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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 6032341" data-attributes="member: 508">ADVENTURE 3 - THE TOMB OF CHAOSFor the third adventure, I wanted to get back to the shorter, finish-the-adventure-in-one-session format, so I went with The Tomb of Chaos, a "Cooperative Dungeon" I had  discovered, of all places, right here on EN World.  It was produced by Creative Mountain Games, and consisted of a single-level tomb with 21 encounter areas.  So another dungeon crawl, perfectly suited for the type of campaign I was running at the time.  The adventure was geared for 3rd-level PCs, but I had three 5th-level PCs - close enough, and easily adaptable.Right away, we determined that Fang was not going to be accompanying the PCs, as Jacob's real interest was in Slayer having a grown dire wolf when he hit 8th level, so he didn't want to take the risk of something happening to Fang as a pup that would preclude him from ever reaching full size as an adult.  Fair enough, I thought, but I had apparently kind of wasted my time hunting up a timber wolf miniature to represent a "puppy Fang" who, it appeared, was not to be adventuring after all.  (It all worked out, though, as a future PC ended up with a timber wolf animal companion, so the "puppy Fang" mini was eventually put to good use.)This time, we were back to playing at Dan's house, at his kitchen table, after having spent all three sessions of the previous adventure at the kitchen table at my house.  That meant an inquisitive 2-year-old Joey wanting to get into our dice and minis, but this time I had come prepared.  I had gathered up another old check box (those things are handy!), made a big label on it marked "JOEY," and filled it with 8 or 9 different plastic dinosaur and bug minis that I had accumulated.  (By this time, I was actively looking for figures I could use in the game.  I wasn't thrilled with the "blind buy" aspect of the D&D Miniatures line, so I was working on buying stuff I knew ahead of time I could use.  Tubes of bugs and dinosaurs worked well, as green caterpillars made functional carrion crawlers, spiders and scorpions would always be useful in a D&D game, and even if I wouldn't be using dinosaurs all that frequently an ankylosaurus made a useful rust monster stand-in and a digester was easily represented by a velociraptor.)  So Joey sat by me at the table happily playing with the ladybug, brontosaur, and dimetrodon while we went about our D&D business.And Dan's wife Vicki spent a bit of time watching us play as well.  She had started to take an interest in this game that her husband and son were spending so much time playing.  At the end of this adventure, the PCs were all at 6th level, and we came to a decision: starting next session, we'd have Vicki playing with us as well.By this time, Dan had purchased a 3.5 Player's Handbook for himself, so they had a copy at their house between gaming sessions.  He felt he was comfortable enough with the rules to help Vicki make up a new character at home by the time that we played again.  However, deciding that it would probably be best for her to start out as a 1st-level PC and learn the rules from the ground up, we came to a decision: we'd place these three PCs on hold, set them to the side, and start the campaign over again at 1st-level.  Then, when they'd all advanced these second-wave PCs to 6th level, we'd have them meet up with the initial PCs, and from then on each player would choose between their two PCs as to who they wanted to run each session.  (For Vicki, after she'd advanced her first PC to 6th level we'd just let her make up another 6th-level PC, so everyone would be on the same footing.  There was no other real way to get her second PC "caught up" with the rest of the group.)So here's what we ended up with: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Vicki's first PC was a half-elven druid named Feron Dru.  Vicki was definitely attracted to the spellcaster type of PC, and since nobody had run a druid yet in our campaign she wanted to give that a try.  Although I was trying to keep house rules to a minimum, I gave her half-elven PC bonus Martial Weapon Proficiency in one bow and one sword of her choice.  She chose the longbow and longsword.  Feron's animal companion was an eagle named Nocturna. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Dan's new PC was a human rogue named Rale Bodkin.  I was pleased to see that this wasn't a "joke" name like "Cal Trop" had been; maybe I could turn this campaign a little more serious over the months.  However - again based on Dan's AD&D 1st Edition heritage - at first he tended to run Rale like an AD&D thief, with "stealing from the party" as a normal bit of the day's business whenever possible.  Personality-wise, Rale was a bit of a coward, preferred to hang back in safety while the rest of the party leapt into combat, and occasionally talked like a drugged-out hippie.  Plus, he took the opportunity to hit on his wife's character whenever possible; it was frankly pretty humorous seeing Vicki roleplay Feron Dru as not the least bit interested in Rale's advances. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Jacob decided on a half-elven ranger named Chalkan, who would be taking a wolf animal companion when the time came.  He would be concentrating on the "archer" style of ranger.  When I asked if there was any family relationship between the two new half-elf PCs, I got an emphatic "no" from both Vicki and Jacob.  Okay then. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Logan's new PC was a human paladin named Akari Naruchi, although that last name didn't make it onto his character sheet and we pretty much never used it.  Logan had been studying the Japanese language, and apparently "Naruchi" meant (according to his Japanese-English dictionary, in any case) "curse-blood."  On his character sheet he put "red" for eye color, stating that there was some fiendish blood back in Akari's ancestry, far enough back that it would have no game impact.  (In other words, Akari wasn't even close to being a tiefling.)  I was surprised at this choice, and initially wasn't going to do anything with this information until I realized that of the seven PCs in this campaign thus far, this was the only bit of character backstory I had received.  So I filed it away as an interesting fact for possible inclusion later in the campaign.</li> </ul>I passed out new blank initiative cards for the players to draw their new PCs on and reveled in the fact that for the first time since 3E had come out, I was finally going to have a four-player group.  That would make it so much easier to find appropriate-level adventures!</blockquote>

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