Seaasion 2
At Teschen, the group checked out the market and tried to look for passage down the river to Breslau, or at least as far as any merchant sailor might take them, but for some reason (which our GM noted wasn’t available because it wasn’t listed in the module as available? Maybe a good reason for why the usual “highways” of the medieval world were shut down would be good?) We were read some of the things available at the market but the frustration with things like fancy named shoes (“kuhmaul?”, I didn’t bother pulling up a picture of them as at least one of them was already frustrated with that, and not getting to the “action”) that nobody knew what they were cropped up again. There was some question about how much of what kinds of food would last for how long on the road, so we didn’t know how much to buy to make sure we had enough food for the trip.
Everyone also wondered why putting 3 gulden on a table would be an illegal provocation. One of the guys did find a thing that said it was Turkish thing but I missed the explanation. Still, of the listed things that were illegal that was the only one that had folks wondering why so if you happen to know it might be cool to include that tidbit in there for the players to chew on and enjoy the medieval flare of it
In any case the Noble, Gerd, decided to risk getting a cobb horse for 2 gulden, to help pull the cart Charles said we had from last time (I forgot to mention that, folks thought the equipment looked like more than any one person could carry, even though I tried to show them it really wasn’t, so Charles decided we had a cart to carry it since they all thought it was so much) just hoping we don’t have it confiscated, but we think the lands where that was an issue is behind us. Then he bought a saddle so he could ride as well, but we couldn’t find a price for that, FWIW. One of the group got sick of dealing with money and shopping, wanting to “get to the action”.
During all of that Jan tried to offer his services at appraising knives and swords and such and succeeded in one gentleman having already paid for a room at the inn offering it up to Jan for the evening since he had to leave that day for his appraisal assistance services, but he could offer him actual no money. However the merchant gave him 5 dinari for overlooking the flaw in that particular blade. Jan rolled poorly enough he hadn’t noticed it! Still, he sighed to himself for that mistake and took the money anyway.
The group used the room at the inn and headed on down the road in the morning. Traveling most of the day, they saw a commotion in a field in the distance, with some festivity happening. As the group approaches they see a wedding! They are welcomed and hear about a horse racing contest and Gerd tossed in a shilling to join the race, getting a 21 on the roll against the peasant’s 19, just barely eeking out the win (the book says this should be an Animal handling check, although the player thought Ride would be appropriate for it instead, but his modifier would have been the same either way… we are not yet using skill checks with the new CM rules, so it’s a single d20 with skill modifier alone.)
The next rider he quickly outraces.
The 3rd rider is bucked off of his horse and badly hurt, with a drunk monk deciding to declare the poor young man not having much time left for this world and trying to drunkenly give last rights, but Gerard, the physician, stepped forward to see to the young man. The monk’s prostrations were interfering but Nils offered a bit of ale to distract and pull him away so the monk wouldn’t interfere and he happily was drawn away by the lure of more ale. Gerard diagnosed him with a broken clavicle. He tried his best to set it and thankfully had a poultice just making it with a 16 on a 15 DC check and thus resetting the break with his good ministrations. Earning the thanks of the lad’s father and an offer to him to spend the night at his home instead of having to pay for space at the hospoda.
The 4th race race Gerd won well, too, but the next man (obviously not even from this village) was an excellent rider. Still with a natural 20 Gerd knocks out another win, but the man was obviously displeased and was seen with others he had been with obviously disgruntled..
The 6th race sees another rider with a natural 1 falling off their horse counting as another win (at least this poor man wasn’t too hurt).
The final opponent, another from the group of the disgruntled rider, barely wins (20 to Gerd’s 19 even with a -5 to his roll), but Gerd found a burr under his saddle most suspiciously. Gerd called out the other man as a cheat and a liar, and the stranger decided to challenge Gerd, so they moved to a field. Gerd firing a bolt from his crosbow at the man with 1MP, but the stranger was just able to deflect with his buckler. The player got very, very frustrated with not being able to load another bolt right away for some reason (and being upset that he couldn’t find “AC” on his sheet), so he spent another MP to draw his sword, at which point Kunst stepped in with a great Diplomacy roll to diffuse the situation, as the villagers were also calling for peace, wanting to celebrate the wedding rather than suffer the violence of a fight.
I found out later the reason for the frustration had to do with a failed “session 0” he had done earlier where I really needed to brush up on Codex Martialis beforehand and our GM was definitely not too familiar with it, so our doing it wrong left a really bad taste in his mouth about the system and that was what was boiling over there. I’ve spoken to him about it and let him know we did it wrong so he’s much more amenable to trying to give it a fair shake next time, I hope. He is one of the group that much prefers narrative systems, mind you, so crunchy combat may always be a bit of an issue for him. I think we have a lot of negative predispositions to get over for some of the group in some ways, I’m sorry to say, which sometimes makes playing this a high hurdle right now. My apologies if things come off a bit negatively because of that. At least you know they won’t hold back their feelings about things they don’t like!
Some of the group then spent the night at a local hospoda, while the physician and Gerd (as his guard) stayed at the home of the young man he had healed earlier.
The next day they were off again until they came to a mudslide in the road. Some peasants from the wedding showed up and mentioned a trail to the north they would travel along to go around it, and we decided to join them, being concerned about trying to go through the mudslide with the horse and cart. Another hour later the weather became threatening and started raining, at which point we saw a ferry to get across river, needing to be on the other side to get to the next big town on the way (Rathbor, or something like that. Sorry if I mess up the names), so we rushed to get on it, but he could only take 2 people, or 1 horse, across at a time and at a cost of 2 denari per person, and 10 for the horse.
It should be noted here that the physician had for money only 5 pieces of jewelry worth .1, but we didn’t know .1 of what, so we assumed it was .1 Gulden each, so he had half a Gulden/20 Kreuzer woth of Jewlery, as our assumption, if he wanted to trade it.
Some of the guys were a bit tired and we ended up calling it there for the night, a bit earlier than usual.