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terryclothToday was the D+D game over at Tom's place, and sure enough I was elected to DM the first game by default. I warned the party that all I had to run was a module with a somewhat shaky hook, but some of them (Erik and Michelle) decided to be difficult anyway. Fortunately, with enough railroading, I managed to funnel them into the adventure against their will, and once they were in the dungeon, well, it was a dungeon.
The background story, such as it is, is that our characters are freelancers working for the 'council of guilds', and sometimes taking on their own jobs between assignments. This session we had Albinus the mage, Sierra the witch, Fielle the archer, Alaric the not-really-a-bladesinger-yet, Burnam the barbarian, and Tachi the druid.
Their mission was simple -- meet an overly paranoid and melodramatic ambassador in the graveyard, act suitably covert, and receive a package. Of course, when they found the ambassador, he was dead, and they found themselves surrounded by guards attracted by his death-scream, who insisted that they had killed him despite copious evidence that this was not so (the acid burns, the worms everywhere, the trail of slime leading into the crypt...).
After failing to charm the guards, failing to bribe them, and deciding not to just kill them (well, Alaric stopped Burnam from killing them) the party was arrested (except for possibly Fielle, who may have been hiding), but was freed an hour later when their superior used his influence. He told them to find the real killer and retrieve the package before morning, so that he wouldn't have to explain this whole fiasco to *his* boss.
So into the crypt they went. It was in bad shape -- broken furniture, rotting food, mildewed books... apparently, the area under the crypt connected to the area under the big abandoned church to some forgotten demigod.
All seemed quiet until they opened a door and were assaulted by five howling skeletons. Burnem charged into the room, but everyone else tried to snipe from the doorway, and were quite surprised when the skeletons closed and barred the door in front of them, leaving Burnem to fight them alone. Now, this was something that Burnem could have easily done, but Albinus used a Knock spell to open the door back up, and so the skeletons were killed even more easily.
Sierra decided to traipse down the corridor past the skeletons, and narrowly avoided falling into a pit lined with rusty swords. As she was listening at the door at the far end of the hallway, Burnem spotted a concealed door and immediately opened it, letting out a loud screech. As Sierra heard something stir beyond the door, a carrion crawler appeared!
Burnem and Alaric killed the carrion crawler before it could do anything, and Sierra's door opened, revealing a bandit... then closed again, the bandit screaming for help against the party of adventurers. Sierra opened the door and paralyzed him, and no help was forthcoming as he was tied up.
The party looted his treasure chest (using the standard barbarian lockpicking method), and was just starting to torture him when his friends finally arrived, only to get taken out by a sleep spell and a single arrow. Tachi (appearing to be a dwarf) grossed out the rest of the party by delivering a coup-de-grace to the leader with his teeth. And swallowing, to be consistent with his 'eat what you kill' policy of proper druidic respect for the natural order.
Albinus decided to investigate the fake painted continuation of a short dead-end corridor, and got stuck in a nasty trap that could have killed him, but the party managed to lift the stone slab up enough for him to scuttle out.
Tachi was set to watch the prisoners, and the party headed south to examine a statue. As they approached, it bellowed out a loud, smarmy greeting... repeatedly, as they approached and retreated. Eventually they went past it, and were jumped by the well-warned wormwraith.
The wormwraith wasn't much of a challenge, though -- it attacked quickly with flailing acidic tentacles and longswords, but was easily cut down. The party took some of its component worms as evidence, and found their package resting in its sarcophagus. Mission accomplished.
But... there was still some of the dungeon they hadn't searched, so they explored the rest and killed some ghouls.
By selling the stolen goods from the bandits and personal artifacts looted by the dead from the ghouls, they made a couple hundred gold each, and the worms and other evidence convinced the guards that the real killer had been found. The ambassador remained dead, but death by monster was unlikely to cause a serious incident.
Who knows what's in store for them next?
Michelle and I do not get along very well as a player/GM pair... fortunately, I won't have to GM for her often. I fear the time when it comes around to her turn to GM, though, since she somehow still doesn't know the rules despite having been a member of our group for more than two years.
Note that lack of rules knowledge was not a factor in the argument, it was more of a 'You didn't listen to anything I say!' 'Don't say it to my back while I'm talking to someone else and expect me to hear it!' thing sparked by me offhandedly saying, 'oh, she was captured too' when she asked if the guards had spotted her. There were metaphorical claws out, but I doubt it'll come to anything serious.
The background story, such as it is, is that our characters are freelancers working for the 'council of guilds', and sometimes taking on their own jobs between assignments. This session we had Albinus the mage, Sierra the witch, Fielle the archer, Alaric the not-really-a-bladesinger-yet, Burnam the barbarian, and Tachi the druid.
Their mission was simple -- meet an overly paranoid and melodramatic ambassador in the graveyard, act suitably covert, and receive a package. Of course, when they found the ambassador, he was dead, and they found themselves surrounded by guards attracted by his death-scream, who insisted that they had killed him despite copious evidence that this was not so (the acid burns, the worms everywhere, the trail of slime leading into the crypt...).
After failing to charm the guards, failing to bribe them, and deciding not to just kill them (well, Alaric stopped Burnam from killing them) the party was arrested (except for possibly Fielle, who may have been hiding), but was freed an hour later when their superior used his influence. He told them to find the real killer and retrieve the package before morning, so that he wouldn't have to explain this whole fiasco to *his* boss.
So into the crypt they went. It was in bad shape -- broken furniture, rotting food, mildewed books... apparently, the area under the crypt connected to the area under the big abandoned church to some forgotten demigod.
All seemed quiet until they opened a door and were assaulted by five howling skeletons. Burnem charged into the room, but everyone else tried to snipe from the doorway, and were quite surprised when the skeletons closed and barred the door in front of them, leaving Burnem to fight them alone. Now, this was something that Burnem could have easily done, but Albinus used a Knock spell to open the door back up, and so the skeletons were killed even more easily.
Sierra decided to traipse down the corridor past the skeletons, and narrowly avoided falling into a pit lined with rusty swords. As she was listening at the door at the far end of the hallway, Burnem spotted a concealed door and immediately opened it, letting out a loud screech. As Sierra heard something stir beyond the door, a carrion crawler appeared!
Burnem and Alaric killed the carrion crawler before it could do anything, and Sierra's door opened, revealing a bandit... then closed again, the bandit screaming for help against the party of adventurers. Sierra opened the door and paralyzed him, and no help was forthcoming as he was tied up.
The party looted his treasure chest (using the standard barbarian lockpicking method), and was just starting to torture him when his friends finally arrived, only to get taken out by a sleep spell and a single arrow. Tachi (appearing to be a dwarf) grossed out the rest of the party by delivering a coup-de-grace to the leader with his teeth. And swallowing, to be consistent with his 'eat what you kill' policy of proper druidic respect for the natural order.
Albinus decided to investigate the fake painted continuation of a short dead-end corridor, and got stuck in a nasty trap that could have killed him, but the party managed to lift the stone slab up enough for him to scuttle out.
Tachi was set to watch the prisoners, and the party headed south to examine a statue. As they approached, it bellowed out a loud, smarmy greeting... repeatedly, as they approached and retreated. Eventually they went past it, and were jumped by the well-warned wormwraith.
The wormwraith wasn't much of a challenge, though -- it attacked quickly with flailing acidic tentacles and longswords, but was easily cut down. The party took some of its component worms as evidence, and found their package resting in its sarcophagus. Mission accomplished.
But... there was still some of the dungeon they hadn't searched, so they explored the rest and killed some ghouls.
By selling the stolen goods from the bandits and personal artifacts looted by the dead from the ghouls, they made a couple hundred gold each, and the worms and other evidence convinced the guards that the real killer had been found. The ambassador remained dead, but death by monster was unlikely to cause a serious incident.
Who knows what's in store for them next?
Michelle and I do not get along very well as a player/GM pair... fortunately, I won't have to GM for her often. I fear the time when it comes around to her turn to GM, though, since she somehow still doesn't know the rules despite having been a member of our group for more than two years.
Note that lack of rules knowledge was not a factor in the argument, it was more of a 'You didn't listen to anything I say!' 'Don't say it to my back while I'm talking to someone else and expect me to hear it!' thing sparked by me offhandedly saying, 'oh, she was captured too' when she asked if the guards had spotted her. There were metaphorical claws out, but I doubt it'll come to anything serious.
