A Paladin in Sloretown

For the record, that was my uber-powered Paladin trashing the tracks of the Jeffro Pacific Express Freight to Funkytown.

Before we get into the view from the player side of the screen, a confession: I used this generator to roll up a fighter type and got the stats for a Paladin on the first try.  That was a mistake.  After the session, I rolled up a few more characters with it and discovered to my horror that it uses a modified Method III to guarantee a fighter's stats.  A modified Method III is not Method III, as handed down from the pen of Mister Gygax.

I should have known better.

My only solace is that, due to logistical difficulties, this game was a one-off for me.

And what a one-off it was.

My paladin, Aggros DeLas Aled, tagged along because his master caught him "with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar."

A minor point to add, because it didn't come up again in the session, Aggros isn't the brightest guy and when he said "proverbial" he really meant "literal".  The degenerates in the party assumed he was attempting to atone for the sin of lust when in fact he was atoning for the sin of indulging in carbs during his physique cutting season.

And here we see the value of old school play.  "I was told to help you by my superiors," is a perfectly valid excuse for the wrong kind of character to have to work with a group for which he is ill-suited.  Even a golden souled Paladin understand the value of hierarchy, and can put a willingness to obey the orders of the head of his order above his own personal desires.  That allows him to play along while maintaining a clean conscience.

And as a demonstration of my trust for the dice, consider the following exchange:

DM: The naked demon woman lands next to the whore.
Aggros: I tackle her.
DM:  The demon or the whore?
Aggros:  Hang on.  *rolls dice*  The demon.

Now what, you might ask, would you have done had the dice told Aggros to tackle the whore instead?

Rolled with it.  Aggros would have shielded her from the rain of death about to be unleashed by bow-armed snipers placed at key positions around the area.  He would have cured diseases on her and offered to escort her to the nearest nunnery to take up the habit and leave Trollopolis in the rearview mirror forever.  With some stabbity stabbity of the demonette along the way, naturally.

That also would have made a fine story.  As it happened, it was not the story that fate or chance or luck had in mind that night.

And that's okay.

Because we rocked that demon-lady hard, trussed her up, and delivered her to Elric the King who probably won't make of her a queen to sit by his side until Stormbringer drinks her soul.

Probably.

The One Shot Dungeon

Tried out Roll20 for the first time this past weekend.  Not for any of the functionality, just for the video conferencing feature.  Two new friends had a weekend free, so they let me run a quick one-shot dungeon delve using a bastardized B/X.  Basically, the B/X combat and movement, but I let them use whatever reasonable OSR ruleset they had for chargen.  Worked out pretty good.  Here's a brief rundown and AAR featuring a lot of nice photos and one that sucks.

 



 

Two fighters, a thief, a cleric, and Butterbucket the halfling inspected all three cave entrances.  They couldn't pick the lock on the portcullis, and they didn't like the fancy floor behind door number one...

There's a trap in there, somwhere

 So they took the right hand cave straight into the heart of the orc goons chillaxing around a firepit.

 And came through without a scratch.  They tied the orc leader up to the main portcullis, but he escaped into the wilds after making his strength check after they'd gone inside the dungeon.

 The aftermath with a sneak peek at the rest of the dungeon in the background.

 

 

 They found their way back to the front grate, but one of the fighters got cut off after springing a cage trap.  Beset by normal bats, he rolled back under the cage thanks to some quick wits and strong as nails companions.

 

Then down a long hallway, they found the master of the dungeon, a second level magic-user with two veteran guards who managed to kill the thief before being put out of their own misery.

 

That narrow corridor really turned this fight into a slogfest that worked in the player's favor.  The door is laying on a rubble pile marking a collapsed cave and the end of the dungeon.

 

 

Along the way they found a room full of pools that attacked them, turned a staff magic, and showed them two of the rooms of the dungeon on a successful intelligence check.  They also played around with a magic healing statue (shown on the left) and a magic mirror (shown on the right) that they played with for a while, didn't trust, and basically left alone rather than risk fighting duplicates of themselves.  Sometimes not playing is the smart way to play.

 



 

Then it was time to loot the library, fight some skeletons in the dark temple, and say goodbye to the cleric.  His loss in the first round of combat made the fight tougher than it would have been if one of the fighters had died early, but they prevailed, recovered the loot from that alcove in the back of the room, and got out with over 500XP.  Not a bad haul for a four hour delve.



 

And here we see the remains of the fallen.  The thief in the bottom, and the cleric in the upper part.  Long shall the names of whatshisface and whozit be remembered in the annals of faceless dungeon plungin' players.

If you liked this AAR, you would really enjoy my collection of dragon slayer novellas.  Featuring one tale each for fighter, thief, cleric, and wizard, it even has a bonus tale told from the point of view of an ancient dragon woken from its slumber by ruthless but well meaning conquistadors.



An Adventure 10 Years in the Making

My ten year old daughter ran her first D&D adventure yesterday using the Moldvay ruleset.  She is either a real hard case or an old softy.  The jury is still out.

Out three heroes, Father Zeke Brimstone, the mighty warrior Angel Algerbio, and thief Ezio, find themselves on the run.  Framed for the crime of stealing gold from the village of Rattenrude, a crime for which Ezio would later confess, the trio heavily pursued by pitchfork and torch wielding villagers through a deep dark forest.  Surrounded, and beset at every turn, Angel discovers a normal sized door set into the trunk of a large oak tree.

With no better option the party disappears into the door, to find themselves in a long corridor stretching off into the darkness.  Turning to spike the door shut, they find themselves trapped at the business end of a dead end corridor.  A lone villager, an old man not part of the mob, lies at their feet.

"Don't let him get you as he got me," the old man croaks with his last breath.  Ominous and prophetic words.

Ezio wastes no time turning out the old man's pockets.  No luck.

A passage to the right.  A large room with a minotaur statue and two heavy chests.  A sign above the chests, "CHOOSE ONLY ONE".  No fools, Angel and Zeke search for traps, only to find themselves standing above a series of coin sized holes.  Open the chest and spikes rip into your feet.  A job for the thief.

Ezio climbs the walls to reach the chests safely and chooses poorly.  The chest contains only a pile of desiccated small animal corpses.  The other chest?  Disappeared in a cloud of smoke.  The minotaur statue is made of copper and has dark red eyes.  Do we look at them?  No!  Back to the corridor...

A short ways on, a tile star of the richest blue.  We all jump over it, but the warrior who trips on approach and triggers...nothing!  (Later it would be revealed by a giggling DM that the star had the power to remove a curse affecting the cleric and thief.)

Another large chamber, this one with two waist-high pedestals and a lever.  With no choices, the fighter and cleric strongarm the thief into pulling the lever.  Magic darkness descends and when it lifts, the thief stands on the right pedestal and his identical twin stands on the left.  But which is the real thief?

(To add to the confusion, our DM pulled the thief's player into another room.  They played rock-paper-scissors to decide who was the real Ezio.  Then they returned to the play table.)

Accusations flew.  Tempers flared.  Fingers were pointed.  After literal minutes of confusion, Ezio the player slashes at Ezio the DM and splits the imposter's head wide open!  Which triggers a backlash against the real Ezio - a wicked slash across the forehead.  First blood for the party.  With the death of the imposter, a secret door in the rear of the room opens.

A short hall which is crossed by a wide perpendicular passage - a thick and flowing sewer.  Through the clever use of climbing rope and iron spikes, the disgusting sewage is bypassed.

A small room, two levers, two doors out, and a waist high copper statue of a frog.  When rubbed, the statue emits the spirit of the frog and warns the party, "The Master will destroy you as he destroyed me."  When queried about the levers and doors, the frogs-spirit feigns ignorance, but as Zeke moves to the right lever, it smiles in satisfaction as it disappears.

Zeke doesn't trust the frog-spirit and moves to the left lever, pulls it, and gets sprayed in the chest with acid.  No HP damage, but his armor is degraded by two points.  The doors open, and the party moves out through the one on the right.

A wide circular chamber with four wide pools, three filled with blood.  The back of the chamber dominated by a tall statue of a staff wielding half-man half-snake.  It's the Master!

"My villagers lured you into my trap, and now I will feast on your souls."  He charms the fighter for five turns.  A vicious brawl, the cleric and thief hold off their ensorcelled friend and numerous spells from the Master just long enough for Angel to shrug off the effects of the charm spell.  With her last act of slavery she slashed Zeke to the ground.  That very round, Ezio falls to a flame bolt from the Master.

One on one now, Angel goes berzerk, hammering the Master with her sword.  Again and again the blows rain down like...well, like rain.  Finally, the evil snake man succumbs to the onslaught, shrinking with each blow until Angel finally cuts the Master in half like a dollar store pinata.  He explodes, jewels bursting every which way.  Jewels that contain the souls of his most recent victims.

Misty forms slither into the corpses of Ezio and Zeke. It is their spirits - they yet live!  And still seek a solution to their unstated curses.  The party gathers up the remaining jewels and leaves by way of a doorway in the previous room.  (It was time for church, so we didn't have a chance to investigate the pools in the room.)  The party finds themselves back in the forest, a week later with the heat off.  They walk to the next village, now 65 gp and 250 xp the richer for their harrowing experience.

The Master's Dungeon Trap For Unwary Adventurers

Not bad for a first timer.  We had brutal combat.  Foreshadowing.  A wealth of traps.  Even a doppleganger.  It was obvious she drew on her own exposure to media, in fine DMing tradition. Overall the dungeon was a bit railroady, but on the whole it's a great start to her DMing career.

Tyranny of Dragons 2: Catching Up on Things

The Old Gang has met a few times to work our way through the D&D 5th edition feature campaign, A Tyranny of Dragons, and while playing my son pointed out how far behind this blog was.  Here's a quick update for those of you comparing your experience to mine:

After surviving the Cult of the Dragon's full blown invasion of the town of Greenest, my character hit his head on a rock and died.  The party was called upon to save some townsfolk trapped in the old mill, and so elected to slip over the walls of the keep by night.  I failed a climb check and my character plummeted 20 feet to his death.  New character time!

The rest of the party, surviving the simple climb, sneaked out to the old mill only to discover a massive ambush - they fled before it could be triggered. As they climbed back into the keep, all hell broke loose.  The Cult smashed their way inside the inner courtyard, and a huge fracas ensued, with the party barely managing to turn the tide of the fight thanks to the timely intervention of a recently recuperated dwarf fighter named Henry St. John (my new character).  The incursion forced out, the keep settled into for a long siege.

The Cult had other ideas, though.  Their champion, a big blue half-dragon, called out a challenge to the keep; one on one combat.  Hostages were involved, so Henry St. John stepped up, answered the call...and got promptly skewered by Big Blue.  The big old half-dragon was a half-man of his word and left the hostages and the village, the entire raiding party heading off into the mountains well laden with ill gotten loot.

The next morning, the party set out to track down the raiding party, fought through the rear-guard, triggered an ambush, and discovered the valley/headquarters of the Cult.

Interlude:  At this point I have to break to sing the praises of our esteemed DM.  He hand drew and colored a bunch of large maps for each of the major encounters.  The picture below shows the enemy encampment and surrounding environs.  This is a small valley; the blue and red icons are tents, the orangish square jobs are watch towers, and the blue blob in the far back is a large cave mouth.  

The two humans and dragon-kin disguised themselves with looted uniforms taken from the rear-guard and wandered into a party celebrating the successful raid on Greenest.  The dwarf and tiefling necromancer wouldn't pass muster, so hiked up to the northern ridge and selected some largish rocks to roll into the camp as distraction, if needed.

The three infiltrators managed to bluff their way to the back of the camp, free a bunch of prisoners including a scholar who is an expert on the cult, and sound the general alarm.  Just when their cover was about to be blown, the dwarf and necromancer started rolling rocks down into the camp, hooting and hollaring, and raising a general ruckus.  Then they ran like little girls.  In the ensuing chaos, the party rogue snuck into the large HQ tent, and stole a bunch of intel and a big 'ol sword.

After a day of rest (and levelling up), the party returned to the camp, only to find the camp decamped.  The tents were gone, the troops gone, everything above ground...gone.  Curious about what lay inside the big cave at the back of the alley, the party girds their loins and enters...

And that's the end of about three sessions of play.  Overall we're finding fifth edition to be much faster than 3rd or 4th edition, and probably slower than 1st or 2nd?  We're doing a lot more skulking and scouting than stand up fighting at this point, so it's a little hard to judge.

(Finally) Back to the Dungeon

Over a year ago, I showed you lot a map of my version of the Lost Temple of Laun Phien (link), and we finally got around to playing through it.  Last night a small but plucky crew headed out into the grasslands to explore/loot the haunted barrow mound of a long lost norseman berzerker king.  Remember them?  These are the guys chased out of the empire by the evil wizard Bargle.  They are on their way to raising an army to march back and overthrow him - overthrow him onto the sharp end of a pointy stick.

A warrior, cleric, and two elves set out from Cornerstone Keep, and after a couple days stumbled onto a band of orcs tormenting a poor wounded wolf.  They saved the wolf, now named Toby, and descended into the dark a few days later.  They scared off some skeletons, fought through traps, discovered lost libraries and laboratories, and were thoroughly confused by the ever changing nature of the caves.

[I had an egg timer set for 10 minutes - every time the bell rang, the dungeon configuration changed as discussed in the link above.  Searching for secret doors, which takes 10 minutes, the same thing happened and the timer reset.]

The kids figured out what was happening pretty quick, but they haven't made a concerted effort to figure out the pattern just yet.  For their first foray, they were just glad to find the way out.  Here's the map they came up with.

Two hours after entering the dungeon, they confronted the spirit of the norse king - a skeletal figure in horned helm who put down the warrior and cleric and wolf, before a rain of silver arrows dropped him into a burbling vat of black poisonous tar.  The plucky heroes loaded a couple of grand in gold onto their mule, Jerry, only to find that the quick walk back to the loot had once again changed.

Tired, hurt, and running low on food, they made their way back to the Keep where they fended off the queries of other would-be grave robbers, rested up, divvied up the gold, and generally prepared for the next big adventure.

MegaDungeon Assault

Saturday night seven brave souls set out from the village whose name we forgot and couldn't find because I lost the wilderness maps to make a second assault on the Temple of Evil contained within The Dungeon.  Two new hardy adventurers joined in the fun, a pair of elven sisters seeking the Lost Tribe of Elves somewhere in a hidden vale to the north.

On their way to The Dungeon, they camped for the night, only to be ambushed by red robed cultists.  After dispatching the cultists, as seen here...

...they cleverly took their robes and unholy symbols, the better to sneak into the Temple of Evil.  With only six robes, one adventurer (Frodo the Hobbit), played prisoner.  This time, the pesky orcish guardians charged 5gp for passage for all of the "cultists" wink wink and a whopping 100gp for the "prisoner" wink wink.

So the party barged into the Temple and marched straight up to the head of the temple, a bald man who had put the smack down on them last go 'round, and promptly beat the holy living heaven out of him and the rest of his cult.  Feeling smug bout killing most of his lackeys and capturing him, they set about exploring the massive main hall, only to be ambushed by two gargoyles.  A long fight won through smart tactics and the clever use of archers left them with only a little time to gather up as much loot as they could carry and scoot back to the main entrance where the perfidious orcs charged them yet another 100gp for safe entry to the surface.

Only once they were outside did they realize that they forgot to take the Temple leader with them.  They know next time that he'll be ready for them, but they've got enough gold to help ease their worries...

Man, it's invigorating to play D&D with 13 year olds.  You forget about all the stupid things like consistency and cleverness and just roll with the fun.  Yeah, we've got a party with Frodo, Gandalf, Pierce and Annie (from the grossly under-rated NBC television show Community) and Katniss Everdeen.  So what if it isn't wholy original?  It's adventurous and silly and lots of fun.

Borderwilds AAR and The Dungeon First Foray

When we last left our heroes, they had successfully ambushed a small rat-thing outpost.  The group split up, half to return a badly wounded hench-halfling to his home, half to clear the rat-thing warren.  So five brave heroes (sans artillery – if first level wizards can be classified as such) spent an hour and a half exploring the caves of the rat-things only to find the leader had absconded with all the loot. 

They were able to track said leader deeper into the mountains to the entrance of The Dungeon.  During the game and on a whim, I google image searched “Skull Mountain” and found this image.  This is now the official entrance to The Dungeon, which the players have christened Skull Dungeon.

Turns out this is from the Smurfs of all places.  Taking inspiration
from any and all media - a time honored OSR tradition.

Though it meant their quarry living to fight and scheme another day, the players returned to town to rest up for a week.  They returned, loaded for owlbear, and promptly triggered a shrieker.  Said shrieker alerted the goblins on level 1, who arrived en masse, and graciously offered to escort the characters to the second level of the dungeon (the Cult of Chaos) for the nominal fee of 5 gold per head.  (The goblins are playing both sides against the middle, having granted succor to the rat-things for the same price.)

Locked into the Temple of Chaos, the characters flubbed their first encounter with the leader of the cult and fought a vicious battle on the lower steps, won the day and blundered into a second ambush moments later.  They survived that ambush and had just enough time to loot the Black Library before cultish reinforcements arrived and chased them off into the safety (sic) of the goblin escort.

At the end of the day, the characters learned quite a bit about Skull Dungeon and absconded with several heavy tomes, one of which is cursed, one of which is magic, and one of which is both.  They’re going to need some help dealing with all three of those, but are looking forward making another attempt on the Temple.  As of right now, they figure 5 gold is a cheap price to pay for not fighting the goblins.  We’ll see how they feel about that when the goblins do what goblins always do.

AAR: Bargle's Cave

Last night I ran my son and six friends through a dungeon run.  I used the excellent one page adventure There's a Sword Down There - I Promise written by Jensan over at Rustfoot.  Click on that link to see the slick format he used for his dungeon - the map is made of words that describe the dungeon.  For something a little easier to mark up and map, I used Dyson's more traditional mapping style.

Dyson's Map of the Dungeon

The evil wizard Bargle had stolen the King's symbol of authority - the Sword of the Eagle.  The wizard stashed it deep in a dungeon behind riddles, traps, and monsters, and they descended into the depths to find it.  Of the seven, only one had ever played D&D before, and that 4th edition.  We used the Rules Cyclopedia, and it worked like a charm.  Even with seven players, we managed to get through four full combats, lots of traps, and even some intra-party conflict - all in the space of three hours.

In this case, I knew we had a struct time limit before the kids had to go home.  To press the urgency upon them, they started with three torches, and each torch would burn for one hour of real time.  Not only did that guarantee that the adventure would end within the allotted time - it forced the boys to not waste a lot of time dickering over which fork in the cavern to take.

I added a few tweaks to the dungeon.  The alcoves in the long hall each had a lever that opened a pit trap inside that alcove.  The secret door alcove didn't have a pit trap, the wall rotated, turning the person pulling the lever around into the shorter hallway.  The boy's had the one guy with a torch pull the lever, leading to a few tense moments in the dark.

The boys walked straight to the teleport room (the one with the magic circle), and it looked to be a very short night.  They (wisely) didn't trust the magic circle and left without triggering the teleport.  Instead, the cleared everything else on that level first, and saved a dwarf held captive by the ogre in the lower right corner.  (One player showed up late, and right after that fight, so it made for a natural way to introduce him into the adventure.)

After clearing the gray ooze in the pool room, the goblins up top, finding the key, and going into the vermin warrens (giant spiders instead of rats in my dungeon), they finally stepped up to the magic circle.  After triggering it, they chose right, and ran down the steps to grab the sword, return it to the king, and reap a well earned reward.  They can't wait to go try the other doors in the teleport room and finish clearing the whole dungeon.  They don't know that Bargle has other plans for them...

All in all, this was a great adventure with fun traps, easy riddles, and challenging tricks.  I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a light evening's dungeon run.  Thank you Jensan and Dyson for doing the heavy lifting for me.