Originally posted by iserith:
Alright, so we played this last night on Roll20 in a text-based game. That's not my first choice, but that's the format for the regular Friday night HotDQ game and I left my headphone/mic elsewhere earlier in the week, so text it was. In the group was bawylie and three other players that I found via Roll20. Play took 3.75 hours. The first hour was just character introduction - a dwarf paladin, elf ranger, human monk, and half-orc barbarian - bonds, world-building, discussing the premise and some page-setting. The rest was of the time was spent with the players tackling the scenario. With voice, I figure we could have done it in half the time, so 1.5 hours and change maybe.
At the outset, the characters started by exchanging fire with the Blighters while the dwarf paladin, Hungry Hipplolyto (played by bawylie), used the rusty water in the water tower to attract the nearest five or so rust monsters to that area. They went for it which allowed the PCs to get to them easily to put a few of them down , but there was enough of them that the proximity to the tower caused it to be the first building to fall on the next round. When it fell, a couple of the rust monsters and one of the PCs were swept away by the torrent of water that followed while two of them stood their ground well. During this time, other buildings were being weakened by rust monsters while Tetanus hurled spells down at the PCs.
Soon, more Blighters fell to the PCs' assault as did a couple more rust monsters that were outside of buildings. Hungry Hippolyto bum rushed Tetanus' tower and started to climb it, dragging a rust monster corpse with him and using its antennae to rust out a hole in the bottom of the catwalk to climb through. Once a hole large enough to climb through was created, Tetanus tried to polymorph Hungry into a rust monster... but the paladin made his save, fortunately enough. By this time, the monk Shin Shan had started making his way up the tower. The pressure was on Team Bad Guy!
As two of the PCs converged on the top of the tower, there was some last ditch battling between Tetanus and one of the Blighters versus Hungry and the monk as multiple buildings fell to ruin. The half-orc barbarian Tino and the elven ranger Tyrfing took out the Roach Mother (the unique rust monster) and a couple of other rust monsters, saving one building at the last second before focusing on other rust monsters that just took down buildings in the distance. Tetanus withdrew into the tower and teleported down to his laboratory. Hungry and Shin Shan pursued him, taking on "changes" as the magic of the circle altered them.
A short-lived battle ensued between the two of them, the basilisk Lith, and Tetanus. Tetanus tried to use telekinesis to stop Shin Shan in his tracks, hoping to use his defensive magic to protect him from an attack by Hungry. But Hungry smote him twice, killing him outright and capturing the rust belt. Shin Shan finished off the basilisk. Outside, Tino and Tyrfing cleaned up the remaining rust monsters and Blighters. Gedren's Point was saved!
I thought the scenario was a lot of fun. The players established some fun bonds and backgrounds that worked well with each other. I'd definitely continue playing with that party if it were a continuous campaign. The text-based nature of it wasn't my favorite but it wasn't bad at all. The players said the time just flew by and they seemed very engaged the whole time. In the end, four buildings and the water tower were lost and one more building was down to 1 structural hit point. The barbarian was out of weapons. Everyone had taken a decent bit of damage, but not a lot, and nobody dropped. I think that if I would run this again, I'd include some townsfolk in the scene that need help, perhaps having them interacting in some way to incentivize use of the catwalks and mine carts more. Those props didn't see much use.
In any case, it was a success: We had a lot of fun together and told a memorable story in the doing!
Where did you find those pics of the Rust Monsters at??
