Dwimmermount Game 18 - Flight of the Drevelator

The further adventures of our adventuring party, The Investors:

Marthanes the Summoner, (level 4 mage)
Tancrede, a level 4 cleric of Typhon (henchman)
Wulfengard,a level 4 dwarf fighter
Sloth the Mook, level 1 fighter (henchman)
Drev, a level 4 Squindian bard
Bud, a level 3 dwarven cleric
Bart, a level 4 fighter
Mumford, a level 3 fighter
Malthena, a level 3 thief (henchman)
Arethusa, Mage 3 (henchman)
Utor, level 3 Elven Enchanter


The last game ended on a major discovery.  By way of recap:  our stalwart heroes used Drev's flying carpet to ascend up the elevator shaft in Dwimmermount; in this way, they were exploring a secret area they knew no other adventuring party could reach - a totally new space.  Unfortunately, this Level 0, the Divinitarium, is really, really dangerous to an underpowered group that doesn't have access to Cure Disease.  Most of the monsters are slimes, oozes, and fungi with hideous infection attacks.  We stopped last game session when the players discovered a wonder beyond imagining - a full sized interplanetary space ship, the Astral Vessel, parked in a massive hangar.  It blew their minds to think the setting would let them go to other planets.  "We will invade Aeron and conquer the Eld!".  However, a half dozen or more slimy zombies slurped to their feet halfway across the dimly lit hangar, blocking the way.

We started this game with the players, standing across from the zombies, developing their battle plans.

They Astral Vessel was too awesome not to try and seize; how dangerous could a bunch of slimy zombies be?  The fighters started peppering the slow moving zombies with arrows, while Drev shot forward on the flying carpet, with Utor and Arethusa on board.  The two mages had Burning Hands spells and they figured they'd do a couple of back and forth fly-bys, raining fire down on the slime zombies.  The combination of magic items and spells as technology is giving the players access to 'modern' battle tactics.  Queue the Ride of the Valkyries theme.

Unfortunately, no one looked up at the vaulted hangar ceiling to realize it was covered in patches of Olive Slime, which started dropping like bombs.  Incoming!  Drev tried to weave, but a pocket of slime landed on Utor.  "I am very sorry, Mr Utor", said Drev's player in his Squindian accent, "but I will not be having any slime covered elves standing on my special carpet".  And Drev gave Utor a sharp kick in the rear, launching him into the air.  Drev used to be a Squindian pirate, so he flashes his Chaotic tendencies from time to time.

Poor Utor.  He found himself on the ground, disoriented from the fall, going numb from the Olive Slime creeping over his flesh, with several Olive Slime Zombies craning their way towards him, blindly groping for him.  He took out his Wand of Fear, aimed it back at his own face, and let loose with a charge, blasting himself at point blank. When I asked him why he'd do such a crazy thing, he said, "I'm going to scare that slime right off my body!  I think it's going to jump right off in fear!"  What really happened is that Utor ran off into a dark corner of the hangar in a total panic, at least until the Olive Slime permeated enough of his nervous system to take control.  Somewhere in the darkness, a new elf-sized Olive Slime Zombie shuffled to its feet and started walking towards the players…  brains...

Drev looped his carpet back to the players, avoiding the falling slime attacks from the ceiling, and the players agreed this was more than they could handle, and retreated from the hangar.  "We need Fireballs and Cure Disease and then we'll be back to claim our space ship."  Utor's player took the abandonment of his character in stride.  "I'll play Arethusa (a henchman) until I get the chance to make a monk character.  I want to do kung fu."

The players had enough with The Divinitarium, creatively dodging various wandering monsters to get off the level and make their way back to town.  Bart was still shuffling along in the background with his serious head injuries from last session, Utor was dead, and they had sacks of juicy history books to read back in town.

We allowed a few weeks to pass in town so the players could fully recover, level where warranted, and read the books.  Marthanes also lent the books to his allies, the Seekers (this would come up as a full-blown issue in one of the upcoming games, game 20).  Because "The Secret History of Dwimmermount" requires a lot of exposition, I don't give it out mid-game; I send a document out after the session, incrementally adding the new knowledge.  This way, the 2-3 players that really care about it (and don't mind reading) can absorb it at their leisure, and it keeps the game moving in session.  The players have a 'knowledge tracker' so they can see how they're doing versus the "big questions" and where their knowledge has gaps yet to be found.  Like I said in my review of the campaign book, this really is a nice quest \ scavenger hunt mechanic for the dungeon, and it's created forward progress and interesting player choices.

In "campaign time" it's now early winter, and flakes are falling outside Muntburg as the mountains fill up with snow.  The players trudged back to Dwimmermount, bundled against the cold, and decided they would now head down the elevator shaft and try out level 4 (the Halls of Lesser Secrets).  They've dubbed Drev's magic carpet the Drevelator, as in, "we'll take the Drevelator down to level 4."

Level 4 was partially cleared by the Seekers, so the players knew about some of the entry rooms, and the presence of Minotaurs somewhere on the level.  They managed to get the actual elevator working fairly early on, so they wouldn't be reliant on multiple trips on the Drevelator (which can only ferry 3 at a time).  However, the Seekers failed to warn their "allies" about various teleportation traps in the major intersections, and the player group was quickly scattered across level 4!  Bart and Wulf ended up fighting an Ochre Jelly on their own, but Marthanes sent Tancrede through as an experiment, and the pair quickly figured out a method to get everyone together again at a single rally point - although they had no idea where the rally point was located on the level.  They would need to map, explore, and try to piece it together until they found landmarks.

Glossing over exploration, the interesting bits of level 4 emerged when the party encountered some wererats, and broached a parlay in lieu of combat.  After being brought to the wererat leader and exchanging some knowledge about the outside world (in return for information about the inside of Dwimmermount), here was the deal that was brokered:  the wererat leader is interested in escaping to the capital city, Adamas, and becoming a player in the crime underworld there.  If the players promise to  help the wererats get to Adamas, the wererats will help map the level, and point out some of the choice treasure locations.  The players just need to go kill the Minotaur King first.

If you think this deal sounds too favorable for the wererats, you're right, but the kids were happy to expedite their fight with the minotaurs, and the thought of having crime lord allies in the city is too cool to pass up at their age.  They're thinking long term.  The alliance was formed.

The wererats led the players to a hallway that would take them into Minotaur territory, and ultimately the throne of the king.  They assaulted the minotaur king (and a group of guards that looked shockingly similar to the king, almost like clones…)  The fight ended up being anti-climactic - minotaurs are just dumb brutes, an attrition battle.  Drev's mobile fighting platform floated above the battle, providing a safe vantage for a few of the shooters, while the fighters waded in (along with Tancrede).  "You have one job, Tancrede", chided one of the fighters, "stay back and heal the people that need it.  Why are you always clogging the front lines?  One job."  Bud, the other cleric, is actually a better fighter than Tancrede, but Tancrede always beats him to the front line.

The other noticeable development in player strategy has been Marthanes, and his discovery that "It's just awesome being me".  Marthanes has a helm (circlet) of teleportation, which lets him blink around, once per turn.  There's basically a 1% chance he goes and never comes back, lost in the ether.  When he first got the helm that 1% chance was a mental barrier, and he swore to only use the helm for emergencies, but now it seems he's willing to assume the risk and teleport around just to show off.  When the king jumped into the fray, Marthanes teleported behind all the minotaurs to sit on the throne and gloat.  His typical prattle to the other players goes something like this, "Just another perk of being Marthanes, world's greatest summoner.  Forgot something in town?  I can go back and get it for you, instantly.  Because I'm awesome".

After slaying the Minotaur king and his clones, the players looted the throne room, regrouped with their new wererat allies, and made their way out of the dungeon.  We'll pick up with more mad-cap antics of The Investors next week, when they demonstrate how a clone chamber and an alteration bed can be used to manufacture your very own Smurfette.

Dwimmer Games 16 and 17, Magic Carpet Rides

When I last discussed the Dwimmermount game, the characters were picking themselves up off the floor after getting horribly beaten by a tomb with mummies, at least until they rallied and destroyed the horrors.  This session began with the injured (and infected) characters dragging themselves to the surface with all the loot they recovered from the tomb.  Their first order of business (after burying the dead guys) was to head back to Adamas and try to get the curses lifted from everyone suffering Mummy Rot.  There's no healing while cursed, with Mummy Rot.

The players recovered some amazing magic items from the mummy's loot - a magic carpet, a flaming sword, and a helm of teleportation.  Drev, their Squindian Pirate Bard, now rides everywhere on a magic carpet.  Wulfengard calls his new flaming sword, the Kylo Ren sword.  Marthanes got the helm of teleportation working in Adamas… his player remarked, "Can Marthanes get any cooler?"  Oh, and Bart hired an expensive animal trainer to train a bear for him, in Muntburg.  He wants to own an armored bear that he can send into battle.  I guess it's like the D&D equivalent of those rich boxers that keep pet tigers around.

Here's how all the characters look after spending time in the city, selling stuff and leveling up:

Marthanes the Summoner, (level 4 Mage)
Tancrede, a level 4 cleric of Typhon (henchman)
Wulfengard,a level 4 dwarf fighter
Sloth the Mook, level 1 fighter (new henchman)
Drev, a level 4 bard
Bud, a level 3 dwarven cleric
Bart, a level 4 fighter
Mumford, a level 3 fighter
Malthena, a level 3 thief (henchman)
Arethusa, Mage 3 (henchman)
Utor, level 3 Elven Enchanter

Before the new dungeon stuff got rolling, the players returned to Dwimmermount (level 3) and went through the portal to Volmar, to try and convince Arethusa to come adventuring; last session, her friend Collothus, died in the mummy tomb.  It had been some weeks that they left her stranded in Volmar, and she was starting to adopt their ways.  But a good reaction roll and  the promise of a hefty share encouraged her to return with them to Dwimmermount.

The emperor was irritated they'd been gone so long without a report, so they needed to make a full accounting.  The emperor was very irritated to hear the Eld had returned and invaded "his dungeon", so he declared war on the planet Aeron.  Since the players had pacified most of level 3A, the Volmarians would start moving in and taking over the Eld portal.  On some level, I think they'd like to see a Volmarian army march out of the front gate of Dwimmermount at some point, just for the chaos and craziness of it all.

With Arethusa back in the fold, and assurance that Volmar would conquer level 3A, the players returned to the dungeon.  They knew there was no apparent way from level 3A down to level 4  - they had searched the level with 'Locate Object spells' - so they deemed it was time to return to level 1 and start messing with the elevator shaft.  They could use that to get down to 4.  No one had figured out how to use the elevator, but they had a magic carpet.

However, rather than going down, the players went up - the shaft went in both directions, implying there was a level up above level 1.  In the Dwimmermount book, this is a special level 0, the "Divinatarium".  It was both older than anything else they'd explored, and more "high tech" as well.

It was clear to me the players were seriously outclassed, but they persevered regardless.  There were battles with slurping algae men, who incapacitated swathes of characters with brutal mental blasts (algoids).  They fought muscular grey men, with wickedly spiked plate armor and large two-handed swords (Astral Reavers).  There were obviously bad rooms holding slimes and acid monsters the players astutely avoided, and a few rooms infested with terrible fungal monsters, where only a lucky saving throw (and a quick retreat) avoided a gruesome infection.  Without a Cure Disease spell available, it seemed that every other encounter was a roulette roll with death.

As usual, the game had a series of interludes that only the kids can author.  We may have seen our last "I Bart the Door" from Bart.  One of the rooms had a rune covered door, which Bart triggered (explosively) due to his impetuous nature, before anyone could get the chance to warn him that runes could be bad.  He staggered back, dying.  "Medic!"  In ACKS terms, the system is fairly forgiving of characters that end up near death, as long as a cleric can get to them quickly and perform first aid and magic.  But Bart would be stuck at 1 hp and bandaged for a few weeks.

Tancrede, their balding and asthmatic cleric with the 8 constitution and the combat death wish, started wearing the armor of an Astral Reaver, spiked shoulders and gauntlets and a crazy helmet.  They now call him their "death metal accountant" - the most dangerous accountant in the world.

There were a few signature discoveries on this visit to the Dinivatarium.  In the office where Bart blew himself up, they found a centuries old library of conjectural works on the Ancients and the origins of the gods - like the Dwimmermount equivalent of von Daniken's "Chariots of the Gods".  There was a Book of Infinite Spells in the library, too.  But the most mind-blowing discovering was in a large observatory chamber - a full-sized space ship!  Assuming the characters can figure it out, they potentially have a way to travel to the stars and planets.  The players really want to own a space ship.  Dwimmermount continues to push the bounds.

We had to end the session here, as it was getting late, and a half dozen or more slime-covered zombies slurped to their feet and started slowly shambling across the large hangar towards the characters, blocking access to the space ship.  There was an intense table debate whether to fight or retreat; the younger kids usually want to fight everything.  "You've found the absorbatory, Marthanes, now let us fight these zombies - this is a demarkusry, so we get to vote", said one of the 9 year olds.

Dwimmer-Game 15 - All Mooks Die in the End

Cast of Characters:

Bud, a level 3 dwarven cleric
Marthanes the Summoner, (level 4 Mage)
Tancrede, a level 3 cleric of Typhon (henchman)
Wulfengard,a level 4 dwarf fighter
Drev, a level 4 bard
Bart, a level 4 fighter
Mumford, a level 2 fighter
Malthena, a level 1 thief (henchman)
Akmed, a level 1 fighter
Collothus, the Thulian (mage 1)


"The Investors", the name the players have given themselves, had discovered a portal to the Eld homeworld of Aeron on level 3A of Dwimmermount near the end of the last game session; they defeated a patrol of Eld and Bugbears, and captured the Eld leader.  We ended that game outside the dungeon, with the players in the woods outside of town figuring out what to do with the Eld leader.

Marthanes insisted on keeping the Eld prisoner alive for debriefing; the Eld were basically immortal, and he surmised they'd be able to learn "Eld secret history" if they could get him to talk.  If you've read my review of the Dwimmermount book, you know that piecing together "secret history" is one of the great mechanics that's been added to the dungeon, and a few of the players have really focused on it as a motivation.

This objective, getting information from an Eld prisoner, forced the players (most of them teenagers) to work through a number of alternatives and options on the best way to get what they needed.  Some of the options, like intimidation or torture, you don’t exactly want your teenagers getting too excited about or describing in any detail, but the larger context of the problem forced them to do critical thinking, weighing alternatives, and strategy.  This is where tabletop gaming is such a great medium.

For example, would it be better to camp in the deep woods and do their 'nasty business' far away from town, or smuggle the Eld into Muntburg surreptitiously?  If they decided to smuggle the Eld, how could they get him into the town without the guards and authorities finding out they had a living Eld?  Could they charm the guards, or scale the walls at night, Sleep some wall guards, or hide or disguise the Eld somehow?

I enjoyed the debate and thought they came up with a clever solution all around.  First, they decided an ESP spell would be a better way to get information (from mind-reading) than torture or intimidation; there's hope for their ethical growth yet.  Second, they decided the best way to get the Eld into their cottage basement would be to smuggle him in the front gate, hidden in a wagon.  They Charmed and bribed a simple peddler out on the road, hid the unconscious Eld in a barrel, and got him in that way.  Drev, their Bard, started an impromptu musical performance near the gate on the way in, distracting the guards with his charisma (and stories of the party's latest exploits) to make it easy for the peddler to slip through the gate without much scrutiny.

While a few new players have joined, we haven't seen one of them in a long time, meaning his character is a near-permanent resident of Muntburg and the cottage.  So Parquas the Elf has been tasked with keeping the Eld prisoner secure and fed.  The rest of the players planned a journey to Adamas to buy an ESP spell for addition to Marthanes book.  They had a treasure map to the Adleigh Woods, something they've been sitting on since the first game session, and decided this was the time to go find the lost treasure, while they were near Adamas.  (A number of characters were close to leveling up, so they figured recovering a sizable treasure would push them over the top).

I don’t know if I've mentioned it before, Simon Forster (fellow blogger and ACKS-phile) published a book of lairs for ACKS on RPGNow (Book of Lairs); it's nicely done and is a handy tool for wilderness lairs and treasure maps.  I love these kinds of supplements for quick use at the table.  I pulled a lair to use as the destination right from the book, an old tomb filled with mummies on a misty island out on a pond.

In theory, the players only had to fight a mummy at a time, if they explored carefully, posted guards, and kept their wits.  Mummies are pretty dangerous to low level characters, since their paralyzing fear can (and did) take out huge chunks of the party.  In this case, they defeated the first mummy fairly easily, then allowed their Protection from Evil spell to lapse, started bickering and fooling around, as they're kids, and thus were completely surprised when another 2 mummies shambled out of the darkness behind them, paralyzing just about everyone.

Drev, the bard, ended up dragging Marthanes away from the mummies, who were stooped and rending falling characters, spreading mummy rot and death.  Marthanes ended up summoning two heroes and a squad of berserkers, and sending them in to fight the mummies.  "Pick up any weapon off the ground", he exhorted, "It was probably dropped by one of our frightened guys and is enchanted".  Meanwhile, Drev continued to look for openings to drag other guys out of the room so they could recover from Mummy-Fear and attempt to re-enter the fray.  This one was clearly pointing towards being a full on TPK until Drev (one of the adult gamers) settled on the plan of saving Marthanes first, getting Marthanes to send in some level 4 heroes and occupy the mummies, so he could pull more guys out of the fray.  They owe that guy big time, and he single-handed prevented a restart to the campaign.

This game ended with two dead henchmen (Collothus, the ancient Thulian they freed from a stasis tube), and Akmed, the Volmarian mook that went from zero level mercenary to first level fighter over the past few sessions. All mooks die in the end.  The survivors were beaten badly and suffering from Mummy Rot.

Dwimmer-Game 12 - My Orc is Binky

Cast of Characters:
Bud, a level 2 dwarven cleric
Mumford, a level 2 fighter
Utor, the elf enchanter (level 2 Mage)
Jarvis, a level 2 fighter
Bart, a level 2 fighter
Marthanes the Summoner (level 3 Mage)
Tancrede, a level 3 cleric of Typhon
Wulfengard, a level 3 dwarf fighter

The players started game 12 back in Muntburg.  It had been a while since the group was going to spend time in the castle, and I wanted to make sure they saw that the world around them was being changed by the incursions into Dwimmermount.  The castellan of Muntburg, Legate Verodart, invited them to a moot with the other adventuring parties to get a view on what was happening in the dungeon.  A few of the interested characters went to the war council while the others trained or went to the bar.

In game, this was more of a  Q&A, but you readers are getting this like an info-dump.  The players learned that the Delvers and Fists of Typhon had discovered the Temple of Law; a number of the fighters in the Delvers had prayed in the temple and converted to paladins, and the two parties were working together to open a pilgrim's path to the temple.

The Seekers had cleared a bunch of slimes and oozes from the elevator shaft to level 4, had dropped ropes, and begun exploring level 4.  They encountered minotaurs, and a succubus.  After an encounter with a dark altar, Marguerine (one of their mages) had gone 'goth' and the Seekers were worried about her mental health and allegiance.

Meanwhile, rumors were pouring in from around the countryside.  The Necromancers of Ythelrom were organizing an adventuring party to come to Dwimmermount.  The Despot of Retep was supposedly mobilizing an army to march on Dwimmermount in the spring, concerned that the Despot of Adamas would gain too much power if he controlled Dwimmermount on his own.  Retep was far away, so it wasn't clear if this rumor was true.  It's currently "October" on the game calendar, so the players figured they had 5-6 months before the spring.  The last rumor was that the High Priest of Typhon in Adamas would appoint a special Inquisitor to come into Muntburg, to keep an eye on encroachment of Chaos - and also make sure adventurers weren't succumbing to the dark powers, or sympathizing with Volmar.

Anyway, a few of the guys really like to think about the larger world, whereas the kids are more interested in getting back to the dungeon.  They were glad when the war council was over.  The party quickly returned to the sub-level on 3A so Marthanes could figure out how to activate the Pool of Life.

Like last time, it took many hours to figure it out.  There were wandering monster encounters with a Gelatinous Cube, and a couple of Gray Oozes.  This time the party was a little more diligent about posting guards and watching for monsters.

When Marthanes finally figured out the controls, they decided to make some orcs.  I described the scene like something from Isengard in the Lord of the Rings, with muscular snarling orc warriors rising out of the pool to see who called them forth.  Utor, the uber-charismatic Elf, waited near the Pool with a Thulian War Mask (which gives command bonuses over Beastmen) and his glamour that makes him seem commanding.  Utor name the orcs as they rose out of the pool… Binky, Pinky, and Pork.  Although Pork was quickly renamed Travis the Orc.  "Thank you for our names, Master.  Is it true that Binky is a fierce warrior name?  I want to be fierce."

Binky, Pinky, and Travis accompanied the players for a few rooms, but Binky and Pinky were destroyed by some gnolls before the end of the session  - their reign of awesome was short-lived.  Travis ran off into the darkness, to sharpen knives in some dungeon corner.  Maybe he's still somewhere on level 2A?

Bart and Wulfengard got blown up in a room full of upright stasis tubes.  Most of the tubes were empty, but a few of them had vague inhabitants upright in them… and Bart and Wulf started smashing the side of the tube with a hammer, which exploded outwards and brought them both to near death (3-18 damage). The wisely used their Rod of Opening to safely open the other tube.

Inside the tubes were 2 Thulian survivors from 200 years ago, Arethusa and Collothus, who survived the fall of Dwimmermount by escaping into stasis.  Marthanes, the party scholar, was quick to befriend them and hire them - while offering to get them 'up to speed' on the state of the modern world.  Collothus was a good follower for a few sessions, but died versus some mummies a game or two ago, but Arethusa is still a henchman as of game 17.  The players debriefed them in between sessions and learned a ton of secret history about the Termaxians.  They realized that Dwimmermount, in its hey-day under the Termaxians, was full of science and machinery.  Arethusa and Collothus were bureaucrat-mages that knew how a bunch of machines worked (magical engineering).

It was inevitable the kids thought about becoming monsters, living in the dungeon all the time, and building an army of gnolls.  But they realized that higher level adventurers would come after them, and they decided to defer building their gnoll army until they were ready to march it out of Dwimmermount.  They did befriend a bunch of wild gnolls elsewhere in the dungeon, and Marthanes took on the mantle of "Master Soap", heir to Varaxes, and set them to guarding the Pool of Life on his behalf.  It is interesting that the kids usually try to talk to the humanoid monsters (and have the charisma and magic masks to pull it off).

The final piece of this session involved getting to level 3A.  Arethusa had a Locate Object spell and helped the party find the stairs down.  In one of the first rooms they encountered on level 3A, they met a squad of soldiers and a war-priest from the Empire of Volmar.  (The Volmarians are half a continent away from Dwimmermount).  There was an active portal between Volmar and the dungeon.  The players knew that Volmarian agents were getting into the dungeon somehow, but didn't realize it was from within the dungeon itself!

The players suggested an alliance with the Empire of Volmar, and Opilio, the war-priest of Mavors, invited them back to Volmar to meet the emperor in person.  This game ended with the players stepping through a portal on level 3 of the dungeon into the sweltering heat and opulence of the Imperial Palace of Volmar.

Next game:  To Volmar!  Dwimmermount continues to show why it's such a fantastic campaign setting.

Dwimmer Game 11 - Discovering the Pool of Life

Cast of Characters:
Bud, a level 2 dwarven cleric
Mumford, a level 1 fighter
Utor, the elf enchanter (level 2 Mage)
Jarvis, a level 2 fighter
Bart, a level 2 fighter
Marthanes the Summoner, (level 3 Mage)
Tancrede, a level 3 cleric of Typhon
Wulfengard, a level 3 dwarf fighter

Once again, I'll remind the readers that I've let myself get quite a few game sessions behind the current date.  Assuming we get to play Tuesday night, it will be game 16 and the players are trying to pick up the pieces after a near TPK and loss of numerous characters on a side quest that went horribly wrong.  I've been lackadaisical about writing the reports!

Game 11 saw the cast of characters make their way back down to level 2A, the Eld sub-level of "The Laboratory".  Marthanes read about a 'Pool of Life' in some old Thulian Archives they had found over on level 2B.  "…the Emperors looked to the remnants of the monstrous armies left on Telluria by the Eld as a means to maintain Imperial authority.  Exceptional beastmen were recruited, cloned through the use of the Essence Machine and Pool of Life… in time, the now-familiar races of humanoid beastmen began to emerge from the Chaos of the Eldritch troops."

In the early games, the players befriended orcs on level 1.  The orcs had rebelled against a new master, Varaxes (Varazes in the text, but I prefer the sound of Varaxes), who birthed the orcs from a pool on the Laboratory level.  Piecing together the backstory of the orcs, with the information gleaned from the archives, was enough for Marthanes to develop delusions of grandeur, with visions of his very own beastman army.  Everybody needs a dream.  At least his plan is a little more ambitious then "I Bart the door and open the boxes before anyone else can see", like most of the kids.  It's going to be interesting to introduce these guys to the ACKS mid-game and see which ones develop an interest in non-dungeon stuff, if any.  At least they bought a house.

They were already close to finding the Pool of Life when the game started.  On the way, they freed an alchemical cat from a stasis flask, Mr Fluffles, who was adopted by handsome Utor as a pet.  They fought a bunch of injured gnolls in a room (the gnolls were injured because Marthanes sent some berserksers screaming ahead with orders to kill anything), and Utor charmed the largest gnoll and called him Leaderor (which is apparently the name of a character on a cartoon called 'Gravity Falls' the kids watch).  They used their Rod of Opening on the secret door pointed out by the sapient rats last session, and discovered a 200 year old Thulian fallout shelter with various survival gear items tucked away behind the door.

The highlight of the night was finding the Pool of Life, a sprawling room with a sunken pool of white viscous liquid, various essence vats in niches around the room, and a large control panel.  We treated this like a boss fight, vinyl map board and miniatures and all, as the players took on Varaxes and his large squad of gnolls.  Varaxes was from Volmar, like Marthanes, and decried him as a traitor.  Regarding the battle map, I've determined that the kids do a little better with tactics when they can gather around a large map and plan tactics visually, like forming a wall with their fighters, and letting the ranged guys take shots from behind the line.

Wulfengard quaffed a potion of invisibility before the fight, so he snuck around to assassinate Varaxes.  Unfortunately, he missed on his attack roll, the magic was broken, and he got 'dog-piled' by a pair of gnoll bodyguards.  But Wulfengard is consistently the fighter MVP of the group, and can usually hack his way out of any bad situation.  You know how some players always seem to roll 6's on initiative and 20's on their attack rolls?  That's Wulfengard - clearly on friendly terms with lady luck.

The fight devolved into a front-line skirmish between fighters and gnolls, whacking at each other, while Varaxes hurled spells at the players from his position behind his gnolls.  Weak characters in the back fell asleep, but Varaxes rolled too low to sleep more than a few guys.  Marthanes began targeting Varaxes with the wand of magic missiles, winning a few initiative rolls and disrupting the enemy spells by zapping Varaxes first.  Actually it was a pretty cool battle from that perspective, two casters facing off from behind their lines of fighters and tossing magic.  It only took a few shots to kill Varaxes, and once he was dead, the players cleaned up the rest quickly.  Marthanes exhausted the wand of magic missiles, but Varaxes had his own wand in the loot (a wand of fear, it would turn out).

Marthanes began to investigate the workings of the Pool of Life with manic glee.  He has both magical engineering and a high intelligence, but he needed to clear three successes - and he only got to roll once per hour.  His dice were ice cold.  The players waited and waited, dealing with one wandering encounter after another, while Marthanes repeatedly failed his engineering rolls.  Attrition set in.

The last straw was when the party saw large spindly legs coming around the corner at the end of a nearby hall - a trio of giant black widow spiders walking along the ceiling!  Those things are terrifying - instant death via the poisonous bite.  The players were still using the battle map, so they formed defensive positions and shot at the spiders with missiles for as long as they could.  Leaderor, their charmed gnoll commpanion, was sent down the hall to engage the spiders in melee.  He died.  Marthanes also summoned his 4th level hero to charge down the hall and keep the spiders from advancing; he died too.  But the overall tactics were sound, and the kids survived without meaningful casualties.

They forced Marthanes to desist messing with the pool ("because you suck, Marthanes, anyone can roll better than you"), and they headed back to Muntburg to heal and recover.  Next game sees a return visit to the Pool of Life, success from the mage, and the creation of Binky, Pinky, and Travis, the short-lived orcs created by the players.

Dwimmer-Game 10 - I Splash through the Puddle. Oops, Green Slime!

Cast of Characters:
Utor, the elf enchanter (level 2 Mage)
Jarvis, a level 2 fighter
Bud, a level 2 dwarven cleric
Bart, a level 2 fighter
Marthanes the Summoner, (level 3 Mage)
Tancrede, a level 3 cleric of Typhon
Wulfengard, a level 3 dwarf fighter
Mumford, a level 1 fighter (former henchman, now a new player)

Game 10 was another school-night game where my kids petitioned me to run a short pick-up game for their friends on a night when my wife was out doing her theater stuff.  The players returned to the Eld sub-level of dungeon 2A in search of the Pool of Life.

I'm going to breeze over this game session since the exciting stuff starts to happen in games 11 and beyond.  I need to hurry up and get the games caught up to the present.  When the reports are current, I’ll be able to start asking meaningful questions from the readers on what should happen next.

The players returned to the Eld sublevel and began exploring.  They found a machine where a carcass scavenger lived behind it, entered a room with archer bushes, and another room with vampire rose bushes, killing everything they met without incident, other than grumbling about no treasure.  They helped out some sapient rats in a desperate fight against a throgrim (thoul), and the rats repaid them by scrawling on the player map where there was a secret door up ahead.

It wouldn't be a D&D game with kids without at least one signature knuckle-head moment.  After waving goodbye to the sapient rats, the players noticed a greenish wet area on the floor, and a discarded weapon nearby.  A green slime had fallen on a gnoll and eaten it.  But of course these guys aren't very experienced with old time D&D stuff, so Bart decided to splash through the puddle.  He screamed in agony on the other side as the green slime quickly destroyed his boots!

The players tossed torches across to Bart so he could burn it off his feet and boots, while the players started pouring oil on the slime to destroy it.  While Bart was stranded across the burning oil puddle, a Gray Ooze came along too, and he needed to kill it with minimal help.  He was horrified to learn that Gray Ooze can melt magic weapons, and quickly started switching to disposable weapons to survive the ooze attack.

It was a short night due to school, so after retrieving Bart, they headed back to Muntburg.  Coming next time, the Pool of Life…

Dwimmer-Game 9 - Bart the Door!

Cast of Characters:
Bud, a level 2 dwarven cleric
Utor, the elf enchanter (level 2 Mage)
Marthanes the Summoner, (level 3 Mage)
Tancrede, a level 3 cleric of Typhon
Wulfengard, a level 3 dwarf fighter
Jarvis, a level 2 fighter
Drev, a level 3 bard
Bart, a level 2 fighter
Mumford, a level 1 fighter (former henchman, now a new player)

There are some key things to making a megadungeon 'come to life' and create drama and interest with the players.  It's important to give them interesting options each game, provide a few compelling quests and rumors, and news on rival activity so there's time pressure and opportunity costs to the player's choices.

This session, we started with them learning about rival activity in the dungeon while hanging out in Muntburg's tavern.  The Fists of Typhon had started exploring level 2A, killing some orcs and freeing dwarven prisoners.  The Delvers had gotten really beaten up on level 2B by Throgrim, and were out of the dungeon a few weeks to heal.  But the Delvers had found stairs to level 3B, and the players offered to buy a map from them so they wouldn't have to keep searching for stairs on their own.  Finally, the Seekers, a more powerful group, had gotten a Knock spell to help with the elevator doors, and had started exploration of the deep shaft (all the way to level 4).  The shaft was filled with slimes and similar horrors, so it was slow going for them.

From the Secret History the players had gathered a few game sessions ago, they knew about a Pool of Life and Essence Machines on level 2A.  One of the big discussions was whether they should compete with the Fists of Typhon on level 2A, or use the Delvers' map to 3B and get a jump on the Delvers.  In town, they sent the Curate of Typhon after the Fists of Typhon to pester them with his quest to find the Temple of Law on level 2B, hoping this would keep the Fists out of their way while the players searched for the Pool.  As fellow Typhonians, how could the Fists say no?  Don't underestimate the fun and shenanigans some rivalries can add to your game!

This game saw the players pocket the map to 3B for now and instead focus on covering as much ground on level 2A as possible.  Armed with a number of level 2 fighters, they were able to quickly clear a whole series of rooms inhabited by the fragments of the orc tribe on the east side of the dungeon with workmanlike efficiency.  Cleave and damage bonuses turn ACKS fighters into death engines versus low level humanoids.

One of their fighters, Bart, is obsessed with getting to the largest treasure hoards as quickly as possible; they frequently skip detailed searches, and they don't listen or sneak around (and they don't care about the increased wandering monsters, either).  They've definitely missed some goodies, only getting 'saved' by having multiple dwarves and an elf who sometimes find secret doors through their demihuman senses even though they skipped a formal search.  Meanwhile, Bart has 'dungeon bashing' proficiency which makes him an expert at forcing open doors, leading to another signature phrase from the players when he charges from room to room - "He Barts the door."

One source of drama while playing with teens, and Bart is the worst, is the mad scramble over magic items.  "In this room, you see a bunch of boxes…"  Before I even finish the room description, Bart's player is saying, "I open all the boxes.  Before anyone else.  I'm taking any magic items, and putting the gems in my pockets…"  I frequently have to remind them that D&D is a team sport, and their party agreement involves sharing treasure and a fair distribution of magic items.  I can empathize with school teachers and coaches who see their mandates as part education, and the rest civilizing a bunch of 'Lord of the Flies' hooligans.

There was a terrifying wandering monster encounter with a Gelatinous Cube that sneaked up on the players while they were involved in one of their treasure \ item squabbles, but the Summoned Hero of Marthanes ended up putting in good work against the Cube and no one died.  The highlight of the night was when they found an arch and short flight of stairs leading down - still part of level 2A, but to earlier construction featuring precise architecture and alien doors - the Eld sub-level!  The players descended to the Eld section of level 2A, discovering eldritch technology (Glow Bulbs) beyond an adamantite hatch.

By this time, it was getting late, so we wrapped up.  Marthanes loves the idea of the Eld, and has everyone excited to explore the Eld sub-level and find the Pool of Life.  They were already looking forward to continuing this exploration next game.

I'm really enjoying Dwimmermount and running it with the ACKS rules.  The players are a little overpowered for the current dungeon areas, but they're working quickly to get deeper, and having plenty of fun.  The depth of the dungeon background, and stories that are emerging from the player's exploration, is shaping this into a very memorable campaign.

Dwimmer-Game 7 - He Rolled a Door

We had a large crew for this game.  The first order of business each night is for the players to figure out what to do…. They always start back at headquarters (they own a base in Muntburg), and I'm never sure exactly which players will show up, and whether they'll want to carry on from the previous session.  Since Father Tancrede became an atheist last session after grasping a cursed brooch, one option was to travel to the big city of Adamas and beseech the church to fix him (Remove Curse).  But no!  Cities are boring, and we must go back to the dungeon!  The dungeon-lovers won the vote this session, and the party decided that giving up Turn Undead or Cure Light Wounds was worth losing to get in more dungeon action.  Tancrede, with his 10 strength and 8 constitution, would just have to earn his keep as a fighter for the night.

Cast for the Night:

Bud, a dwarven priest

Utor, the elf enchanter

Marthanes, a desert sorcerer

Tancrede, a cleric of Typhon

Wulfengard,a dwarf fighter

Jarvis, a fighter

Parquas, an elf magic-user / thief

Drev, a bard

Bart, a fighter

The major action for the night occurred along the western side of dungeon level 2B where there's a large room with various metal pillars.  The players (through the dwarves and some of their metal-working proficiencies) figured out that the metal plating on these columns was really valuable, and removable.  The players set up a camp and spent many hours salvaging rare metal plates - Azoth, Adamantite, Aeronite, and more.  Over the course of the hours, they ended up facing numerous wandering monsters attracted by the noise; lots of zombies, some hobgoblins, and even a group of thouls.  During one of these fights, Jarvis complained about rolling low, "I rolled another door…" - I think he meant to say I rolled another two, but the slip stuck, and now every time a fighter rolls low on an attack, "he rolled a door".  It's very common to hear the kids chant, "Invest, invest… Oh, he rolled a door.  Who's next?"  I'm experiencing the invention of a bizarre jargon - Kid's Cant.

By the time they got done with the salvage, even the Five Delvers came along.  (Once again, the players that were calling out for NPC blood were outvoted by the members that wanted to talk to the Delvers; this time they suggested to the Delvers to go on ahead, and the players cut out and went in the opposite direction).

Traversing over to the eastern side of the dungeon, the players ran into multiple (wandering)  groups of zombies and started to drain party resources (hit points).  The reality that 'wandering monsters don't carry treasure' has started to sink in and the players are learning to loathe the wandering monsters.

As happens so frequently with dungeon jaunts, the players went "a room too far…"  They stumbled into a large group of hobgoblins and were quickly under duress.  Marthanes brought in the summoned berserkers, but Bart, one of the main fighters, was knocked below zero hit points.  Tancrede's lack of spell ability came back to haunt them!  Using the ACKS rules, zero hit points is not always death; there's a good chance a downed character is just severely injured (and healing magic can improve the odds).  Bart was stabilized after the hobgoblin fight, but he his leg was severely injured and he'd have a limp for life, barring a powerful cleric spell (Restore Life and Limb).  The party now had another good reason to consider that trip to the city - to fix Tancrede, and to heal Bart.

After "limping" out of the dungeon, the players asked me to look up how much gold they could get for selling all the scrap metal from the pillar room.  The dungeon text indicated players could recover 15lbs of each type of metal from the pillars.  My head exploded when I saw how much money the stuff was worth!   45,000gp!  I made it clear the players would need to go to a larger market (like Adamas) if they wanted to get top prices from wealthy merchants.

Aside on Dwimmermount:

Dwimmermount is made of money.  I've noticed that treasure is aggregated on each level in a few large hoards; there are modest sums distributed throughout each level, but successful groups will find the hoards and make big jumps in experience. You'll see in later sessions the players gained an appreciation for Locate Objects in the mega dungeon context, and these treasure clumps would also make a Wand of Metal Detection really helpful.  Overall, the pace of advancement has been fine and the players are moving along at a good rate for maintaining interest.

However, even I wasn't  expecting the players to get a 45,000 go windfall!  If I granted the full amount, it'd be enough to push some of the group up to level 3 (skipping level 2) entirely.  I gave the players most or all of the full amount, but stopped them at 3,999xp, for instance - not allowing them to skip multiple experience levels.  I'm usually fine letting things roll (like giving the players too much) and seeing how things play out naturally.

Dwimmer-campaign Game 6

Now that the campaign is in full swing and the players have returned to town a number of times with loot, there is more activity happening with rivals.  Since each session begins back in town, they get a brief news update on rumors they're hearing about rivals, as well as some new quest opportunities.  (I'm still working through a good procedure for the town activities at the beginning of the session; I appreciate all the recent dialogue here on the blog about towns.  Our next game will be session 11, so you won't see new ideas incorporated until later game reports since I'm only writing up game 6 now).

For this session, the players learned that the Delvers were working directly for the Castellan of Muntburg and were the first adventurers to enter Dwimmermount before the player group started serious operations here.  Another group, called the Fists of Typhon, have arrived in town, at the behest of the high clerics in Adamas. Finally, a higher level group called the Seekers have also arrived, and they are completely uninterested in the upper levels.   The map the players sold to the Delvers was copied and resold to the Seekers, who are mainly interested in the workings of the main elevator on level 1.

The players also picked up a couple of new quest opportunities.  The curate of Typhon  said that the level 2 Reliquary once held the legendary "Temple of Law", and offered a quest reward if the players found it.  The Fists dropped a hint that they'd be operating on level 2A to find the source of the orcs and beastmen .  I'm giving the Church of Typhon a pro-human sect that opposes humanoids and barely tolerates demi-humans, and the Fists are aligned with this militant sect.  However, the players didn't show much interest in either quest.

Finally, the players also pieced together that there was a conjunction a few months ago, that conjunctions could open portals into the mountain, and the conjunction  was near the time when the defenses of the dungeon dropped.  They have correctly guessed that someone got into the dungeon during the conjunction, traveled deep enough to learn about how the dungeon worked, and turned off various wards.  More hints at a larger story are emerging, as well as foreshadowing of future  foes!  The players are also aware, from their previous alliance with the orcs, that a Mage named Varaxes is on a lower level; he created the orcs, who rebelled, and now is creating hyena-headed beastmen - the gnolls.  The players are hypothesizing Varaxes entered the dungeon at the conjunction.

Cast for this Session:

Marthanes , a desert sorcerer

Tancrede, a cleric of Typhon

Wolfengard, a dwarf fighter

Obsidian, a thief

Mulan, a fighter

Mercenaries:  Ed, Owenheim, Mumford

After picking up the rumors in town and rubbing shoulders with rivals, the players went back to dungeon level 2B, The Reliquary.  They had 3 new mercenaries on this jaunt - Ed, Owenheim, and Mumford - because it was a smaller session.  The kids spent some time puzzling the Hall of Truth (and did not learn the secret of the pillars - they have little patience for puzzles).  After searching a series of nearby rooms, their biggest find was a secret room adjacent to the ruined library - it held boxes and boxes of books dating from the time of the Thulians.  Unfortunately, while the main PC's huddled in the secret room confirming the contents of the boxes, they heard yells back in the library - poor Ed was killed by some zombies that wandered in from the east.  It was a quick fight once the PC's got involved.

They loaded up the books, and checked one more room - this one featured a statue (a gargoyle in disguise).  Marthanes deployed the berserkers via Summon Berserkers, and the players quickly left, returning all the way to the surface.  I had previously briefed the players on the importance of Dwimmermount's Secret History, and the teens were very excited to see that they had recovered some secret lore.  Later that night, I put together a document with the information they discovered (basically pasting the entries from the secret history to a word doc for easy consumption).  You'll see in later sessions they know about things like the Manufactory, the Pool of Life, and the Essence Machines - all from reading the Thulian archives.  I like how that aspect of the campaign is coming together!

There was time left in the session for the players to return to the dungeon for a brief jaunt; this time they visited the gargoyle again, prepared, and defeated it with magic.  The last battle involved an Ossuary haunted by a Necrophidius.  Necrophidius is one of those oddball monsters from the Fiend Folio converted to ACKS; it gets an A on the creepy factor, and has a hypnotic dance that wrecked most of the party and almost caused a TPK.  They were down to one PC standing (the rest were swaying hypnotically with goggle eyes) before they got it.  There was a treasure room near the Necrophidius, so the players greedily loaded it into sacks.

Oh, this was priceless. - one of the items in the treasure was a brooch; Wolfengard put it on (failed a saving throw), and got sad.  They asked him why, he said "I don't believe in anything any longer, not even the gods".  So Marthanes put on the brooch, and made his save.  Then the player with Tancrede had the cleric put it on!  Of course he failed his save, lost his faith, and can no longer Turn Undead.  Players are awesome - their own worst enemies.

This game saw enough treasure for more guys to start leveling up to 2, including Tancrede (who can't cast spells because he's now an Atheist).  The surviving mercenaries went from 0-level men to 1st level fighters.  At the end of the session, they decided they'd have to go to the city and get his faith restored sometime soon - via a Remove Curse.

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.

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

Catching Up With Supernatural

I blinked, and a week went by without blogging.  My eyeballs have been on the TV screen (or more frequently, the iPad) finishing the last couple of streaming episodes of the TV series Supernatural in a binge of media consumption.  Not once in the past 9-10 years did I bother to tune into that one while it was broadcasting; my wife, an ardent Dr Who fan, relentlessly implored me to commit to watching the first season of Supernatural a couple of months ago proclaiming it would strike a similar chord.  It's actually been great fun.

Let's say, like me, you're somewhat averse to the television and were equally oblivious about the show - here's the theme:  Supernatural is about a pair of brothers who hunt monsters as their life's mission.  The show postulates a world where there's a brotherhood of "hunters", urban fantasy warriors that roam the backwaters and by-streets of America, staking vampires and laying ghosts to rest, combing the papers for gruesome murders and bizarre deaths to find the next case.  There are overarching metaplots that invoke Judeo-Christian mythology, involving rogue angels, scheming demons, and sundry Biblical monsters.  Beyond the metaplot stories, each episode is basically a "monster of the week" showcase, and the writers have definitely looked far and wide to fill out 9 seasons with critters.

Supernatural isn't a horror show, but you can still get plenty of ideas from it for your horror or D&D gaming.  It's pretty much someone's "Hunter the Reckoning" campaign made into an ongoing saga, the way True Blood is a Masquerade campaign brought to HBO.  I've gotten some good ideas for staging a few obscure monsters, and it's shown me that there's quite a bit of monstrous material in the Bible - ideas for some upcoming posts, perhaps.

Meanwhile, the kiddos have discovered Naruto.  I've been hearing quotes from the show non-stop for the past two weeks:  Dad, I feel really good about my red deck for this week's FNM - I'm going undefeated this week, believe it!  Which reminds me, the latest core set for Magic the Gathering dropped last week, so we've also been busy sorting cards and updating our standard decks.  I'm a decent sealed player and took second at our prerelease; for standard, I've been on pack rats and demons all season, so black devotion was easy to update with M15.  I figure there's a small amount of overlap between readers who are just table top gamers and those that play the Magic; you've either been loving the past year of swamps and demons and black horrible things or you can't wait for October and no more black versus blue showdowns.  Anyway, I'm pretty excited to have "Urborg, the Tomb of Yawgmoth", back in standard, believe it!

Despite the distractions of television and the playing cards, we've had some great sessions with the gaming groups exploring Taenarum.  I have a few game reports to post this week.  I also picked up a copy of the 5th Edition Starter Box to peruse, and an author sent a few adventures over to review.   Plenty to catch up on.

Orcs, Goblins, and Gnolls, Oh My

I've mostly been running some Call of Cthulhu games lately, so the itch to get back to running fantasy is growing.  Plus, it's summer, and the kiddos are out of school - it's high time for another family game!  The two littles are old enough to follow along with a game, and my daughter can read a character sheet now, so they'll be off to THE KEEP ON THE BORDERLANDS* shortly - mom and the three kids.

Here's the thing - kids and Gygaxian Naturalism don't mix.  There will be no orc babies or crying goblin moms in the game, mewling that the adventurers just killed their husbands.  I could have the whole table reduced to tears in short order.  (In fact, there is no crying in Dungeons & Dragons).  Ergo, it's time to whip up some alternate origins for the humanoid races, ones that put them firmly in the realm of monsters, and not as misunderstood, hairy pseudo-people.

Kobolds
The jealous Lord of the Underworld (Hades, Nix, or a similar character) works hard to keep the ways and passages to his gloomy realm hidden from mortals, and the kobolds were created to lure and confuse miners (ie, tommyknockers).  They delight in creating devious traps and laying ambushes, watching from the shadows with their ghostly, dead eyes.  As a Lord of the Dead, Hades is unable to create natural life, and thus the kobolds aren't truly alive - they're golem-like constructs made from children's bones,  rat's blood, and other scavenged materials, stewed in Hade's giant cauldrons.

Orcs
The souls of wicked humans become wriggling larva, squirming in the pit of Hell, but powerful witches (Satanic witches) are able to call them back to the mortal world through their dark pacts.  They grow them in breeding pits into disciplined servants, the orcs.  There is no hope for redemption for any orc; there's only the belief that if they serve well and inflict sufficient pain and suffering on their maker's victims, they'll climb a rung on the ladder when they're cast back down to the pit.

Goblins
Beneath the moldering eaves of the Goblin King's vast forest, putrid gardens spew forth the goblins and their larger cousins, the hobgoblins.  The goblins claw their way up out of the ground, chalk-colored and earthy, with a tuft of leaves on top of their heads to attest to their gestation as a root vegetable.  They're drawn to the woods and forests near human settlements to carry out their favorite diversion, kidnapping human children and carrying them off to wander the Goblin King's gigantic labyrinth beyond the mortal world.

Hobgoblins
Hobgoblins are grown from massive gourds, like pumpkins, and frequently use serrated shields and edged weapons that allude to sharpened leaves, or bulbous armor that calls to mind the contours of a large gourd.  Unlike their smaller brethren, the hobgoblins delight in robbery and banditry, frequently forming armed bands that terrorize lonely sections of roads and trails.  They eventually carry their loot to the Goblin King's vast treasuries, making the crossing each Halloween and vying to be crowned the new hobgoblin king for the next year.

Bugbears
Bugbears are the boogeymen of faerie lore, gangly fairy creepers covered in short, bristlelike fur, peering out of the shadows with their multifaceted eyes and clacking mandibles.  They can climb walls like a spider and contort to fit into near impossible spaces, such as the nook beneath the stairs, the hall closet, or perhaps squeeze down a narrow chimney.  Their insides are filled with bugs and worms and all manner of crawling things that spill out if they're killed.  Their mistress is a cruel and mad faerie lady, covered in spider webs that suggest a veiled wedding dress; she's known to sages only as "the Bride".

Gnolls
When the demonic witch Baba Yaga needed footsoldiers capable of running tirelessly across the steppes, she transformed a mongrel pack of wild dogs into the first gnolls, and taught the first gnoll shamans the dark rituals necessary to consecrate future mongrel litters to Yeenoghu and warp more canines into two-legged gnolls.  Roaming bands of these marauders leave behind death, destruction, and a noticeable lack of dogs.

Ogres
The oldest crime, the oldest prohibition, is against cannibalism, and there is a spirit that sometimes takes root when a man eats the flesh of another man, transforming the forbidden diet into an addiction while changing the transgressor - body, mind, and soul - into a hulking man-eater that lumbers off into the wilderness to indulge its dark passions far from torches, pitchforks, and angry villagers.  Possession by the ogre spirit leads to an immortality, of sorts.

There we have it - my quick set of alternate humanoid descriptions.  I suppose if I'm doing THE KEEP ON THE BORDERLANDS, I should tackle Lizard Men, too.  Hmm, upon rereading, I notice they're not quite as "kid friendly" or whimsical as I would have hoped.  Perhaps I watch too many horror movies to run a kid's D&D game.  But kids are tough, and real fairy tales are pretty scary, right?  They'll be fine, right?


*Gygaxian syntax requires all of his published works to be capitalized.

Teach Your Kids to Game Week - Palace of the Silver Princess

I was traveling all last week, but was able to kick off a short kids D&D game the other night to introduce the young ones to some basic D&D.  They're starting in a simplified version of Charlemagne's France near the bewitching Enchanted Forest, long rumored to hold a secret glade where a mysterious Elven princess held court while protected by glamours and illusions.

For the first game, each character was drawn by a vision to meet at the crossroads, where a ghostly "Protector" explained that a terrible curse had befallen the secret valley where the Silver Princess held court, and now she needed help from brave heroes to explore her palace and break the curse.  The players agreed that sounded like great fun, and followed the Protector down the Elf Road to the entrance to the palace, and thus we began the adventure.

I'd really like to try Keep on the Borderlands and Horror on the Hill with the kiddos in the Carolingian setting, but felt that the more simplistic "fairy tale-like" Palace of the Silver Princess would be a better intro because it's less of a wide open sandbox.  We enlisted my 6 year old adopted son, his sister, my oldest son and one of his friends, their grandma who was visiting, and wifey.

Here's who they brought along:

Sir Gordon - a knight
Sir Mungo - a halfling knight
Louis the Robber - a thief
Princess Tolula - a magic user
Father Seton - a cleric
Johnny the Elf - an elf

We used pre-rolled characters with "Ye Faste Packe" so all they had to do was name their new character, sit down and play; I simplified the options quite a bit (presenting things almost in a 'Choose Your Own Adventure Style' of choice); we paired the youngest kiddo (who can't read yet) with an adult to help out.

The best piece of advice I can give is to support and encourage those wacky and unusual tactics kids think up on the fly; they haven't read the rule books and their imagination isn't calcified by the prescribed combat options.  Creative maneuvers show their engagement with the game, which is all you can really ask from the young ones.

Examples from the game included the time Princess Tolula jumped on the monster's back to throw her sleeve over its face, blinding it, to give  one of her fellow adventurers an assist;  Mungo figured out that giant beetles are hard to hit because of their tough shells, so let's flip them on their back and hit the soft squishy parts on the bottom; Johnny thought that if he moon-walked while shooting his bow, he'd be harder to hit;  Father Seton tried to review his equipment during every round - "How about now?  Is now a good time to splash the Holy Water?"

An hour or so is about the attention span limit for the kids under 8, so we wrapped after 5-6 rooms and called it a night.  Everyone is hoping we can make it a regular thing - we'll see how it goes.

Last foray into a kids focused game was more than a year and a half ago, when their older brother and his friends started (a few have since moved into the regular game) - looks like I can trot out some of the same table rules from back then:  Dungeon Mastering for 9 year-olds.

Charlemagne Triumphs Over Arthur

A few weeks ago, a simple poll here was "Which legendary realm is better suited for adventure, Arthur's Britain or the Empire of Charlemagne?"

I expected Arthur to win in a landslide, but the Holy Roman Emperor knocked off the King of Britain, 57% to 42%.  (Um, go Franks?).  Seriously though, there's a strong old school D&D sensibility in Charlemagne's Saxon frontier and the theme of civilization vs the barbarians.  I'm going to put some notes together for a simple, yet literary, setting for the younger kiddos to learn the beloved classic D&D, and a fantastic version of the Frankish Empire would be fun, and serve a bit of education too.  Hopefully we can kick it off while it's still "teach your kids to game" week.

Because the Frankish frontier with the Saxons is one long borderlands area, a few classic adventure modules jump out as being immediately relevant:  B2 Keep on the Borderlands, or B5 Horror on the Hill.  Both involve forts or castles on the frontier facing off against a wilderness where monsters lurk.

Any other adventure modules (TSR, D&D, AD&D, OSR, or whatever) come to mind as being well suited for chivalric adventures, or at least easy to dress them for the part?

I don’t see any issues with plate mail or Medieval stone castles if you're basing the milieu on the anachronistic stories of the chansons de geste, so it's not going to reflect the historical 8th or 9th centuries.

Today in D&D School

I had the thought to do this article before the big storm, so it's been sitting on my computer while the power was down, waiting to post.  The moms of one of our players said something nice to my wife: "Your husband is doing a good job with the D&D game, the boys are learning so much about history while they're playing".

So I asked the kiddo what kinds of things he's learned in our current campaign.  Here's what he had say:

Real vikings didn't wear horned helmets.  The vikings went everywhere and drank beer or mead - Russia, England, France, and even Canada.  They ate dried, salted, or smoked fish in the winter,  and lots of pickled stuff, like pickled cabbages.  But if you didn't eat fresh stuff every few weeks, from hunting or fishing, you could get scurvy.  Their boats are called longships or knarrs.  The men are either jarls, karls, or thralls depending on whether you're a noble, freeman, or slave.  They do crafts during the winter in those big halls and drink more beer (beer was like food you could store all winter).  They used cone helmets with nose guards, wooden shields, and axes.

I'm sure he knows a lot more, like how island shelters are constructed, how names are formed, what everyday life is like back home, that kind of stuff.  We also watched the recent Nova episode that showed the forging of an Ulfberht sword and the guys talked about it during one of the games, so he now knows a bit about how crucible steel is made and why it was superior to local steel.

I had overlooked this as a benefit of a setting based on real-world history - I like getting ideas from real myths and legends, using real maps and place names, but there's this huge educational upside to also consider if you game with kids.  Besides, if you like history, the research and reading inherent in preparing the setting is pretty dang fun.  The real world is endlessly strange and fascinating.

My home library is slowly accreting 'day in the life' books, like The Time Travelers Guide to Medieval England, Everyday Life in Viking Times, or A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome;  I appreciate the modern approach to scholarship that's painting these vivid pictures of ordinary life by piecing together bits from anthropology, literature, archaeology, art, and written history.  As Black Vulmea said over here - Booke Faire - many children's history books also feature curious bits about everyday life to help kids place themselves in the period;  these sources are really fast and accessible for the harried game master.

I've actually had a few  parents on the block wrinkle their nose when their kid went home and asked if they could sit in on one of the kid-focused D&D games during the summer - like it's the late 1980's again, and D&D is only something for... I dunno, weirdos or something.  Meanwhile, they don't blink when their kids play gory TV-MA video games and blow the heads off zombies or loot bodies in Skyrim.  I'll stop judging.

TL;DR version:  You can slide in plenty of historical knowledge into your tabletop game, ninja-style, the way some moms are known to puree healthy stuff like carrots and mix it into their kid's food sight unseen.