AD&D 1e. First session of the module I6 Ravenloft, adapted to my campaign setting. Two of my regulars will be unable to join us, and we recruited two new players from friends, for a total of five players. One of them has only had experience playing and running D&D 5e, while the other has only touched D&D briefly, back in the 3e days. Funnily enough, he played through 3e's Ravenloft.

Module spoilers will be found ahead. Given that it's expecting mid-high level characters (six to eight of levels 5-7), I allowed the new players to create their PCs with 55k total XP, which is ~11k less than the next highest among my regular players, and rolled for magic items per DMG Appendix P. The full party is:

• Rowan, Human MU 7
  • Henchman Freya, Human Fighter 5
  • Henchman Rikka, Human Fighter 5
• Iskandar, Human MU 8
  • Henchman Thorgisl, Human Fighter 2
• Bo'Bert, Human Cleric 7
• Elowyn, Elf Fighter 5 / Magus 5
• Nobar, Dwarf Fighter 5 / Thief 6

After introductions were made, we got right into it. They dismounted in the courtyard and their horses led to the stables in the back. They're led through the foyer, into the dining room, and begin to eat as they have a short conversation with the Count. After a few minutes, I kick the module proper off with the doors slamming shut, lights going out, and the Count disappearing.

A couple of them pull out glowing magic weapons while Bo'Bert removes an amulet of continual light from under his clothes. They set up a marching order and set out, heading up and discovering the accountant's office, where they have a rather befuddling, albeit cordial, conversation and push forward into the audience hall. After a little poking around, they find the secret door on the southern wall leading to a turret and a set of stairs, but they forgo these to move through some ornate doors into a large, 20'x70' hall.

As they move through the halls, they're set upon by a baker's dozen gargoyles, swooping in from above. Despite best efforts, several characters are whittled down, a spell is lost from damage, and general pandemonium is at hand. Iskandar uses knock to get the closest set of doors open, Elowyn tries to open with magic missile but a tail swipe knocks her off balance, Bo'Bert blesses the party, Nobar is attempting to train his crossbow on a gargoyle, and everyone else is fending them off with their weapons. On the second round, the party splits into two groups to try and mitigate attacks going towards the casters while Freya stands her ground and continues attacking. By the end of that round, Freya, Rikka, and Thorgisl have formed one group while everyone else formed a second group. The gargoyles ended up splitting between them in groups of 10 and 3, respectively. On the third round, Iskandar releases a monster summoning 1 as Elowyn successfully looses her magic missiles and Bo'Bert eases some of the damage taken by Rowan with a cure light wounds. Everyone else is doing their best to remain alive while in melee with these creatures. They managed to kill one of the thirteen gargoyles this round. On the fourth round, Rowan attempts to withdraw further away from his group while Rikka and Thorgisl do the same from theirs, both incredibly injured by this point. Iskandar looses his own magic missile and, with the efforts of others, kill another two gargoyles. At the end of the round, several manes demons form out of the shadows, and the gargoyles seem to break, choosing to flee from the fight.

Surprised to have made it through that endeavor without anyone dying, the party takes a few minutes to tend to their wounds and distribute a few magic items, before taking a set of stairs down to the chapel. After noting the age of the place and its apparent disuse, they strip the long-dead corpse of a cleric and Bo'Bert removes the Icon from the altar; being Neutral Good, he stands unsmote.

The party has decided to attempt to rest a few hours, just enough to get a couple of 1st level spells memorized. The general state of the chapel has led them to believe that this chamber is the closest thing they'll find to a... "safe"... room. Even if that simply manifests as a lower rate of encounters, it's better than nothing, in their eyes.

That's where we left off for the evening. I've not yet rolled the encounter checks to see if they make it through unbothered.

I've been working on a playlist for a while of rock / pop songs with sax solos. The rules are:

• Must be from this millennium
• sax can't be a primary instrument
• pop or rock genres preferred

Here's what I've got so far: https://link.deezer.com/s/323YPvabsQgEuS8BOTCXj

Add awesome game deals to this topic as they come up over the course of the week!

Alternately, ask about a given game deal if you want the community’s opinions: e.g. “What games from this bundle are most worth my attention?”

Rules:

• No grey market sales
• No affiliate links

If posting a sale, it is strongly encouraged that you share why you think the available game/games are worthwhile.

All previous Save Point topics

If you don’t want to see threads in this series, add save point to your personal tag filters.

I'll be brief.

I have a collection of plastic water bottles including a large 12 liters container. I am in the process of replacing them with metal, but large metal containers can be expensive (I'm not in the US). How much risk do quality plastic water bottles really poses to my health?

Thanks!

I recently came across an interesting-looking indie game, Idols of Ash. Basically, you have to use a simple grapple-and-swing mechanic to descend through an eldritch underground complex while being pursued by a dangerous "murderpede" monster.

I first played it on what I thought was the official site, idolsofash.fun. It's a pretty spiffy design, with a playable web version, extensive FAQs, strategy guides, and embedded images and video of the game. But I ran into some bugs while playing -- no sound effects, weird lighting. When I mentioned these flaws on the developer's Itch.io page, they responded that they had nothing to do with the site.

Turns out it has a disclaimer at the very bottom: "Unofficial fan site. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Leafy Games." Buying and installing the actual version solved my tech issues. And in playing the game more, I noticed that the various guides on the site were subtly wrong in a lot of ways. The About page claims it's maintained by a big fan of the game, but in hindsight the whole thing seems AI-written and full of hallucinations.

Thing is, I don't get the angle here. There's no advertising on the site. It prominently links directly to the game's official Steam and Itch pages, so they're not trying to deliver malware or intercept the developer's sales. I assume the glitches are from a poor decompilation and rehosting of the original Godot engine game, but there's nothing to be gained from that. The presence of images and video suggests some level of human involvement in the site design, meaning it's not some cheap fire-and-forget thing. The URL and content are far too specific to flip into something else after gaining SEO rank. It presents (and acts) exactly like a non-commercial labor-of-love fansite (albeit one that shares the paid game for free in a broken state).

Could this be a genuine, if misguided, attempt by an actual fan to share the game using AI tools? Or is there some kind of scam I'm not seeing? Is this sort of fake AI fansite with embedded versions of the game a widespread problem with indie titles now?

Hello! I’m finally going on an international trip! I live in the US and have always wanted to go to Europe. In June, I’ll be spending two weeks there in Norway, Amsterdam, and Germany!

My plane tickets are purchased and I’m starting to form my itinerary and am willing to take advice on travel tips or if people have any specific recommendations for things to do!

I’m a woman traveling solo. When I travel, I tend to plan one or two specific things a day and then just figure out the rest, I’m pretty flexible. I am high energy when I travel, though, so even if I only plan one thing a day in the months prior, I can easily spend 10 hours a day exploring. I also like to see a few typical tourist things, but I also want to experience what actual local culture is, I don’t want to only spend my time in the places that only tourists go to. I want to talk to locals and even though I know I’ll stick out like a sore thumb, I want to get some sampling of what life is like in the places I travel to.

I usually travel light, just a backpack, but may need another carry on bag for this trip. If I spend a couple nights in on hostel, do they usually have secure storage or anything? My worry about an extra bag is it being inconvenient since I don’t want to bring it around cities with me. I guess even if I’m in a hotel, I have the window between check out times and getting to my next destination… I guess that’s why I normally like just having a backpack, but let me know if that’s a bad idea and you think I should have a second bag.

The things I’d be looking for advice on are things like hostels vs hotels, should I book hostels/hotels ahead of time or fly by the seat of my pants, how easy is doing laundry, what little things have I forgotten (like making sure my phone plan works internationally, which it does), etc, as well as any recommendations for specific attractions, museums, or restaurants to visit!

The loose plan is that I land in Oslo, spend a few days there, take the train to Trondheim and spend a day or two there. I think then I’ll rent a car so that I can get to Stenkjer (small town, but it’s where my family emigrated from, so I want to see it) and then travel down the west coast, stopping at cool nature spots, and ending up in Bergen or Stavanger for a couple days. I’m planning about a week in Norway.

I then plan on flying to Amsterdam and spending 2-3 days there. I really don’t know that much about the city besides what touristy things friends and family have done. I will be visiting De Poezenboot, but am otherwise all ears.

I will then be renting a car and traveling to the Nürburgring so that I can race a car around it. Then I’ll have 3.5 days to road trip east across Germany, see some castles, and fly back home from Berlin.

I am extremely into cars and motorsports, so I imagine there’s no shortage of museums I can visit in Germany, but I also want to see a few castles as well, so I’m unsure if I’ll have one or two full days in Berlin, yet. I’ll be flying out of Berlin at 9:30am on my departure day.

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like vent, reciprocity and strait of hormuz. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was bewildered.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!