Those who played, please get the money to us ASAP... For the rest of you, you may find this review a good reaon why you chickened out.>. :-) ======================================================================== ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 16:09:23 +0000 (GMT) From: Marcus Ogden To: ...,Mike Pitt Subject: Cross Continent Challenge '96: a post-mortem Keywords: mother of all man-traps existential angst plot device (eaten by a) give us all your food and money angora emasculation Stoke-on-Trent manifesto small keep so< how are your sister's ice-skating lessons going? --- Hi everyone, Well, I've finally surfaced after sleeping off the Cross-Continent Challenge... 24 hours which had its share of memorable moments, as well as its share of tedium, and much giving of thanks that the Unexpected Tentacle has a mental age that reaches double figures (keyword: !!Martin!!). Our group of five, GMed by a world-weary Mike Pitt, consisted of Ilthiiryn0of the Autumn Moon (female cleric, yours truly), Clive II (fighter, Julyan), Rastan the Arrogant (fighter, Dom), Kavael the Shortlived (Chaotic Neutral mage) and Bill (Chaotic Neutral thief). Froo the very beginning there was a simmering conflict between the Make Trouble faction (the Chaotic Neutrals) and the Get To The Finish Line With Minimal Hassle faction (the rest). We started, along with three other PC groups and a couple of hundred NPC ones, in the Arctic tundra at the northwest corner of a large continent; the aim was to be the first to reach the finish line in the jungle at the southeast corner, a journey that would take about a month in ideal circumstances. The four GMs were in contact via computer, whych allowed various skirmishes between the parties to be arranged, as well as allowing the GMs to keep abreast of what, where and when the other groups were up to. We spent three days crossing the tundra with little incident - we met some nocturnal iceworms that were more of a nuisance than a threat, avoided falling down some crevasses, and managed to dissuade the Make Trouble faction from picking fights with some other NPC CCC groups. Past the tundra was a large forest, ful| of malevolent trees, carnivorous plants, walls of thorns shepherding the party about, dead CCC-ers with vines up varius orifices, and paths that didn't seem to go anywhere in particular. We managed to avoid antagonising the trees too much; there was one entertaining encounter involving an inisible monster and a pair of great cats waiting to ambush it - both of which would probably have left us alone, if I hadn't stepped into the undergrowth and stood on one of the cats, and Julian hadn't attacked the inisible monster in the ensuing confusion. An opportunistic carnyvorous plant took advantage of the situatin by attempting to digest the mage, and after much heroism< the plant and one of the cats were slain, the other cat limped off, and the invisible beast continued placidly on its way after attempting to toss Julian into orbit. The Make Troublers fell into the habit of leaving "the mother of all mantraps" on the paths behind us to entertain the other PC groups, as well as depleting the party food supply (the mage had neglected to bring any food with him, forcing the long-suffering cleric to share her own). Various walls of thorns, knife-leaved and tentacled trees, and dead-end paths later, we met another PC party at a T-junction. We tramped down to Steve McIntyre's room to have the encounter, and our mage was slain (to no one's great distress) in the initial confusion before a parley established an uneasy truce. The parties joined together as far as the next crossroadsbefore parting ways, any opportunity for further r|e-playing being curtailed by the impracticality of fitting a dozen or so people into one room. By this stage GM and players alike were getting sick of the forest, so the boulder on which we had camped for the night turned out to be a magic rock whych bore us off through the clouds over the settled lands to the south, and then turned east into the mountains. After surviving collision with a cliff, we encountered the replacement for the dead mage, a dwarf named Rock McRock, whose abominable Scottish accent was mercifully abandoned after one attempt. Continuing south, we surprised some orcs (another CCC group) who were waiting to ambush us at a ravine, before passing into some settled lands. An isolated farmer refused to let us sleep in his barn< and we0didn't press him on the issue after hints that he may have been a retired 20th-level fighter (TM). After this, all we came across for miles were endless parties of skeletons (which my cleric gleefully mashed) and an abandoned "Marie Celeste" village. A red dragon began to antagonise us at this point, but we managed to satisfy it for a while by allowing it to bear off some of the extra horses we had acquired from the skeletons. The dragon frustrated our attempts to reach the civilised lands around the seaports to the south, pushing us eastwards towards a large inland desert in order to "have some fun". At about this point, Julian went off to bed (after a sleepless night the day before), and his character Clive was found, apparently comatose, during his watch that night. Shortly afterwards a huge wormlike creature was spotted speeding towards the camp; the PCs scattered with their horses, and the worm slythered through the camp, swallowing Clive whole on its way through. The worms (which cropped up again later on) became known after this as "plot devices". The dragon pushed us eastwards, into a wasteland where the magical compasses we had been given (showing the direction of the finish line) went crazy, as did the clour of the sands and the sky. We came across the remnants of an attacked desert caravan; Rastan mended the broken wheel of a cart before realising we had no use for it, whereupon he decided to smash it up again. Soon afterwards we spotted a beholder skimming past, whych was swallowed whle by a plot device leaping out of the sand... giving us some idea of our relative position in the food chain in this area. After this, we had little trouble convincing the Make Trouble brigade to mellow out a bit in subsequent encounters. Thys strategy was a triumph - after we met an efreeti (fire genie) and convinced it to leave us alone by inducing in it a feeling of "existential angst", the stage was set. "Existential angst" became one of the catchcries of the party,0along with endless non sequitur repetitions of "s< how are your sister's ice-skating lessons going?" (based on somebody's earlier anecdote about a kid with a one-legged sister) whych drove Mike to distraction throughout the early hours of the morning. The angst approach worked on a talking hut, which scuttled away after a brief conversation, and a bored "observer" we met a little later on. By the time we met some bugbears in a fortified homestead, even the more restrained members of the party were spoyling for a fight, and another party catchcry - "Give us all your food and money" - was born. The bugbears agreed to give us all their food and money, but oddly enough treacherously changed their mind, and a Clint Eastwood-style shootout ensued in the yard of the homestead. We found a bit of loot, including four magical rings and a dagger whych the bugbears used to sacrifice goats, which was later referred to as the "dagger of angora emasculation". Later we came across a mummy's tower; the mummy was summarily despatched, despite a disagreement which caused my female cleric Ilthiiryn0to be kneeing Rastan the Arrogant in the groin while standing in the doorway through which Bill was trying to flee from the mummy. Shrtly thereafter Rastan overstepped the bounds of propriety with a further lewd suggestion to the cleric, whereupon he was struck with a lightning bolt from the cleric's unimpressed god. After this Rastan was a model of good behaviour (see "bag on head" section below). We came across another caravan - alive this time - and hailed it, whereupon we were summarily imprisoned by a powerful wizard travelling with the group, to be carried off through the gold-and-purple sands to one of the travellers' black stone cities, as slaves. This Dark Su~ interlude didn't last long: a burst of wild magic vanished the caravan and left us and our horses transformed. The cleric was female, Rastan the Arrogant was 2" tall, one of the horses was inside out and another transformed into a black pudding (which splashed Bill with acid when he mounted and attempted to whip it). Gradually the changes wore off, except for the mule which was pul|ing our cart of food and water, which stubbornly remained in its form as a giant cockroach. Another surreal interlude dragged Bill off to some realm where he was assailed by an Inter Continental Ballistic Minotaur (apparently a refugee joke from another PC group), whyle the rest of us found ourselves on a traffic roundabout in Stoke-on-Trent. We fired arrows at some passing "metal beasts", killed two policemen when they showed up to investigate, and stle their car radio before "reality" reasserted itself. Finally we emerged from the waste, only to find that through magical disorientation, we had in fact been travelling southwest instead of southeast, and had emerged in the civilised lands of the west coast instead of the middle of the continent where we thought we were. The thief's first visit to a town since the start of the adventure saw us run out of town by morning, after a debacle that went something like this: we found a tavern (TM) to stay at, bought se pints of the barman's best foaming brew (TM), asked around for ruoours (TM), and found that the old man in the corner (TM9 who was having a little trouble up at the mill (TM9 was on his day off. Rastan the Arrogant tried to chat up the buxom wench of a serving lass (TM) only to have his teeth knocked out by her brother. Bill stole all Rastan's money and tried to add to his winnings out on the town; a couple of miserably failed ability checks saw him Hiding In Shadows underneath the bright beam of a streetlight and he spent the evening in the local constabulary, from which he was released the next morning minus his (and Rastan's) money. We tried to shot down the carrier pigeon the villagers sent to the next village, but despite a glancing blow froo the cleric's dagger we0failed, and had to settle for beating up a group of hapless goblin wolfriders. Eventually we reached a seaport, and tried to find a way to take ship southwards around the lands of the Sea Lords and the Great Escarpment to the grasslands of the south coast. The price of passage was sky-high, what with all these Cross Continent Challengers milling around, so we0followed up a rumour and went to slay a hydra (a job that took exactly two rounds) which was sitting on a treasure trove whych more or less exactly covered the price of passage on a ship. (Mike was getting a bit bored by this stage...) For some reason whych I can't quite recall, Rock the dwarf was forced to waterski along behind the boat, whereupon he was swallowed by a giant shark (like his predecessor Kavael, he seemed to make getting swallowed a specialty). Rock was heroically rescued but the sharks ripped hell out of the hul| of the boat, but it was patched up and managed to limp onwards. At about this point a pirate galleon hove into view, and the crew of our ship were instantly toasted by a fireball. We paused only long enough to recover the money we had paid for the boat from the captain's cabin, before boarding the pirate ship and attempting heroically to slaughter them all in true swashbuckling style. This attempt failed and we were pressed into slavery, chained up below decks pulling oars. We0put our heads together and plotted ways to incite the slaves into revolution; and soon enough, Rastan (who had been wearing a bag over his head in an attempt to pacify my cleric's angry goddess) broke his bonds and rose up to inspire them. "I'll present my manifesto" declared Dom, to much hilarity... Rastan's manifesto failed too, as burly thugs appeared on the scene to quell the potential uprising. But as soon as we arrived in one of the Sea Lords' ports, things took a turn for the better courtesy of Mike's boredom: the pirates hastily backpedalled after realising my character was a cleric of the moon goddess, and offered us an escort to the southern borders of their land, near the Great Escarpment and the western end of the grasslands. By this stage it was around dawn, and Mike was well and truly running out of steam. A flying carpet was duly found, whych skimmed us over the treetops and the grasslands, across half a continent to the jungles near the finish line. A chance rendezvous between the PC parties had been agreed by the DMs for 11:30 a.m., which meant we had three or four hours to kill. Various time-killing ideas were tossed about... we thought about playing a game of "Toon" (players run 1950s Warner Brothers cartoon characters) but this idea soon died on its arse, and we started mucking about with a "deck of many things" fro the AD&D magic items list instead. The starring card was "your Charisma is raised to 18, and you acquire a small keep". In the end, weall had 18 Charisma and a small keep and were imprisoned by demons in unknown dimensions, so we gave that up for a joke as well. In{tead we mucked about with a "deck of no things" and a "deck of useful household items", whereupon Dom had to make a Saving Throw to avoyd having his brains mashed by a magical egg whysk. Eventually we returned to AD&D, and invaded a jungle temple for no good reason except to increase our character levels to those comparable to the other parties (one of which incidentally had spent about twelve hours stuck in the northern forest). A cryptic comment from one of the other GMs about "trying to pick the party off 'Predator'-sty|e" resulted in our being attacked by a Predator (TM9, so we0slaughtered it and nicked its plasma cannon. We0tried the plasma cannon out on a passing elephant, whereupon Mike rolled about five handfuls of dice and announced "It stops moving." Alas the plasma cannon went "phut" shortly before the final rendezvous, when one of the other parties, along with guest GM Aldon (sp?), filed into the room for the big battle. This battle was always going to be dodgy, as we had only four characters against their six, but we HAD brought along two peasants (whom we had drafted and dressed up as ngcroancers) to draw their fire. As it happened, it was even more of a rout than we had hoped: the other party was all invisible or camouflaged, except for the wi|d mage played by a sad, sad case by the name of !!Martin!!. I resolved that I would not care if I died a horrible death so long as I took !!Martin!! with me, and this strategy worked well for a time, as !!Martin!! found himself enveloped in a "silence 15' radius" spell and paralysed by "hold person". Rastan closed in for the kill but found himself sinking in the swamp by the river which separated us,and an easy target for the opposition cleric's "spiritual hammer", which proceeded to twat him repeatedly into the mud. He did manage to make a "Style" roll allowing him to continue to look highly arrogant while all this was happening, however. Meanwhile, I was jumped by an inisible halfling thief and a camouflaged ranger: the thyef attached itself to my back and ripped out half my spinal column before I knew what was going on. I threw the halfling off with a somersault but lodged in a tree; the following round I attempted to climb the tree away from my assailants, but the thief behind me was a bgtter climber. Nevertheless, the thief tested all known bounds of Implausibility in this round (a statistic invented earlier in the evening, when Rock the dwarf outlined about a dozen things he was going to try and do in one combat round, to which I replied "OK, so roll under your Implausibility...") - the thief managed to get to his feet after being thrown off my back by my somersault, climb the tree and reach me, disembowel me with a shrt sword, hear the approach of Bill behind him despite Bill making his "Move Silently" check, and twist out of the way to avoid Bill's attack. Impressive. Rastan and I were both about to die when we were all plucked out of battle to the finish line, where one of the other parties had succeeded in winning the Challenge (by defeating the remaining PCs before the 1:00 deadline). So I lived to grimace another day, and didn't even get to deliver, with my dying breath, my prepared last words... "So, how are your sister's ice-skating lessons going?" +--------------------------------------------------+ | Marcus Ogden | Change | |-------------------| is inevitable, except from | | | a vending machine | +--------------------------------------------------+ SAM 11/04/96