heading to the Birdhunters' Club. Something Else flies after him and kills him. We head back to the Cleaner's Club and eliminate all of the members. We hear, off in the distance, some loud meetings being held at the Birdhunters' Club and the Butterflies Anonymous group. They are planning to unite to eliminate the party from the town. However, we now have a headquarters from which to operate: the old Cleaner's Club building.

Adventure Abounds (Session 1)

Something Else is lucky because he’s with someone who is lucky (Trixie) because she helped the GM.

Craw is Unlucky because he kept telling the GM to go to the bathroom.

Trixie is riding Something Else, delivering a package to someone named Jack. Trixie does not believe in sparing the whip. Trixie and Something Else head to the inn, where we think Jack might be heading.

Dusty begins in the haunted house.

The inn is so accustomed to having pixies visit, they have a fly-in pixie door. Something Else is having problems flying because Jack is an elf, which means he has a pretty big letter. We see one of the tables in the inn is an elf table. We approach it and ask for Jack. The elves say that Jack was heading for the bar and went around the corner to the side of the bar that has the better bartender. We head to the good bartender; we see an arm waving. It looks like the arm of Jack. We deliver the letter to Jack, who then heads out of the inn to read the letter, which appears to be very important to him.

After Jack finishes reading the letter, he turns around, sees Trixie and Something Else and says, “Are you following me?” Trixie says, “Sure. You’re cute.” Jack hastily writes a letter and gives it to Something Else and Trixie to deliver it to his father, who is the one who wrote the letter that he just read.

Trixie and Something Else head off and think that they catch something out of the corner of their eye. We turn toward it, and a flash occurs. After recovering from being flashed, we determine that it was just the sun, but then it’s

“something else that can’t be explained other than the GM is rolling low.” -- Andrew

After a bit, we realize that the area where the flash occurred is the door to the building where a Butterfly Catchers Anonymous meeting is going on. We see the doorknob turn and decide to head back to the inn. The butterfly catcher comes into the inn; we head back out of the inn. The people of the inn block the pixie door so that the butterfly catcher doesn’t see us leaving. On our way out of the inn, we notice that the butterfly catcher is holding a book called “How Pixies Are Like Butterflies”.

We then notice that when the bartender saw the book, he had a frightened look on his face. Apparently, he likes the way that mail is delivered by pixies and butterflies.

We make it to the forest and take Jack’s letter to Pixie Central. We would have delivered the letter directly to Jack’s father, but he lives on a different island. We choose to end our turn to let someone else go. Ben and Rich roll off; Ben wins, so he goes next.

In the haunted house, Dusty notices that there are rats running around that he can milk in case he gets thirsty. Also, drinking rat milk will heal Dusty. But, Ben doesn’t want his character to have the skill “Rat-milking”. There is a rat rodeo going on inside the haunted house. There are petrified dust demons riding rats while patrolling the house. Suddenly, one of the rats starts bucking like a wild horse. Six more dust demons ride over to help the dust demon that is on the bucking rat. The party hopes that it doesn’t run into any armored rat-man sorcerers.

Dusty notices a skeleton running amok, who appears to have gone mad. There are four more skeletons and one zombie within the house, and they are running over to help the mad skeleton get back to normal.

Up ahead, Dusty notices that there is a haunted house brawl going on… rats are lunging at zombies, ghosts are entering zombies and rats and yanking their hearts out. Dusty notices that there is a Level 1 rat running to join the brawl. Dusty runs after the rat and catches up to it before the rat reaches the brawl. The rat turns on Dusty and attacks. Dusty attempts to summon a herd of dust minions, but fails. He tries again, and succeeds. Dusty decides to make his minion a dust bull, and sics it on the rat. It kills the rat.

Dusty then sees a Level 2 rat foaming at the mouth. Dusty summons two more dust minions, which attack the foaming rat. Dusty heads up into the attic. Now, it’s Craw’s turn.

In the forest, Craw lands on a tree branch, which is very small. But, Craw, being of alignment Nuts, doesn’t realize that it is likely that it will snap. As the branch begins to snap, Craw decides to fly. Craw flies about and spots a group of pixies and butterflies and, given that he is of Alignment: Nuts, figures that they must be hanging around a buffet. Being hungry, he dives down on the pixies and butterflies.

Something Else and Trixie notice a huge eagle diving toward us, which is 5 meters away. Something Else and Trixie back up, Trixie throws pixie dust in his eyes, but it doesn’t work. Craw then impales himself in the ground. Something Else laughs. Craw pushes himself up to try to pull his beak out of the ground. Something Else heads over to Craw to help him get his beak out of the ground. As it turns out, the butterfly is stronger than the giant eagle.

Suddenly, five butterfly catcher descend upon us. Three of them are level 6, one of them is level 4, and the last one is level 1. Trixie charms Craw and has him attack the butterfly catchers. The butterfly catchers have nets and spellbooks. Something Else whacks one of the catchers with his mailbag. Trixie summons a bee which attacks the big level 6 butterfly catcher. Craw tried to hit the catchers with his wings and continues to miss. Eventually, Craw whacks on a butterfly catcher and kills him.

Two of the butterfly catchers run off. They make it to a building where Birdhunters live. The battle continues on. Trixie’s charm wears off of Craw. Trixie and Something Else get netted by two of the butterfly catchers. Craw pecks a hole through the heart of the butterfly catcher that is holding Something Else. Something Else gets out of his net and attempts to attack the butterfly catcher that has netted Trixie. Something Else then hears the sound of a crossbow bolt being loaded onto a crossbow. Something Else turns about to look toward the sound and sees the two catchers who had run off to the Birdhunters Lodge earlier. They are loading a crossbow, and have a Birdhunter with them.

The guy with the crossbow hits Craw, being that he is skilled at hunting birds. But, luck is with the party this day, as a pack of two wolves shows up and begins attacking the crossbowman. Trixie attempts to charm one of the butterfly catchers, but fails. Craw attempts to use his ranged wind attack on one of the catchers, but misses. Trixie charms the one butterfly catcher who is still standing. We notice that he has his spellbook open to “Chain Lightning”. Given that Trixie has not given him any commands, he turns and attacks the two wolves. Craw, Trixie, and Something Else fly straight up. Looking down, they see a petrified dust demon (Dusty) and take pity upon him. They fly back down and begin talking to him, to see why he is out in the sun (petrified dust demons prefer to stay in the dark). In the distance, we hear a wolf thud to the ground. In the end, we pick up Dusty and his dust bulls, and fly out of range of the butterfly catcher and the birdhunter. Flying further from the area, Craw catches sight of a sign that says “The Cleaner Club”, whose charter it is to eliminate dust. Dusty attacks Craw because Dusty didn’t want to be picked up off the ground. Craw decides to drop the petrified dust demon that is attacking him. Something Else flies over a pond and drops the two dust bulls he is carrying into the pond so that they turn to mud and stop attacking him.

Something Else and Trixie land on a tree branch to rest. Craw, not knowing any better, lands on a branch that is far too small to support his weight. Then, Craw spots an even smaller tree branch, tries to land on it, and it breaks the moment he touches it.

Charm wears off the last butterfly catcher, who then looks at Dusty and says (out loud), “Cleaner Club. Cleaner Club. Cleaner Club. Cleaner Club.” Dusty attacks and kills the butterfly catcher. Dusty levels up. Something Else and Trixie get some sleep in order to heal up faster.

Dusty heads over to where the rest of us are so that he can explain why he had attacked us. Meanwhile, 21 squirrels approach Craw. Craw flies away. Meanwhile a rain of nuts from the squirrels comes down on Craw. Unfortunately, Trixie gets caught in the barrage of nuts and dies. However, fortunately, Jenni has a roll-off with Death and beats him, so Trixie comes back to life at full health.

A Little Background

Dungeons & Death is a fantasy RPG system and campaign system that has been developed by Andrew Seiler and playtested by Ben Seiler. Andrew also serves as the GM in the campaign in which we are playing that uses this system.

Homebrew System
The game system is styled, in a sense, after Dungeons & Dragons(tm), which is published by Wizards of the Coast. It is similar insofar as characters are defined by a race, a class, physical and mental statistics, and an alignment.

This is where the similarities end.

First off, there are no restrictions on a player character's race or their class. A player can play a human, an ogre, a frost giant, a winged slug, a squirrel, or an extroverted badger... the sky's the limit. The same goes for the PC's class: fighter, hunter, mage, deliveryman, short-order cook, ninja, and nerf-herder are all perfectly viable PC classes. (The latter is only allowed, of course, if the PC is scruffy-looking.)

Alignments, as given in D&D(tm), define the moral compass of the character that guides their actions within the campaign. For this attribute, a player may select from "good", "evil", "chaotic", "lawful", and "nuts".

The Party
Our party of four wayward travelers is comprised of:

Dusty (played by Ben)
  Race: Petrified Dust Demon
  Class: Dust Collector

Something Else (played by Mike)
  Race: Butterfly
  Class: Mailman

Craw (played by Rich)
  Race: Giant Eagle
  Class: Hunter

Trixie (played by Jenni)
  Race: Pixie
  Class: Messenger