Well, folks...I just played Encounter Critical.
Kyle and John, my two best friends from high school, came over and rolled up some characters. Neither one could resist the lure of the mutations chart, so we ended up with Routh, a human psi witch with lowered luck and a Barnabus, a blind, cursed robodroid warrior. After priming some minis for John to paint as we played, I ran "The Curse Of Count Obonos", an excellent module by Jeff Rients.
Oh, man.
I started things off with some embellishments of my own. I placed a wrecked damnation van in the center of town, and right away they decided they wanted it. They went into the tavern to ask if anyone claimed ownership to it, but none of the locals could say it was theirs.
Then Kildar walked in.
Kildar was a character played by a high school friend of ours, back in the day. Arrogant, lascivious, annoying as hell and a 50th-level demigod paladin or...something...I dunno. we all hated Kildar. We all wanted to bump off Kildar. We never got to bump off Kildar.
Until today. Sure, on Vanth he was just a 2nd-level Planetary Ape warrior, but it felt good to include him as a purely juvenile gesture. He ended up getting robo-kicked in the monkeynuts, after which a Lesser Feat roll was made to snap his neck.
Off to a good start.
Pretty soon Lady Bella showed up, offering the quest as detailed in the module. The player accepted the quest for 1000 GC and repairs for the robodroid (Kildar actually put some hurt on him). They then dawdled around playing in the van, wherein they found three skeletons: one an elf in chainmail and the others human, one in a jumpsuit and the other in a leopardskin bikini. No wounds were apparent on the skeletons, but further examination of the van gave a clue as to the cause of their deaths when Kyle's character opened a door and found a four-eyed, needle-toothed skull which began to wail horribly, eye sockets blinking rapidly and causing 2d6 damage to him. Yikes! I made that up on the spot. They were taking too long with the van so Bella told them that if they'd just get going, she'd have the van fixed up, too.
They left so fast...
The trip to the wreck was uneventful because I wanted to get them to the adventure site. Plus, the notion of a dungeon crawl through a crashed spaceship really seemed to tickle them, so I headed straight for the action.
John declared that Barnabus, his PC, would try to hack the disabled lock on the airlock at location F. He rolled a 01 on his Machine Friend roll, so I ruled that he was able to reprogram every door on the ship. Not only did that reward him for good thinking and good luck, but it eliminated a lot of futzing later on.
They actually made fairly quick work inside the ship, hitting up and getting the goodies from rooms 10, 12, 13 and 14. Luck was with them in the Prismatic Crocagator fight; I painstakingly sought 4d8 from my pile, rolled them for the monster's hit points...
...and got a total of 6. One mighty strike from Barnabus (using a bastard sword claimed from Kildar) slew the beast, and it also allowed the robodroid to level up. ZING!
They found the idol soon after, and a bad LUC roll caused Routh to mistakenly grab Volutina's representation upon the generous Impervium funbag; he'd made a good Seduce roll ahead of time, to explain to the idol what they were doing, though, so he escaped becoming a jackaltoad. When asked if they should haed back or keep exploring, John simply said, "Mission accomplished" and they got the hell out.
I threw in a quick encounter with some bandits, really just as an excuse for Kyle's character to level up, which he did. They got some GCs and Lynrd Skynrd 8-tracks, as well as some ammo for their new rocket pistol. Then my mission was accomplished, and they got back to the castle.
I didn't linger long on the epilogue. Suffice to say that they accepted the hands of the other two daughters, and soon found out about their tendencies, so they snuck off to get their van and get lost. First, though, Routh talked Lady Bella into joining them, which she did. The End, For Now.
THAT FELT SO GOOD.
In fact, what with the casual miniatures painting, the delightfuly warm weather, the invite for the sexy female NPC to join up and the occasional boob jokes...
...I felt young again.
