Last week I ran the first part of the penultimate game of my 4E campaign.

Actually, the campaign was not supposed to end so soon, even though it did have a definite, planned end, but since two key players were leaving in 2 months, and myself am leaving Japan by October, I decided to pull the plug and wrap things up. It is something new to me, to actually bring an RPG campaign to a grand finalle! (both as a DM and as a player!)

As I have written last time, the group was exploring and abandoned island, in search for the riches left by a forgotten civilization, promised by a crazed NPC. They had managed to climb the highest mountain in the island and get a general view of their surroundings, which revealed to them the location of the old capital of the lost civilization (think Mayan Pyramids). They decided that whatever treasure this island might have, it would certainly be hidden in that island.

As they followed the river north towards the location of the old capital, the woods around they started to get creepier and creepier. Every so often, they had the impression of being observed. The weather was becoming darker. The group stopped as they heard voices coming from the woods – ghosts where about them!

This is where it gets interesting – one by one, the adventurers were taken by illusions. Each of them saw themselves as “king”, facing some sort of catastrophe. Some of the group members dove deep into the illusions, trying to solve the problems posed before them. Others tried to fight what they saw as “not truth”. Those that fought the illusion eventually became freed, and found themselves on a misty cemetery, with their companions heading slowly but surely towards a large stone structure, while shouting whatever they were saying in their dreams.

Afraid of the stone structure, the waking members of the group managed to stop and free the sleeping ones before they entered there. They decided then to investigate the stone structure, which seemed to be the centre of the strange powers which were about them. Inside, they found a large and very pompous tomb, surrounded by statues and minor tombs. On top of the big tomb was a ghost in the trappings of a king, tied by some sort of ethereal ropes.

The group promptly charged to attack that ghost! (Shoot first! Ask questions later!)

A big battle followed, in which ghostly defenders of the king attacked the party, as they tried to destroy the big ghost in the center of the cemetery. As they hacked into the king’s hitpoints, more and more ghosts assistants would appear, and the king would scream both for help and for freedom. Finally, the group managed to destroy the King’s material form, which sent its servants into sturpor.

At that moment, the ropes that tied the ghost king started forming his body again, and even more ghosts started to appear. While the group decided to stay and fight, Sincearu, the bard, chose to perform a ritual to sanctify the king to the Elder Gods. This ritual made the king stronger, and he started to fight against the magical ropes that bound him. The rest of the group helped Sincearu with his ritual, and soon the ghost King was freed from the magical bounds that kept him controlled.

He revealed to the group that he was the last kind of the ludians, the lost civilization of the island. That he was controlled by some sort of creature from the “World of Nothingness” that they had summoned accidentaly while trying to find a escape route from a catastrophe that was hitting the island. He pleaded with the heroes to help him defeat the creature that held sway over him and the remaining souls from Ludus, and in exchange he would reveal to them the secrets of the island.

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The game itself worked pretty flawlessly. In the last session, one of the players complained about “senseless fights” where the group was basically walking around the island killing whatever moved in front of them, so I decided I would give them some “good guys” and “bad guys” to ponder about. I did not count, however, with them attacking the King’s ghost so viciously even though I dropped a bunch of hints that he was supposed to be talked to, not fought with.

In the “illusion” encounter, I wanted to try a way to resolve conflicts in the game that did not involve fighting or dice rolls. In the encounter, each player was faced with a facet of the last moments of the life of the king – yeah, they were being “possessed” by ghosts at the time. Each “round” in the illusion was defined by a scene playing out, and the player’s reaction to that scene. For each round, the character would sleepwalk closer to the tomb, and after 6 rounds it would be laying prone at the feet of the ghost king, ready to be sacrificed.

The solution for the illusion scene was to act twice in a row in a way that disbelieved the illusion (the first time would show some cracks in the illusion), although I accepted some alternative solutions, such the bard which decided to invoke his god during the illusion. The one thing that I (unwittingly) did right in this scene was to have the players describe his action, before describing the results of that action moving to the next player’s scene first – two of the players said that this resulted in a nice “suspense” effect. This was probably the highlight of the game.

In the ghost encounter, I wanted to go for a battle encounter where the goal was not to “kill all enemies”, but rather to finish a ritual which would free the king ghost. Ideally one or two characters could concentrate on the ritual near the ghost while the rest had to protect them from the hordes of guardians. However, I did not counted on my players being so bloodthirsty – I guess I did not train them that well. What actually happened is that they managed to beat the ghost king to a pulp WHILE kicking the guardians at the same time. I then decided that i would have hundreds of the ghosts show up at the same time to force the party to flee, but just at that time one of the players figured the solution to the puzzle :-P So I guess no big loss.

Now to prep for part two of the game – infiltrating the Capital!