Domnio: Risus Dungeons: Actual Play

July 21, 2008 No comments

At Saturday’s Ides of Gaming I got the opportunity to run Domnio, an OD&D-style Risus game. I had six players at my table, the largest group I’ve run for in a long, long time, including ThomasD and Ron Blessing. I’d never played with the other four; three of them were brand-new to Ides, and one had never, ever played a roleplaying game before! It went incredibly well, and a great time was had by all.

Characters:
* Walter the Wandering Wizard Werewolf, who made great use of the Random Spell Name Generator an the imposed trope of having to name every spell in the Name-Adjective-noun format. My favorite spell was “Bigby’s Bigger Barbarian”, cast upon another player character to turn him into a giant. Brilliant.

* Princess Violet the Alcoholic Ninja Princess, a very anime-ish character in sparkly pink ninja outfit and very effective. The Princess cliche was used for presence-style attacks. When both “Princess” and “Ninja” were down to 1 die each, the inappropriate “alcoholic” cliche was used to great effect by beating an attacked with an empty beer stein.

* Effn, who cliches were Christopher Walker, Cliff Claven, and Lovable Fat Guy. Let me just say that Ron Blessing does an amzing Walken impression, and Walken as Cliff Claven spouting nonsensical facts almost had me in tears. Dodging attacks with a soft-shoe routine was inspired, as was challenging the boss monster to a dance-off.

* Brond “the Mighty”, Wannabe Epic Hero, Giant Sword, RPG Geek. The wannabee was important; Brond only drew his sword once, and missed. The rest of the time he merely struck a heroic pose and said something pithy, and with a presence-type attack the bad guys ran away. The RPG Geek cliche only came into play once, when Brond told a monster that under the 1st edition rules the monster only had 1HD and should be dead by now. Unfortunately, the monster won the challenge and the group decided it was because it was the 3.5 version and this a lot tougher. Oops.

* Helga, tough dwarf “bearddresser”. for a first-time player, this was a great character. She became Oprah of the Kobolds by bolstering their self esteem and giving them makeovers. She ended up with a half-dozen kolbolds dressed up like dwarves following her around.

* Grognard the Barbarian, Big Guy with an Axe, That Wolf That Hangs Out With Him, “Outdoorsy” smell. ThomasD’s character. His wolf was also named Walter, adding some intentional confusion with the player character Walter the Werewolf Wizard. Grognad was turned into a giant for half the session, and threw rocks at things like a hill giant. His main weapon was his “outdoorsy smell”, which got larger when he did. Thomas’s joke was that Effn brought the dance, and he brought the funk.

The plot was a cut-down version of the Pathfinder module Revenge of the Kobold King. Very, very cut down. I started with a quick combat against a band of kobolds to introduce the system, then had the characters arrive in the village. They were quickly hired to go rescue the people at the lumber camp. Along the way they ran across the female hill giant looking for her gallivanting husband (that’s actually in the module — I just added a giant rolling pin as a weapon, because this is Risus and it just felt right). They got to the lumber camp and fought a bajillion kobolds, the kobold shaman, and the huge beetle. Well, kinda fought.

The final fight took a while and resulted in few kobold casualties because most of the characters were trying to talk the kobolds out of attacking them. Effen, as Walken, was getting them all to dance. The Princess was asserting her Princess-ness. The Wannabee Epic Hero was being heroic-looking and no one wanted to fight him. The Dwarf bearddresser was playing on their body image. The wizard cast a low self-esteem spell on them. Grognard just stunk. In the end, the kobold shaman burst into tears and ran away, the other kobolds joined the party as henchmen, and the hostages were released.

Really, really bizarre game session. I will be running this again in the future.