Red & Pleasant Land Play Reports #1

So I started running Red and Pleasant Land (get it from Lamentations of the Flame Princess http://www.lotfp.com/store/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=190)  for my in-person friends group, with maybe 6-8 players. Enough stuff is already starting to go on that I'm realizing I need to write some of the session happenings down or it's going to get confusing, even after my weekly introduction "Last Time on D&D" that I give. 

As a precursor about RPL, I have to say I was initially intimidated and thought I did not know how to run RPL when I got the book. It took me awhile to realize how much I just needed to read and reread the Bestiary entries and just play with some of the adventure generation tables at the back. We have yet to get into much time-twisting or Escher geography though. Also, I thought the Alice references and nonsensical talk of the RPL inhabitants may be too silly or weird- but it turns out my players took them like fish to water! Turns out the Adventure Time and Rick & Morty (and Monty Python) vibe and RPL goes together like peanut butter and jelly. Also, RPL really is great for improve DMing, which is my preferred style (sorry megadungeons!) once you get the swing of the major factions and say fuck it to remembering every detail of how shits supposed to be according to the RPL book verbatim. Use it more as a resource/idea generator to pluck ideas from (though trying to have internal consistency about how the vampires work is good). 

Anyway, stuff that's happened so far in the Place of Unreason:

Party teleported to an interior from a magic circle they found in a pyramid after wizard stepped into said circle. The party found the wizard unconscious near a fountain beneath a translucent skinned knight calling himself Sir Baldrick. Baldrick challenged warrior Brotef to a duel to prove the party's professed  loyalty to the Queen of Nephidilia. Brotef lost, so Baldrick sent them on a quest to find the Cat, a servant of the HeartQueen  he spotted nearby. Party emerges into a forest by finding trap door atop steps near Baldrick's fountain. They find the cat with some rhyming, fight some Toves with some rhyming and later wolves (no rhyming), and start bringing Baldrick to a tower in the forest where they say they have the Cat (cat actually gone but party thought was just invisible). [quest and Baldrick created based on sample adventure locations in book plus some random adventure rolls from that section of the book, though I regret making Baldrick more like an honorable Pale Knight than the fishy-nephidlians].

Meanwhile the Cat has found a troupe of Huszars/Clubs, the Knights of the Heart Queen. Party betrays Baldrick, cutting him down in the road as the 6 Huszars ride up, and he is captured in mist form in a prepared jar by party sorceress Sassafras. The party claims loyalty to the Heart Queen. Patrical, the party trickster-magician (no spells only tricks), gives sexual favor to the lead Huszar ("eat me") after Anora the warrior loses a duel to one. These actions convince the Huszars to bring the party to the Queen's croquet game.

At the croquet game, Salacia, the Huszar won over by Patrical, introduces the party. After Salacia is permitted to whisper in her ear, the Queen asks the party to retrieve a wicket lost in the far forest near a tower of hers. The towers commander is also suspected of disloyalty, so she must be checked too. Then some Hearts, the Queens children, ride up on their ponies. Seeing a nearby lobster being walked by a Diamond courtier, Brotef grabbed the lobster, challenging a Heart child to duel, and flung it at the Heart, knocking him from the pony. The courtiers clapped and laughed, enraging the Child who began charging at Brotef, when he seized a second lobster being proffered and again knocked the Child to the ground. Delighted, to the shame of the Child, the Queen awarded a vorpal, lobster-handled sword to Brotef. [notes: two natural 20s rolled on these lobster attacks and I thought suitably silly to go for it, and the Roll on random objects chart in RPL came up vorpal sword when I wanted a Gift from the Queen.] 

Party sets out for Tower in the Terrible Goblin Wood, and ingratiate themselves to the Huszar commander, Vespesia, Salacia's arch rival. Anora makes a gift of a golden Minotaur nose ring, impressing her and putting the party in her good graces (she puts it on as a bracelet). They hear of Vespesia's search for a hidden human village, cryptically referring to being low on fresh food. And they see a giant Gelatinous Dome in the distance, apparently the result of a magical catastrophe from the gnomish sorcerer Trigon. Many magic items are rumored inside. But the party is focused on the wicket, which is in the hands of a band of frost goblins in a nearby cave.

On the way to the frost goblin cave, the party is ambushed first by 6 giant spider-riders (green forest goblins!). They defeat them, primarily through use of two sorcerers' spells, a fire blast from one and a giant subterranean gullet-hole opening by the other. The last goblin tries to escape on his spider, but the Elementalist chased him down on a chariot of wind. [note we use the Wonders & Wickedness spells and spell system]. On threat of death, the goblin Glimpfbop agrees to teach Poe the Thief how to ride the spider. Then the party is attacked by a band of frost goblin warriors outside the cave, which are quickly dispatched and their woolly Rams eaten. 

The party now approaches the cave, with its rumored giant frost gem inside... 

[the wicket quest just made sense, and I found some awesome One Page Dungeon 2016 dungeons I placed around. The factions are being pretty friendly to the party so far, which I think is fine when they're so low level, but we'll see what happens- Brotef has probably made an enemy of that Heart Child, I'll need a name for him...]