HALLUCINARROW!

Per usual, this last weekend was spent playing Dungeonmor, prepping those final tweaks for the free release. A small group of players got to test out the intro to The Cold Silence Within Shadows, a free adventure to be released this fall. This group had not played the current version of Dungeonmor, so we spent some time making up characters, getting introduced to the Nymbrilus setting, and playing out some rules basics. The session itself was really just a short introduction for the players, but they did wind up exploring a place called Stone Hills Gulch in search of goblins. And this is where one of the most memorable experiences I've had running Dungeonmor occurred. Leona (Fhaenyr Fighter), Lyddia (Ork Barbarian), and Lorenzo (Human Wizard) followed a road to the gulch, noting a series of pillars to their left along the way. They came to several stone hills of an old quarry which surround the gulch where was found a strange, ancient stone structure. The place was large, 120' long, 50' deep, 20' high, with only one back wall, the rest standing open. It seemed to be a massive storage shed and the delvers decided to spend time studying the place. While investigating, a group of goblins approached from behind a stone hill further into the gulch and shot Lyddia with a bone arrow. The two groups, delvers and goblins, were about a couple hundred feet apart and thus a distance combat ensued. That's when it happened. In Dungeonmor, magic-users craft magical effects. Players get to describe how a named spell manifests and what they attempt for it to do. Per my usual intro games, I allowed players to fill in character details, like abilities, equipment, and languages, while we played the game, so as they needed something for a situation they added it. Lorenzo looked over his spells for something with a real kick, but wasn't satisfied with the list of options. As I frequently do, I let him suggest his own spell creation. Spells for Dungeonmor are just names, indicating what the spell does. After a short discussion about magic, how it works, and tossing around ideas, its boundaries where explored in a plethora of over-the-top ideas. With much laughter in an otherwise desperate delver situation, "Hallucinarrow" was born. Mimicking the draw and release of an invisible bow, the player, Matt, described his spell's effect being "belief that they were mortally wounded by an arrow." The die was cast for the spell, getting an 18 (success), and thus Lorenzo unleashed Hallucinarrow on one of the half dozen goblin adversaries. The goblin victim screamed in agony, shouting to its companions that he was struck through the chest by some magically conjured arrow, spastically writhing about grasping at "the arrow." An otherwise dominant goblin assault suddenly turned to chaos. As only the target was described as affected, the other goblins saw "nothing." Just a human in wizard robes pretending to fire a bow and then their cohort devolving into a crazed mania, wailing about its death from some non-existent arrow in its chest. Distracted, dumbfounded, and now afraid of the wizard's seemingly powerful death magic, the goblins drag their "dying" companion away from the dangerous interlopers come to their hills.