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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Agemegos" data-source="post: 1515253" data-attributes="member: 18377">It was 1981, or maybe late in 1980. I was in Year 11 or Year 12: what I think Americans call a junior or senior at high school. Ian Grojnowski had run a game before, but it degenerated into a bit of a schmozzle. I tried to do it right.I sketched a dungeon that consisted of the ruins of a dwarvish mine and underground city, now occupied by monsters. Over the top I put a town, run by four 'name level' evil retired adventurers, who knew that an important piece of treasure (the crown jewels of a fallen dwarvish kingdom) were in the bottom of the dungeon, and who didn't feel themselves up to getting it out. they were running businesses catering to young adventurers who came to cut their teeth on this dungeon, and using the youngsters as unwitting cannon-fodder in their long slow assault in the place. I calculated that a higher-level party had gone through a few hours ahead of the PCs, and got wiped out, but made a huge dent in the monsters, almost killing the BEM inthe basement. I placed their corpses, items, map, and notes appropriately.Bill Plant, Ian Grojnowski, and Paul Tritter came to my place on Saturday afternoon to play. Bill generated a cleric, Ian a Magic-User, and Paul a fighter (1st level, and we rolled 3d6 for each attribute in order). They paid their entry fees to the concessionaire at the entrance to the dungeon. They agreed to hand over 25% of any loot to the concessionaire when they departed. They went in. They were disconcerted to find that the top two levels have been picked clean. They reluctantly went down to the third level, and easily beat up some badly-wounded monsters. They found the dead thief of the preceding party, his notes, and the map. Using these, they avoided the intact areas of the fourth and fifth levels, went along the path that the earlier party had cleared ahead of them. They nearly freaked when they met the giant acid-spitting snail, but put it down with two arrows. They got the preceding party's items (such as survived). They realised the importance of the dwarvish crown jewels and chose not to pay 25% on those. They smuggled them out of the dungeon.Back in the town on top, they went to the jeweller's shop (run, unbeknownst to them, but a retired evil master thief) and tried to sell him the sceptre. They soon twigged that something was wrong, and fled the town, hotly pursued by the evil syndics, their militia, and a bunch of monsters they had in their employ. To escape the cavalry they struck off the road into rough country, towards a dwarvish road that was marked on their map.Now, there happened to be a dwarvish army marching along that road. It would have confiscated the dwarvish national treasures they had, but it would have saved their bacon, and they would have got to keep many of the items of a sixth-level party. I thought the whole thing was rather Fritz Leiber.But anyway, they weren't to know about the dwarvish army. The players decided that I was being unfair. The characters threw the dwarvish treasures into a river, and then slit their wrists in protest against the unfairness of teh Universe.:sigh:</blockquote>

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