-----
Joss is headed into town to sell a bow that she thieved from somewhere as money is getting tight. On the way she is jumped by three bandits in the forest before town. Joss ignores the bandit's calls for surrender and sprints towards the tree line away from the road. She is hit by a light crossbow bolt but the damage is absorbed by her light armor.
Joss manages to make it up into the trees with a few light crossbow bolts missing her as she climbed. The bandit/thieves claim they only want her to pay the "King's tax". Amid cat calls to come down Joss jumps to a larger tree and scurries up and hides. After a while the bandits locate her but can't get a good shot. One of the bandits, George (not a very hyborian-Lemurian name, but I was winging it) climbs up after Joss. George isn't a great climber and almost falls out of the tree, but after a bit he manages to make it up to where Joss is hiding. Joss surprises George with a kick to the face sending George crashing down through the branches. Unfortunately George takes a bad fall and breaks his neck.
Enraged, the remaining un-named thieves ( a swordsman with medium armor and a burly gladiator type) pick up George's light crossbow and fire numerous times at a well protected Joss. They do get close enough to Joss to spook her into attempting to jump to another tree, and Joss ends up loosing her footing and crashes to the ground, taking a bruising on the way down. Before the two thieves manage to be upon her though Joss sprints away from them. Immediately the ring mailed warrior is in hot pursuit and almost catches Joss. Joss ends up eluding the thief swordsman and gains enough ground on him over the course of the next few minutes to have time to stop, turn, notch and arrow in her bow, and fire at the swordman's unprotected head. Joss's first show glances the swordsman, but her next show rings true, and as the swordman's blade is about to come down on Joss he crashes down dead before her.
Joss immediately takes to the trees again, awaiting to see if there are any other pursuers. Sure enough, after a time the burly thief shows up and immediately heads to the fallen swordsman's side. Joss misses and easy kill shot at the burly warrior. To his credit the burly x-gladiator immediately realizes he is facing a superior opponent that has a tactical advantage and he tries to run. Joss mercilessly fells him with a second shot to the back.
Joss cautiously climbs down the tree again and searches the fallen swordsman's body while keeping an eye on the face down x-gladiator in-case he is playing dead. Joss removes 9 silver pieces from the dead swordsman. She then cautiously approaches the x-gladiator that is laying face down with an arrow protruding from his body. Without taking any risk Joss delivers a dagger blow below the rib cage to the heart. Her fears were unfounded though as the poor fellow perished from the bow strike. Joss searches the body and recovers some jerky and a small gem stone.
Joss decides to return to the initial ambush site and search the first thief that fell from the tree. On her way she finds the discarded light crossbow that belonged to George and takes it. Joss searches George and other than some sticks of black lotus incense, which Joss leaves, and an old dagger, George doesn't have much. Joss notices that there is an identifying engraving on the side of the light crossbow. She spends a good deal of time trying to scrape the engraving up with George's dagger, only to end up accidently cutting the crossbow string. Joss discard's the crossbow and heads to town.
Outside the fortress gates of the yet to be named city is a medium sized shanty town of makeshift homes, taverns, stores, and inns. Joss decides to find a pawner and sell the gem stone. She finds one, and works a deal to be paid 5 crowns (worth 10 silvers each) and Joss also picks up a lock picking set in the deal.
What Joss doesn't know is she failed to recover her arrows, which are distinct, and the x-gladiator was a friend of the local bandit lord in the forest. Although the bandit lord has no respect for the three fools that tried to ambush Joss, honor demans that he soon seek the owner of the arrows and slay him or her. Also unknown to Joss is that the gem stone she sold belong to a larger shipment of gemstones bound to the merchant Thell, who is very eager to recover all of them before the Jun warlord Har looses patience and comes looking for the gems himself.
Strength -1
Agility 2
Mind 2
Appeal 1
Brawl 0
Melee 0
Ranged 3
Defense 1
Lifeblood 9
Hero Points 3
Hunter 2
Thief 2
Boons
Called Shot
Sharpened Senses
Flaws
Hunted
I didn't mess around with languages and background for this game.
So far I had fun with the game. There are enough of a rule framework so when I determined what to role and what bonuses applied (jumping to another tree, I'll give you the standard difficulty 9 with Agility bonus) but ultimately Barbarians of Lemuria (BoL for short) is highly GM fiat, which is OK. Joss used two of her hero points on miss jumps, and I cut her a break on one of her damage rolls, but over all the rules light GM fiat driven BoL system seemed to work fine. I'll use the two groups that are angry at her as her hunted flaw. I used Joss's thief skills to determine if she could find a decent pawn fence shop and for her to estimate what the gem stone was worth, as well as I rolled against her hunting career of 2 as a "perception" type bonus while out in the woods (though it didn't help, Joss was still surprised by the bandits). The bandits being "mooks" and only having 3 lifeblood didn't seem to distract from the threat of danger at all, and fell in with about how powered up a typical hyporian-esque hero I figure would be compared to non important enemies. The above lasted about 45 minutes, so you can see how the game moves along fairly quickly. I decided that I wanted to track money and equipment, rather than use the Lemurian concepts of players having vast wealth and then blowing it all between adventures with the idea of not getting bogged down into gold piece counting. I might adopt that later but as Joss as just getting going I will let her scrap for funds for a while, after all it led to an adventure hook or two.
My wife was initially not really into playing Barbarians of Lemuria even though she enjoys table top role playing games (her favorite so far being WHFRP 2nd ed). She just didn't think there was enough "meat" to the system. So I kind of conned her into playing but just starting to free flow describing her having a surplus bow to sell and asking what she wanted to do. She humored me. I'm not sure how she will take to playing a long term campaign using the BoL rules light system, we will have to see. But we will play again.
Comments