Well, I did my first game last Saturday.
We had 6 players signed up. 3 actually showed....
The party was a Wizard, a Sorcerer and a Rogue. IE, squishie.
I added an NPC cleric to the mix.
The session was scheduled for ten hours. It went sixteen because the players didn't want to stop. I finally had to tell them I needed to stop because I had to be up early for Mother's Day.
They met in town, where the townsfolk had great tales of a wererat and hit cohorts passing through to some previously-undiscovered cave.
They got to the first room. Instead of the doors the adventure describes, I sometimes change things up some. They had an orb hovering on a pedestal and emitting light. So, naturally, the sorcerer had to run up and touch it. *POP* sorc gone. So the rogue decides to touch it with his weapon instead of his hand. *POP* rogue gone. The NPC cleric starts crying, the wizard says 'what the hell, in for a penny...' and *POP*, followed by the cleric *POP*ing in as well. Yes, the were all teleported just over the wall.
At this point I should probably point out that were were playing on GameTable and I must say that my first run using that program was awesome and we will continue to use it down the road. It is a God-send. Moving right along.
Dark room, rogue uncovers his hooded lantern he has with him. Lo and behold there are three orcs in the corner, resting there, minding their own business. So what does the sorcerer do? "Let's kill them". I had the orcs all start flat-footed and take a full round just to stand up and get their weapons ready. The party almost wiped on that fight, and yes, the orcs were fatigued as well.
Good times. =)
At this point I should probably get everyone aquanted with my house rules:
http://keithratliff.com/CS/forums/thread/26.aspx
You will see that resting and death have large changes, one of which is that resting is not something the players can simply elect to do at any time. So, resting now was not in the picture.
Rogue checks all four doors. Top left one reeks something awful, so everyone decides to skip. Two closed doors, both uninteresting and one open door leading to a large room with dried grass everywhere. Players are naturally paranoid and decide to avoid it. They go to the door beside it, open the door. They find a dead orc, spear in the corner, orc outstretched toward door. Walking around in this room causes major echos to echo back from the room just beyond it. The PCs are again paranoid and close the door again.
They go to the other 'uninteresting' door. Open it up, sacks, mold, door on far end. Rogue checks for traps. Nada. Performs a listen check. Gets hit by a burning hands trap, goes to negative HPs. The cleric runs in, grabs him, runs out and does her last cure light on him. Cleric is now out of mana and the party is no better for xp. And the room is on fire now. Close the door and ignore it for now.
They decide it is time to explore the grass room. They do so. Because the grass had been obviously swept out from center and there was blood in the room, they were naturally, very cautious. Poke here, prod there. Aha! A body! Yuck! A trogg! Pile the grasses up in the corner and get a night's rest (I allowed it at that time). Tremors in the dark, a dead kobold outside the door in the morning.
So following that, they decide to try the burning hands door again. "It already went off. You don't think it would have reset do you?" Silly adventurers... So a few HPs lower, the rogue decides this door is not worth his time, at least, for now.
Back to the echo-y room. Walk in, shadows are moving around unnaturally. It is hard to see. Oh wait! Even harder now with a tentacle wrapped around your neck! A few rounds later, add a dead octopus to the board. They spot the rat. The rat sees they spotted them. In my dungeon, I have a small gap underneath the doors. The rats and stirges can use these gaps to travel. (The stirges just dive bomb the ground basically and then bounce out the other end of the door)
So they open the door, can't see the rat. So now which way? They go right. Couple skeletons and what is that? A bedroom??
So they sneak in to the bedroom, if a cleric wearing breastplate and a rogue weilding a hooded lanters could be considered 'sneaking'. And they are sure the rat is here. It has to be. Search under the desk, don't see any red glowie eyes. But the bed.... They couldn't see under it; the covers were draping on to the ground. It was at this time that the sorcerer burst out with perhaps the funniest line of the whole evening. "There is only one logic course of action. Burn it down." Luckily the rogue was able to convince him that flipping the mattress up was probably a better choice of action. So they did. And nothing. Check the closet. Nothing there either. Drat. The rat got away.
So they go back to the hall and open the first door they come to. Never mind that. They didn't open it. They went for the dramatic entrance. Have the cleric kick it down!! (She has a ten strength btw). First roll was a 3. WHAM. Lots of noise. Door is still standing. So much for a dramatic entrance. So naturally, they decide to try again. WHAM. This time, a roll of 19 and the door goes down. And RAWR! The hallway beyond was quite afraid I am sure. So they enter the hall. Four doors, two left side, two right side. And what is that! We can hear rats, somewhere!! Following the sound, they reach the end of the hallway. Rats behind the door to the left, and an open door to the right. But they can't see in to that room. It is so dark...
So they go left. Throw the door open and they succeed their spot checks as the rats attempted, but failed, to surprise them. (The rats knew they were coming) Few combat rounds later, the rogue took some damage until they realized the cleric should tank it. Cleric starts tanking it, they do better, rats go down. Nothing in the room. Search the other two rooms also, which was also, fairly uninteresting.
Leave the shadow'y room alone. That one is scary.
Back to the hall, move over and there is a room here. Wow the door is cold! And underneath the door, cold air is spilling out. Brrr. They throw open the door and the room beyond is cold. So the sorcerer wraps herself in a winter blanket (which the DM rules as having the same effect as being "heavily" encumbered while worn). She trudges through the room. The next room has more shifty shadows and the echos, and the air is being blown out of it fairly forcefully. But she enters it without incident. The other party members run in. Step in to the next room and the fight is on. Stirges! Cleric loses 4 Con on this battle but otherwise they do OK.
Spill out of that room in to the hallway beyond and they see a door up ahead. They listen and don't hear anything, so they open it up. To their pleasure, the door emits no sound as it opens. A moment later, pleasure turns to disappointment as they realize that no matter what they do, neither do they.
They enter the room and check it out. Nothing special. Go to the next room and casually inspect it and the pillars, then enter the third room.
Now in the final room, the DM messed up a bit (thats me, whoops!). I started the battle with an orc, but when we realized the damage that he was doing with a lance, we looked closer. Whoops, that 5' orc is really a 10' ogre. And those people who went down already, there is no way to tell if that was appropriate or not. So I undid the last person's damage and continued combat.
They barely survived. So then, the DM allowed them to rest again (least he could do). And they did. To their surprise, rather peacefully (extra 1 HP gained on rest).
Get up the next day, continue to explore northward. Long hallway. A door. Listen. Rats.
They throw the door open and discover a host of rats feasting on orc bodies. Red glowie eyes. The rats hiss, but do not attack. They slam the door shut again.
Then, they hatch a plan. They are going to throw the door open and unload arrows! They do so and the first group loops around a large column and comes at them. The other group runs out underneath the OTHER south doorway. They ignore that set and continue to fight the first set. Four combat rounds later, the ignored set appears behind them in the hallway. The wizard curses aloud and then pops a grease spell. All the rats saved, somehow. He takes a 5 foot step away. More combat, next round, and to the wizard's benefit, none of the rats make their balance check and thus cannot move. His round comes back up, fire off a spell and get the hell out.
Few combat rounds later, all the rats are dead and the party is close to spent. But they still have a lot of EXP to go till they can rest again. So they explore east.
They discover a dead orc with a darkmantle currently feeding on it. Wizard runs in and unleashes his last spell. A well-executed burning hands. The rogue pops the mantle with an arrow. It flops over. The party smacks their collective foreheads as they realize that they just killed something that was already dead.
Finish searching that room and the one beside it.
They track back west and find a door that is shut. Someone is obviously pushing it shut. After a few uneventful tries at shoving the door open, they finally manage to. And they discover an orc who runs to the back of the room, holding his battleaxe, but shaking uncontrollably.
For the first time, "burn it down" was not the automagic response. =)
They talk to him. He pleads for his life. They question him about the events of the dungeon. He reveals some of what is going on but refuses to assist the party. They close him back in to his room.
Rest is sounding good but not any more forthcoming.
So they go back to the very beginning and check out the room that smells really bad. Aha, kobold corpses. Makes sense. So back to the room with the burning-hands-trapped door. Another door with no locking mechanism so this time instead of trying to find the trap and risking it going off again, the rogue decides he is just gonna take it as he throws the door open.
He throws the door open and rolls well on his reflex. DM rolls poorly on damage and he takes only one point of damage. Whew!
Advancing in to the room beyond, they largely ignore the barrels as there is a fungus among them. Loop around a bit, small corridor. A dead orc! Let's go check it out! *click* dart shoots out at rogue. Rogue avoids. Sorcerer runs up to rogue. *click* Sorcerer does not avoid. Ouch that hurts. (And smarts). Rogue uses the cleric's shield, a large steel for a medium character - the rogue is a small character - as a tower shield to push the orc on to the newly-discovered pressure plate. Two more darts shoot out but the sheild blocks them. Testing the plate, the body is holding it down and so now everyone else advances past safely, making sure not to disturb the body so as not to reset the trap.
They discover a room fairly undisturbed and with a nice cache of mundane tools. They get some rope and a pick.
They go back to one of the previous halls (the one with the skeletons) and then up the other end to find a refuse pit and a note in it. They grab the note.
In Draconic: "Thoz ork theevs thay steelz ower tweazure but we smart we chozn wons we getz thoz orks back thay die soon"
With the discovery of the note, the party gets a sense of completion that allows them to rest once more. They do so in the silent room again.
After an uneventful rest, they go north again, past the sissy orc room. They discover a secret door at the end of a long hallway and open it. Rats. Lots of them. Two swarms of them in fact.
Well, the rogue apparently fails his morale check and shouts out to the party "Save yourselves, I will shut myself in." (The player thought the DM was just going overboard and was going to reroll another character as a screw-you to the DM). The rest of the party helped him to make his follow up morale check.
They find the the first swarm, while deadly, was also quite weak. Within two rounds, the swarm is down and only one remains. They group up on the cleric who casts a split-Longstrider on the party (Cleric has Travel as a domain). Using their new-found speed, the party manages to pick off the remaining swarm (but not until the sorcerer discovers that burning hands has minimal effect on feindish creatures and then further discovers that magic missile has no effect on swarms).
Search the room, nothing of interest, and continue onward.
Another hallway. So let's go left. Hrmm. Long hall, no doors. Rogue whips out the BS card and starts searching for secret doors. And lo! There is one at the end. Just then, they get a feeling of foreboding "I should not be here yet." They take the feeling seriously, close the door and then backtrack down the hall to the opposite direction.
Though a little more twisty than they expected, they come to a series of four workshops. Two are desecrated, but two are intact. A daring fight with some stirges and some more rats and they claim the shops as their own. Grab a few tools, do some searching and what's this! A sword! And a magical one too!!!
Finish off with one more stirge battle in another room and then BAM 1000 exp and time to rest baby! Make it back to the silence room and finish off the night.
End of session.
I must say that they got so much more done than I expected they would. The session was awesome. Indeed, the players wanted to keep going, but I had to get up early for Mother's Day so I had to stop it. - at six hours over the originally scheduled ten hours. =)
I do need an additional player, but I am quite satisfied with how things went.
