10/03/04:

Living Greyhawk: The Perrinland Battle Interactive

Team: Jaegergruppe Uther – Carl R (Jaeger Leader Uther), Carl H (Fabio), Glenn (Ingamaar), Darrin (Parvan), Anestis (Hazeron), Martin (Darius)

The RPGA runs a series of “living” campaigns, in which players create characters and then get to all take part in an unfolding story. In the Living Greyhawk campaign, different geographical regions of Earth are mapped to different locations in Oerth (the world of Greyhawk). In Living Greyhawk, Australia represents the nation of Perrinland. On Sunday, approximately 84 players and gamemasters participated in the Battle Interactive – a massive series of linked adventures that would determine whether the scattered heroes of Perrinland could regroup and defeat the vile forces of Iuz and Iggwilv.

The Battle Interactive was one of the most impressive feats of tabletop game design that I have seen, and I must congratulate Patrick Williamson, Andrew Cawan, Bruce Paris, and everyone else involved. The day began with the 70-odd players – representing the heroes of Perrinland, gathered at a fortress after the defeat of one of the nation’s great armies – assembling in the hall to be addressed by Patrick, playing the part of Commander VanOosten. This in itself was a great piece of roleplaying, as Patrick delivered a rallying speech: how often do you get to see an actual army of gamers assembled for a single goal? After the initial address, the groups were split into (conveniently) groups of six, which were called “jaegers”. Each jaeger selected a leader and a second in command, and the leader was sent for further briefing. As VanOosten, Patrick outlined the situation (adding a few grim details he’d kept from the general forces) and assigned each jaeger a critical task.

My group had a fairly simple assignment: move along the left flank of the armies of Iuz, gathering intelligence and reporting to the general command being established at the monastery of St. Cuthbert. Their greatest challenge was an ambush that occurred one night. It played out perfectly: two people were on watch, only one of whom could see in the dark. Parvan catches a faint glimpse of movement, but can’t see that far away. Hazeron looks over, but fails his Spot check and thus sees nothing. After a few days of travelling, it’s easy to imagine the scene: “It was just a rabbit. You’re imagining things.” Another false alarm – until six vulture-headed demons (vrock) emerge out of the darkness. A single vrock would pose a challenge to this group; six was a lethal force, and it was satisfying to see the reaction from the group… satisfying because there was, in fact, only one vrock, which had used the mirror image spell to duplicate itself. Despite the overwhelming odds, the guards rallied their sleeping comrades and put up a bold fight. Darius destroyed the mirror images with a volley of magic missiles, which helped to put things in perspective. But the demon summoned a second vrock, and making use of area effect attacks and combat reflexes the two fiends were able to inflict significant damage on the party. Despite their best efforts, Ingamaar fell in battle before the vrock were defeated.

The remainder of the Left Flank mission was fairly simple: the party had to fight a few bugbears, but after the demons, these goblinoids posed little threat. The White-Eyes bugbears were staunch allies of Iuz, and when the party found a group of hobgoblins battling the bugbears, they sided with the hobgoblins and helped turn the tide of battle. Uther had fought with these hobgoblins in the past, but spoke as a fellow warrior and convinced their leader to send an envoy to St Cuthbert’s monastery to discuss the terms of an alliance against Iuz.

This was the end of the first adventure. As each adventure came to an end, Patrick debriefed the leader of each jaeger; like the initial briefing, this was a fun piece of roleplaying that added a great deal of flavour to the experience. Everyone had time for a brief lunch break, and then they began again.

In the second phase, VanOosten addressed the assembled jaeger leaders. The hobgoblin envoy revealed the location of the traitorous priest who was responsible for many of the disasters that had befallen Perrinland, and six jaegers (that’s 36 players!) were dispatched to capture him. As it turned out, each team needed to pass through a different plane to reach the sanctuary of the priest. I was assigned to DM the Plane of Earth – and by complete coincidence, Jaegergruppe Uther chose that plane as their trial. The passage itself was fairly straightforward, and involved battling various earth elementals. However, there was a catch: whenever a DM wished, he could select a PC at his table to “fade”, switching places with a random PC from one of the other tables. So in the middle of the first battle, Hazeron vanished, replaced by a stranger who had been exploring from the Negative Energy Plane. This continued throughout the trial, and made things very chaotic; for example, Hazeron returned twice, displacing different people each time, only to get sent away again. By the end of the trial, Ingamaar and Parvan had both been knocked out, and I was hoping that one of them would be chosen to transport into another group, but the dice had other ideas.

Once they had completed the trial, the group had to pass through a magical field. If the character failed a saving throw, he took damage and was transported to the location of one of the other groups, selected at random. This led to my personal favorite moment of the game. Fabio had brought a few live chickens with him, and tossed one at the barrier. Needless to say, the chicken failed its save, so I got to walk over to another table and let them know that a squawking chicken had just appeared behind them.

Eventually the groups brought down the barriers and made it in to the chamber where the evil priest was conducting his ritual. At this point, Patrick basically ran a combat for 36 people, with everyone getting to take their shot at the bad guy and his minion. One that was done, they rejoined the other 36 people, who were defending the monastery from attack. For one brief round I was reunited with the Cobra Kais as they fought undead on the walls of the monastery – then the forces of evil were defeated and it all came to a close. Patrick delivered a closing speech congratulating the heroes on their victory, and the interactive was done. 

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