The Gaming Den

2 more votes to try another door, and one of them suggest just rolling one die to save time, so that's what I'll do:

Die roll = 5!

The door is not locked. You open it and find yourself in a larder. You can restore 4 STAMINA points by eating some of the food. Then you can either try another door by rolling another double on the dice, or you can carry on up the passage.

STAMINA is back to max.

Do we want to push our luck further?

My vote is not to push DVS luck further, and carry on up the passage. Hopefully that will be the case.

Yeah, probably best to move on.

Those are probably the only two good ones anyways.

Agreed, let's move on.

Soon you reach a point where you could either turn left or carry straight on. You can hear the harsh laughter of some cruel being up ahead, but to the left you sense a feeling of terrible doom. The is not an easy decision to make. Will you turn left or carry straight on?

Cruelty or doom?

My vote is to turn left, of course, to stand against fascism. Doom is also awesome, so there's that too.

Checkout the doom.

Why not? Doom it is.

"Terrible doom" is what DVS is here to stop. Go left and check it out.

*

The further you go along this passage, the more you can sense great Evil ahead, so you think you must be nearing your goal. You come to a cave where, though there is nothing to be seen, the aura is so oppressive that you cannot move. It is like an impenetrable, suffocating blanket, but it writhes with an evil force, and nightmarish images form in your mind. You feel your POWER draining away as you struggle to break through, and then your lifeless body drops to the ground.

Apparently a Game Over section....but one with an asterisk, and there's really no reason not to at least try going to the dream world to see if we at least survive there, so I don't think this needs a vote:

As soon as you begin to feel your POWER draining, you flip to the dream world and find yourself confronted by Morpheus, Ishtra's lieutenant. He is a gross, bloated creature, the source of all nightmares for the races of Titan. His body has no definite form, but seethes with the stuff of nightmares - foul creatures, great and small. He will send several nightmare creatures against you, to soften you up, before attacking you himself. You will have to fight, one after the other, a Harpy (POWER 10), a Clawbeast (POWER 12), and a Wraith (POWER 14). The Harpy is a winged demon that slashes at you with its talons; the Clawbeast swings its four arms at you, trying to rip your dream world body with huge hooked claws; the Wraith simply tries to drain your POWER by its terrible presence. Conduct each battle as normal for dream combat, by rolling two dice: if you roll 2-7, the monster has reduced your POWER score by 2 points; if you roll 8-2, you have reduced its POWER score by 2 points. At the end of each fight, restore your POWER to 1 less than what it was before the fight begin. If you lose all three battles, you are unable to remain in the dream world, and you flip back to 73, with no chance to return here. Otherwise, turn to 364.

Having to flip back to 73 essentially means Game Over, but at least we only need to win 1 of the 3 battles to survive, so its not too bad. Given that we have more than 2x the amount of POWER as our first opponent, the Harpy, hopefully we'd be able to win that one as long as the dice don't fail us too badly.

COMBAT LOG:

Dice roll = 10. Harpy is at 8.
Dice roll = 8. Harpy is at 6.
Dice roll = 9. Harpy is at 4.
Dice roll = 6. DVS is at 20.
Dice roll = 5. DVS is at 18.
Dice roll = 3. DVS is at 16.
Dice roll = 3. DVS is at 14.
Dice roll = 9. Harpy is at 2.
Dice roll = 10. Harpy is defeated.

Even our "weakest" opponent nearly reduced our POWER by half, but we prevail.

Technically, we should have to resolve the next 2 fights as well.....but I don't see the point, since our POWER score will be restored to 1 point below the starting score after the fight no matter who won. We just had to make sure we win at least one battle in order to move on to 364, so I'm just going to skip the pointless dice-rolling and just deduct 3 POWER points from DVS (1 for each fight) before moving on to confront Morpheus with a score of 19:

Now, instead of facing separate monsters, you must fight Morpheus himself, the conglomerate of nightmare monsters, who is trying to absorb you. Since Morpheus is no mere illusion, but a creature of the dream world, then you can be killed in this dream battle. Conduct the battle as if it were normal combat, but substitute POWER for STAMINA.

MORPHEUS SKILL 8 POWER 20

Will you stop fighting Morpheus when his POWER reaches 2 or 1, if you get that far, or will you finish him off?

Yeah, look at that low SKILL, the master of the nightmares world is actually less of a threat than pretty much all the nightmares it sent at us because this combat is resolved by SKILL instead of via the random dice rolls that are always at a fixed odds which are 40/60 biased against us. Like I said before, the dream combats in this book really haven't bee well-implemented....

COMBAT LOG:

Morpheus 14, DVS 16. Morpheus is at 18.
Morpheus 12, DVS 19. Morpheus is at 16.
Morpheus 17, DVS 24. Morpheus is at 14.
Morpheus 17, DVS 17. Tie.
Morpheus 15, DVS 17. Morpheus is at 12.
Morpheus 15, DVS 21. Morpheus is at 10.
Morpheus 11, DVS 15. Morpheus is at 8.
Morpheus 16, DVS 17. Morpheus is at 6.
Morpheus 13, DVS 19. Morpheus is at 4.
Morpheus 16, DVS 19. Morpheus is at 2.

And it didn't manage to hit us even once!

Do we want to kill it?

My vote is to stop fighting Morpheus, as maybe we can interrogate him, Agent Smith style.

Normally I'd advocate for the advanced trait of hitting monsters until they die, but given it's specifically an option to not do that, keep it alive for a bit.

I feel like killing “the source of all nightmares will” have some weird effects on our dream abilities, and I suspect they’re not good ones, so spare the creature.

I agree, there's a reason we're offered the option not to kill him, so let's take it.

In your dream, you have been wielding a sword like Telessa, but one which burns with bight fire. You refrain from the final scything blow, which would scatter Morpheus to the winds; since you are dreaming, you dare not kill the source of your dream. With a howl of frustration, Morpheus' conglomerate body falls apart. You have temporarily broken the bonds that holds his nightmare parts together. He will be rejoined some day: the world will not be rid of nightmares, but many will sleep more peacefully tonight.

Victory is yours, and you feel a tremendous surge of energy. Restore your POWER points to the level they were at before you entered Morpheus' cavern. You now have to decide whether to face Ishtra himself in the dream world or the real world. You can feel his presence drawing near, and you know that as a Demon Prince, who has taken on some form in the Earthly Plane, he will simultaneously occupy both worlds. If you choose to meet him in the dream world, turn to 167; of you choose to meet him in the real world, turn to 346; if your real-world body is wearing a green pendant, turn to 128.

POWER is back to 22, and it's now Boss Fight time! Where do we choose to be our battleground?

A SKILL of 12 is better than a POWER of 22 so I suggest we do our stabbing in the real world.

I believe Galana said that one of the ways to defeat Ishtra requires physical artefacts to do so. I think that particular method of defeating Ishtra seems to be necessary in the real world, since there was a reference of not being able to use real items in the dream world IIRC.

Since I don't feel that we have enough artefacts to defeat Ishtra through this method, my vote will be to meet Ishtra in the dream world, and hope this is another SKILL fight like the Morpheus one.

Agreed with Journeymann00b, particularly given the mention of a blue option that we don't satisfy the requirement for.

Sounds good, make with the real stabbing.

Thaluikhain's post is confusing....it sounds like he's voting to have the confrontation in the real world, but not quoting who he's agreeing with when the last poster is clearing voting for a different option than him. If I'm interpreting his vote right, then the votes are tied 2-2. Please correct/clarify if I'm wrong.

Oops, didn't read the above posts properly, but yeah, I did mean fight in the real world, but will change my vote to avoid a tie.

With no other tie-breaking votes, DVS decides to stay in the dream world for the confrontation:

If your POWER score is 22 or more, turn to 201; otherwise, turn to 292.

Our score is exactly 22!

If we don't have high enough POWER, the PC arbitrarily decides that he's not powerful enough to confront Ishtra in the dream world, and flips to the real world.

Ishtra breaks into your field of vision with a clap like a thunderbolt; the air around him surges like a wave. Demon Princes take many forms; you see him as a goat-headed crocodile which stands on two legs and has lividgreen fire playing over the surface of his body. Despite his fearsome appearance, you sense that he is afraid of you, and you soon realize why. Demons are fixed: they cannot grow or change. Mortals are not fixed, and you have managed to gain more POWER than your opponent. Nevertheless, his SKILL is high, because he is at home in this dream world. He does not pause to taunt you, but hurls his first fireball at you to start this battle. With a prayer to your gods in the back of your mind, you boldly engage him.

ISHTRA SKILL 10 POWER 21

If you win, you have banished Ishtra back to the Demonic Plane by dint of your POWER. It will take him a long time, in mortal years, to lick his wounds. You cross back over to the real world. Turn to 400.

He's afraid of us because we have gained higher POWER than him (albeit only by 1 point), but what should have really made him afraid is the fact that we're actually even more "at home in this dream world" and thus has a SKILL score 2 points higher than his.

COMBAT LOG:

Ishtra 17, DVS 20. Ishtra is at 19.
Ishtra 16, DVS 18. Ishtra is at 17.
Ishtra 19, DVS 19. Tie.
Ishtra 16, DVS 18. Ishtra is at 15.
Ishtra 16, DVS 20. Ishtra is at 13.
Ishtra 18, DVS 20. Ishtra is at 11.
Ishtra 16, DVS 21. Ishtra is at 9.
Ishtra 18, DVS 19. Ishtra is at 7.
Ishtra 12, DVS 17. Ishtra is at 5.
Ishtra 18, DVS 23. Ishtra is at 3.
Ishtra 15, DVS 18. Ishtra is at 1.
Ishtra 15, DVS 16. Ishtra is defeated!

Flawless Boss-fight!

Now that you have rid Titan of Ishtra, his army will soon fall apart. If you were to linger in his underground stronghold, you would soon hear the sounds of fighting, as each faction among his troops seeks to annihilate all others. You do not linger, however! The cavern you are in - the cavern where you faced Morpheus and overcame Ishtra - is close to an exit from the tunnels. You leave through a gate of horn and find yourself back in the forest. There has been no miracle cure: it is still as blighted and cursed as before; but you know that it will soon be covered in fresh green, as new growth begins. For the time being, your forest and Titan are safe!

And we made it to the successful ending after just 1 failure. Not too bad! Choosing to tackle Ishtra in the dream world was the right option for us, as was choosing to rewind to the point where we decide to fight the tiger-monster in our dream after the first failure (we wouldn't have enough POWER otherwise....and Galana's garden was indeed the last place where we can still gain a POWER bonus). As you can see, there're 2 rough "paths" to winning this game, and the "real world confrontation" route doesn't require a high POWER (or high SKILL, since there's no combat....but it does require our POWER score to be higher than when we started out), but it also require multiple numbered items. Six items, in fact, and we only had 4 of those, so we would have failed there. The green pendant that was checked was actually NOT a good one - it was a trap item that would have led to game over.

Thanks to everyone for playing. As usual, I will post a brief summary of some of the stuff we missed in the next couple of days, and if you have any particular questions, feel free to ask.

Might ask more later, but off the top of my head: What would have happened if Dickolaus von Scrotenheim decided to whack Morpheus?

Good game folks. Looking forward to playing Masks of Mayhem, assuming that a Let's Play will be set up for that in the near future.