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Post by Meph on Feb 2, 2015 14:57:03 GMT
My group has always been big with taking a picture or two of our gaming sessions but in the last couple weeks since finding this site, my players have gone nuts with pictures. They absolutely love the 2.5d and 2.5d Next systems. Prior to this we just used a Chessex mat and some markers. Our first week I brought out a single tile of a large room with multiple encounters in it and they really loved it. In the following week I made my walls for 2.5d Next and unveiled them last night. It was a HUGE hit and all the players said it was like our games moved to a whole new level with the visuals. Our group originally had 3 rotating DMs. One didn't really want to DM, one the players didn't really like, and one who used to switch on and off with me back in the day. This group has been going strong now for 2 years after almost a 20 year break from gaming entirely. Back in November the DMing role was literally thrown in my lap about an hour before game time one week so I had to scramble to come up with something. I ended up starting the group with the Spider Farm adventure from Dragonsfoot and then moved them into an 11 level "mini" mega-dungeon. It's 11 total levels but each level is small enough to be completed in one game session (about 5 hours). The adventure is free and called Dyson's Delve if anyone is interesting. My players have liked it some much I think I am going to purchase his Adventure packs. You can check out the 11 level dungeon at the link below. Its just an old fashioned dungeons crawl but it has some serious dangers in it. rpgcharacters.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/dysons-delve-deluxe.pdfIn the last 3 sessions the party has had to deal with a fighter using a Helm of Alignment change (in a party with a LG Cleric and Paladin) and that same character turned to stone by a crazed imprisoned Medusa. The prison level was abandoned of all by living stone and crystal guardians and the imprisoned Medusa. After all the warnings including the huge written warning on the door NOT to open it, they opened it and faced her. It's been great getting back to DMing. Has taken a few months to finally get myself into the swing of it but I am finding myself really adding my touches to the dungeon and making up a lot on the fly lately which is how I used to play. So enough talk, I am going to use this thread to update with my weekly pics of our session as my 2.5d & 2.5d Next systems expand. As the players descended a 40' spiral stair case down to level 7 they encountered the Evil priest they had been chasing who has stolen the helm from the church. This weeks session began where they left off on level 7 but I also had my 2.5 Next walls to bring into play. I had it setup before most of the players arrived. Suffice to say, they were dazzled! =) There was a staircase on level 7 leading back up to a separate section of level 6 which was the abandoned prison wing. To my amazement as soon as I laid out the main hall one of the players pulled out the "treasure" map from a few weeks before and started to piece it together. I really thought they would miss it entirely. The have to pass through a locked steel door to a chamber with 2 stone guardians who immedately attack them as they approach the prison door. Written on the door is a warning not to open it. The map also had a warning for the room. Can you guess what they did? I kept her to the back of the room in the shadows and had her parlay with them trying to draw them in. Of course the fighter with his altered alignment decided to rush right in. As soon as he was in range she showed herself, gazed, and he failed. They left the stone fighter behind as they continued to the area on the treasure map marked as the old wizards chambers. The chambers are guarded by 3 crystal guardians and a trapped explosive wardrobe, but the room is stripped of anything of value. They do find the secret door leading to his stash which includes the other helm stolen from the church. So they have a way to return the fighter, they just need to figure out how to return him to flesh. Btw, that is one of the fighters in blue just blindly opening the wardrobe setting off a 2d6 fireball in the room right after combat dropping the paladin to 0 hp and the thief to -2. Good fun. So a couple levels ago the party ran into a gelatinous cube which had an undigested staff inside it. The staff was identified as a Healing staff. I decided to make it a custom priest only item that allowed the priest to channel "spell levels" through it Cure Moderate Wounds, remove poison, paralysis, or other movement impairing effects once per day. I also gave it a greater ability to channel his full spell levels through it for a small chance to raise dead, restore levels, or turn stone to flesh but the downside is that it completely drains the priest for 3 full days and has an equal chance to destroy the staff if it succeeds. Needless to say he tried it on the fighter and failed, so at that point the party decided to leave the dungeon and get back to the city. 3 days in there, half dead, with no healing wasn't their idea of fun. I decided to give them a break and let them get back to town in one piece. They begged the church for help. I have managed to keep the party pretty poor. They are literally scrambling each time they have leveled to barely come up with enough money combined to train. They get by but have never had excess. This last 2 weeks they piled on the gold. Unfortunately the church was willing to help for a moderate donation. For a mere 10k gold they were given the opportunity to buy a wand of stone to flesh with 3 charges! After the wand and a couple characters training, the party walked away with 1800 gold combined =). The wand works out well because on the 8th level of the dungeon there will see random stone statues around the level, the results of the roaming cockatrices. I am sure those 2 charges wont last too long. So finally after returning to the dungeon they were able to restore the fighter and return his alignment. While I have given my players a lot of chances to live, they are learning quickly that death is coming if they don't play smarter. Of course they don't seem to be learning quick enough because on return they moved on to level 8 of the dungeon. They encountered 2 Ogres in the first room which they had no troubles with but then proceeded down a narrow hallway all together. The 2nd to last in line set off a floor trap hitting him and the person behind him with 3d4 darts. The party then moved into the big room on the left which was a huge dark cavern (I dont have any cave walls yet). As the party spread out to explore it they spotted a HUGE old grizzled bear. He was very old, arthritic, moving slow and VERY pissed off/hungry. The party could have easily just avoided him but one of the players charged to engage this 7HD Bear. 1d6/1d6/2d6 attacks almost made the party crap their pants. They barely survived the encounter and that was where we ended...it was Superbowl time. So hope you enjoyed the pics/summary. I am planning to update this thread regularly as we play. Hopefully next week I will have a lot more crafted stuff to show.
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Post by sgtslag on Feb 2, 2015 15:16:16 GMT
Nice. Your players are really enjoying the enhancements, and that is what really matters. Keep it up. The effort is worthwhile, especially since it is all re-usable! Cheers!
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Post by dragon722 on Feb 2, 2015 16:00:17 GMT
Simply awesome outcome and love the story....NOt to mention that this story of your game brought reminisence(?) of my old gaming group I started with. KARMA to you is on the way
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Post by DMScotty on Feb 2, 2015 17:09:43 GMT
Love what you have done with your set up...fun times.
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Post by DnDPaladin on Feb 2, 2015 20:25:25 GMT
compared to pen and pencils with dices and erasers... yeah my players dont want to go back to anything thats not 2.5d either ! one of them loved theater of the mind, but even him has to agree on the fact thats its just better to visualise with real stuff. but i combine all methods well. fighting is easy on visuals. moving around the dungeon do not really requires the visuals. so im really only doing the visuals when i need to.
nice group you have there. mine would have left the fighter behind leaving the player to create another character all together. you know, not wanting to lose precious money that can be used to gear up so that kind of thing do not happen. they'd say it was his choice and failed. though one or two could have heart felt changes after saying so. yeah my group preffer the neutral evil style. playing good is rarely a thing in my group. players do not lke to be good. it involves too much for them.
really good story man. good times.
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Post by Hamsterglue on Feb 3, 2015 20:55:15 GMT
Great thread.
A 20year break... i bet it felt like it was just yesterday. I'm about to introduce 2.5next into our gaming group, i hope my group has the same reaction yours did.
Thanks so much for the pdf link!! mo' dungeons, mo' dungeons!!!
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Post by Meph on Feb 4, 2015 1:06:19 GMT
Hope you enjoy it. I was kinda just going on autopilot the first half of it. Wasn't really back into the swing of DMing again yet but now things are flowing well. Have been making a lot of changes to the dungeon, some on the fly, making it more my own. It was written with Basic rules so a lot of the monsters in it you have to look back for them. Robber Flies, Living Statues, White Worm, Veterans, etc. Some I changed, some I just looked up in my Basic book. Either way its a fun dungeon crawl with a lot of potential. The very bottom ends at an underground lake. Or course I plan to make that a beginning to a whole new underground campaign focused around the 22 new Duergar minis I just picked up. =)
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Post by Meph on Feb 9, 2015 15:01:26 GMT
So when we picked up this week the players were still in the large cave where they killed the Grizzled Cave Bear. They were seriously beat up and very low on healing. I did a quick inventory before the game started this week because I had some players that were lagging behind on levels. At this point everyone should be 4th level and the last 2 levels of the dungeon are meant for 5-6th level. We had 3 players at 4th level, almost 5th. The other 3 were 3rd level and some were still a couple thousand xp away. There was also a discrepancy in magic items as the Paladin and one other Fighter had none. So I decided to add some magic tailored for those 2 which would in turn give them a nice XP boost. They have really been hanging on by their teeth through this entire dungeon and I find myself pulling punches a couple times every night. I roll my dice openly so there is no fudging in that respect but I may tone down an encounter if it looks like it will go badly. I know some people don't believe in that but my players told me last night that they are loving the direction our games have gone, so I must be doing something right. I don't know if I mentioned it before but this party is really unbalanced. We have 3 Fighters, a Paladin, a Thief, and a Cleric. So in typical Fighter fashion they decide to push forward with only 2 heals left and a couple of Greater Healing potions that they have been carting around for a couple months. In the cave they had the option to drop off the ledge into the large cavern below where they could faintly hear dripping water or they could go back into the main section of the dungeon. After the encounter with the Bear they decided to go back into the dungeon. They decide to check out the first room. As usual the Thief checks the door for traps and to see if its locked. He doesn't listen for noises, he never listens for noises. Tells the party that the door is clear and one of the Fighters opens it up to hear a growling noise. He decides to step in and peek around the room. They came upon the other half of the Ogre guard contingent from the entrance in their post along with their Hellhound. Of course the Ogres heard the Thief fumbling with the door and were waiting for the party. The Fighter is surprised and one Ogre grabs him, hurling him into the room where the other 2 Ogre pummel him. The next fighter rushes in to immediately run into the Hellhound who breathes fire on him. All hell breaks loose, the cleric is rushing in to use one of his heals on the first Fighter. The Thief in his usual non-thief fashion rush right in to face and Ogre toe to toe. (Really, someone needs to show him how to play a thief) They manage to win the encounter barely suffering a lot of wounds. The party is really messed up. I am completely amazed and baffled as the Cleric asks to barricade themselves in the room to rest and heal, but the Fighters say they should move on. After the melee in the room they hear some shouts for help down the hall and rush to see what it is. They find a Dwarf and a Human locked in a cage, no weapons, no armor. The question them and find out they are the last 2 members of an adventuring party that fell to the Ogres. They locked them in here and don't know what happened to the rest. The party decides to free them and give them an extra dagger and hammer that they had. They proceed down the hall and find 2 doors. They check the door on the left which leads to a set of stairs leading down. They decide to close that door back up and spike it shut the best they can. The open the other door to find a room that is dripping with water. There are some kind of shrooms growing in the corner and the southern floor and wall are covered with a nasty yellow mold. So true to his "dumb" warrior form, the same fighter that got himself turned to stone decides to go poke at the mold. Releases a cloud of spores 10'x10'. He was the only one in the section luckily and he made his save vs. poison or die! The party decides that the room just isn't worth it so heads back up to the end of the hall and checks the door to the north. It opens to a natural cavern sloping down similar to the cave on the other side where the bear was. They decide to go exploring in. The 2 npcs that they picked up agree to carry torches since they have no armor and weak weapons. The move the party in and 2 of the fighters move ahead without a light source hoping that the Elf Fighter might be able to see some heat signatures in the caves. He doesn't see any large sources but he does see a few small things on the floor of the cave up ahead and the cave stinks. Both fighters fail their int checks and neither notice the large pile of crap they walked through. They end up calling the rest of the party forward and they start pressing forward. As they pass by an alcove on the right they hear a loud screech to their right followed buy one far to their left and one ahead of them. They quickly take a defensive stance as they are flanked by 3 Owlbears! (I don't have any Owlbear minis yet). It is a REALLY rough fight and the players end up using both of their Greater Healing Potions and the last Cleric heal. The main fighter ended up getting hugged and took some significant damage. After they encounter the party decided to split into 3 groups with light sources and search the cave. Their insistence to split up WILL get them all killed one day. So as the encounter was written there was a dead half eaten Elf in the cave that the Owlbears were feeding on. The Paladin found that next and searched it. The Elf was chewed up, his leather armor destroyed but she found a nice Long Sword partially under the corpse and some Owlbear poo. That gets her started because she has no magic at all and between the xp for the night and xp for the sword once identified it should put her into 4th level. One of the other Fighter checked the alcove in the North and found some natural stairs leading down to another large cavern which was dimly lit with a blue bioluminescent light. Just like the Cave bear encounter, the party was really afraid to explore the remainder of that cave so they headed back into the main dungeon section and opened the Southern door at the end of the hall. They couldn't open the lock so one if the Fighters decides to kick it in. Inside, the room was filled with Shriekers that immediately started shrieking. They party kinda panicked at this point and didn't really know what to do. At a situation like this I love to start a slow countdown quietly. Usually one or two will notice me doing and realize that they need to act fast. The party just seemed so helpless. They haven't stopped to rest, they were completely drained of heals and they were very close to death. I gave the party a little extra time because I knew this could end in a wipe if I played it like intended. They party decided to back down the hall near the Ogre room and wait for the inevitable. The Shrieker's were an early warning system for the group of 7 Troglodytes that serve the Black Dragon on the lower levels. Of course the Troglodytes grab their spears to investigate (Another one of my "take it easy on the players" decisions. 1 Spear attack vs 3 natural attacks). The Troglodytes come through the Shrieker's to see the door kicked open. They also see the door to the cavern open so 4 of them head into the cave and 3 head down the hall (my next gift to the players). They end up fighting the 3 and winning. Finally the players decide to move back into the Ogre room, barricade the door, and rest. I decide to give them a break and allow them to rest a couple days barricaded in there. Realistically those Trogs would be all over them but hey, rolling new characters over a couple Trogs just isn't that glamorous. They live to fight another day. After resting and healing up best they could they decide to try and burn the mold in the southern section. One warrior soaks a rag to cover his face, throws a vial of oil on the mold near the southeast door followed by a torch, and then closes the door. It begins to smoke like crazy which in turn alerts the remaining 4 Trogs on the other side of the door. They players hear the Shriekers and turn to engage. The fighter and cleric, faces bound with wet rags decide to wait a couple rounds and then attempt to head through the door south. They rush through the south and come up from behind the Trogs to attack them from behind. The players easily win this encounter and finally have some luck on their side. They search the Trog's quarters and find a chest of silver. In the corner of the room is a fine Quarterstaff covered in Yellow Mold. =) One of the Fighters with no magic happens to be specialized in the Quarterstaff. The Cleric uses his herbalism proficiency and he is able to figure that since mold thrives on warm damp climates, it's probably adversely affected by light. Of course Continual Light (which renders it dormant for 2-6 turns) never occured to them. They decided to soak a cloak to keep the spores down and throw it over the staff. They wrapped it tightly and decided they will take it out with them and see what they can do. They decided to head back and finish exploring that cave now that they are in better health. The follow it through the Owlbear area back to the ledge with the Cave Bear. In that last section there is a bit of water dripping off the walls leading to a large pool of water on the cave floor. Most of the players are cautiously searching the area while the one fighter (Stone/Mold guy) proceeds to walk up and start washing himself up in the pond. As soon as he disturbs the water it alerts the 9 Troglodyte Zombies in the bottom of the pool. Troglodytes used to be ritually drowned in this pool. They are bloated and pale, but it take 3 turns and a few outright hints before they finally put it together. The Cleric is able to turn 7 of them which makes the encounter trivial at that point. The night was winding down but the players wanted to check out the cave below them with the blue bioluminescent lighting. They make their way down there. There are glowing mushrooms in the gave giving a dim glow to the entire cavern. There are some large piles of rocks and shrooms so they split up again to start searching the cave. They have intruded in the lair of a White Worm (Caecilia) that immediately moves to attack. It moves right for the closest player which happens to be the Thief. It bites the Thief once and then the players engage. They had a really good round and much to my dismay they almost killed it in the first round. The one downside to a lot of Fighters is they can potentially do a LOT of damage fast if they roll well. Fortunately for me on the next round I rolled a natural 19. On a 19 or 20 the Caecilia swallows up to a horse sized creature whole. Down goes the Thief. That left him with 6 hit points left and the Worm does an automatic 1d8 to swallowed victims. Luckily for the Thief the players proceeded to kill it that round. They loved the encounter, mainly because of the custom mini but I was disappointed at how easily they killed it. I guess I underestimated their ability. That is where we left it for the night. Next week should be a doozy. Lets just say their Wand with 2 remaining charges of Stone to Flesh will come in handy. Next week will also bring them back with the Royal Court of Wererats that they had a run-in with earlier. The best part of the dungeon should be the 4 sword wielding Bone Guardian. =) Should be fun.
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Post by SpielMeisterKev! on Feb 9, 2015 16:00:10 GMT
Howdy,
Swallowed whole! I don't care where you're from...that's gotta hurt!
Kev!
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Post by DnDPaladin on Feb 9, 2015 21:02:07 GMT
never underestimate the power of no fudging dices, it makes for quite random encounters. compared to you, my players are always resting. i swear, once the warlock is out, they always take a full rest. im about to hit them in their rest just to show them they shouldn't rest that often. we have to save a person asap... lets take a full rest in between the run.
want to know the fun i had though... the warlock strat not working as intended due to the doppleganger having read thought. with a bugbear keeping a spike of his morning star near the throat of a dwarf that is unconscious and already at 0. they surrendered with the warlock telepthy telling other players we'll fuck him from inside the room when we get closer. and the dopple ganger reading the thought and telling the bugbear they dont intend to surrender at all. warlock burst into action. gets the hostage killed and then cry out. we got 10 days to ressurect him. i swear i did not do all that trouble just to see him fucking die !!!
last session was so fun ! yours look like a lot of fun as well, i love hearing those tales. and kudos to rolling as is everytime. i think it makes for quite random shit to happen. but when epic shit does happen, players and DM alike are happy. cant wait to read the next part.
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Post by Meph on Feb 9, 2015 22:41:49 GMT
Crap, I completely forgot to post one major detail until DndPaladin mentioned a Doppleganger. The Human and Dwarf that they rescued are actually Dopplegangers. They are sticking with the party and the plan is for them to finally reveal themselves at the most inopportune time. When they finally did camp one of the fighters on watch managed to catch a glimpse of some sort of "shimmer" happen with the Dwarf. They questioned him, he played dumb. They immediately turned to the Paladin to detect evil, but since dopplegangers are neutral she detected nothing. They are remaining cautious and even asked the Human if he knew what was up with the Dwarf. This should be fun. More about that next week I think.
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Post by Meph on Feb 16, 2015 13:03:07 GMT
Over the last week I have been pouring over the remaining couple levels of the dungeon. I was really concerned that my players weren't going to be able to handle it. They were an average level of 4 and the last two levels were designed for 5-6. Now normally this wouldn't be a problem because I would just find a way to artificially block their progress requiring some side mission to continue on, in the process giving them the needed xp to level them up some. Unfortunately the other DM is chomping at the bit to get back to his campaign and after 4 1/2 months of every weekend I am ready for a break, so I just decided to revise the whole bottom of the dungeon. The original plan was for the PCs to fight a Black Dragon at the bottom of the dungeon but I really didn't to have to scale down the encounter so much as to be doable to a level 5 group, and my intention isn't to wipe the party.....so I buffed the hell out of the dragon =) I know it doesn't make sense but the players have spent this dungeon believing that they were going to kill a dragon, and if they are smart they will quickly realize that they have seriously overestimated their abilities. We picked up with the players having just killed the Caecilia. They end up searching the main cavern and find that there is a path continuing down to level 10 of the dungeon. They decide to go back up to level and and over to the other stairs leading to level 9 before progressing further down. As soon as they descent the stairs they come into a 2 tiered chamber. The players are up top with a small stair case leading down, and then the room exits in 3 directions. In that first room are 4 stone "statues". There is a large scorpion, a troglodyte, and 2 humans all in various combat poses, all stone. Of course after facing a Medusa, the players are a bit freaking out at this point. The players choose to take the hall on the right and starting moving more cautiously than I have ever seen. They search the door on the left and are immediately surprised to find a snarling Owlbear backed into the corner of the room. Of course their surprise turns to relief when they realize that the Owlbear appears to be backing away in fear and turned to stone. A quick search of the room reveals that behind the Owlbear is another room. The players are able to move the Owlbear and search the room to find 2 nests and 2 long dead Cockatrice. This entire section of this level was originally the home to the Medusa who was imprisoned above and her pet Cockatrices. The Owlbear had trapped 2 of the Cockatrice in that room but himself got ambushed from behind by a 3rd. Unfortunately for the other 2 they ended up starving to death in there. As they players searched the room they found 3 Cockatrice eggs in one nest. Now none of the characters have ever seen a cockatrice and as such, without saying, were expected to play as such. 2 of my players have the Appraising non-weapon proficiency and both appraised the eggs. Both failed their checks and appraised them as worthless. Thus began my issue with the thief in my party. I believe I may have mentioned him before in this thread or maybe another but this guy really gets to me and the other players. After having failed his appraisal and believing the eggs to be worthless, he insists that he is going to take one anyways because "it might be worth something". This is the same guy blurting out at the table, in character, that they are cockatrice as soon as I describe the skeletal remains. Fortunately a couple of the other players are constantly trying to keep this guy in check so I don't have to. That type of play just irritates me. They move to continue exploring and leave the other 2 eggs in the nest. The thief takes the one egg and puts it in his nice warm, cozy backpack They proceed down the hall and around the corner into an open southern room. The thief with no light source, only infravision decides that he is taking point. 2 fighters are behind him, one with a light source. No some of the halls in this section of dungeon are only 5 feet wide. We had 7 players this week along with the 2 dopplegangers that were disguised as a human and dwarf. I told the players the way they kept stacking up that there was limited mobility and if they got into a battle in tight quarters they were bottlenecking themselves. They didn't listen and not 5 minutes later it became a reality. The thief and 2 fighters enter the room with the remained of the party filling in behind them. As soon as they turn the corner the thief sees a quick blur of heat advancing at him. The fighter behind him with the torch immediately sees 2 cockatrice move to attack. Now this is where I begin to get really annoyed with this thief. The players end up defeating the cockatrice and nobody is turned to stone. The one fighter is wearing splint and has an Ac of -1 so I decide the cockatrice needs a natural 18 or higher to actually hit bare skin. The thief on the other hand is wearing leather which provides no protection at all from the cockatrices petrification. The fighter never actually gets hit in the combat, the thief does twice. Once with a natural 20 which we play as critical hits incurring double damage. The thief ends up dropping to 0 hp but makes both of his saves and isn't petrified. The other 2 fighters kill the cockatrices. The annoying part was the thiefs reaction. The second he saw them he declares that he is "averting his eyes" and turns to run. Of course after my warning about stacking up like they were in the halls and doorways he isn't able to go anywhere. He gets mad at me as if I somehow put him in this position. Next he continues with the "averting his eyes". The other players start giving him crap about playing impartial and how his character wouldn't act that way about a couple of oversized chickens, but he just tells them he doesn't care and continues. This guy really is a bad player. The move on down the hall that opens into a wider room with a southern door and an eastern door. The east door is guarded by a 6' tall 4 armed bone guardian. He is made up of a patchwork of different types of bones and wields 4 long swords. He does nothing when the players enter but one fighter decides to throw a dagger at it, immediately causing the guardian to attack the party. The guardian is a minor bone golem created by the Wererats which occupy the other half of this level to keep the cockatrices at bay and away from them. They players have a pretty decent fight with this guardian but win. They proceed through the door into a large open hall with large curtains at each end. The end closest to them is a very fine looking curtain, the opposite end is tattered rags. As they enter they are immediately confronted by 3 armed Wererats who order them to leave. The state that the players are trespassing and give them the chance to leave. The curtain behind them opens and 2 more, finely dressed and armed wererats come out. Much to my dismay the players for the first time start to actually think before they act and they back out of the room. They check the southern door to find the wererat's food stores and a bone pile for "golem repair". Of course the wererat guards follow them out and order them to leave which they do. Of course our adventurers get a whiff of courage and decide to rush back in the room to fight. They end up fighting the 3 guards and 2 finely dressed wererats and towards the end of the fight the ragged curtain opens as 2 more wererats rush out. Both are dressed in tattered clothing and both move to backstab the finely dressed rats, which now has my players all twisted. This is where I throw this whole wrench in this dungeon for them. They start talking to these wererats and find out the stairs up and out of this room leads to the royal chambers. The King, Queen, Prince, High Priest, Adviser, and 3 royal guards reside above. At the mention of the adviser the "human" npc who is with them starts to question the rats about this adviser. Of course the players that rescued the captured human and dwarf start to question them about who they really are and who the adviser is. At this point the 2 dopplegangers decide their best chance of survival is sticking with the party so they show their true form. Now the players are a bit freaked out as they stand in this room with 2 wererats and 2 dopplegangers, all of which appear to NOT want to kill them. THis is where all the portions of this dungeon start to come together for the players. This dungeon is called Dalnir's Folly. Dalnir was a great wizard and his tower sat above this dungeon. Stories say that Dalnir started excavating below his tower to create a dungeon to conduct his experiments and they got out of control. Monsters escaped his dungeon and in the battle to regain control the tower was destroyed, Dalnir was killed, and the dungeon eventually sealed. That has been the accepted story. Of course the dopplegangers tell them a different story. Dalnir created a great magical portal to other worlds at the bottom of his dungeon. To hide his creation from the rest of the world he destroyed his tower and created this story. Their "order" has been searching for this portal for generations and have finally gotten this close. They came with a small raiding party but ended up ambushed by Ogres. Most of them died except for 3. Their goal was to reach the Rat King and search for information about the portal and more importantly the crystal needed to operate the portal. The 2 with the party ended up captured by the Ogres and the 3rd escaped and hopefully made it down here to the Rat King. The 2 Wererats explain that they are from the disgraced Poeress family. They have been slaves to the Royal family for generations. The rats they killed were from the Noble Durin family. The wererats have been the guardians of the portal for generations until recently. The great Black Dragon Dulwin moved in to the lower level of the dungeon. He brought with him a small army of Troglodytes and Ogres. They killed off the rats and the Royal family, guards, the Durins and Poeress are the only remaining wererats alive. When the PCs attacked and were winning the Poeress saw their chance to finally get themselves free from the King and away from this dungeon that has been their prison. The players question the rats and they give them a description of the Royal Hall above. The player devise a plan for the 2 dopplegangers to change into rats and alone with the Poeress family to escort them up the the Royal hall. The dopplegangers will enter the Advisers quarters and see if the other doppleganger made it, or else kill the adviser. The thief will take a potion of invisibility and post just outside the kings door. Half the party will move to intercept the High Priest immediately and the other half will post outside the Kings chamber ready to fight. Now I am not used to my players actually planning anything out like this, they usually just run in half cocked and barely live. I decided to NOT alter the makeup of the Royal Hall and let them go through with their plan, which actually works quite well. Our priest immediately moves in to cast hold person on the Rat priest. He fails his save and that encounter is trivial. The King, Queen, and Prince move out to fight. It is a decent fight but nothing that the players and allies can't easily handle. The thief's job was to backstab the King as he left his chamber. He was already invisible so that was a plus. His only weapon was a long sword which of course he can't backstab with. Somehow at level 4 he didn't know this. Remember this is only the 2nd time he has ever tried. Of course a player gives him a Silver dagger which we find out he isn't proficient in!! Thief not proficient in any weapon he can backstab with. Anyways, he is going to try. +4 to backstab to counteract the non-proficient penalty. Regardless he fails his move silently and gets a rear attack instead of a backstab. So the players finish that up and the Adviser proceeds to give them more to this story. Dulwin the Black Dragon's horde has recently started to seriously diminish. They don't know where it's going but he is spending his fortunes on something. He also recently took a mate but he got so pissed off at her that he killed her. Since then he has been in an exceptionally foul mood and has been out of his lair a lot with a large raiding group of Troglodytes. Each time he has returned with a Magic User as prison but within a few days he has killed the Magic User. He knows that Dulwin is in possession of the crystal needed to power the portal. He is currently out of his lair but it is guarded by Troglodytes. Below his lair is a large underground lake approximately 1 league across. At the other end of the lake there is a cave with the portal built into the rock wall. If they want to try to recover the crystal, now is the time to do it since he is away. Of course the Dopplegangers are going with them since this has been their life's mission. The 2 Wererats from the Poeress family are going with them because they need help getting out. This is where the players left off. Next week will be my final DM session for a while. The players have already been told to bring their characters for the other campaign because next week they either complete this dungeon and reach the portal or they die, either way we are switching campaigns. I haven't yet decided if I am going to make a large custom tile for the Dragon's lair or not. All will not go as they plan but if they try and fight Dulwin, they will die. They will have the opportunity to escape so I am leaving this all in their hands.
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Post by DnDPaladin on Feb 16, 2015 20:38:36 GMT
good story and nice work. i am forced to do the same with my friday group. they left the old quest line because they feared death. now they are back to it. but my problem was tha the dungeon was made for them between level 3-5 and they are now level 5 about to go 6. so i have to redo the whole second level for it to be more challenging. for now im simply adding more enemies to the upper floor.
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Post by SpielMeisterKev! on Feb 17, 2015 0:05:57 GMT
Howdy,
An EXALT BUTTON!!! worthy telling, my friend!
Kev!
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Post by Meph on Feb 24, 2015 2:03:13 GMT
Well our party began their final descent to the bottom of the dungeon looking for some crystal they have been told is needed to operate a magical portal. They really don't know too much about it other than the story they have gotten from the dopplegangers. The head down to the 10th level into the caves. They notice a bunch of loose rocks piled up in one section of the caves. The Dwarf in the part investigates it to find a pressure plate under the rocks set to trigger a cave in. The players decide to take the other path which leads them right to a Minotaur waiting to ambush them. They really don't have too much trouble with the Minotaur himself. They find that the Minotaur had been tending to two Tautera Lizards. The Troglodytes in the lower part of the dungeon use these lizards as pack animals. The part decides to attack the two lizards and end up taking a bit of damage. After the lizards they follow the cave downward to the 11th level of the dungeon where it opens up to a large underground lake. Docked near them is a large barge of sorts. The cave itself curves around to two open passageways. The players head to the first entry where they spot a couple of dead, partially dismembered humans laying in a pile. There are 2 rooms leading off that. They decide to check out the door on the right and manage to quietly sneak in and find 4 Ogres cooking up a pot of Halfling soup. Another Ogre is in the room beyond that. The party moves back to the main room and decide to generate some noise to draw the Ogres into the larger room. Quite the fight ensues. They draw out the first 4 and the players rolls start going badly. The commotion draws out the 5th Ogre who runs right into the Thief who had just attempted to backstab the others. The noise also alerted a couple of Troglodytes that were finishing cleaning out the chambers of the Troglodyte King who has vacated the dungeon. One of the Wererats dies in this battle and the players get busted up badly. The investigate and find out the the Troglodytes have been moving out of the dungeon but they have no idea why yet. THe players wisely decide to rest and heal up before going on. They head up the other path and the cave leads back upwards and opens into a giant cavern. About 70 feet up is a large opening to the outside. There is a rank odor sulfuric odor in the air and lots of pools of acidic goo around the cave. Spread through out the lair they see lots of twinkles of coins but most of them have been removed. There are two troglodytes in the center of the cave filling chests and crates with the remainder of the treasure. Near the troglodytes is a dead black dragon! The players decide to spread out across the cave staying hidden as much as possible and advancing on the Troglodytes. Just as they near the troglodytes, one of the fighters asks another to boost him onto the raised section in front of him. As he does he hears 2 loud screeches from either side of him as 2 Black Dragon hatchlings notice him and move in to kill! Both hatchling utilize 2 very minor acid breaths each on the helpless party below them sending them fleeing in different directions and then both fly straight to the center platform to tag team the fighter. One fighter below lands a great spear throw, a few daggers are thrown and hit, and the fighter that is getting mauled lands a nice critical hit. The end up killing both hatchlings and the troglodytes. The party decides to start searching the lair. In the treasure they are transporting one of the clerics finds what he thinks is the Blue Crystal they were looking for. They also find Dalnir's Journal with some odd symbol embossed on the front of it. Others are busy searching the Troglodytes and a few are checking out the larger dead dragon. The dead dragon appears to be the "mate" that they heard Dulwin, the Black killed in anger. As they are preoccupied searching the cave, only 2 of the part hear the flapping of large wings and Dulwin, the Black descends on the party. He lands and immediately start chuckling at the party thinking he is going to play with them. The party tries to move to cover as Dulwin notices the 2 dead hatchlings. He immediately goes into a rage at which point the cleric yells for everyone to run! Dulwin breaths acid at the closest which happens to be the 3 dopplegangers, immediately stripping the flesh from their bones. At that point the party runs for their lives. They all manage to make it out but the thief almost bit it thinking he could just sneak his way out. As they ran out of the main cave they heard Dulwin go into a mad rage. They have most definitely not seen the last of him. They run for the boat and immediately start rowing. They know the portal is supposedly 1 league across. The thief gets up in the crows nest to discover a covered lantern on top that is powered by a continual light spell. Of course I wasn't going to allow them to escape that easily so enter the Giant Octopus. The battle scared the crap out of them but wasn't as bad as they thought. They did all remove their armor before pushing off with the boat so it made hitting them a little easier but the Octopus only managed to wrap up the paladin and she was able to sever the tentacle the next round. It served it's purpose though and put them all on edge. I didn't get a picture of the final part which was the portal. They arrived at the portal and after reading through Dalnir's Journal some they realized operating the portal is a complex procedure. Multiple crystals are needed to pinpoint your location. The one they have currently will activate the portal but the can't control the destination. In the end, my group of players that has thrown caution to the wind at every opportunity decided to NOT go through the portal because they were scared. I had it planned that they were going to go through the portal and basically land right in the middle of some frozen wasteland, outside some Ice Orc outpost in the midst of a battle between Ice Orcs and Frost Giants. And that is where the campaign was going to fade to black leaving the players contemplating their fate for the next 4 months or so. Instead, the wimps up and decided they want to row back across the lake, trek back up through the dungeon and back to town to learn what they can about this portal. I was annoyed but what are you going to do. Now I have months to decide what I want to do with them. Of course once out of the dungeon they have a 3 day trek through the swamp and there is one very large, very angry Black Dragon looking for them. So I guess we will see in a few months. For those that didn't see my other thread, this is the portal. There are 9 different colors for 9 different portals across the world. I am thinking there may also be other destinations also if 2 different colored crystals are combined. I have lots of time to work that out. So that will be my last update for this campaign for a while. I might start another thread for my co-dm's campaign since he has asked me to continue crafting stuff for him to use.
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Post by SpielMeisterKev! on Feb 24, 2015 3:29:58 GMT
Howdy,
I totally would have had the octo damage the boat enough to make it unusable and trap them at the portal...
Keep up the greatness, Kev!
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Post by Alexis on Feb 24, 2015 6:03:37 GMT
I really enjoyed reading about your game sessions! Made my morning commute less boring ;-) Reading about your group reminded me of mine at some points. They also often don't think before they do something and they try to fight and kill about everyone and everything they encounter. So far they have been lucky. But since we have all just played for the first time 6 months ago there is still a lot of learning going on but I think they play their characters very well. Unfortunately we only get to play once a month. We all would love to do it more often but it's simply not possible. They haven't even played with all my crafted 2.5d next stuff yet. I can't wait to use it for the first time.
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Post by vestrivan on Feb 24, 2015 8:00:57 GMT
Love reading this! Great thread, keep us updated...
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Post by Alexis on Feb 24, 2015 19:59:30 GMT
And Meph, thanks a lot for posting the link to the adventure you're using. I just downloaded the pdf and I'm eventually going to use it in some way after adjusting everything to my taste. I liked reading about your game so much, I just had to have it ^^ Since I'm just starting out as a DM I'm always happy for some adventure inspiration and coming up with my own adventures or dungeons is very time consuming, even though I enjoy doing it a lot.
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Post by michka on Feb 26, 2015 7:38:13 GMT
I just took the time to read this entire thread, and it was wonderful. (I so miss running a Basic D&D/Labyrinth Lord style game.) Your crafting looks fantastic. I particularly liked the White Worm and the Octopus.
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