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<blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 6032337" data-attributes="member: 508"><p><strong>ADVENTURE 2 - IDYLLS OF THE RAT KING</strong></p><p></p><p>For the second adventure, I wanted something a little longer, so I went with the very first in Goodman Games' Dungeon Crawl Classics line, <em>Idylls of the Rat King</em>, by Jeffrey Quinn. This was a 32-page standalone module, taking place in a four-level silver mine. The maps were all pretty much rooms and corridors at right angles, perfect for use with the various Dungeon Tiles I'd picked up for my earlier campaign with my two sons, and the monsters were mostly creatures that could be used with the plastic figures that came with my old HeroQuest game, plus it was designed for character levels 1-3, so it seemed a perfect fit. In addition, the whole Dungeon Crawl Classics line was designed to feel "old school," so we'd be playing right in Dan's comfort zone. (Remember, although he had AD&D experience from several decades ago, he was learning the 3.5 rules along with his son.)</p><p></p><p>This time, we played at my house, in our kitchen. I got to see everyone's initiative cards for the first time. Logan's was a drawing from the waist up of Gareth. For Cal's initiative card, Dan had simply drawn Kord's holy symbol from the <em>Player's Handbook</em>. Jacob had drawn an evilly grinning half-orc barbarian in typical 8-year-old boy fashion. Each was drawn in pencil. Oddly enough, Joanna had the best-looking card of the bunch, but that was only because Logan's PC in our previous campaign had also had a toad familiar (that campaign had started under the 3.0 rules, where a toad familiar didn't just give you 3 extra hit points but rather 2 extra points of Constitution, which made it arguably the optimal choice of the standard familiars available). All of the PCs in that campaign and their associated animals (including a bronze griffon <em>figurine of wondrous power</em>) had their own full-color initiative card in colored pencil, so Joanna kind of stood out there a bit, but oh well.</p><p></p><p>As intended, this adventure took us three different sessions to plow through. The mines were filled with lots of goblins and some skeleton and zombie servitors. At one point, getting into the cinematic feel that a D&D game can bring about, Jacob had Slayer pull open a door, only to find a startled goblin standing there about to open the door himself from the other side. Just because it felt like a good idea, Jacob had Slayer punch the goblin in the face with his fist instead of running it through with his greatsword. He rolled, hit, did damage, and I described the goblin as flying backwards into the room, wetting himself in mid-arc before crashing to the floor. That elicited a cry of "I love this game!" from an enthusiastic Jacob, which would be music to the ears of any DM.</p><p></p><p>The mines took several days for the PCs to get through in-game as well, so Jacob was introduced to the concept of finding a place to camp out in and fortify while the PCs rested up. In fact, we ended one session with the PCs doing just that, so I took the opportunity to add a little to the goblin strategies beyond those documented in the module. The goblins, by this time, were aware that there was an adventuring party down there in the mines with them, as they'd found ample evidence in the form of slain (and looted) goblin bodies. I figured it would be fairly easy for them to track where the PCs were holed up, and to make plans accordingly. So between sessions (we were playing about every other weekend at that time), I hunted up some scrap cardboard and made some simple crates of various sizes, all scaled to the PCs' minis. When they exited their out-of-the-way chamber the next morning, the PCs found that the goblins had built "walls" out of stacked crates blocking off a section of the tunnel, and stationed skeleton archers in front of the crates. Goblin archers stood on top of the crates, ready to duck down behind cover if the PCs gave too much of a defensive response. So basically, the PCs were in a dead end hallway being peppered by arrows, with no way out other than storming the crate wall and its defenders. That put a little fear back into Jacob, since by this point Slayer had not been particularly threatened by any of the goblins, skeletons, or zombies they'd encountered thus far. It was a good tactical lesson, too, and a demonstration that the game world doesn't just go "on hold" because the PCs have stopped adventuring for the day.</p><p></p><p>In any case, by the end of that adventure Jacob had mentioned offhand how cool it would be if Slayer had a pet dire wolf. I don't recall if this was a reaction to having seen the druid and ranger animal companion sections in the <em>Player's Handbook</em> or if it was based more on the "Lords of the Ring" movie trilogy. But, always eager to keep the game engaging for the 8-year-old whose introduction to D&D was the whole purpose of this campaign, I added a short encounter at the end of the adventure. Upon exiting the silver mine, the PCs heard the sounds of ferocious battle from the forest nearby. It turned out that an owlbear (because I happened to have a lead miniature of an owlbear from my earliest campaigns as a kid) had stumbled across a dire wolf cave and had been devouring the pups within while the mother was out hunting. Then the mother dire wolf got back and a fierce battle ensued. By the time the PCs arrived, the mother dire wolf had been slain, the owlbear was wounded, and after the PCs had managed to kill it, there was one wounded dire wolf pup still alive. Slayer rescued it, Cal healed it with spells, and we arbitarily decided that it would reach its full adult size when Slayer had attained 8th level. Jacob named the dire wolf pup <strong>Fang</strong>. (Of course he did!) And shortly thereafter, I found myself at my comic/gaming shop making my first ever purchase of a D&D Miniature: a $1.00 timber wolf, to represent Fang the dire wolf pup. The next time we played, I gave the wolf mini to Jacob in an old check box, upon which I had pasted a photo of a wolf and the following caption:We decided that the PCs would pay to have the dire wolf trained, so they hunted up a retired dwarven adventurer who agreed for a fee to train Fang. Cal went through Slayer's backpack and found his sweatiest article of clothing, which was used as part of Fang's bedding so that he'd associate the scent of "sweaty half-orc" in a positive light.</p><p></p><p>Despite <em>Idylls of the Rat King</em> being designed to take PCs from 1st-level to 3rd, the fact that the PCs had already been through one adventure previously, plus the added encounters I threw in, plus the fact that most adventures are written with four PCs in mind while our little party had only three (and thus all XP was being split into only three pieces, not fourths), meant that the PCs had all attained 5th level by the end of this adventure. As it would turn out, we only had one more adventure ahead of us before our tiny little dungeon crawl campaign would take an unexpected turn that would completely reshape the way we played....</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Richards, post: 6032337, member: 508"] [b]ADVENTURE 2 - IDYLLS OF THE RAT KING[/b] For the second adventure, I wanted something a little longer, so I went with the very first in Goodman Games' Dungeon Crawl Classics line, [i]Idylls of the Rat King[/i], by Jeffrey Quinn. This was a 32-page standalone module, taking place in a four-level silver mine. The maps were all pretty much rooms and corridors at right angles, perfect for use with the various Dungeon Tiles I'd picked up for my earlier campaign with my two sons, and the monsters were mostly creatures that could be used with the plastic figures that came with my old HeroQuest game, plus it was designed for character levels 1-3, so it seemed a perfect fit. In addition, the whole Dungeon Crawl Classics line was designed to feel "old school," so we'd be playing right in Dan's comfort zone. (Remember, although he had AD&D experience from several decades ago, he was learning the 3.5 rules along with his son.) This time, we played at my house, in our kitchen. I got to see everyone's initiative cards for the first time. Logan's was a drawing from the waist up of Gareth. For Cal's initiative card, Dan had simply drawn Kord's holy symbol from the [i]Player's Handbook[/i]. Jacob had drawn an evilly grinning half-orc barbarian in typical 8-year-old boy fashion. Each was drawn in pencil. Oddly enough, Joanna had the best-looking card of the bunch, but that was only because Logan's PC in our previous campaign had also had a toad familiar (that campaign had started under the 3.0 rules, where a toad familiar didn't just give you 3 extra hit points but rather 2 extra points of Constitution, which made it arguably the optimal choice of the standard familiars available). All of the PCs in that campaign and their associated animals (including a bronze griffon [i]figurine of wondrous power[/i]) had their own full-color initiative card in colored pencil, so Joanna kind of stood out there a bit, but oh well. As intended, this adventure took us three different sessions to plow through. The mines were filled with lots of goblins and some skeleton and zombie servitors. At one point, getting into the cinematic feel that a D&D game can bring about, Jacob had Slayer pull open a door, only to find a startled goblin standing there about to open the door himself from the other side. Just because it felt like a good idea, Jacob had Slayer punch the goblin in the face with his fist instead of running it through with his greatsword. He rolled, hit, did damage, and I described the goblin as flying backwards into the room, wetting himself in mid-arc before crashing to the floor. That elicited a cry of "I love this game!" from an enthusiastic Jacob, which would be music to the ears of any DM. The mines took several days for the PCs to get through in-game as well, so Jacob was introduced to the concept of finding a place to camp out in and fortify while the PCs rested up. In fact, we ended one session with the PCs doing just that, so I took the opportunity to add a little to the goblin strategies beyond those documented in the module. The goblins, by this time, were aware that there was an adventuring party down there in the mines with them, as they'd found ample evidence in the form of slain (and looted) goblin bodies. I figured it would be fairly easy for them to track where the PCs were holed up, and to make plans accordingly. So between sessions (we were playing about every other weekend at that time), I hunted up some scrap cardboard and made some simple crates of various sizes, all scaled to the PCs' minis. When they exited their out-of-the-way chamber the next morning, the PCs found that the goblins had built "walls" out of stacked crates blocking off a section of the tunnel, and stationed skeleton archers in front of the crates. Goblin archers stood on top of the crates, ready to duck down behind cover if the PCs gave too much of a defensive response. So basically, the PCs were in a dead end hallway being peppered by arrows, with no way out other than storming the crate wall and its defenders. That put a little fear back into Jacob, since by this point Slayer had not been particularly threatened by any of the goblins, skeletons, or zombies they'd encountered thus far. It was a good tactical lesson, too, and a demonstration that the game world doesn't just go "on hold" because the PCs have stopped adventuring for the day. In any case, by the end of that adventure Jacob had mentioned offhand how cool it would be if Slayer had a pet dire wolf. I don't recall if this was a reaction to having seen the druid and ranger animal companion sections in the [i]Player's Handbook[/i] or if it was based more on the "Lords of the Ring" movie trilogy. But, always eager to keep the game engaging for the 8-year-old whose introduction to D&D was the whole purpose of this campaign, I added a short encounter at the end of the adventure. Upon exiting the silver mine, the PCs heard the sounds of ferocious battle from the forest nearby. It turned out that an owlbear (because I happened to have a lead miniature of an owlbear from my earliest campaigns as a kid) had stumbled across a dire wolf cave and had been devouring the pups within while the mother was out hunting. Then the mother dire wolf got back and a fierce battle ensued. By the time the PCs arrived, the mother dire wolf had been slain, the owlbear was wounded, and after the PCs had managed to kill it, there was one wounded dire wolf pup still alive. Slayer rescued it, Cal healed it with spells, and we arbitarily decided that it would reach its full adult size when Slayer had attained 8th level. Jacob named the dire wolf pup [b]Fang[/b]. (Of course he did!) And shortly thereafter, I found myself at my comic/gaming shop making my first ever purchase of a D&D Miniature: a $1.00 timber wolf, to represent Fang the dire wolf pup. The next time we played, I gave the wolf mini to Jacob in an old check box, upon which I had pasted a photo of a wolf and the following caption:We decided that the PCs would pay to have the dire wolf trained, so they hunted up a retired dwarven adventurer who agreed for a fee to train Fang. Cal went through Slayer's backpack and found his sweatiest article of clothing, which was used as part of Fang's bedding so that he'd associate the scent of "sweaty half-orc" in a positive light. Despite [i]Idylls of the Rat King[/i] being designed to take PCs from 1st-level to 3rd, the fact that the PCs had already been through one adventure previously, plus the added encounters I threw in, plus the fact that most adventures are written with four PCs in mind while our little party had only three (and thus all XP was being split into only three pieces, not fourths), meant that the PCs had all attained 5th level by the end of this adventure. As it would turn out, we only had one more adventure ahead of us before our tiny little dungeon crawl campaign would take an unexpected turn that would completely reshape the way we played.... [/QUOTE]
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