Play Report - THE GUEST STARS

Click here to see their doodled map!

I've never actually written a play report, and I don't often read them either.

But Regalia over on Phlox's brought it up a while back, some fine folks gave me some advice on what to include, AND my players had some lovely little doodles so I figured- what better time to take a crack at one? After all, we all had a great time with the wonderful community work that is THE GUEST STARS.

Setup

The five players for these two sessions were a mix of friends and acquaintances, all with a range of TTRPG experiences/backgrounds- but overall mainly folks from outside the GLOG/OSR sphere.

For the system: I quick-adapted the dungeon to my home ruleset (which technically isn't GLOG, but I'm told all things born in proximity to GLOG are GLOG by law). Player characters were randomly generated via this tool I made previously, along with randomly rolling for a few starting pieces of equipment.

Of the listed Hooks, the party selected Hook #7 and rolled up their random party of uniform-clad mail workers looking to deliver their packages to the different party-goers.

• Eemee, the nimble records keeper.
• Kett, the sledgehammer-wielding Post Master General.
• Timo, the part-timer currently trying to break into a career in law.
• Bernard, the mute & mysteriously magical, & Sanders, his lovable St. Bernard dog.
• Poob, the unpaid intern.

Given this selection, I also added a few tweaks in advance of the session:

• Just in case it were to come up, I ended up detailing the contents of the package for delivery to Planche (A particularly massive living book worm, in dormancy. This specimen was meant to crawl into the ear and invade the dream-space of Orionon the Star Giant as part of Planche's grand architectural plans). It was also assumed to be transported on a small cart, pushed by two party members at any given time.
• I also swapped out the RSVPs in Maxew's package (page 8) to instead be deliveries for their respective party-goers.
• To the dark orc clan: a directive to hunt down and capture the orc princess (riffing on Hook #4, sort of assuming the dark orcs act in opposition to the non-dark orcs).
• To Nab the Puppeteer: a new manual of dances (given her desires, the contents of her nest, and the fact that Nab is an earlier encounter in the dungeon- I figured this more a layup).
• To the Dober-Men Company: a directive to hunt down and kill the dark orcs (purely as a powder-keg of conflict to set off after delivery, hoping to add some dynamism to the encounter tables).
• To the Scarlet Antimony: a magical bauble to turn her into a bat and help her escape her confinement (just because I figured it'd be a fun double-fake out; and an elderly tricky-type vampire having a backup plan for breaking out of places felt on point).
• Dracula's invite remained as is, labelled "return to sender", given The Count not being counted among the dungeon's resident.

The Events of Two Long Sessions, Delivering Mail

Arriving at the front gate in the early hours of the morning, the party banged on the side door for assistance and promptly were met by a randomly rolled Haywire automaton badly trying to assist them before awkwardly falling into the pit below 3 - COVERED BIRDCAGE.

As is adventurous tradition, the party immediately took the chance to loot the unattended corpse in 2 - LOBBY and happened to recover Maxew's mail for delivery. While they took special note of the letter they would have to deliver to Count Dracula after all this was over- an omen of the darkness in this castle- they actually completely forgot to do anything with Maxew's body or any sort of revenge seeking. For this party: just getting in there and deliviring the mail and then getting out was the sole focus of things.

In 3 - COVERED BIRDCAGE, the party tried to ascertain what was going on with Scungilli before accidentally summoning Mr. Red, pushing him down the same pit as the automaton, and then promptly just moving on after getting nowhere with the fool in the cage.

After that, the party hoped that the sleeping dark orcs in 7 - EAST COURTYARD would make for an easy first delivery. However after going through all of the trouble of waking one and talking them down from violence, they only got pointed to go find their chieftain Gnasty Gnovax in 27 - VIP LOUNGE to sign for it.

Passing through 8 - HALL OF NAB, after a brief fright from the dancing puppets the party quickly connected the dots and delivered the package for "the Puppeteer" to the Puppeteer; leaving as soon as the package made it into the spider's scopulae.

The party breathed in the ambience of 22 - DEFACED GALLERY and 23 - TWO KEY JUNCTION, but ultimately gave up on investigating it further after encountering and shooing away the Housecat-sized dragon.

The unpaid intern was sent to march into 25 - QUARTZ ARMORIUM, but they ended up immediately slipping on the rug and hurting themselves before deciding to drop on all fours and scuttle on it to reach the organ. There they found Pneuma, and ended up whipping it around in the air and accidentally hurting the keen ears of Sanders the dog.

Circling back through 26 - FORGOTTEN FANE: the party entered 27 - VIP LOUNGE with facial orifices red, irritated, and leaking from diving into drifts of lustrous silver dust. There, a lot of things happened:

• Given everybody was hungry, trying to hunt for hors d'oeuvres that didn't feature somebody's flesh (a moral stance) or alcohol (everyone here is on the job after all) was a top priority. This time was also spent debating whether summoning Mr. Red as a distraction would be helpful or not.
• The party heard from some of the guests that Scarlet Antimony broke some party rules, and was thrown into the castle's prison.
• The Silver Gentleman was served his divorce papers, causing him to enter a depressive slump and to slink away to other matters in the castle. (This will matter later).
• Gnasty Gnovax was delivered the dark orc's new orders, and promptly goaded to go back and join the rest of his clan to hunt the princess. (This will not matter later).
• Timo broke up the Dober-Men's poker game by using a spell to silence the Oracular Hog, which then promptly ouroboros'd itself out of existence after delivering a purposefully ominous warning. Graciously receiving their package, the Dober-Men then also left the VIP Room in order to go find and slay the dark orcs. (This also will not matter later- as the party never circled back to the courtyard where the dark orcs were camping, nor had any sort of further encounters with either the dark orcs, Dober-Men, etc).
• The party did encounter the tiny adventuring frogs though, and pointed them toward the tiny dragon they encountered previously. They felt bad about it, investigated the area and found signs of a battle, but neither side of the conflict was found after.

Many packages delivered, the party looked at 29 - MAGIC CIRCLE and said nope that's too spooky we're just here to deliver the mail and continued onward.

Investigating 30 - ADVENTURER STATUES the party decided to stick Sanders the Dog inside the chest and then close it. This inadvertently freed the petrified adventurers (but it also created a sticky judgement situation: if the box were to be re-opened to save Sanders, would everyone present be petrified? In the end, I assumed that the chest's contents would be protected from being petrified & that the lock would presumably remain disengaged). Immediately after the entire party sans Sanders got petrified after the dog reopened the chest from the inside, and then un-petrified again after the St. Bernard nudged it back closed.

After punking the newfound adventurers that they must have been petrified for thousands of years, and then revealing it's only been a few, Bog & Jon Shi joined the party in the background for the rest of the adventure. (Dysmhe, upon hearing about the dragons from Bernard using sign language, promptly left to seek her revenge alone).

Exiting into the open air courtyard of 31 - MOTHER MOSQUITO, the party became fast friends with Mother & Bril. (The player of Poob in particular was touched by their little family, making things work. I also improvised a bit here based on the text, as I assumed that Mother Mosquito must have had larval Mosquito daughters through some form of parthenogenesis while Bril had half-orc daughters through some form of asexual reproduction via the half-orc wrigglers mentioned). They bartered some blood and misc items for the garden gate key & some infected blood, and headed off to investigate the western courtyards.

In 33 - PALE GLADE, the party got spooked by Living statues but instead of destroying them they just left them to suffer while they chatted up Keiran and helped themselves to a piece of fruit which they jammed in 34 - BEAST FOUNTAIN. Despite triggering the fountain, fiddling with it in all sorts of ways, and getting positively covered in stinking drool- nobody ended up drinking the goo.

Instead of checking out many more rooms, the party gathered as many vegetables as they could carry in 14 - MONK’S GARDEN and circled back to Bril & Mother Mosquito to make arrangements for a rest. The party & this family would share dinner, and the party would sleep while watched over by these proud folk.

The next morning the party went to 15 - HUNGRY ABATTOIR. They rifled through the piled up personal effects of the corpses, but otherwise avoided the corpses themselves. Bernard fished up the mysterious glowing red ring from the drain, thinking nothing of it before moving on.

While Jildak was happy to receive the packaged Ghost Egg meant for 16 - LABORATORY, the party left them quickly to go finish their own Great Work: delivering the last two pieces of mail.

They barely even investigated the 17 - SPELL MUTATION VAT in their haste, only tapping the glass once to goad the slug within. 21 - HIDER’S ROOM stumped them, and 10 - LASER OBELISKS seemed like to great an obstacle for their massive package.

Instead it was a rush to dig through 18 - SNOW DRIFT and into 62 - LIBRARY AVALANCHE.  Thankfully what they lacked in tools, they made up for with the fact that Sanders was established as specifically being a St. Bernard as a bit of flavour at character creation. After all: what better dog is there for digging up "buried explorers" in the snow?

After digging up and unleashing the hapless automatons and riding the package through a crowd of Chaos elves as it thumped down the stairs, the party ended up at 60 - PANIC ROOM. There: Poob & Lisa had a heart-to-heart through their shared understanding of suffering as unpaid interns, and in exchange for their help Lisa returned the favour by helping the party with the locked door ahead.

Would you believe that the party didn't even look around 59 - VAMPIRE DEN? Not even a single plug gazed. After the music stopped and Bernard realised his new ring was glowing red: they just kept their noses down, shielded their faces, and averted their eyes from the vampire's play as they hurried through. After a tense encounter and grovelling as humble delivery workers, they hurried through 58 - MOUTH GATE and continued on toward the prison.

After taking a moment to rest and rinse off at 57 - GOBLIN STATUES, Kett used her hammer to bust a hole in the door and lift the bar to enter 56 - SCARLET’S CELL.

Nobody trusted the "little old lady in the dungeon" routine, but Bernard scanned with his ring just to double check and his player announced to the party that "yep, it's glowing red." Just as soon as Mr. Red spawned in though, Scarlet Antimony grabbed him and attempted-but-failed to drain the bloodless abomination- triple confirming that she is a dangerous vampire.

So, what else to do in this situation but send in the intern with the clipboard? This resulted in Poob being throttled by the neck and taken hostage, nearly dying before the party revealed that they did indeed have Scarlet's package. The exchange was made, and the vampire seemingly disappeared in a puff of smoke before beginning to taunt the party. But before she could kill all present the party bribed her with the vial of infected blood, grovelled, and pointed the bat towards the Vampire Den to get revenge.

Wanting to put some distance between themselves and the potential vampire battle, the party went to 53 - CELL WARRENS and encountered the local goblins. Bog helped translate (in retrospect I assume they are supposed to speak different goblin dialects, but it felt apt in the moment) and the group traded the rest of their vegetable stockpile to the starving goblins in exchange for hiding amongst them to sleep & advice on how to get into the castle sewers.

In the morning the goblins helped the party enter 54 - TANNING ROOM, which they passed through with a simple thumbs up to the fishbowl man. The 48 - DJ BOOTH went similarly- banging out some tunes with the synth gremlin before passing through the HALL OF ROCK into 101 - PIPE GALLERY.

After annoying the 99 - GOBLIN PAINTER hard enough for everyone to end up dying in the battle scene (with a particularly gruesome depiction for Sanders the dog), the party broke the lock on the door to the west and entered 77 - SEWER NEXUS.

The Encounter Clock ticked over once more, and this time who should the party encounter but The Silver Gentleman himself. Given he was last seen struggling to handle receiving divorce papers: I figured it right that he be found down here in a drunk and depressive stupor, not out of lost love but out of bruised wizardly ego. Randomly transforming between wizard and dragon, spraying fire, clawing apart stone- even just summoning dozens of Mr. Red and killing them with his dragon powers.

Timo and the group tried talking The Silver Gentleman into trying to find a new love. And when that failed, tried talking him into using his rad wizard powers to show everyone upstairs how wrong they are and how awesome and Wizard he is, which felt more correct for an evil wizard.

(Now: given the random encounter and the party questioning why The Silver Gentleman would be wallowing down in The Sewers of all places, I reasoned it would be a matter of sulking and coming down here to play with any of the Wizard shit kept down here to soothe himself. And what would just so happen to be nearby, other than 78 - NORTH TUNNEL and by extension the Star Giant? So retroactively I described the trail of scorch marks and destruction as coming from that direction, starting abruptly right at the thin wall).

After quickly scaring off the living graffiti, Kett once again used their hammer to quickly bust down the wall to 103 - STAR GIANT. The party only briefly investigated, before they had the dog bark as loudly as possible into the ear-horns to try and wake Orionon.

The party ended up rolling a 2 on his reaction: "Shout of Indignation. All within the dungeon save or die (eardrums explode on a save). Within 5km, save or fall deaf." Instead of having each party member roll individually, I had them collectively flip a coin whether they live or died. They ended up calling heads, and so they all somehow survived with exploded ear drums and permanent deafening as they watched Orionon ascend to the stars.

(Right; now this next bit is a bit of a stretch but I figured it'd be a fun way to close things out and it makes sense so stay with me:)

As the party sat and gazed through the hole in the castle, taking in what just happened, a pruned little creature with a pointy red mushroom hat came up to them. They didn't even hear her approach- only reacting when she started pounding on their legs or throwing pebbles at them, only watching as this woman screamed at them until she was red in the face despite the complete silence.

At this point: Poob's player had Poob hold out their clipboard for this person to try and write a message so they could understand what she was trying to communicate. But the colour just drained from her face, as the woman defeatedly signed: "Planche."

End session.

(Given the tweaked hook of Planche's package & plan being directly involved with the Star Giant, I figured it would make sense that she would be monitoring things and make her way over as soon as there was a massive earth-rumbling, deafening, boom of something going wrong. Is it a little forced? Yeah. Was it a funny way to close the loop? Also yeah).

mapping doodles + ending doodles done by my friend, scorporius

Reflection

I really need to stop writing at 4 AM when I can't sleep. Sorry if this reads dry or repetitive- it's a combination of that, me writing technical for work, me not writing play reports before, me trying to explain every little doodle on the map, and me having ran this like a week and change ago and forgetting all the jokes and funny little moments that happened.

As far as the actual running of GUEST STARS though- no notes, it was a wonderful time! More personally, it has also been a bit since I last ran a game, and a long time since I ran someone else's material, and this was a real fun way to dust off the cobwebs and also introduce some newer folks to the hobby. I've also been nervous about feeling older and slower, not as quick with the improv or managing things at the table, but the variety of authors really helped as an exercise in flexibility there too I think.

For this specific hook: I also feel like the players did a lot less traditional dungeoneering, and a lot more running around the haunted house avoiding things and trying to weasel out of problems to speedrun their goal and get out of there. Regular Fed Ex service, dropkicking the package and booking it. If we didn't end things with the waking of the giant, I would have been real curious to see how the problems the party directly stirred up and ran away from (The Silver Gentleman, the Dober-Men vs the Dark Orcs, the Vampire feud, etc) would have complicated actually making it back out of the castle.