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<blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 6075327" data-attributes="member: 508"><p><strong>ADVENTURE 48 - SEKARVU'S LAIR</strong></p><p></p><p>PC Roster: <p style="margin-left: 20px">Chalkan, half-elf ranger/cleric of Corellon Larethian/sorcerer/arcane archer</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Delphyne Babelberi, human witch (wizard)</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Rale Bodkin, human rogue</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Telgrane, human conjurer</p><p></p><p>"Sekarvu's Lair" was one of the mini-adventures that was included in <em>Lords of Madness</em>, the monster book from Wizards of the Coast that featured aberrations of various sorts, like beholders, aboleths, and illithids. I chose it because I wanted to use a beholder as a main enemy in an adventure, since I had received the D&D Minis Beholder boxed set as a Christmas gift, and it was level-appropriate for the average level of the group by that point. I made a very few number of changes to the adventure as written, swapping out the ethereal filchers (I've never been a fan of them) with advanced gargoyles and changing the charmed gnome's name from Ilirik Jadewhisper to <strong>Ilirik Ponkadoodle</strong> (because gnomes in my campaigns must have prodigious noses and ridiculous-sounding names).</p><p></p><p>I set the adventure up by having Ponkadoodle show up at Wing Three with a proposition: he had recently won a treasure map from a cleric of Fharlanghn in a poker game. The map showed the location of a medusa's lair, a simple two-story affair with one large chamber on each level. Ponkadoodle wasn't up to clearing it out himself (I gave him a prominent limp), so he was willing to give the PCs the map if they'd split any treasure with him 50/50. He name-dropped "his good friend Dundernoggin" but in reality had only met him that morning, upon arriving in town and asking for a group of prominent heroes. <strong>Sekarvu</strong> the beholder had <em>charmed</em> Ponkadoodle into finding adventurers and luring them back to its lair, where it could slay them, thus gaining their flesh for its belly and their treasure for its hoard.</p><p></p><p>The adventure went well; one of the things I had liked about the map was that it was made up of multiple vertical levels, as made sense for a hovering sphere monster with access to a disintegration ray at the end of one of its eyestalks. The group ended up fighting the beholder several levels deep, and it surprised them by popping down a vertical shaft, then disintegrating its way below them and then up from the floor. The PCs were standing in a stone chamber deciding how best to go down the vertical shaft after the beholder when the floor started disintegrating beneath them - that was a cool mental image, and the players definitely didn't expect that! (I gave their PCs Reflex saves to dive out of the suddenly-appearing pit in the floor.) Sadly, Sekarvu didn't fare all that well after that, as Telgrane cast a <em>disintegrate</em> spell at him and beat him at his own game.</p><p></p><p>At the end, the last enemy left fighting was Ponkadoodle, and he threw himself on the floor before them begging for mercy, claiming he'd been <em>charmed</em> by the beholder and unable to resist its instructions. The PCs weren't buying it for a minute, but they bound him and lugged him back to Guild Headquarters, where a <em>zone of truth</em> spell (cast by either Cal or Akari - we tend to handwave who's got what spells prepared when they aren't actively adventuring in that session) verified that he had indeed been acting against his own will. So they decided to let him live, but made him forfeit his share of the beholder's treasure in return for his life. Ponkadoodle was all too eager to accept their offer.</p><p></p><p>Oddly enough, he now works at Piddilink Dundernoggin's magic shop as his assistant, so the group gets to see him every now and again.</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>And since this writeup is relatively short, I should probably mention what Joey had been up to. By this time, he was probably close to seven years old, and he habitually sat at the table with us and played his version of D&D. His version involved him moving his miniature (usually a humanoid droid from a Star Wars Miniatures set) around the map, and when it was his turn (he had his own initiative card), he'd tell us what his character was doing. Often this involved flying around with a jet pack, or firing tactical nukes at the bad guys, but occasionally he'd stray a little closer into D&D territory and have his PC attack a monster with a sword or drink a potion.</p><p></p><p>By this time I had made Logan a bunch of tokens for the creatures that Telgrane summoned most often (he was pretty much an elementalist, so he tended to summon a bunch of elementals, plus the occasional celestial bison or hippogriff), and he carried them around in his Telgrane box. (Surprise, surprise, this was another old check box - it's amazing how much use I've gotten out of old check boxes over the years!) Anyway, Joey created a massive fire elemental and a water elemental of his own by drawing them on a piece of paper, coloring them in with crayons, and cutting them out, so once he had these props ready to go he would usually have his PC summon one of them and he'd have not only a Star Wars mini on our dungeon map but a homemade elemental token as well. (We limited him to one at a time.) We all just put up with it, because we knew his attention span was such that within an hour or so he'd likely excuse himself to go play video games or whatever, or stand in the kitchen by the counter and play with the D&D minis we'd already used; I had a habit of keeping them in the "Current Adventure box" (made out of a - what else? - used check box) until they were needed, then plunking them down on the geomorphs when they were in play, and then "discarding" them on Dan and Vicki's stove after use. Joey would often stand by the stove and play with the minis that had already seen play in that session's adventure, dividing them up into teams and having them fight each other.</p><p></p><p>However, as time went on, I noticed that Joey's attention span was increasing, he was paying attention to what was going on in the game (often more so than his older brother), and every once in a while he'd suggest a pretty good in-game idea. I realized it wouldn't be too long before he'd likely be joining our ranks for good!</p><p></p><p>So I started inserting D&D rules into his "Joey rules." He had a bunch of dice of his own (mostly d6 "pip" dice, but also a yellow d20 and at least one d8). Early on, he'd declare he was shooting a tactical nuke at the monster, grab up as many dice as he could hold, throw them, and then we'd let him spend the next couple of minutes adding up all of his "damage." We'd move on to whoever's turn it was in the game, and once he told me the total ("I did 67 points of damage!") I'd make a scribble next to my monster stat sheet as if I were subtracting that from the monster's hp total, tell him how the monster looked a lot weaker now, and we'd move on.</p><p></p><p>About this time, I started having him roll his d20 to see if he hit the monster, usually just deciding that a big number hit and a small number missed. If he hit, we'd have him roll his damage dice (usually a d8 and/or a d6), and I'd still "fake update" my monster stat sheet and tell him how much he hurt the bad monster. On occasion, if a monster died in the game right before Joey's turn, I'd silently gesture to the player that the monster was dead, but then allow Joey's PC to kill it; he liked it when "his" damage killed the monster and I took it off out of the game as a result. So we slowly weaned him away from tactical nukes and lasers and got him used to the idea of his PC using a hand-held weapon instead. (Sometimes he decided it was a sword; at others it was an axe.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Richards, post: 6075327, member: 508"] [b]ADVENTURE 48 - SEKARVU'S LAIR[/b] PC Roster: [INDENT]Chalkan, half-elf ranger/cleric of Corellon Larethian/sorcerer/arcane archer Delphyne Babelberi, human witch (wizard) Rale Bodkin, human rogue Telgrane, human conjurer[/INDENT] "Sekarvu's Lair" was one of the mini-adventures that was included in [i]Lords of Madness[/i], the monster book from Wizards of the Coast that featured aberrations of various sorts, like beholders, aboleths, and illithids. I chose it because I wanted to use a beholder as a main enemy in an adventure, since I had received the D&D Minis Beholder boxed set as a Christmas gift, and it was level-appropriate for the average level of the group by that point. I made a very few number of changes to the adventure as written, swapping out the ethereal filchers (I've never been a fan of them) with advanced gargoyles and changing the charmed gnome's name from Ilirik Jadewhisper to [b]Ilirik Ponkadoodle[/b] (because gnomes in my campaigns must have prodigious noses and ridiculous-sounding names). I set the adventure up by having Ponkadoodle show up at Wing Three with a proposition: he had recently won a treasure map from a cleric of Fharlanghn in a poker game. The map showed the location of a medusa's lair, a simple two-story affair with one large chamber on each level. Ponkadoodle wasn't up to clearing it out himself (I gave him a prominent limp), so he was willing to give the PCs the map if they'd split any treasure with him 50/50. He name-dropped "his good friend Dundernoggin" but in reality had only met him that morning, upon arriving in town and asking for a group of prominent heroes. [b]Sekarvu[/b] the beholder had [i]charmed[/i] Ponkadoodle into finding adventurers and luring them back to its lair, where it could slay them, thus gaining their flesh for its belly and their treasure for its hoard. The adventure went well; one of the things I had liked about the map was that it was made up of multiple vertical levels, as made sense for a hovering sphere monster with access to a disintegration ray at the end of one of its eyestalks. The group ended up fighting the beholder several levels deep, and it surprised them by popping down a vertical shaft, then disintegrating its way below them and then up from the floor. The PCs were standing in a stone chamber deciding how best to go down the vertical shaft after the beholder when the floor started disintegrating beneath them - that was a cool mental image, and the players definitely didn't expect that! (I gave their PCs Reflex saves to dive out of the suddenly-appearing pit in the floor.) Sadly, Sekarvu didn't fare all that well after that, as Telgrane cast a [i]disintegrate[/i] spell at him and beat him at his own game. At the end, the last enemy left fighting was Ponkadoodle, and he threw himself on the floor before them begging for mercy, claiming he'd been [i]charmed[/i] by the beholder and unable to resist its instructions. The PCs weren't buying it for a minute, but they bound him and lugged him back to Guild Headquarters, where a [i]zone of truth[/i] spell (cast by either Cal or Akari - we tend to handwave who's got what spells prepared when they aren't actively adventuring in that session) verified that he had indeed been acting against his own will. So they decided to let him live, but made him forfeit his share of the beholder's treasure in return for his life. Ponkadoodle was all too eager to accept their offer. Oddly enough, he now works at Piddilink Dundernoggin's magic shop as his assistant, so the group gets to see him every now and again. - - - And since this writeup is relatively short, I should probably mention what Joey had been up to. By this time, he was probably close to seven years old, and he habitually sat at the table with us and played his version of D&D. His version involved him moving his miniature (usually a humanoid droid from a Star Wars Miniatures set) around the map, and when it was his turn (he had his own initiative card), he'd tell us what his character was doing. Often this involved flying around with a jet pack, or firing tactical nukes at the bad guys, but occasionally he'd stray a little closer into D&D territory and have his PC attack a monster with a sword or drink a potion. By this time I had made Logan a bunch of tokens for the creatures that Telgrane summoned most often (he was pretty much an elementalist, so he tended to summon a bunch of elementals, plus the occasional celestial bison or hippogriff), and he carried them around in his Telgrane box. (Surprise, surprise, this was another old check box - it's amazing how much use I've gotten out of old check boxes over the years!) Anyway, Joey created a massive fire elemental and a water elemental of his own by drawing them on a piece of paper, coloring them in with crayons, and cutting them out, so once he had these props ready to go he would usually have his PC summon one of them and he'd have not only a Star Wars mini on our dungeon map but a homemade elemental token as well. (We limited him to one at a time.) We all just put up with it, because we knew his attention span was such that within an hour or so he'd likely excuse himself to go play video games or whatever, or stand in the kitchen by the counter and play with the D&D minis we'd already used; I had a habit of keeping them in the "Current Adventure box" (made out of a - what else? - used check box) until they were needed, then plunking them down on the geomorphs when they were in play, and then "discarding" them on Dan and Vicki's stove after use. Joey would often stand by the stove and play with the minis that had already seen play in that session's adventure, dividing them up into teams and having them fight each other. However, as time went on, I noticed that Joey's attention span was increasing, he was paying attention to what was going on in the game (often more so than his older brother), and every once in a while he'd suggest a pretty good in-game idea. I realized it wouldn't be too long before he'd likely be joining our ranks for good! So I started inserting D&D rules into his "Joey rules." He had a bunch of dice of his own (mostly d6 "pip" dice, but also a yellow d20 and at least one d8). Early on, he'd declare he was shooting a tactical nuke at the monster, grab up as many dice as he could hold, throw them, and then we'd let him spend the next couple of minutes adding up all of his "damage." We'd move on to whoever's turn it was in the game, and once he told me the total ("I did 67 points of damage!") I'd make a scribble next to my monster stat sheet as if I were subtracting that from the monster's hp total, tell him how the monster looked a lot weaker now, and we'd move on. About this time, I started having him roll his d20 to see if he hit the monster, usually just deciding that a big number hit and a small number missed. If he hit, we'd have him roll his damage dice (usually a d8 and/or a d6), and I'd still "fake update" my monster stat sheet and tell him how much he hurt the bad monster. On occasion, if a monster died in the game right before Joey's turn, I'd silently gesture to the player that the monster was dead, but then allow Joey's PC to kill it; he liked it when "his" damage killed the monster and I took it off out of the game as a result. So we slowly weaned him away from tactical nukes and lasers and got him used to the idea of his PC using a hand-held weapon instead. (Sometimes he decided it was a sword; at others it was an axe.) [/QUOTE]
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