Naked and weaponless, into the pit that is "The World's Largest Dungeon"

[mroberon1972]

Naked and weaponless, into the pit of the World's Largest Dungeon


Descent into Darkness

Well, we have the following characters:

Breanna: Human Cleric of Light.
Drake: Human Rogue, and Breanna’s bondsman (bodyguard/companion)
Lilly: Dwarven Rogue
Kara: Dwarven Fighter

All characters start at 1st level, with no equipment.

Both Breanna and Drake are played by Rebecca, and Rosemary plays Lilly and Kara.

We only have 2 players, and I need a few extra characters, at least at first... I'm sure there will be some attrition...

Anyway, on with the show!

 

[mroberon1972]

“So, you gonna go into the pit with or without new holes in ya?” Dalik’s smirk was as ugly as the rest of his face. The reason for his pleasure was due to four loin-clothed prisoners that were standing in front of a pit. It spanned nearly twenty feet across, and faded into darkness when looking into it. Surrounding the prisoners were nearly fourty guards with sharp pointy-sticks.

Dalik didn’t like to take chances…

One of the guards dragged another body into the room and pushed it into the pit. The prisoners watched it fall into the shadows, and listened for the sound of it hitting bottom...

It never came.

“Well?” Even with the horrible grating noise his voice made. It was obvious we was enjoying himself. “All-righty then! Stab them and THEN throw them in.”

At that, the prisoners all looked at each other, sighed, and jumped in…

 

[mroberon1972]

(The party is now entering room A3, their starting position in the WLD. It was mean of me to start them here, but it made logical sense to for this room to be where the entrance pit leads to… Especially when considering its contents… All rooms are using the scale of 10 feet per square, as opposed to 5 feet.)

Drake landed on something soft and hard at the same time. It seemed to be like a mattress stuffed with feathers and rocks. He took a deep breath, and immediately began retching. The stench was unbelievable. He turned over to move and came face to face with a corpse staring back at him. It had been dead quite a while.

“Ghaaaa!” His arms scrambled for purchase, and his hand immediately sunk into something too horrible to think about. Horrible and liquidy. This flipped him head-first into the sea of bodies. As he pulled himself up, he stopped screaming long enough to gag uncontrollably…

By the time he climbed down from the mound of bodies, he grabbed the first familiar face he saw.

And poor Lilly never saw it coming. She had just finished crawling out of the mass a few moments before, and was huddled in the corner while trying to put herself back into order. Of course, after digging her way out of a pile of bodies, she did what anyone would do when grabbed by cold, slimy hands from behind.

She screamed like a little dwarven child.

Drake, a little bent himself by now, screamed too, though his sounded more like a little elvish girl’s cry…

By the time Breanna and Kara got them calmed down, they were all deathly ill from the stench. Only seeing one door to room, they went over and opened it. Lilly quickly exited the room, followed by the rest of the party.

 

[mroberon1972]

(The party has just entered room A2, an ‘L’ shaped room with the ends pointing south and west.)

The room was pitch black, and Lilly used her dwarven sight to note that the ceiling was about 50’ high, and not quite visible to her. She followed a wall near the door to her right, and walked until she could see the far wall. There was a door there, same as the door behind them.

Drake then heard a sound from the far side of the room, and Lilly chose to go scout. She began walking along the southern wall until she also heard the sounds. Following them, she came across three orcs sitting in the North-East corner of the room. The biggest snarled at her.

She ran like hell was on her heals all the way back to the corpse room. She hoped to get the orcs to chase her instead of her party, and allow them time to attach from behind. Lilly waited for a few minutes, and only when everyone came to get her did she tell them what she saw.

Both dwarves decided to go back, while leaving the sightless members of the party behind. Upon returning to the sitting orcs, they began attempting to talk to them in orcish.

 

[haiiro]

All characters start at 1st level, with no equipment.

This is just cruel. Do the players know they're headed into the WLD, or do they just think it's an ordinary (read: short) dungeon crawl?

 

[mroberon1972]

This is just cruel. Do the players know they're headed into the WLD, or do they just thing it's an ordinary (read: short) dungeon crawl?

They know... It's more fun that way...

 

[Missnox]

Yep. we knew..... Sorta hoped we would have more gear than our underwear though.....

actually it went down hill from there. For instance due to frustration, the aggravation of interruptions, lack of sleep, ect. it took us awhile to remember we could maybe light a torch using a fire trap as a lighter.......

 

[Timely Drought]

How is experience being awarded? Are challenges going to award more points based on the added difficulty of being under-equiped? Or are you going for the WLD's suggested levelling scheme?

I can't even begin to image the difficulty the players are going to face for starting the gauntlet this way.

Any house rules for this campaign? I'm curious of how different groups are going to deal with this all-dungeon campaign that excludes many essential player tools unless the DM lets them freely go in & out.