The Pillories in Death Frost Doom - The Crypt isn't Empty

Our cast of characters continues to explore Death Frost Doom (DFD), but the ending of last game session was perhaps one of my favorites.  First - about Death Frost Doom.  In the early OSR period (pre-2010), this stood out to me as an adventure that took D&D style gaming in a new direction.  Once I started running a game with my old high school friends, I knew this was an adventure that we'd work into the campaign, especially because they like the horror genre. In DFD, the players explore an ominous dungeon full of catacombs and the creepy trappings of a long defunct death cult.  The tension builds as they continue to loot crypts but aren't finding any monsters - but they know something bad is going to happen at some point, they just don't know how and when.  Last game ended with the first bad thing.

The players were in a kitchen in an area of the dungeon dedicated to priest quarters.  They found a hidden air duct in the ceiling that led to a 3' square crawl-space.  The party's halfling, Remi, asked for a boost - he felt some cold air coming down the shaft and wanted to see where it went.  He lit a candle and crawled through the duct, discovering a long vertical shaft that seemed to go up and out - cold air was coming down the shaft from the surface.  But the duct kept going forward, so he kept going.  The other characters called for him to come back, but Remi said he'd be fine.  In the dim light of his candle, he could see the duct opened into the ceiling of another chamber, and it looked like some kind of crypt was down below.

He yelled back at everyone to hang tight while he dropped down to check out the room.  (Mind you, he had no rope or similar gear - once he dropped himself down into the next room, he had no way to get back into the duct).  "It'll be fine", he said, "I'll find my way back one way or another".

The lid of the stone crypt was carved with a relief of a gruesome tyrant standing on the skulls of victims; he passed by the sarcophagus to see if there was a way out of the room before looking into it any further.  Yes!  There was a door out.  Unfortunately, it was barred from the outside.  Why would someone put a bar on the outside of a crypt, as if to keep something in?  That's when he heard the grinding of stone behind him, as something with a grip of iron slid aside the lid of the sarcophagus from the inside and sat upright.  That was the cliffhanger ending of the game night, with the mummified remains of the cult's "grand inquisitor" jerkily lurching towards the trapped halfling and his little candle.  The mummified inquisitor began to interrogate him with a sepulchral voice from beyond the grave, while the other players watched on in horror.

It turns out Remi has been carrying a potion of gaseous form with him since very early in the campaign, so he's confident he'll escape the crypt of the undead horror if he wins initiative, and that's why he was so nonchalant about the risks.  The tension at the table eased a little in anticipation of next game.  But the players are now boggled with the idea that the sprawling dungeon is not entirely quiescent, and there are dark horrors waiting for them, lurking in undiscovered tombs.

By way of reminder, here is our cast of characters, The Pillories:

• Reverend Blackburn - L4 cleric
• Remi Knotwise - L4 halfling
• Allister - L3 magic-user
• Yuri - L3 elf
• Henchmen - Wood (fighter), Toby (specialist), Geoff (fighter)

Other events since last game report included discovery of endless catacombs, filled with thousands of mummified cult members - warriors, priests, commoners, and even children.  There have been traps and curses, including the cleric, who fell victim to a spell that saw him inscribing a tattoo of the death cult on his own forearm while caught in a mindless frenzy; he learned to his horror that he can longer receive the benefits of his own healing magic.  They also discovered the source of the ominous susurrus sound that permeates the dungeon, but quickly retreated when an ooze-like monster crawled out of a well to defend the spikey plant growth that was producing the sound.  They know they'll need to defeat the ooze monster and hack through the spike growth to reach their goal, but decided to double back and finish exploring some other areas and confirm there wasn't another way around it first.  This is how Remi ended up crawling through an air duct to the tomb of the inquisitor.

I had great fun running it, and I'm looking forward to the next installment.

Game Reports - ACKS and LOTFP

York 1630 - F*ck Around and Find Out

I'm a few weeks behind on game reports for this one.  Our players, the magic user Allister, cleric Blackburn, Yuri the Elf, and Remy Knotwise the Halfing, have been exploring a puzzle dungeon called The Grinding Gear, a dungeon beneath an abandoned inn within the woods west of Aldfield.  Allister has two henchmen as well, a fighter named Wood and a specialist named Toby.  Rather than post a dull play by play, I'll just focus on some highlights.

At one point they encountered a set of stairs that led up to a landing, the passage turned right, and the stairs continued up.  The landing was one large pressure plate trap, and anyone that triggered the trap got launched in the air by a spring-loaded wall that threw them off the top of the stairs, like a giant pinball bumper.  The players avoided the trap and straddled the corner to avoid the pressure plate - that's not the interesting point.  Later in the dungeon when they ran into some "fast zombies" (ie, ghouls) the cleric used a scroll of turn undead to drive them down the same hallway - he quickly reasoned he could make them flee down the stairs and let the pinball bumper take care of them.  There was a moment, much later in the game, when they went by that way again and found the broken bodies of the zombies at the base of the steps, horribly mangled after being launched into the air.  I think one of them was still snapping it's jaws futilely at anything that came near, unable to even crawl with it's broken body.

They were running low on water and needed to leave the dungeon and return to the surface (they hadn't yet found the water source in the dungeon).  So they returned to the surface and carefully retrieved water from the well, cautious that there were still mosquito bats in the vicinity living in the attic of the inn.  It had been several days since the players first smoked them out.

A random encounter while the players were staying top-side brought some inquisitive bandits into the area of the inn, and they caught sight of some of the players fleeing into the inn and barring the door.  The bandits gave up investigating the statue and bodies in the clearing to mess with the players in the inn.  "You better leave us alone - don't f*ck around and find out", yelled one of the players through the door.  (We're from Philly where Gritty - the Flyers mascot - is basically the mayor of f*ck around and find out).  One of the quick thinking players ran up stairs with a pot and pan and started waking up all the mosquito bats in the attic with a huge racket, while the players continued to goad the bandits into yelling back at them through the front door.  This picture perfectly captures the moment the bandits got swarmed by angry mosquito bats while the halfling and elf laughed at their misery from the safety of the inn.  I love how this group repeatedly figures out how to use the environment as a weapon.

Here's a pic from a previous session when they were exploring an area with pits, and the halfling went down to explore after they killed a ghoul safely from outside the pit.  The halfling player was over the moon with the way his character has been depicted in these game vignettes.  He's even got a tiny pin with The Pillories logo on his hat.

ACKS Greyhawk - Let's Look Fabulous

In Greyhawk news, they did it.  The players finally had enough of Temple of Elemental Evil level one and started exploring the second level.  They seem to be figuring this D&D thing out.  They murdered a minotaur, and cut through a lair area with room after room of bandits wiping them out with a barrage of sleep spells and scooping up the spoils.  As an impartial observer, I believe they'll start getting more experience and leveling up... their insistence on grinding out all of level 1 was getting a little tedious.  Note - there is a horrifying room in the top center of level 1 with like four Earth Elementals patrolling it... the players learned about this place by interrogating some bad guys, and astutely decided to leave if for now.  They found a scroll of protection vs elementals on level 2, so now the wheels are turning.

Their fabulous moment came when exploring a junk-filled room with chests and wardrobes... full of many garments, clothes, dresses, and other sartorial accoutrements.  Old Gary (or perhaps Frank) was being generous when he wrote, "If care is taken in sorting, adventurers can fill three large sacks with good garments, worth 500gp per sack".  This was the last thing the players did on their way out of the dungeon for the night, and many jokes were made... "gee, we barely get any experience for fighting in deadly combat, but bargain hunting for clothes in the bandit's thrift store and suddenly my mojo is pointing up".  Like my son the football player always says about his "drip", look-good, play-good.  That's 1500xp of looking good for you, fellas.

In other ACKS news, I just learned that ACKS 2.0 (second edition) will be hitting the kickstarter later this month.  Oof - I love the compactness of the original book, it's an all-in-one, but ACKS 2.0 will have a player's books, judge's book, and monster book.  It's a great rules set for combat heavy, oldish school heroic fantasy, but a three book set is not an auto-buy for me - I have questions.  We may stick with first edition, we'll see.  Anyone else in the same boat or you diving in?

Death and Skullport (an Undermountain play report)

I'm still playing catch-up on older game reports for our Undermountain campaign.  The objective of the players has been to find a way through the dungeon to the underground pirate city of Skullport, which is home to the headquarters of the secretive Xanathar's Guild, the major thieves' guild in Waterdeep.  The Black Staff, a wizardly protector of Waterdeep, has commissioned the players to eliminate a threat facing Waterdeep - the minds of ordinary citizens are being replaced by intellect controllers under the control of a mind flayer working with the guild.  After months of play, the players are getting close to their objective!  Last game, they agreed to act as ambassadors to the hobgoblin nation of Azrok and take a diplomatic missive to Xanathar's agents.

As an aside on Undermountain (I'm using the 5E Dungeon of the Mad Mage) it really does a fine job of creating a living underworld, with connections between inhabitants, between levels, and story elements that can drive the campaign forward.  I recommend the dungeon master develop story reasons for the players to be interested in Undermountain that fit their own campaign and the play styles of the players.  For my group, the aspiration to be members of the Harpers and the group 'Force Grey' gave them sufficient reason to take on complex quests from figures like the Blackstaff. The books Dragon Heist and Dungeon of the Mad Mage provide you a lot of "lego pieces" to customize a cool exploration based campaign.  It's classic 1970's dungeon crawling, but with 5E systems.

Skullport from Dungeon of the Mad Mage

Skullport is a harbor town located in a large cavern on the shore of an underground lake.  Apparently there used to be locks and waterways to reach the city from a hidden sea cave on the surface, but that way no longer allows large sailing vessels to reach the port, and the population of the town is dwindling.  The mouth of the harbor is guarded by an oppressive fortress squatting atop the aptly named "Skull Island".

There are several cave passages between Undermountain (level 3) and the town of Skullport; the slow moving Sargauth River that flows through level 3 also leads to Skullport harbor.  My players used a passage guarded by the hobgoblin kingdom, the "Ghost Way", where they indeed needed to skirt a haunted cavern to reach Skullport.  We spent 1-2 game sessions with the players carousing around Skullport, visiting pubs such as the Black Tankard and the Dragon and the Flagon, while seeking the location of one of Xanathar's agents to give the wax sealed scroll with a message from the hobgoblin king.  Word reached the commander of Skull Island, an 8' tall half-ogre champion called Sundeth, who flew out of the dark cavern on a wyvern mount to receive the character's message.  Sundeth dispatched a courier to take it to Xanathar; the players foresaw something like this happening and made their rogue, Teukros, invisible in advance.  Teukros was able to tail the courier to an entrance to the thieves' guild, in the basement of an inn called the Gut and Gartner.  A long arc of the campaign was coming to a close and the players were now ready to return to the surface, share their intelligence with the Blackstaff, and identify what comes next.

There's a saying "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink…"  It applies equally to RPG players.  There have been several times during the course of the campaign where the character's faction connections, be it Force Grey, the Harpers, or even the Zhentarim, have made it clear there are friendly agents in Skullport who could aid the characters in getting back to the surface if they're able to make contact.  My group of players considered this tact and declared, "seeking out friendly agents sounds too much like work, let's figure out if we can sneak or fight our way back through the drow city".   (The last time they tussled with the drow a character died and the rest of the player characters fled for their lives).

Backtracking through the hobgoblin kingdom, making their way to the drow outskirts, and sneaking through the drow city was certainly a legitimate option to try.  They came up with an intricate plan to go "light-free" and  guide their blinded characters with ropes, while sneaking along the outskirts of the ruined dwarven hold and avoiding drow patrols.  Unfortunately, they had a barbarian in the group.  Bosko, their goliath barbarian, got frustrated about not being able to see in the darkness; he tossed his drift globe in the air, yelled the command word for daylight, and charged into a nearby intersection, daring the drow to come out and fight like men.

There was a movie in the late 1960's, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - it tells the story of the legendary train robbers and gun fighters.  At the end, Butch and Sundance are living as outlaws in Bolivia where they are identified by the local police while eating at an outdoor café.  The Bolivian Army arrives and surrounds them completely, and the movie ends in a hail of gunfire.  That's a good metaphor for what happens next to my players.

Bosko and some of the frontline fighters (like Alfred, the duelist fighter) created one front at an intersection, dueling at a  drow elite warrior and some flunky soldiers.  Virsk (cleric), Teukros (rogue), and Ace (their elf wizard), were embattled on a nearby street fighting a gaggle of quaggoths, including a quaggoth shaman who was frying Virsk with a heat metal spell.  Giant spiders were bearing down on them from above and plopping into the combat, and ordinary drow soldiers would pop out of an alley, fire a sleep dart with a hand crossbow, and then duck back out of sight, using effective hit and run tactics.  It was all very exciting and cinematic (for me).

One of the things I like to do stylistically, when it makes sense, is to use "cut scenes" to raise the tension at the table.  It's a good technique to give the players information their characters don't know.  In a situation like the pitched battle in the drow city streets, I'd describe (in between combat rounds) how forces are mobilizing in other parts of the city; bells are rung and drow soldiers fall out of the barracks with their gear; the drow priestess abandons her meditations and brandishes her freaky tentacle scourge as she makes her way out of her sanctuary.  As a dungeon master, this transparency gives the players necessary information to make choices, raises the stakes and tension, and relieves my conscience in case the reinforcements flatten the player characters if the players don't switch strategies.  The key to being a fair bare-knuckled DM is to give the players the information they need to plan and make choices so the consequences aren't arbitrary (particularly when a TPK, total party kill, is looming on the horizon).

This was an interesting moment for the players.  I actually had one player, who plays in many other 5E games, quip to his compatriots, "It's nothing to worry about, we'll be fine - 5E is balanced for the players to win".  The others were hearing the ominous forces winding towards the battle front and were looking for ways to escape.  There are modern DM's who embrace a "fail forward" philosophy - no matter how boneheaded the player's choices are, they'll find a way to minimize the negative results to avoid total failure or death.  Do any of you do it that way?  Character death has been part of the campaign since we started, and the players have known all along failure can be final.

This session ended with several of the characters at zero hit points or unconscious, finally succumbing tothe drow sleep poison darts flying in at them; Teukros broke off using his rogue skills ("bonus action disengage" the 5E rogue's cheesiest declaration) and creating darkness to cover the escape of him and Virsk the cleric.  Bosko, Ace, and Alfred were cut off and became prisoners of the drow (ultimate fate yet to be decided).  Teukros and Virsk stumbled into a cave that looked out on the swirling black waters of the Sargauth river.  There was a raft nearby.  We ended this game with them drifting off into the darkness, putting distance between themselves and the carnage back in the ruins.  The river would eventually take them back to Skullport.

The players of Bosko, Ace, and Alfred would make new characters for next game - thugs or outlaws that could be met in one of the dockside taverns in Skullport.

Game Report: Diplomacy on Undermountain Level 3

Following their trouncing by the drow elves in the eastern passages of level 3, the party stealthily retreated to the west and south after sufficient recovery (in 5E terms, they finished a long rest).  There was a straightforward battle with a chimera in a side cavern, and then the party scouted a ruined dwarven city sprawled across the floor of a very large cavern.  The ruins were inhabited by giant spiders and drow patrols.  They took refuge in an abandoned dwarven dwelling and surprised a lone drow elf while he was relieving himself.  He was quickly taken prisoner.

It's been a long time so I don't remember exactly the word they used to intimidate or cajole the lone sentry to guide them through the ruins, avoiding watchposts and getting past the drow garrison in the ruined city.  But they left the low level drow flunky once they got beyond the city and made their way through warren-like tunnels to the edge of hobgoblin territory.  Again there was more negotiation, this time convincing the hobgoblin captain in charge that they were also enemies of the drow and potential allies to the hobgoblin nation.  (By way of reminder, the player's objective on level 3 was to find their way to the underground pirate city of Skullport and they were hoping to get the location from the hobgoblins).

The Legion of Azrok is the name of the hobgoblin kingdom on level 3 of Undermountain.  I'm not familiar with the original Undermountain, but there were elements of Azrok that reminded me of the old Orcs of Thar Gazetteer from Mystara era Basic D&D.  Humanoid societies there were presented as mirrors of the human world; the hobgoblin stronghold, with its building sized banners festooned with the Legion's heraldry gave it the feel of an autocratic police state; militaristic hobgoblins patrolled with regularity, checking the "papers" of visitors like the KGB or gestapo.  The players were subjected to the surreal experience of being marched by uniformed hobgoblins to a chamber where bespectacled goblin artists hastily sketched "guest visas" for visitors to the hobgoblin nation.  It was good for some comedy.

It turns out the hobgoblin nation was in dire straits.  The drow elves had recently invaded from a lower level, driving the hobgoblins out of the eastern part of the ruined dwarven city and inflicting heavy casualties.  The Legion of Azrok was on a war-time footing.  They were casting about for allies.  An ambassador from Xanathar's Guild was being entertained, a mind flayer named Ulquess.  The pirate city of Skullport sat nearby to the west of Undermountain level 3, and apparently Xanathar now controlled the entire city.  The hobgoblins were open to an alliance with the beholder Xanathar.

In their audience with the hobgoblin king and his queen, Lurkana, the players offered to help the hobgoblins against the drow, in return for safe passage to Skullport.  However, they wanted a private audience with either the king or queen.  The news that a mind flayer ambassador was loose somewhere in the Hold of Azrok was chilling to them.  (Whether you're new to these game reports or not, there's been a campaign-long theme where mind flayers allied with Xanathar's guild are using intellect devourers to murder and replace prominent people topside in Waterdeep City).  The players were immediately concerned the hobgoblin court was compromised.

The characters had a small supply of Potions of Mind Reading in their inventory, going all the way back to when they were adventuring topside in Waterdeep during the Dragon Heist phase of the campaign (they got roped into a Zhentarim side mission that involved knocking over a potion shop).  Ace, their elven wizard, now used one of the potions during their private audience with Lurkana to verify neither she nor her guards secretly had mind flayer pets lurking in their skulls.

The players convinced the queen to let them stage a dramatic scene in front of the hobgoblin court where one of the characters gave a fiery speech about the dangers of an alliance with Xanathar while Ace used a second potion to scan the thoughts of the assembled courtiers, a mix of hobgoblins, goblins, and bugbears.  One of the bugbears was being controlled by an intellect devourer and made a break for it when Ace touched its mind.  There was a short duel, the assembled court saw the bugbear's empty cranium and the horror of the emerging intellect devourer, and orders were issued to have Ulquess, the Xanathar ambassador, arrested.

The players decided a patrol of hobgoblins was no match for a mind flayer.  "I've sent a patrol of my best soldiers, they're already bringing the ambassador back here" said the queen.  "No", said one of the players, "Your men are already dead".  So they went themselves to the ambassador's quarters.  They were ambushed by a fair number of denizens who had already been replaced by mind-controlled servitors.  The mind flayer had been busy preparing defenses around the embassy, and had defensive contingency plans in place.

When the dust settled, the mind flayer was long gone - probably levitating to the top of the cavern once it learned that its network of spies was compromised.  The players had to slaughter a half dozen intellect devourers and their mind-controlled goon bodies.  The threat ended, the hobgoblin court was grateful and the players were elevated from guest visas to permanent residents if they wished.

Over the next few days, the players learned more about the hobgoblin nation and the politics of level 3.  Interesting encounters included a demonic hobgoblin trader, and a mutated necromancer, exiled from the depths of Undermountain.  The necromancer was slowly building a zombie army to help tip the hobgoblins tip the scales against the drow.  Her stories and rumors gave the players a glimpse of what’s waiting in the depths of Undermountain.

Ultimately the hobgoblins decided to cease diplomatic relations with Xanathar's Guild and close the passages between Skullport and the Hold of Azrok.  A missive was drafted and prepared to be taken by courier to Skullport, to be presented to one of Xanathar's agents. As the players were desperate to go to Skullport, they volunteered to take the diplomatic letter to Skullport themselves.  We'll pick up the game reports next time with their first visit to Skullport.

Undermountain Level 3 Play Report: Commence the Beatings

Let's begin our first of several game sessions that centered around Undermountain level 3, the Sargauth Level.  (Sarguath is the slow moving river that flows south along the eastern edge of the map).  Ah yes, the map - I've included an image below to make it easier to follow along, and added some simple annotations.

You'll notice when the party comes down the stairs from level 2, they are immediately faced with a go left/go right type of decision.  Go left (east) and you'll find yourself in a small sub area that houses a drow temple, prisons, and various drow torture/sex rooms.  If the players go right, they'll make their way to the partially collapsed remain of an ancient dwarven city called Stromkuhldur, which is now a drow military outpost.  There are some "no-man's land" tunnels between the drow outpost and the other half of the ruined dwarven city, which is now a hobgoblin base called the Hold of Azrok.  I put a few stars on the left edge of the map where there are paths to Skullport, the underground pirate city.  By way of reminder, the party's overarching goal in Undermountain is to scout level 3 and find a way to Skullport, and once there discover how to get into a secretive thieves' guild headquartered beneath Skullport.  Finally on the map, there's the river itself, and several caves and lairs which can only be reached by boat across the river.

The level 3 map is very large, but also somewhat linear.  The river is the principle feature that gives the players freedom to skip elements of the linear path, as well as the ability to explore the caves and lairs on the far side.  As we go through our play reports, you'll see my players never really learned to exploit the river in their exploration of level 3.  Because of this, they were very challenged by the drow elf hold over the middle of the map.  Level 3 presented them with a good mix of exploration, combat, and roleplaying opportunities, and several sound defeats.  Let's get on with recounting their first one!

The drow elves on this level are led by a priestess who has converted a Dwarven temple into a spider temple; they've been kidnapping people, possibly even citizens from the surface, and using them to incubate spider eggs and give birth to giant spiders.  The temple is festooned with corpses in webs with burst egg sacs that grew out of the victims.  It's a fantastic set piece if you want to accentuate a horror vibe.  There are several clues in the caves and passages before the temple, such as a hapless adventurer who died from things bursting from within, to give the players some foreshadowing as they explore the eastern area.  At the time, the characters in our party were still Bosko (goliath barbarian), Virsk (human cleric), Alfred (human fighter), Ace (elf wizard), and Teukros (drow rogue).  Their attitude was in the vein of, "Yay, we're going to smash the guts out of some spiders…"  After a relatively easy time breezing through levels 1 and 2, they would be coming back to earth very soon.

As a DM who has his roots in the 1980's, let me tell you something I'm enjoying about running this 5E megadungeon:  many of the encounter areas consist of zones where a group of rooms contain like-minded or allied inhabitants.  When the players enter the zone, you can give the monsters a tactical response as warranted by their intelligence and organization.  It's a chance to be creative.  Throw the kitchen sink at the players if you want.  Have fun.

An old school mind-set is to be tough but fair; you are an adversarial DM from the perspective that you're not there to let the players win.  They make their choices, they roll the dice, the chips fall, you report on the results.  That's how the story gets made.  You are a neutral arbiter of their actions and how the inhabitants of the game world react.  When those inhabitants are highly intelligent, organized, and dangerous, watch out, players.  Carelessness can alert whole areas and find the adventuring party taking on a much bigger force than expected.  Many combats in 5E feel like two opposing sides bashing each other with styrofoam weapons.  Escalating the tactical situations as intelligent opposition forms against the players is where you get to feel Gygaxian again.

Maybe you can see where this is going… as the players explored the eastern dungeon, they tripped on the sentries for the drow temple (which included quaggoths and a drow elf mage) and got bogged down fighting mooks while the mage gathered reinforcements.  (In 5E terms, a "mage" is a 9th level wizard, so they usually have access to some serious damage spells like cloudkill and lightning bolt).  Cloudkill synergized well with the quaggoths, who are immune to poison, while the confined spaces maximized the impact of the cloudkill on the player characters.

This battle was many game sessions ago, so apologies if I'm fuzzy on the play-by-play.  The drow mage leveraged "greater invisibility" to stay invisible while attacking, after alerting reinforcements in the temple proper.  Once the players got crushed by a lightning bolt, Ace realized they were facing an invisible caster and used "detect invisible" so he could counterspell and duel the enemy wizard.  The barbarian and Alfred hacked their way to the entrance of the temple, carving up quaggoths, troglodytes, and giant spiders along the way.  Virsk, as a storm cleric, figured out that gust of wind could take care of any further cloudkill nonsense.

The big gun in the main temple was the drow priestess.  As she made her way to the front, she dropped more giant spiders on the party through "conjure animals".  I still haven't yet succeeded in a "summon demon" roll to bring forth a Yochlol in one of these drow priestess combats, I'm 0-4.  Ace was able to knock the drow mage to zero hit points, but no one was able to make it over to his body and finish him off; my players know not to assume that powerful NPC's are instantly dead at zero hit points.  By now, the party was fairly injured after smashing through a guard post of quaggoths, an assault of troglodytes, several waves of giant spiders, and dueling an invisible drow elf wizard.  When the drow priestess dropped an insect swarm on them, characters started to drop.  Alfred died; he got put at zero hit points, and it took the players long enough to drag his corpse out of the insect swarm that he accumulated enough 5E failed "death saves" to be truly dead.  The casters were out of spells and everyone was limping along.  I think Teukros, their own drow elf rogue, dropped a darkness spell behind them so they could retreat and regroup.

The players retreated to a nearby cavern where they activated their Daern's Instant Fortress to create a secure location to rest and recover.  Virsk had been holding onto a raise dead scroll which they used on Alfred.  (This was before they made Revivify a staple).  When the players emerged from the tower after a rest, they discovered it was completely webbed and besieged by phase spiders, which was a fun combat and a reminder they were camped entirely too close to the enemy.  The players quickly made their way away from the "temple side" of the dungeon and towards the ruined drow city.

I've seen other game reports regarding level 3 of Undermountain; getting roughed up by the drow priestess seems to be a common theme; I've even heard of full on TPK's in this area.  My players would face her a couple more times before finally quelling the threat.  Next time we'll pick up with the drow outpost and their visit to the Hobgoblins.

Undermountain Game Reports: The Upper Levels

One thing becomes apparent as you read through Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage.  It's a big dungeon.  The overwhelming majority of the content consists of the dungeon levels themselves - maps and keys - 23 levels in all.  There are a few pages up front about dungeon history and attributes of the dungeon, and a small appendix with several new monsters and magic stuff.  Everything else is dungeon content.

There's not a lot of space devoted to storyline, plot hooks, and how to run an engaging campaign in Undermountain - the referee is mostly on their own.  Hopefully that's a skill you picked up from earlier editions, or from your friendly neighborhood OSR blogger.  Probably the most useful thing readers can glean from my game reports is how I've woven exploration of the dungeon into the themes of the campaign.  I've been effective at presenting storylines that encourage the players to explore deeper.  I'll focus special attention in the game reports on our use of plot hooks and rumors to integrate Undermountain into campaign play so you get ideas for your own games.

The idea behind the first campaign arc was focused on finding the headquarters for the Xanathar's Guild.  Several important Waterdeep citizens had been replaced by Intellect Devourers, including a high ranking member of Force Grey.  Several of the player characters were working their way through the ranks of Force Grey and were personally involved in uncovering the intellect devourer plot.  The Black Staff, the arch-wizard that commands Force Grey, invited them to a special briefing at Black Staff Tower.

"We need to find a furtive way into Xanathar's Guild headquarters.  It's located beneath the underground pirate city of Skullport.  There are entrances to Skullport from within the sprawling dungeon called Undermountain located beneath the Yawning Portal Tavern.  I'd like you to scout the first several levels of Undermountain to find the best way to Skullport; from there, spend enough time in Skullport to discover how Xanathar's agents come and go.  Once you have that well-mapped, return for further instructions."

All of the players were already interested in exploring Undermountain, although only two of them were aspiring members of Force Grey.  But everyone thought scouting several levels of Undermountain, making their way to Skullport, and locating the entrance to the crime boss lair, was fairly interesting and the whole party got behind the mission.  I think many of the typical Forgotten Realms factions could provide alternative motivation to get started with Undermountain; I liked the urgency the "invasion of the body snatching intellect devourers" created.

The first dungeon level is rather generic, with the ubiquitous "dungeon bandit hideout", some typical scavengers like trolls and carrion crawlers, and several hideouts for humanoids working for Xanathar's guild.  Many of the bugbears on this level are host to intellect devourers, which greatly reinforced our theme about the grave threat posed by Xanathar's alliance with the Mind Flayer(s).  Whenever combat would start with a group of humanoids, I'd ensure the correct bugbears would maneuver towards the characters with low Intelligences.  The bugbears would eventually be dropped to zero hit points, and the Intellect Devourer would materialize next to the dead host body, ready to brain zap another big dumb galook and jump into a new cranium.  Several player deaths were delivered this way!  Great fun for the DM, and a way to spike the tension at the table.  Intellect Devourers are terrifying.

The other bit I greatly enjoyed on the first level was the "revenant".  There's a dead cleric named Garke trapped in a well where his murderous companions dropped his corpse before looting his stuff; Garke has returned as a revenant to exact vengeance, just as soon as someone helps him out of the hole.  He has an unerring sense of location to hunt his betrayers.  Garke became an interesting ally for the players, because they could take advantage of his help for as long as they pushed forwards after his tormentors (which drove the players down to level 2 quicker than they may have liked).  It's balanced by the fact the revenant is a powerful ally, a nigh unstoppable force of destruction.

The party at this time consisted of Ace, an elven blade dancer wizard; Bosko, a goliath barbarian; Alfred, a rapier-wielding duelist (fighter); Teukros, a Drow assassin/rogue; and Virsk, a northman cleric.  Spoiler alert:  most of them died on level 3, but we'll get to that story eventually.  At this point in their career, they motored through level 1 with minimal casualties and accompanied Garke around areas of level 2 for a bit, at least until he had pounded enough of his murderous ex-companions (the Fine Fellows of Daggerford) into a bloody pulp that his spirit was able to travel onwards to his rest.

I've mentioned in a previous post that Undermountain is "balanced" for 4 players starting at 5th level.  For a larger group, I'm just counting up total levels.  So the first level is meant for 20 levels of characters (4 5th level characters); the second level is 24 levels (4 6th level characters) and so on.  There are various "arch gates" on each dungeon level that are tied to character level as well which I'm adjusting due to our larger group size.  In this way I've got a sense how well they'll handle the challenges.

Level 2 was fairly fun.  There's a goblin market and a problem with the goblin boss who wears a special magic item called a "circlet of human perfection" that changes his shape into an attractive (naked) human.  Goblins don't have the same modesty as people so the players got a little tired of seeing the goblin junk flapping around in front of them when Yek danced and gamboled around.

There was an area where most of the players fell into deep covered pit trap, without any light sources, and couldn't figure out how to get the pit open from the inside.  Meanwhile, Virsk, the cleric, was left outside one of the pits, and had to battle alone against an undead beholder zombie while the schmucks tried to free themselves from the pit traps.  Virsk still brags about single-handedly killing a beholder (and everyone chimes in "it was already dead…").

This campaign originally started with Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, and some of the potential outcomes of that adventure include the players owning their own Waterdeep tavern (Trollskull Manor) and winning a 50,000gp royal treasure.  Our players ended with both outcomes.  With the money, they tried to find a powerful magic item on auction (random magic item) and they were able to bid on and buy a Daern's Instant Fortress.  One of their first priorities when they explore a new level of Undermountain is to find a safe redoubt with a ceiling high enough to allow the instant fortress to deploy.  We've had entire games where they defended the fortress against a siege of dungeon monsters.

There was also a challenging treasure on level 2 that tied into their tavern ownership.  Much of level 2 is an old dwarven mine dating back in Undermountain history to the Melairkyn dwarves - dwarven mines, dwarven temples, breweries, and so on.  One of the distant chambers has a large trove of magically preserved Melairkyn ale in large barrels.  The upper levels of Undermountain are extremely light on treasure, and the Melairkyn ale is several thousand gold pieces (140 or so barrels at 40gp each, but each barrel is 400 pounds of weight).  One of the players was a Zhent agent and was able to secure a small mercenary force to secure the straightest path from the ale storage to the Yawning Portal.  They negotiated a cut with Durnan (the proprietor of the Yawning Portal) and then brought a healthy supply back to Trollskull Manor.  The players have maintained a side business as tavern owners, they run a Zhent black market out of the basement, and engage in some light politics in the city.

Level 3 of Undermountain is really good, and where this dungeon exploration campaign really took off.  We'll start our look at level 3 next time!

Assault on Chult

Note:  the map below has spoilers

My home campaign is 15 sessions into the player's assault on Chult (the Tomb of Annihilation campaign).  I'm estimating we're a third of the way through the campaign, about to finish the first of three campaign arcs.  The first arc is exploring the jungles of Chult, and trying to identify the locale of the Forbidden City.  The second arc is exploration of the Forbidden City itself and learning how to open the lost tomb.  The final arc is exploration of the tomb itself.

I'm not going to do detailed campaign recaps, as we're already 15 sessions in.  I'll do a survey of the player's progress with exposition on tips and referee choices that have worked out well for us.

The most important suggestion I have for starting a new Chult game is to adjust the urgency of the "Death Curse".  By the book, the campaign starts in the Chultan city of Port Nyanzaru under pressure to find a corrupt relic lost in the jungles.  The relic is affecting the whole world; Raise Dead and similar clerical magic has stopped working.  People brought back via Raise Dead or Resurrection are dying.  Both effects together are being labeled "The Death Curse".  The character's patron, a retired adventurer and recipient of a Raise Dead, is dying, and hires the characters to find the source of the Death Curse (quickly).  They are one of several similarly hired adventuring parties.

The problem is that Chult is a sprawling hex crawl with many interesting side quests and adventure opportunities.  Perkins and the WOTC team created a great hex crawl.  But if the players are under too much immediate pressure due to the Death Curse countdown, they'll focus solely on the Forbidden City, missing out on a lot of the fun discovering lost ruins in the jungle.  I bifurcated the effects of the Death Curse; the corrupt relic starts the game blocking souls from Raise Dead and Resurrection.  It's important to find the source of the curse, but the player's patron isn't dying by the minute.  I marked a time on the calendar (60 days) where the corrupt relic has absorbed enough souls from the recently dead that it's ability evolves, and begins to leech once-dead souls brought back via Raise Read or Resurrection.  It gives the players a more relaxed entry point into exploration of Chult, while setting a countdown later when the relic begins unraveling recipients of Raise Dead and providing a time clock when it's appropriate.

Expedition 1 (Right of Map)
The first arc starts in Port Nyanzaru, a frontier city squatting on the edge of the foreboding jungle, nestled between sluggish jungle rivers.  The players hire a guide, buy equipment, and set off on their first forays into the jungles of Chult.

My advice:  first, use the encumbrance rules (a "variant rule" in the player's handbook) and let the players know you'll be enforcing rules around heat exhaustion, daily water intake, and the difficulties of logistics in the jungles.  There is a fair amount of bookkeeping during this phase, creating inventories of food, bug repellent, tents and camping gear, canoes, and developing hex crawl "standard operating procedures" such as how to set up camp, daily jobs, canoe assignments, night watch schedules, etc.  Once they have all of this in place, the hex crawl procedures run smoothly.

I get the sense many modern referees ignore encumbrance and requiring the players to plan.  My players learned to hate and respect the jungle - the storms, the oppressive heat, the difficulty of bushwhacking overland and having to leave behind things like armor because carrying food and water was more important.  Plus the presence of dinosaurs and bands of undead, the remnants of an ancient army.  "I hate the jungle" became a running theme with the party's paladin, forced to leave behind heavy armor in order to hack through vine-choked jungle on 10 mile marches.  5E's encounters typically challenges the characters, but table top planning challenges the players.  Now that the characters are reaching mid-levels, they appreciate the way they can avoid the worst of the jungle because their wealth or class abilities afford them better options.

Their first expeditions (sessions 1-4) took them to a place on the map called Firefinger and then back to the city, moving from levels 1-3.

Expedition 2 (Center)
After their first major expedition, they spent more time in the city looking for rumors and learned about a storied oracle at Orolunga that might provide a clue to the resting place of the corrupt relic.  On this expedition, they went with more canoes and hired local porters, so they'd have hirelings to carry extra food and water (and potentially lug armor and other heavy gear).

I worked in themes from Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now on this river trip, with distance equating to regression into horror for those that didn't respect the jungle, culminating in their visit to Camp Vengeance, where the paladins and crusaders of the Order of the Gauntlet were on the verge of madness (and the commander, Niles Breakbone, was my own Colonel Kurtz).  There's also a fine DM's Guild adventure called Hunter, an homage to the Schwarzenegger movie Predator, that I worked in as a side-trek on this expedition.  I'll probably write a review, we enjoyed Hunter quite a bit.

This expedition also took the players on to M'Bala, and then out to Orolunga, where they did get insights on the corrupt relic and a locale for the Forbidden City (Omu).

I'm not a fan of the over-powered NPC characters that traipse around the Forgotten Realms, and Chult has it's own - the immortal Artus Cimber and his holy sword wielding sidekick, Dragonbait.  Artus, who went by the name "Sam", was encountered in Orolunga as a surly adventurer seeking his own answers from the oracle.  He and the players learned they may have a common goal, the defeat of a legendary jungle warlord Ras Nsi, but the two sides parted amidst mutual insults.  Later, the players ran into a hunting party of Zhentarim assassins on the trail of a wanted fugitive, Artus Cimber, and the players connected the dots between "Sam" and Artus.  Artus is now "in the game" in case I need a high level helper NPC at some point during the end game, but there's a bit of a rivalry so I don't feel obligated for them to team up because they're both "good guys".  He can act as a provocateur or rival.

The other recommendation from this arc was to threaten the hired help.  5E characters are notoriously tough to put down; my game still doesn't have a fatality, although we've come close several times.  NPC's don't have plot immunity and the guides and porters are critically important if you're running the hex crawl with encumbrance and logistics.  It's been great fun having monsters choose the easier targets and stressing the players about such important resources.

This expedition covered sessions 5 - 12, and saw most of the party hit levels 4 and 5 before returning to the city.

Expedition 3 (Ocean-based)
By this point, the players knew a lot about Chult and had many targets for their next journey.  However, the jungle ruins don't provide a lot of cash and their pouches were getting light.  They learned about a lucrative pirate hunting opportunity in the city dock ward, and hired a ship to go pirate hunting.  Drink up me hearties yo ho.  This allowed me to introduce the dragon turtle in the Bay of Chult, and we had a great time running an intricate ship-to-ship combat when they intercepted a pirate ship by trailing a loaded merchant vessel - the pirate ship was called "The Stirge" and they ultimately captured it and sailed it back to port to collect a heavy reward.  I also ran a pirate-themed lighthouse encounter from one of the DM's guild supplements, Encounters in Port Nyanzaru.  When all was done, the characters were flush with cash, owned their own sloop, hired a captain and quartermaster, and planned a long voyage to Shilku Bay to begin their trek to Omu, the Forbidden City.

My advice if you try something similar is to leverage the ocean voyage rules from Ghosts of Saltmarsh for 5E.  Ghosts of Saltmarsh is a nautical campaign, and the appendices cover detailed vehicle rules for ships, downtime on long voyages, sea hazards, ocean borne encounters, the works.  It's a great resource to put some nautical flair into your Chult game.  One of the Unearthed Arcana articles had additional ships (I think I got "sloop" from the UA article).  I have irrational love for pirate adventures.  The Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign is in my future, along with grog, sea shanties, and a bunch of pirate movies.  (In fact, I'm currently streaming Black Sails with my wife).

Expedition 4 (South)
When the characters set out for the south of Chult, they were loaded up for a long journey.  They used the wealth from pirate hunting to buy some magic items, many potions, and sufficient food and gear to stay in Omu several weeks.  Their patron had been tracking them via Dreams and Sendings magic; now they learned from her the Death Curse has entered a new phase, and recipients of Raise Dead that predated the Death Curse are beginning to unravel.  She's dying.  Suddenly there's a time clock!

Their new guide for the expedition is an albino jungle dwarf named "Musharib"; he waived his fee if the characters would help him explore Hrakhamar first, so they've been clearing that mini-dungeon - a dwarven forge overrun by Fire Newts.  They learned of the dragon in Wyrmheart Mine and plan to assault it next, then head for Omu and the next leg of the campaign.

I'll post another set of observations sometime after they've explored Omu and are entering the final arc, the Tomb of the Nine Gods.  Feel free to generate a discussion in the comments about your own Chult game and how things went by you, I'd love to hear it.

Dwimmer-Game 5 - Invest on their Blood!

My wife does this thing every New Year's where she invites anyone she's ever met over to the house for a New Year's Day potluck.  It's good for me to have some forced mingling and small talk on topics other than work and gaming, so I can continue to function as a normal human, at least once a year.  However, by evening, all the neighbors that play D&D had heard my kid's rave about the Dwimmermount game, and a number of them engineered to come back over for an evening dungeon romp.  We had 9 people packed into the upstairs study for a New Years Day jaunt into Dwimmermount.

Cast of Characters for Game 5:

Marthanes, a desert sorcerer

Tancrede , a cleric of Typhon

Wolfengard, a dwarf fighter

Utor, an elf enchanter

Bud, a dwarven cleric

Drev, a swashbuckling bard

Parquas, an elf magic user\thief

Big Bart, a fighter*

Jarvis, a fighter*

*Bart and Jarvis were the mercenaries Ploppy and Fluffy; they earned enough experience to go from zero level man to 1st level fighter, and have since been taken over as characters by new players.

This Dwimmermount campaign is shaping up to have a component of "passing the torch" to younger gamers.  We had 3 dads and 6 kids in the game, with kid ages ranging from 9 to 15.  One of the precepts is that the kids do the planning; the adults can offer advice, but kids make the decisions (for better or worse).  When it comes to planning, there is a strong bias towards fighting, action, and getting back into the dungeon as quickly as possible.  After getting the new players up to speed on the 'story so far', the kids decided they wanted to try and find the Moon Pool on level 1 once and for all.  (The other options they discussed were going to level 2, or breaking their alliance with the orcs of level 1 so they could loot them.  There was a certain bloodthirsty contingent that wanted to beat up the orcs.)

Once they reached the caverns again, they tripped a kobold ambush and ended up fighting a room full of kobolds.  Dwimmermount kobolds are small, misshapen dwarves, closer to kobold folklore, not the reptile headed dog men of traditional D&D games.  As a group, they charged the kobolds with weapons swinging.  When the kids get into these types of scrums, there is only one rule - "everybody fights, nobody quits".

Over the next few caverns, the major finds included the Moon Pool, a secret exit out of the dungeon (the hidden Dwarf Door), and a cavern with a pod of Shrieker Mushrooms; the players created a tactical position after dealing with the Shriekers, and then ambushed a large gang of kobolds coming to investigate the sounds (and they leveraged the high armor fighters to form a strong defensive line).  As an aside:  the Moon Pool has mind-expanding powers, and the players scooped a ton of Moon Pool water into flasks; sadly, they learned at the end of the session, back in town, that the water loses its Moon Pool properties when taken out of the pool, and is worthless outside of the dungeon.  They're considering an alternate way to monetize access to the Moon Pool.

After another round of voting, the kids decided it was time to head down to level 2.  They knew about two sets of stairs - an eastern set leading to a level called 'The Reliquary', and a western set leading to 'The Laboratory'.  The orcs (their erstwhile allies) guarded the west stairs, so the players chose the eastern stairs.  A "hall of memories" led to the stairs down, where the players viewed brief magical holograms showing pivotal moments in the history of the Thulians.  This was the player's first introduction to the idea that the dungeon is full of history, and the kids were very interested in seeing that dimension of the dungeon - good!  This first historical exposure was a big moment in the game, as I believe unraveling Dwimmermount's history is a satisfying goal for any Dwimmermount campaign.

It was at this point, the descent to level 2, that things took a turn for the zany.  The first room on level 2 was inhabited by a handful of those "Eldritch Bones", the metal skeletal Terminator-like destroyers that terrorize level 1.  The bard started doing his once-per-day Inspire Courage to improve the group's chance at surviving, when George (the 9 year old that plays Wolfengard) jumped in to do his own pep talk and "show the bard how it's really done".

"This is the day, my brothers, get ready to fight, my brothers, get ready to destroy them, brothers, we will INVEST ON THEIR BLOOD !"  George is English-as-a-second-language, so sometimes he gets his words wrong, plus he's the youngest guy (9 years old).  Maybe he was trying to say "we will feast on their blood?", I dunno.  From that point on, the gang of kids implored their compatriots to 'invest the monsters', roll really well and 'invest the dice', they'd even chant "invest, invest, invest, INVEST !" while pounding on the tables in advance of key dice rolls.  It was funny and endearing that they got so excited by George's speech and adopted "Invest" as their battle cry.  By the end of the night, they changed their company name from Muntburg Broncos to The Investors.

The Eldritch Bones were threatening enough that Marthanes summoned his berserkers to join the fight and get in on the "investing".  Because the berserkers last for 3 turns, the kids are focused on immediate action after a fight.  It's the polar opposite of the careful adult players.  The kids finished their combat with the EBs, concluded a mandatory turn of rest, and quickly tried to find another chamber with monsters before the spell ended.

The next room was a large vault with multiple wights.  The remaining berserkers perished quickly, and the players had to finish the wights themselves.  Everyone that could use a silver dagger or holy water had one at this point in the campaign (wealth was no barrier to this type of gear) but any hit by a wight is still instant death for a first level character, so the monster attacks were very tense.  No one died, but the drama made for a fitting end to an exciting session.

Leaving the dungeon, the players ran into the Five Delvers on their way out.  There was a brief debate whether to attack them - Marthanes implored his companions, "what happens in the dungeon stays in the dungeon…", but they settled on Plan B, which was to offer to sell the Delvers their complete map of level 1 and coax them into facing that demonic spider voice the party had deliberately by-passed.  The players had no intention of staying on level 1 anyway, so they cashed in the map.  With a heavy bag of gold, and the hopes that they've sent their rivals off to face a horrible demon spider, the players returned to Muntburg.  Happy New Year!

Dwimmer Game 4 - The EB's Attack!

Game 4 of our exploration of the legendary Dwimmermount.

As usual, we started the game back in town - in this way, drop in players can always join a session.  At the beginning of this one, a summons appeared from the Curate of Typhon, requiring the presence of the party's cleric, Father Tancrede (a fellow Typhonian).  "It's time I explained why a luminary such as myself was willing to accept a post in such a dismal backwater", the curate began.  From there he explained how a sect within the Great Church has always kept an eye out for rumors that the Termaxians, a cabal dedicated to resurrecting the cult of Termax, might resurface and threaten the church and the true gods once again.  Herynt, the Curate, is convinced Termaxians are behind the opening of Dwimmermount.  He exhorted the party to be ever vigilant for evidence of strange wizards or mages as they explore the ruins.  He also reminded Father Tancrede that the church expects its tithe!

Here is the cast of characters:

Marthanes, a desert sorcerer
Tancrede, a cleric (henchman)
Malgrim, a fighter
Wolfengard, a dwarf fighter (henchman)
Priscus, a paladin
Ploppy and Fluffy - two new mercenaries (real names Bart and Jarvis)

The Curate had heard about a bronze head on the wall that could answer questions like an oracle; the players remembered seeing the head on a previous journey, and accepted the Curate's offer to find the head and try it out on their next delve.  Returning to the dungeon was the next activity, and visiting the bronze head was their first stop; it wasn't hard for them to figure out to oil the joints of the large, rusted fixture (one of the kids said, "like the Tin Man!") in order to get it to work.  I think they asked the head something about whether there were any large treasures (more than 2,000gp)  left on the level.

After visiting the head on the wall, they went to see the orcs that were on guard near the cavern.  It was still in the player's minds that they wanted to find the moon pool somewhere in the caverns.  (This would be a quest stretching over multiple nights).  With the Thulian war masks, and a few high charisma characters that speak Bestial, the players haven't had issues parleying with the orcs and getting insights on the cavern denizens.  They learned that there were many more kobolds, despite the death of the kobold leader a few sessions ago, and the uneasy truce between the kobolds and orcs was over, forcing the orcs to barricade the door into the cavern.  The orcs were only too glad to hear the players would be clearing out the kobold caves.

This session was all kids, no dads, and I've observed that even teenagers don't do a great job with tactics.  For instance, running into a large cavern of kobolds, which were armed with torches and oil flasks, led to a bunch of burning player characters, at least until Marthanes' summoned berserkers showed up and wrecked the place.  Both Priscus and Malgrim were saved from zero hit points or near death.  Meanwhile, the summoned berserkers were given a few torches and sent ahead to slay any additional kobolds, indiscriminately.

By the time the players caught up, the berserkers had already cleared another room of kobolds.  They still didn't discover the moon pool, but they found a spring of oily black silver liquid (unrefined Azoth) which they scooped up into flasks instead.  It was getting late, so they started to leave with a large sack full of unrefined Azoth.

In one of the main corridors on the way out, a patrol of "Eldritch Bones" found them.  EB's are the alpha monsters of Dwimmermount level 1; they have good armor, resistance to edged weapons, they can't be turned, and they have hideous claw attacks.  I picture them like Terminator skeletons, metal and relentless (and they absolutely never will stop, ever, until you are dead.  They can't be bargained with, they don't feel pity, or remorse, or fear).  The last encounter with EB's in the chapel left Grimson maimed, and this one saw the death of Malgrim and Priscus, the two fighters that were injured in the caverns.  Tancrede got knocked out too, and the fight would have turned completely against the party if Marthanes didn't go nuts with the wand of magic missiles, firing double shots at each skeleton.

Back in town, they collected some extra experience due to finishing the Curate's quest (finding the head on the wall) and they sold the Azoth to the Great Porfirio (the Alchemist) for about 200gp; he claimed he'd be able to take it back to the great city Adamas and refine it into pure Azoth.

"Dwimmer Death Count" is now Grimson (killed by a spider), and Malgrim and Priscus, killed by EB's.  They lost a few mooks to spiders, too.  Wolfengard has been promoted to PC for next game.

The Dwimmer-Campaign Game 3

Third installment of the player's exploration of the legendary Dwimmermount.

Game 3 started with a few new drop-in players joining for the night as we played at a neighbor's house.  The players started at the Muntburg tavern, the Flask and Scroll, and discussed their next delve while peering at the map.  Mook 3 (who left their service at the end of last game) had been spreading horrible rumors about Dwimmermount in the intervening time - full of monstrous spiders, death, and beastmen - and word was starting to get out of Muntburg that the dungeon held dangers and treasures.  "I knew we should have knocked off that mook in the dungeon", complained Marthanes' player, as they considered options.  "By the way, new guys, what kind of characters are you, and what do you do?"

"I'm a paladin!" declared Priscus.  "Surely you were kidding about that last comment, murdering your poor ex-retainer?"  Marthanes' player, who nearly spit out his chips, glared across the table - "Seriously, you had to pick a paladin, dude?  So much for my reign of chaos - I guess we're  going to have to act "lawful" from now on".  Meanwhile, the other new player was Parquas, an elf nightblade (a magic user\thief).

The characters for this session:
Marthanes, an exotic sorcerer (mage) from the sultry south
Malgrim, a fighter
Priscus, a paladin
Parquas the Duelist, an elf nightblade
Plus two henchmen - Wolfengard, a dwarf fighter, and Father Tancrede, a priest of Typhon

The Great Porfirio, the finest alchemist of the majestic city of Adamas, had come to Muntberg with his entourage as soon as he heard the dungeon was open, to hire adventurers to retrieve rare reagents for him from the dungeon.  "Texts from the time of the Termaxians identify a 'moon pool' right on the first level of Dwimmermount where the mages of the old empire recovered 'True Water'", declared Porfirio.  "I will pay handsomely if you can discover the truth of whether such a pool exists, and even more if you're able to retrieve some True Water.  Of course, if you don't want the job, I can hire those other guys, the Five Delvers…"

I'll talk about this more during a formal review, but there's a neat tool called the Dwimmermount Dungeon Tracker over at RPGNow; each level has a table of 1d6 interesting quests on the tracker - exactly the type of thing I've done for my home brew megadungeons.  Porfirio is the embellished result of a quest... 

The players bought some empty flasks, but when they went to the bond-house to see if there were any mercenaries looking for work, they learned that all of them were recently hired away by a new party, the Five Delvers.  "That's it, we're going to find these guys and have a talk with them - we'll double the pay and hire the mooks away!"

The Five Delvers are a newly formed adventuring party preparing for their own first trip to the dungeon.  The recently hired mercenaries were outside the cottage laying out gear and sharpening weapons.  Priscus started making an offer to the mercenaries about coming to work for the Muntburg Broncos (the spontaneous name the players just picked for themselves) when Asceline, the lithe and attractive leader of the Delvers, burst out and declared that no one was hiring away her mercenaries.

After sizing up Priscus, she looped her arm in his and walked him down the street to 'work out an arrangement'.  She agreed to letting the party hire away a couple of mercenaries by doubling their pay (as long as she could pocket the difference) and all the while was trying to use her pick pockets skill to rifle through Priscus's belt pouch.  "What do you need the empty flasks for, did you find something like a pool?"  Priscus realized what she was doing and pushed her away.  "We're going to find that Moon Pool for the alchemist", he declared.  "Not if the Delvers find it first!" she retorted.  The players picked two of the mercenaries to change teams, and they headed back to the inn to get ready.

Despite an hour planning to find the moon pool, what they really did when they got to the dungeon was go to a vault with a locked iron door, to test out the "rod of opening".  The door creaked open and then slammed against the wall with a deafening clang.  The vault groaned with an inward rush of air, and a cold chill of undeath washed over the party.  A hollow voice called out, "This treasure is mine.  Mine!  You shall not have it…" and rising from the floor was the gruesome shape of a wight!  (The players didn't know it was a wight, but I described it in such scary detail that the two youngest kids were quaking in their very chairs!)

The party had loaded up on holy water last week, so they immediately started pulling out vials and tossing them at the undead horror, with its life-draining talons reaching for their necks.  Meanwhile, the elf nightblade, using acrobatics, stealth, and the skulking proficiency, had skirted around the vault to the backside of the treasure pile and was creeping up on the wight from behind.  Once he realized it was a nasty undead, he figured his regular sword wouldn't damage it, so he scanned his eyes over the treasure pile, figuring there was a fair chance for a magic item.  The hilt of a sword stuck out of the pile!  Hoping that it was magical, he withdrew the sword and attempted to backstab the wight once it moved forward to claw at the front rank of characters.  It was indeed an enchanted blade, and the thief ended up doing close to 20 damage on the backstab, splitting the wight's skull from the rear.

The mercenaries stood watch while the players sorted and catalogued the wight's large treasure pile, and packed it into sacks for transport.  It was so much that they aborted the rest of the delve to haul the loot back to Muntburg right away, heavily laden with bursting sacks and full backpacks.  There was no keeping a low profile now; word spread from the corporal of the watch that the adventurers had returned with a load of treasure, and the players were barraged with offers from merchants and people in town plying wares and services.  They spent the rest of the night negotiating the purchase of a stone cottage in the outer bailey to use as headquarters, and a bunch of large chests, locks, and some trained war dogs to help with security of their new headquarters.  They even talked to the captain of the guard about keeping a closer watch on their house.  Success has come quickly for the Muntburg Broncos!

My neighbor's wife came home early from shopping and declared it 'time for kids to hit the sack', so we packed up.  His kiddo seemed to enjoy D&D so we'll see if we can get them in another game in a week or so.

Dwimmer-Campaign Game 2

Second installment of my player's exploration of Dwimmermount.

The characters stayed in town a few weeks to give Grimson time to heal his grievous head injury from last game session.   Obsidian's player missed the game, so the other players hired a few mercenaries in Muntburg to round out the crew.  They promptly renamed the mercenaries mook 1, mook 2, and mook 3.  They tried to keep a low profile about their initial success in Dwimmermount, and also bought a bunch of new supplies - better armor for Malgrim, 6 vials of holy water, and a few silver daggers.  Marthanes used his proficiency (magical engineering) to identify that the rod from last session was a rod of opening, and the scarab was a deadly cursed item.  Since kids are chaotic by nature, they immediately started scheming how they might sell the scarab as a fake magic item and then retrieve it after it killed its new owner, so they could pass it on to another victim.  Luckily they got distracted by the dungeon before carrying out this particular plan…

The characters for this session:
Marthanes, an exotic sorcerer (mage) from the sultry south
Grimson, the world's first dreadlocked kilted barbarian
Plus two henchmen - Malgrim, an ex-legionnaire from Adamas, and Father Tancrede, a priest of Typhon, and 3 mercenaries

Back at the dungeon, the first thing they did was to replace the head of a god statue.  In one of the treasure rooms last week, the players recovered the head of a statue of Tyche, but were in too much of a rush getting out of the dungeon to mess with it last time.  They lugged it back to Muntburg, where it sat next to the bed for a week.  Now they hauled it back to the dungeon, and fitted it to Tyche's statue where it sealed itself to the torso -  and then the characters were filled with the blessing of Tyche, a divine boon.

They used their map of the level to find a library to loot, discovering various books and a manual of warfare.  They wandered off to another room where they parlayed with a handful of orcs; the war-masks from last session (which clip on to helmets like demon-faced samurai masks) improved the reaction rolls and they gained some intelligence on the nearby area from the rocs, learning about kobolds and a nearby 'kobold chieftain' in an area where the orcs wanted to expand.  The players just needed to hear "kobold lord" and it was clobberin' time - off to mug some kobolds.

The orc's directions led them beyond the finished dungeon into the cave network in the south of the level.  The kobold "chieftain" was actually a vile dwarf, sitting on a crude throne with a large spider minion perched on the back of the throne, with a gang of kobolds.  Devoid of tactics, the players charged in!

Grimson went first, roaring a challenge and leaping forward to attack the evil dwarf.  A massive swing took off half the leader's hit points.  Unfortunately, the giant crab spider went next, jumping onto Grimson, biting and poisoning him, and Grimson died (after writhing on the ground a while).

Marthanes had summoned his berserkers for this fight, and the combination of berserkers and mooks quickly sliced through the kobolds once the berserkers got into the fray.  The other characters finished off the dwarf and the spider, and tended to Grimson after the fight, but he was too far gone to save.

Knowing they had a little bit of time left with the summoned berserkers, the party quickly left the chieftain's room and looked for another fight.  They found a room full of spiders, and lost the remaining berserkers and two of the mooks dealing with the group of giant crab spiders.  There was a dank tunnel leading down out of the spider room, and they heard a faint telepathic voice calling out to them, "I'm down here mortals, tasty mortals, waiting in the dark for you.  Come to me…. Come to me… "  They quickly retreated.

The party doubled back to the chieftain's room, looted the dwarf and the kobold treasure (which consisted of 6,000 coppers and a few dwarven magic items) and headed out of the dungeon, sad to lose Grimson the barbarian.  Furthermore, despondent at seeing mook 1 and mook 2 die in the dungeon, mook 3 left the player's employment when they got back to Muntburg.

This ended the session, and began the list of casualties:

Dwimmermount Dead:
Grimson, the dreadlocked barbarian (killed by a giant crab spider)

Dwimmer-Campaign Starts - First Session

Here we go, game session 1 - Dwimmermount using ACKS.  I have a few basic goals for the campaign - I want to run a simple (old school) game, feature a flexible cast of players from the neighborhood, keep the sessions short so they can be scheduled ad hoc, and keep the amount of prep fairly low so I can still run it when work and school start up again in a few weeks.

We started with the players at the gates of Dwimmermount, standing before the large red doors into the dungeon, making last minute preparations, before trying to push the doors open to see if the rumors of the dungeon being unlocked are true.  We used a large sheaf of pre-made characters and handy background sheets on "what everyone knows about Dwimmermount" to accelerate the action.  I try to minimize exposition during table time, especially for a first session.  Players come to rumble, not to listen to long background monologues!

The characters:
Marthanes, an exotic sorcerer (mage) from the sultry south
Grimson, my world's first dreadlocked kilted barbarian
Obsidian, a thief
-Plus a few henchmen - Malgrim and Mulan, two ex-legionnaires from the city of Adamas, and Father Tancrede, a cleric of Typhon

They descended into the first room, inspected a few statues of the gods with mismatched heads, and Grimson knocked off the misplaced heads of Turms Termax before they moved out.  In one of the first rooms, they found a party of dead dwarfs (turned to stone) and pieced together that one of them had a leather case depicting a full map of dungeon level 1!  (The secret they used was to treat it like an etching or rubbing with some charcoal).  Armed with a full map of the level, the players have been very tactical about where they go looking for treasure.

They found one room with an illusionary demon, managed to hit it (and dispelled the illusion) and discovered their first treasure hoard.  This was followed by a mad minute of dancing in place and acting like they were doing the "make it rain money" mobile device game.  Kids!

The next stop was an iron door in the north east part of the dungeon (which the thief couldn't unlock) so they went to a nearby room instead where they were ambushed by a half dozen metallic bone constructs jumping down from ledges.  (They caught on that the skeletons weren't undead once their turn attempts failed).  Woefully unequipped with enough bashing weapons, the skeletal constructs proved difficult to defeat with blades, and Grimson was torn to pieces, dropping to zero hit points before the rest of the group defeated the "eldritch bones".  ACKS uses a mortal wounds table to determine the results when a guy is knocked out to determine whether he's dead, dying, or just really hurt.  In the case of Grimson, he was really hurt and one of his ears was practically ripped off.  They bandaged him, but he'd need a few weeks to recover back in town.

Meanwhile, the other characters discovered a nearby secret door and a second treasure hoard (along with a few magic items - a rod of opening and a scarab of death - which they packed for later).  On the way out of the dungeon, they stopped in a room with various Thulian war masks hanging on the walls.  Malgrim almost got poisoned taking one off the wall (since the masks were trapped with gas) and everyone else quickly backed away.  The commotion attracted more wandering monsters, and Marthanes used his single 1st level spell (Summon Berserker*) to materialize a squad of desert fanatics from the afterlife to fight off the beetles.

After the beetle fight, the players learned something super useful - the summoned berserkers last for 3 turns!  Marthanes' minions were quite willing to go retrieve some masks for him while the party stayed at a safe distance.  With masks in hand, the group limped out of Dwimmermount and back to town.  End of game 1!

*Summon Berserkers is a new spell in the ACKS Player Companion

Icons Game Reports - the American Ninja Cowboys Campaign

I took some time off blogging (and RPG gaming), but the gang is coming over this weekend to pick up again.  Our current \ active campaign is 'American Ninja Cowboys', a post-apocalyptic anime-inspired game set in a fantastic, future America, featuring lumbering spirit beasts, magic, and ninja cowboys.  The characters are super-powered members of the Pine City Rangers, a fighting team protecting Wood Nation and Pine City from the other nations and various super-powered criminals.  Pine City is in the Pacific Northwest, built over the thousand year old ruins of Portland.

I've really enjoyed Icons.  The system plays fast and loose, and allows (er, requires) a lot of player improvisation at the table.  It supports random character generation!  I can definitely see using it for more types of super hero games.

The official designation of the player's ranger team is "Orca Team 6", but they call themselves the Otters.  At the beginning of the campaign, the Otters had just finished a long patrol south of Origami City, the city at the southern end of Wood Nation.  They were on their way back to Pine City in time for the upcoming "Pine City Games", a super-powered competition in Trailblazer Arena.  They stopped in Origami City to visit their retired coach and mentor, Old Man Skinner.

Skinner and the Otters were ambushed by some criminals and thugs, directed by one of Skinner's old enemies, the synthetic android Replicant Dioxide.  Replicant was thousands of years old, a relic of the Ancients, made to lead robot armies in the time before the Fall.  He looks like a large metal skeleton, wielding ridiculously oversized anime-style weapons.  Now he operates as a bounty hunter and salvage specialist for various criminal entities like the secretive 'Sixth Nation'.  A fight against a bunch of sword-wielding thugs and a lone copy of Replicant Dioxide (he can multiply himself) was a good introduction to the Icons combat system.  Inazuma, their lightning fast electric swordsman, figured out that the replicant's metal form was vulnerable to lightning, and defeated the copy.

The second game session had the players trying to figure out Replicant's target.  He came from the Scarred Lands east of the Mississippi, and normally operated in Earth Nation, east of the Rockies.  Someone must have hired him to come to Origami City!  Through skill checks and roleplaying, the players identified a series of likely targets - the hidden shrine at Bullfrog Lake, or the mystic monastery.  The players guessed he was after the Crack'd Bell, a symbol of liberty kept in the highest spire of the monastery, whose ringing could drive away gigantic lumbering Kaiju from the spirit world.

A gang of Dioxide's replicants were attacking the monastery, apparently going after the Crack'd Bell.  Kid Galactus flew Tex towards the top of the monastery, while everyone else went towards the main gate as quickly as possible.  Tex made himself super-dense and was dropped on a replicant from high altitude, while Kid G started battling the replicant climbing the tower walls.  At the gates, Haruki, set up her unassailable Tower of Iron Wind defense to defend the gates, and Black Russian summoned inky tentacles from the Dark to wrap and restrain another replicant.  Unfortunately, the attack on the monastery was a diversion, and the ringleader (General Dioxide) was nowhere to be seen.  Then came a report that the Hidden Shrine was under attack!

Origami City is on the river and a center of the lumber industry for Wood Nation; the monks of the Mystic Monastery make boats.  Everyone jumped in a half-finished hull in the monastery courtyard, and Kid G picked it up and flew everyone out towards the distant Hidden Shrine at super speed.  The shrine was a smoking ruin, with dead monks scattering the grounds, and General Dioxide waited for the players in the clearing.  He had retrieved a giant clay jar from the depths of the shrine, carefully sealed and scribed with mystic sigils.  Kid Galactus dumped the players into the clearing and went straight for the General.  Meanwhile, a fresh set of replicant clones stepped out of the woods, ready to fight.

The great thing about kids with super powers is they love to blow things up!  General Dioxide taunted Kid Galactus, who blasted an energy bolt at him with everyone thing he had.   It was all a ploy to get Kid G to destroy the clay jar, which exploded into a million pieces, releasing a shrieking spirit beast into the air.  Genoskwa was free!  Genoskwa (at least in the game world) is a kind of Pacific Northwest Sasquatch demon, the herald of the Apocalypse Beasts.

Game session 3 ended with General Dioxide thanking the players for the assistance, since he couldn't break the mystic seals of Genoskwa's prison himself.  Now he's off to collect his commission from his patron!  When we resume tonight, I'm sure the players are going to try beating the tar out General Dioxide and his replicants to get some answers.

Cast of Characters:
Tex
Inazuma
Haruki
Trapper Keeper
Kid Galactus
Black Russian

Game Report - Taenarum Week 1

I meant for the last post to be a game report, but it ended up focusing on the role of adventurers and my idea of using an actual scoreboard to track the players versus other adventuring groups.  While the players spent a few minutes in town getting oriented and picking up a few rumors, Lykourgos, proprietor of the adventurer's guild hall, added them to the scoreboard.  The first group to have a game night was the family.

The wife and kids called themselves Adventurer's Inc. (duhn duhn duhn) so they're on the scoreboard as "AI".  Their roster includes Egrog, a Spartan gladiator; Leonidas a paladin; Starbuck the prophet of Apollo; Mathias of Athens, a magic user; Milo (an NPC hireling); Holly the (Christmas) elf.   (I've explained that the wintry being of the north is Boreas, the father of winter and god of the north wind, but my daughter is still going to call him Santa Claus nonetheless).

The following night, some of the adult regulars (and a few of their kids) formed a second group.  Their nom de guerre for the scoreboard is Moe's Marauders.   Their roster consists of Moe - a bard-poet from Phoenicia (Palestine); Alantir, a paladin of Poseidon; Etor the ranger (explorer); Leonidas the necromancer; Olympos the bravo; Talus a magic user; Connell, a Celtic fighter (NPC hireling).

Both of the groups followed the same sun-drenched path atop rolling hills to reach the towering sea cliffs at the end of the peninsula; they both passed the same massive columns, carved as titans holding a vast tableau, that formed the entrance tunnel to the road to the Underworld.  They both entered Taenarum beneath the baleful gaze of a carved gorgon head above the entrance.  I'm going to compare how they handled similar areas in the dungeon.

The place itself is hewn from red marble, the living rock of the cliffs.  A massive 20' by 20' passage sloped gradually down into the cliff side.  A short way in there was a 10' passage off the main road leading to a room.  Both groups quickly decided to ditch the main passage for the smaller side passage and the first room.

The first area had camp remains, some old baskets, and a bunch of adventurer graffiti - things like:

Diodoros sleeps with the fishes; Spartans rule, Athenians drool; For a good time, ask to dance with Melantha; If you find my head, let me know - signed, Orpheus; Don't eat the pomegranates.

The kid's group immediately set to pulling out chalk and delightfully adding their own graffiti.  I know one of the things was Egrog Rules, Herodotus Drools (Herodotus was an NPC back in town - I guess he made an impression on Egrog).  The elf added, The Magic of Christmas Lies in Your Heart.  Moe's Marauders saw all the graffiti the next night, harumphed, and focused instead on searching.  They found a scrap of paper (papyrus) in one of the reed baskets - it featured a potential treasure map.  The kids never searched the baskets the night before.  Neither group found a loose flagstone that had a hidden cache - they never looked under the baskets.

A nearby room had a gigantic stone head (10' tall) like a grotesque and detailed Easter Island carving.  Moe's group learned that certain activities caused the stone head to exhale a cloud of gas that overwhelmed the senses with fear; there were a few times his guys had to regroup on the sunlit path outside of the dungeon after someone banged on the head with a hammer or tried to knock it over.  There was an inscription on the forehead written in an alien tongue; the kid's magic user identified it as Olympian, the language of the gods.  He plans to use a Read Languages spell on a return trip.  Moe took the time to copy it down and is hoping to pay someone to translate it back in town.

The kids decided to go up a north passage and found a room filled with large clay amphorae.  A gang of black and white striped goblins, invaders from Hecate's dark realm, ambushed them from behind the large pots.  Mathias put them out with a Sleep spell, and the kids killed the goblins and looted a bunch of moonstones (which are precious to the triple-faced goddess).  The adults ended up visiting the same room the following day - all they found were a bunch of dead goblins and smashed clay pots.

The adults ended up finding a few other places.  One included a gigantic mural that showed a colonnaded room filled with statues and perhaps a snake-haired gorgon in the background.  The mural wavered and swam if you looked at it closely and appeared to become three-dimensional and trippy.  No one tried to step through.

Elsewhere they found a large stone sarcophagus filled with a bluish gas.  More of Hecate's striped goblins ambushed them, and after the battle, they stuck one of the goblins in the box.  It appeared to put the goblin into some kind of timeless state.  The wheels are turning on how they could use such a thing.

That's about all the ground the two groups covered for a short game night - remember that they each did character creation and equipment on the same night, so the adventuring time was abridged.  I don't know that I'll do joint game reports going forward, but it was fun comparing how they did.  If you're watching "the scoreboard", the kids earned 630gp while the adults got 150gp.  It pays to be first to an area.