Recap: Silly Romperoo, Season 1 Episode 3

Bears

Oh man, serious logistics issues rocked my world, but we got through it! Hopefully, it doesn't happen again, right?

Cast

There are a lot more characters signed up, but these are the ones that were involved for the large part.

Provided portrait.

Alisa 

A Paladin of a death god. Fights with a flail and shield, and has decent armor.

Provided Portrait

Isaac

An unusually youthful student of the Kabbalah, a fact hidden by his head of grey hair, Isaac Cordovero was amongst the most gifted students of the lot, displaying an affinity for the Sephirah Chokhmah to the extent of displaying talent even in the most hidden arts. However, his relative inexperience with life - not even forty years of age - had him passed over for the position of Rebbe at the Yeshiva and told to experience life to its fullest in order to gain a complete understanding of the nature of Ein Sof, as required of the greatest thaumatologists.
Brashly confident in his powers, Isaac chose to join an adventuring party, hoping to bring fame and glory to the Yeshiva and, above all, to the thaumatologist's art. He crawls dungeons, the loot secondary to his greater aspirations.

Derick

Uncredited and I can't find
a source.

A combination doctor and necromancer. He is haunted, for lack of a better word by his great grandfather, a ghost that is upset about the dwindling Dicus family tree. Derick is a talented doctor, naturalist, and magic user in his own right.

Nanako

A wood elf. She has the power to imbue arrows with magic.

Also can't find a source.

Nate Bumpus - Innkeeper Extraordinaire!

Son of a soldier, Nate Bumpus was born with wandering in his blood. He tried his hand at the warring trade but found it wasn't to his liking. He left the armed service, traveled far and away, encountering people of many strange cultures and races. Often he worked in exchange for room and board, and through the years he learned the trade of an innkeeper. He found this work more to his liking: he enjoyed meeting new people, and staying put at an inn for a while, he could meet more than he could traveling. He eventually developed a pattern: wandering and seeking adventure when the weather is right, then settling with a job at a comfy inn when the months get colder. 

Also no source

Arron

A two handed swordsman. He is quick but frail, and eager to kill.

Summary

The party from last time has just finished resting up a little after being attacked. Into the sewer, four new people wander in: Dr. Derick, and companions Arron, Nate, and Nanako.

They can hear the commotion to the west and go to join with Alisa and Isaac who are in repose at the moment. While arguing about the quest to rescue the candlestick maker's lost daughter, and Nate's missing dog who has also found its way into the sewer, they eventually settle on the idea of searching for a hidden door that the Dinomen that were just recently executed hinted about. They found one in the same room through the use of a charm from Isaac. When they managed to finally get the door open, (pictured in purple on the screenshot,) they heard two interesting sets of footsteps. One, the dinomen, scurrying through the secret passage, but also, a terrifyingly loud sound from the east. Dr. Derick, something of an animal expert recognizes the sound of sewer bears and informs the party of the approaching enemy.

Forming a quick alliance for their own safety, Arron and Alisa take point, with Nate holding a light behind them, and Isaac, Derick, and Nanako waiting in the back. The tussle in the tight corridors makes Nanako's bow unable to provide much help to the rest of the party. Derick expecting that his other friends would be nearby by now, does what he can to help by invigorating the swordsman Arron with a Strengthening spell.

Alisa, Nate, and Arron position themselves for an ensuing spectacle. Alisa throws down her weapon to better sacrificially block for her allies, while Arron rushes out in front, Nate illuminating the hallway. The bears, running at full tilt attempt to slam into both Arron and Alisa. Arron unable to locate the vitals, instead decides to take advantage of his quick attacks to target the neck of the beast making three slashes in the space of a single second, and knocking it down with a critical hit. Arron and Nate are able to get out of the way but Alisa is smacked into the wall.

Isaac stuns the other bear with a spare charm, taking advantage of the intel from Derick that the bears are not very intelligent, this would be a nail in its coffin. With the bear crashed into the corner, the front line heroes make quick work of the stupefied animal.

After everything is finally done, Derick's zombies finally arrive. Slightly late, but that's life, or unlife, sometimes.

Derick sizes up the possibility of zombifying the bears, but Arron and Nate want to butcher the beast for leather and meat. After summoning the ghost of his great grandfather, who was more interested in making sure his great grandson would sire an heir, and seeing he didn't have the resources to cast the spelll on such huge creatures, Derick relented, and the butchering began. From the two, the party salvaged 3,600 lbs of meat, and 52 lbs of sweetbreads, worth $468. Isaac decides to freeze the vast majority of the meat as there is no way to safely transport this much with the more important task of making sure a child comes home alive and safely.

Dr. Derick's zombies and skeletons rummage about the belongings of the dead dinomen and take some axes, which the skeletons are skilled enough to use.

After Action Report

• What Went Well
• Derick had a good mastery of the magic system even though it was his first time playing GURPS. He knew the answer to questions I wasn't sure about, so that was helpful!
• The party liked the characterization of the ghost of Derick's grandfather.
• The party appreciated Alisa's organization
• What We can learn from
• I started some last minute preparations too late, and some logistics issues like wrangling character sheets, making tokens in Roll 20, and all that shoulda been done sooner.
• This was exacerbated by my stress testing uncovering a bug in GURPS Calculator. I think the two important take-aways here are that I need backup character sheets from the players in case the tool ever breaks down again, and I need to do preparation like this further in advance. 4 new players are a lot to introduce all at once.
• 6 players and 1 GM is encroaching on critical mass for an exclusively text chat game. I think I've discovered my limit. In a later experiment, I'll try exclusively voice and see how that works different. I assume there are pros and cons to both approaches.
• The bears were supposed to be SM+4, that is apparently 30 feet tall. They would not have even fit in the hallway of that screenshot. All the more, theater of mind style, defeating two bears like that is a pretty impressive feat.