New OOTS products from CafePress
New OOTS t-shirts, ornaments, mugs, bags, and more
Results 1 to 16 of 16
  1. - Top - End - #1
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Talakeal's Avatar

    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Location
    Denver.
    Gender
    Male

    Default Gateway to the Dreamscapes: Megadungeon Campaign Log

    Greetings everyone!

    I have been wanting to do a megadungeon ever since reading Kaveman's awesome "Cattle Driving Necromancers" campaign log on this very forum, and last year that old idea came back to me while playing Blasphemous (a metroid / dark souls hybrid).

    I have been working on and off on this dungeon for a while. I wasn't sure how I was going to handle it mechanically, or even what system to use, but more regular game was put on hiatus for a few months and so I was sort of pushed back into it early. Nobody wanted to learn a new system (or much cares for 5E D&D) so we are using my own Heart of Darkness system. Link in the signature, but everything in the log is in narrative terms so if you are familiar with traditional fantasy and can excuse a few "weird western" elements you don't need to know anything about my system or setting to enjoy it.

    Spoiler: Characters
    Show
    Feurlina
    Female Human Warrior
    Skills: Fortitude, Melee
    Feurlina suffers from a severe glandular condition that has left her with the body of a giant and the mind of a child. She is a fair blonde woman who stands almost seven and a half feet tall, the tallest person in town and the largest woman most people have ever seen, and she is strong as a bear and built sturdy as an old oak. She often doesn’t know her own strength, and likes to play rough, much to the consternation of all the parents in town. She is a ward of the church, and is fiercely loyal to Flossie, whom she considers to be her only friend.

    Flossie
    Female Human Priestess of Dionysus
    Skills: Alchemy, Brewing, Chaos Magic, Gambling, Resolve
    Flossie was an ordinary girl with a strong will and overactive imagination; so strong that she often had trouble separating her imagination from reality, and was thus chosen to be an acolyte at the church of Dionysus at a young age. Though several years older than her, Feurlina took a liking to Flossie and followed her guidance in all things, and could even share in her lucid daydreams.

    Jesse
    Intersex Human Trader
    Skills: Bartering, Crossbow, First Aid, Harper
    Jesse is a being of two souls, both male and female. Due to her hermaphroditic nature, and the illness in her mind, she is considered touched by Dionysus, and the church keeps a close eye on her. She is normally charming, gentle, and musical, but when she feels threatened, her male side takes over, intensely violent and a fearsome shot with his crossbow. When the danger is passed, he calms down, leaving her confused and disoriented. Jesse handles most of the church’s business, and has dreams of being a trader and wandering the world, but those who care for her try to discourage leaving the safety of the town.

    Kumiko Rei
    Female Human Samurai
    Skills: Beauty, Leadership, Poetry, Swordsmanship
    Kumiko’s parents were scoundrels. When they couldn’t afford their gambling debts, they sold their own child into slavery. The beautiful little girl was saved from the brothels by the Old Man, the lord of Arasaka Fief, to serve as a lady in waiting for his wife. Unfortunately, the lady was not long for the world, and soon the girl was all but running the household, though she was fascinated by the old man and the stories of his adventurous youth, although deep in her mind she knew he was probably not so brave or so noble as he let on. She demanded he teach her how to use a blade, and with long practice she was soon as skilled as he.
    When the old man was on his deathbed, he sought to reward Kumiko’s devotion by wedding her to his son, but she could bear the thought of being married to the dishonest lay about who reminded her of her own parents, and she refused. Enraged by the insult, the Old Man banished her from Arasaka.
    Kumiko wandered the world as a sellsword for a few years, but then she saw the Old Man’s son bring the land to ruin and tarnish his father’s legacy, and so she returned to Arasaka wearing a mask, under the guise of the outlaw Gray Fox, a play on her own name.
    In the end, she played an integral part in the dynasty’s downfall, and saved thousands of lives that would have been lost bringing Imperial law back to the province. The Empress even offered to make her Templar lord of the domain as was their custom, but Kumiko refused, for her oaths still held, and she was exiled for all time.


    To be honest, these characters raised a lot of red flags for me.
    Kumiko really went hard into the samurai thing and has a lot of orientalist stereotypes, Feurlina has developmental disorders, Jesse has multiple personalities and gender fluidity, and Flossie is, well its Bob playing a Wild Mage. Enough said.

    I was concerned, especially about Jesse, as someone who suffers from gender dysphoria myself I was afraid she could make me very uncomfortable or that I could make her player upset by not using the correct pronouns. I asked what tone she was going for, and she said "Monty Python," which was not a good sign for me.

    If I played this straight, this could look really depressing, a bunch of mentally ill people sent into a dungeon to be eaten by monsters, and if played for laughs it could turn the campaign I had been working so hard on into a farce.

    Not looking off to a great start.

    Spoiler: Prologue: What Happened in Pendelsworn
    Show

    Flossie and Feurlina spent many summer mornings in the imaginary kingdom of Pendelsworn, where Flossie was the court wizard for a kindly king and Feurlina was captain of the knights. It was an intricate fantasy world, accentuated by Feurlina’s odd ideas like rivers of root beer, orchards of caramel apples, and luminous clouds that act as nightlights.

    One day, about four years ago, the dark lord of Nobrundia invaded, Flossie defeated the old warlock in a magical duel, and took the enchanted gem in which he stored his soul. She was tempted to take his dark power for her own, but Feurlina talked her out of it, and instead, she destroyed the gem with her magic.

    As the orb exploded, shards of molten glass pierced Flossie’s flesh, and suddenly the fantasy world fell away, leaving the girl crying in the churchyard, her flesh pierced by shards of the strange glass orb they had found in their games.

    She recovered and the wounds did not scar, but from that day forward she was changed. Flossie could bring her imagination into reality, most directly by producing raw elemental energy, although when she did so her hair color would shift to match; blonde for air, brown for force, blue for lightning, orange for fire, red for blood, black for shadow, white for cold, green for poison, grey for metal, pink for light, purple for sound, and so on.

    In many places, she would have been stoned, but the people of town instead took this as an indication of Dionysus’ blessing and called it a miracle, and some even whispered that she might be a saint or an avatar.



    Spoiler: Chapter Zero: The Sundered Lands, June
    Show
    Kumiko has been brought to Camelot and finds herself kneeling before the Empress Lucia. The Empress tells her that, due to her stubborn refusal to take the throne of Arasaka, she will instead be granted a new mission.

    Long ago, before the Cataclysm shattered the Giant’s Span, the region beyond the north sea was the farthest frontier of the Old Empire. Then the land was broken and cut off, and is now called the Sundered Lands, and it was forgotten.

    She is to travel to the Sundered Lands as a herald of the Imperium, to make herself useful and heroic, so that the people might be more receptive to the return of the Imperium, and if she handles it well, the land will be given to Kumiko to found her own dynasty. She is also told that Silanthous, the court wizard, plans to reopen the Black School, and that Kumiko should be on the lookout for youths with untapped supernatural talent.

    She is given a stack of official letters and papers, and told to journey to the largest town in the region, what was once the seat of the Old Empire, on the edge of the Evermoon Bayou.

    So Kumiko begins the long journey of over a thousand leagues. She passes through the lands that once belonged to the fallen Warlords Umbriel and Baalberith, not far from those she knew, and then into the alien lands of the dark wizard Thanatos that border the north sea. There she is met by a silver-haired half-elven ranger named Amadeesa who guides her through the moors, islets, and fjords that make up the Sundered Lands.

    As they approach the Evermoon Bayou, Kumiko spies a cart in the road head, and her guide bids her to go introduce herself. The cart contains a large wine barrel, and a girl blonde girl with green priestess’ robes and a crown of holly leaves rides atop it, rather than a mule it is pulled by the largest woman Kumiko has ever seen. A portly, androgynous figure walks beside them strumming a lyre.

    Kumiko introduces herself to the Maenads as Rei, and the companions meet one another for the first time.

    They travel through the vast vineyards that are the mayor’s holdings, and Flossie explains that they have a strain of Atlantean grapes that can grow in this cold, rainy climate, and it is these grapes that are the basis of the town’s economy. Kumiko is surprised, for she has only had wine made from rice, and Flossie is intent on figuring out how that would work, as the climate they are in is ideal for growing rice.

    When they arrive at the winery, Jesse and Flossie move in to talk business. A young woman comes out to meet them, she is beautiful, but extremely short and Rubenesque, almost as big around as she is tall. She tells them that her father is waiting for them, and tells Feurlina to unload the barrels in the usual place, but as she walks about the barrel she isn’t looking where she is going and walks headfirst into Kumiko. She is surprised, stumbles backward, and sees the tall foreigner looking down at her over the shelf of her bosom. The girl turns bright red, mumbles something of an apology, and disappears into the winery.

    While inside Jesse negotiates a price for the temple’s wine with Dan Rhyss, the manager of the winery, and after a long haggling session comes to exactly the price she always pays. The girl asks Flossie about the exotic stranger they have brought with them, and Flossie tells her what she has learned about Kumiko, and is told to give her a bottle of their best wine as an apology.

    Feurlina replaces the empty barrel with a full one, and soon they are ready to depart, to take the wine back to the chapel for a proper ceremonial blessing. Kumiko notices the girl watching her from the window and then disappearing when being noticed, and asks Flossie who she is. Flossie tells her that her name is Arianna Rhyss, and that she is the child of the family who runs the winery, and is almost certainly the old priest’s bastard daughter.

    The town is rustic and home to a few thousand people. It isn’t terribly centralized, and aside from a single hard-packed main street most of the homes are outside of the town proper. Once they are safely to the town hall, the ranger departs and tells them that she will be in touch.

    Kumiko meets with the mayor, Galen Hallbreight. He is a charming fellow in a white suit, and he openly flatters the girl and kisses her hand. At the same time, he tells her that the people here have no need of the Empire; they are so remote that even the dark wizard Thanatos, may his first day in Hell have lasted a million years, never thought it worth the resources to conquer them. And although her paperwork looks official, he is skeptical about the stories of their once more being an Empress in Camelot, and the details of her paperwork are all wrong; this town was never part of the Old Empire, they have the original town charter, and it was only first incorporated forty odd years before.

    She offers to help them with their problems, and he tells her she is welcome to stay amongst them, but they don’t have much need of a blade-slinger, for they don’t get many strangers passing through town and the locals know to mind their own business.

    Upon leaving, Kumiko is solicited by a vendor in a cart on the side of the street, offering to sell her a bowl of jambalaya. She is uncertain, having never seen food like this before, but the man, whose name is Viktor, assures her she will love it. Jesse joins her and tries to haggle for a better price on the deal, and Viktor agrees to give Feurlina an extra-large portion at no additional cost. Kumiko tries to make small talk, although it is difficult as his accent is thicker than most, but she learns that he is one of the fisher people who live by the cost and makes his living catching prawns. She goes to ask what all he can do with them, but Feurlina immediately slaps a massive hand over her mouth and silences her, telling her not to get him started.

    Among Kumiko’s papers is a deed to an old lumber camp that has been maintained as a safe house by the Rangers. It is a brisk twenty-minute walk from town, located in the forest on the dry side away from the bayou.

    It is a single-room lodge, built into a hillside, with a sloping roof overhand. The floor is built below ground level, with a narrow patio walkway on three sides, a tub and a sauna on the left. The interior has windows on three sides, so that one can see people coming but they can’t see in. The main room has a bar and grill in one corner, a fireplace in the other, numerous chairs and tables, and a back wall with wooden bunks, bookshelves, and coat racks built into the hillside wall. It was designed for about twenty people, and it would be cramped in such conditions, but for a single person, it is overly spacious. It is in shabby shape though, and it has obviously flooded on more than one occasion, the rugs are moldy, and the floorboards and chair legs are warped.

    Two days later Kumiko is asking around about the geological activity in the region, she is dissatisfied with the cedar tub and is looking for hot springs. As she is asking, a powerful earthquake jolts the region, and many people begin to whisper that she might be an oracle.

    Jesse is walking down the street and panics at the shaking, her male side taking over, and he is calmed down by an old geezer on the barbershop porch, who tells him that this was nothing, just an aftershock from the big one ninety years before. His hometown of Sandal Wood Cove now lies sixteen fathoms below the north sea. As he reminisces about his childhood on the beach, her feminine side re-exerts itself, and she is confused by what he is babbling on about.

    Flossie is far too busy preparing for the Juno’s day festival which marks the beginning of summer to be concerned about an earthquake. The old priest, Father Boysen, would still like to meet Kumiko, and asks Flossie her opinion of the stranger. The acolyte tells the old man that just because his eyes don’t work so well anymore doesn’t mean that she is going to ogle women for him.
    Two mornings later, Arianna travels out to the woodcutter’s lodge, bringing Kumiko a basket of muffins. The conversation is awkward, she is shy, and both of them speak Terran as a second language and with a thick accent, but Arianna tells Rei that she hopes to see her at the festival.

    Father Boysen meets with Kumiko, and does his best to get her drunk and convert her to the worship of his god, telling her that as an animist she follows plenty of spirits, surely one more can’t hurt, but she is not swayed. He gifts her with some scented birch branches for the sauna, and she doesn’t know what he is talking about, and when he tells her about the heated wooden room by the lodge, she asks if he means the outhouse. He sends Flossie to show her how the sauna works, and Feurlina to clean up the mess.

    Juno’s festival occurs on the first full moon of summer. It is a traditional time for marriages, and is a busy time for priests of Dionysus, the god of celebrations. They have been working hard to organize the event, to decorate the winery and coordinate with the local restaurants to provide catering.

    Kumiko wants to buy Arianna a gift to show her appreciation for the wine and the muffins, and asks Flossie what would be traditional. Sensing the opportunity for a prank, the priestess suggests one of the floral wreaths that many of the women in town wear on their arms, not telling her the cultural context that it symbolizes engagement. Kumiko thanks her and does just that.

    The night of the festival is remarkably clear and brilliantly illuminated under the full moon and sparkling stars, a change from the rain that normally blankets the region. The road up to the winery is illuminated by delicate paper lanterns woven throughout the grapevine tresses, and Kumiko is impressed by the beauty and civility.

    Children run across the hillside, playing games and chasing fireflies in the twilight.

    At the feast, Father Boysen is already well into his cups, having spent the majority of the afternoon performing marriage ceremonies, and can be seen telling people about the vineyard nymphs and John Barleycorn who will visit lonely people in the night, and he passes the duty of giving the first toast to his acolyte. Flossie is both honored and flustered, and says something quick and unremarkable without an opportunity to rehearse. The mayor pulls her aside and tells her she did fine, but asks what she was thinking wearing a pine-green dress with white hair, to which she responds that it wasn’t white when she put on the outfit.

    The mayor gives an even shorter toast, and then Jesse plays a song, backed up by the frogs, loons, and crickets in the swamp and the old priest’s drunken singing. This festival is a rather brief affair, not like the great feasts of harvest, and after the toasts, most of the newlyweds are allowed to make their exit and do what they can to support the next generation. The food is light, but the drinks are many.

    Once the toast is passed people are free to dance or help themselves to the food arrayed about them, and it is at this moment that Arianna approaches Kumiko. Kumiko stands, and bows, and in fumbling Terran offers her gift. Arianna sees it and her eyes grow wide, then her pale cheeks turn so red that her freckles disappear, and she stammers silently and shakes her head. Kumiko asks her what is wrong, but is interrupted by a terrifying sound.

    It sounds like three dogs crying out in terror, and echoes across the fields. There is silence for a moment, then the screaming of children. Our heroes burst out from the garden, Rei and Jesse grabbing their weapons from the coat check table and the latter adopting his masculine persona.

    They find a horrible creature, a large three-headed dog with oversized tusks and a chomping pincer like a bear trap on the end of its tail. It is chasing after several of the children who were playing in the fields or the adolescents who had snuck away to make out in the bushes. Fortunately, there are so many targets that the beast’s three heads can’t make up their minds about who to chase first, and this means nobody has died, yet.

    Kumiko moves like lightning, charging down the hill and drawing her katana, severing the throat of the creature’s left head, causing it to bleed profusely, but not slowing it down. Its pincer-like tail clamps down upon her and she feels her body stiffen as her blood is filled with venom.

    Flossie draws near, and does the first thing she can think of, imagining great tentacles emerging from the earth and crushing the creature, and then draws them forth from her mind. The beast manages to wriggle free, but is distracted and unnerved, and it backs away slowly, growling and barking at the unnatural protuberances.

    Jesse then shoots it in the side with his crossbow, hurting the beast but also getting its attention, and it falls upon him, tearing great bloody chunks from his flesh. He would have been slain if Feurlina had not appeared at that moment, wielding a heavy table leg as a club and a metal serving tray as a shield. The two roll around for a bit, and though she is getting some good licks in, the giant woman is obviously outmatched. Flossie curses the hellhound, and it backs into a small moat a child had dug earlier as part of a game, snapping its rear leg.

    The creature howls in pain and is disoriented from blood loss and repeated blows to its heads, but is obviously preparing its next attack, having decided that it was no longer hunting for food but fighting for its life. A harsh male voice shouts at Feurlina to get down, and she instinctively obeys, and then there is the smell of smoke and the popping sound of a dozen musket shots as the town militia fires a score of bullets into the fearsome beast, leaving its body torn and full of jagged smoking holes.

    Travois are made and Flossie sees her three friends taken swiftly to what passes for a hospital in this small town.

    That night, while Kumiko passes in and out of consciousness, Arianna visits her, and as she places a vase of flowers on the bedside table, tearfully tells her that she accepts.


    So we had our sessions zero for everyone to get used to their characters and to get acquainted with the setting and one another. It actually went really, really well. My concerns about the characters didn't materialize, and there was a lot of great RP. We kept the mood light, but it never descended to "Monty Python" levels, mostly sticking in "Rom-Com" territory.

    Only a single combat, a warmup fight get everyone used to their character's combat mechanics and establish the threat. They were in no real danger, the militia was there to save them if they got in over their heads, but they still got pretty beaten up.

    Overall, very good session! I am so pleasantly surprised, not a horror story to be found!

    And next time, we get to see the dungeon proper.


    Here is a link to a discussion of the mechanics of the dungeon and commentary.
    Last edited by Talakeal; 2023-04-03 at 10:49 AM.
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

  2. - Top - End - #2
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Talakeal's Avatar

    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Location
    Denver.
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Gateway to the Dreamscapes: Megadungeon Campaign Log

    Spoiler: Chapter One: Market Street, July
    Show
    The mayor visits them in the hospital, and commends their bravery. He tells them that while he still doesn’t know about this whole Empire thing, Kumiko has proven herself part of the community and is welcome to stay here as long as she likes.

    Once they are on the mend, they visit Safana, a local naturalist. She is a slender woman from the Vedic kingdom of Marhanna, with dark mahogany skin and straight black hair, and she is said to have walked the entire length of the continent along the Old Coast Road. She tells them that nobody around here has even seen a monster like they killed. She has heard legends of such creatures, called Cerberus, but not within a hundred leagues of the Sundered Lands. They ask if there are monsters in the swamp, and she says the land is mostly free of monsters and mutants, aside from mothers telling their children not to play in the swamp after dark lest the snallygaster get them. When asked what a snallygaster is, she says it’s nothing more than a wyvern poured out of the mouth of an idiot and into the ear of a moron.

    A few days later, an elderly couple living on the edge of town was found killed in their beds by strange creatures resembling winged monkeys. Safana can easily identify these as Grues, for she has seen them before, although never north of the equator.

    The next week, a child goes missing. While people are out searching for him, they find a great cleft in the hills near town, not far from the lodge where Kumiko is staying. When approached, foul smells and strange growling noises could be heard within, and the town elders decided that this cave must have been opened up in the earthquake and is undoubtedly where the monsters are hiding, and a decision is made to seal it up with heavy boulders and be done with it.

    Unfortunately, that was not the end. Three days later something like an ogre tried to carry off a farmer’s wife, and when he tried to stop it he took a kick to the head and nobody is sure if he will ever wake up. The farmhands were eventually able to put it down with pitchforks, but only after a long bloody battle.

    When Kumiko returns to her lodge, she finds that Arianna has moved in and cleaned up the place, replaced the carpets and upholstery, brought in fresh food and drink, unstopped the drains, and filled the furnaces and stoves with fresh whale oil. She is pleasantly surprised, but does not understand why.

    The mayor pays her a visit, and tells her that he has a mission for her. It was decided that there must be another entrance to the caves somewhere in or around town, but damned if they can find it. She is to enter into the fissure and find where it leads so that it can be properly sealed. She solemnly accepts without question, and he tells her the town’s resources are at her disposal, within reason.

    She goes and tells Flossie that she needs help. Feurlina and Jesse are excited at the prospect of adventure, but the acolyte of the wine god says no; she is too busy and it is far too dangerous. Kumiko shrugs and tells her that everyone dies, and then tells her about the Black School and how it is looking for those with mystic gifts. Flossie says no.

    That night, she prays. She finds that the gods have been unusually silent the last few years, but asks for a sign anyway, and that night she dreams that her destiny awaits her below the town.

    In the morning, she agrees to help, despite her better judgment.

    They prepare. First, they visit the mercantile for supplies. Before entering, Flossie quickly stops and warns Kumiko not to panic, for the locals are all used to the shopkeeper, but an outsider might not be. The proprietor of the general store is Monsieur Gallefort, and he is a goblin spider, or what Kumiko’s people would call a Kumamoto. It is a bit off-setting to see a spider the size of a pony with a top hat perched upon his head, but when he speaks he is as articulate and gentle as any man in town. He assures her that he doesn’t eat people, only marmalade. They give him their list; rope, pitons, first aid supplies, a new keg, flasks and wineskins, dry rations, lanterns, knives, and the like, and he retrieves it from his attic storeroom, only accessible by climbing the webs. He presents them with a bill of sale, and Kumiko goes to pay it, but both Gallefort and Jesse explain that she needs to haggle first. She is uncomfortable with the practice, but eventually gets the hang of it, and the great spider gifts her with an ornate lighter. It is engraved with the following passage:

    T.J. remember that this is the only thing standing between you and a knife in the dark.

    He doesn’t know what it means, and she suspects it might be cursed.

    Flossie asks if he has a spell book, and Monsieur Gallefort looks disconcerted and rubs his pedipalps. He responds that he doesn’t deal with black magic. He shouldn’t be telling her this, but she is an adult now and can make her own decisions, and if she needs voodoo, she should see Mordred WhiteSmoke on the edge of the bayou.

    Flossie makes her way out to the bayou alone. Mordred dwells in an old riverboat on the edge of town, where it has been this past century since the Cataclysm turned the river into a bog. It is decorated in spark lights and gruesome talismans, and smells of foul incense. She expects a frightening old man, but Mordred is actually young and handsome, with an athletic build and long dark braids, yellow eyes and ebon skin. He tells her that Old Rusufarius told him there was an outlander in town, and he knew it wouldn’t be long before he would have a visitor.

    Flossie says she is here for a spell book, and Mordred tells her that she isn’t ready for that yet. Instead, he sells her a dictionary, translating Terran phrases into Enochian. He tells her to learn the language, and to practice speaking her dreams instead of just willing them into reality. Once she has mastered that, then maybe she will be ready to learn about secret names and the old pacts. She is disappointed and perplexed, but thanks him and lets him get back to replacing the old rotted panels on his riverboat home.

    Next, they visit the blacksmith, and ask him to rig a harness of iron plates for Feurlina to wear as armor, as well as a proper mace and shield.

    Lastly, Flossie brews a set of healing tonics and ceremonial wine to combat what they find in the dark.

    A volunteer watch has been set up around the clock, keeping an eye on the fissure and the lodge, as well as patrolling the borders of the town. A trio of young men, led by a deputy named Dennis, are to be constantly stationed at the fissure while they are below. When it is time to depart, they move just enough of the rocks that Feurlina can squeeze her way inside.

    The cavern is dark, with strange smells and sounds echoing from within. It heads down and towards the town, and at the end of the chasm they come to what appears to be a hole in a worked wall. Beyond, they see only darkness, and Flossie conjures up a tulpa, a small vaguely humanoid creature with waxy ectoplasmic flesh, and it carries their lantern within the translucent globe of its belly.

    Beyond is a cobblestone street, although the floor is mostly covered with mud, algae, and standing water. Above them is a brick ceiling, and mud and dripping water flows through the small gap between it and the walls. The closest thing Kumiko has ever seen is the covered walkways that led from the servant’s quarters to the Old Man’s manor, built to protect from the weather but still keep the kitchen’s cool and well-ventilated.

    The passage continues to either side and straight ahead, and they decide to go forward. After about ten paces, they find another crossroad, and continue forward through an old gate of warped wood.

    The lane beyond is wider but still covered, and as they move forward they hear hoofbeats and war-whoops. A trio of men ride toward them, swinging shamshirs and shouting. The battle is brief, the only serious wound suffered is a slash to Kumiko’s hip, and soon the three men lie on the ground, blood turning their white wraps black in the torchlight. As they die, they pray to unknown gods in a foreign tongue, and Kumiho eases their passing.

    These men are strange. They are dressed for the desert, and their features do not belong to any ethnicity familiar to the adventurers. Their only coins are strange octagons made out of some zinc alloy. The group attempts to calm the horses, but the beasts panic and bolt off into the darkness.

    The quartet continues on and comes to an iron portcullis with “Path of Tribulations” etched upon it. While Flossie explains what a portcullis is to Feurlina, Kumiko and Jesse spring the lock on the mechanism and then have their giant companion lift it up.

    They pass on, and see another portcullis ahead at the edge of their lantern light, but instead choose to enter a door to the side. This room is dryer, with a crenulated tile overhang deflecting the drizzle from above.

    Inside, the floor is covered in deep, crunchy dung. The only thing in the room is a large brass gong, and an ornate ringer that is likely worth a few coins. An unspoken decision passes between them, that it would be a bad idea to ring the gong, and they turn to leave, but subtle agreements were never Feurlina’s forte, and she smashes into the gong with her mace. Loud reverberations echo through the tunnels, momentarily drowning out the dripping water, and then there is a loud metallic crash from further down the road. Then, a swarm of frenzied vampire bats descends from the rafters.

    The group was not expecting bats, and though they can kill them, there are too many to fight effectively with their weapons. Jesse gets the worst of it, his face being bitten repeatedly, his crossbow no help. Flossie fires off bolts of elemental energy wildly, her hair going from black to grey to blue to green, but it does little. She then gets the idea to conjure up a spray of ooblek, grounding the bats in the sticky mass. Then, she attempts to create a shield of flame around Feurlina, but instead causes a jet of molten lava to begin spraying up beneath her feet, scalding her and causing her armor to glow red hot. The quartet retreats, Kumiko thinking at the last second to close the door behind her.

    They hear the bats screaming and dying and the lava fills the room, and doors chars and turns black. They don’t know if it will hold, and don’t want to chance it, so they retreat back to the crossroad. There, they take the west passage, and come to a small cul-de-sac with three businesses, one on each side; The Cloven Heap, Batwing Surplus, and The Eternal Mausoleum.

    Not liking the sound of the latter, they move into the Cloven Heap, and find a large L-shaped chamber that looks to have once been a scrapyard. It is badly flooded, and most everything here is a rusted or mold-encrusted mess, and it looks like there are no few corpses here, most long since rotted to bones. There is a door at the far end, but they decide to search first.

    They find a set of real silver utensils, dull and scratched but still shining, and a few emeralds stuck to what once may have been a porcelain chamber pot. Then, they find several glittering ruby rings on a rotted hand, and Jesse attempts to pull the rings free, but finds the waterlogged flesh has swollen around them, and she tugs hard, freeing the corpse from the mud. Unfortunately, a giant worm was in the process of devouring the corpse, and the legs and waist are in the monster’s slimy may. Upon seeing the worm, Jesse shrieks and falls back into the mud, her male persona disoriented and wondering what he is doing face down in the dirt.

    The worm, seeing live meat, drops the corpse and grasps at them with tentacles dripping in paralytic venom. Feurlina moves forward to fight it, but her mace does very little to the rubbery beast, and soon she is grabbed by the monster, and nearly pulled down into its hole before Kumiko’s sword and Jesse’s bolts can kill the beast. In the end, Flossie saves her big friend, once again attempting to conjure a flame shield. She does, but at first, it is around herself, and it takes her a few precious moments to transfer it to Feurlina and then prolong its duration, but once it does the worm lets go and sinks back into the muck.

    They decline to search further, and move in through the door. They find a small alley, with a dangling wooden street sign that reads “Shakey Lane.” The road beyond has collapsed into a swamp, and using a rope determines that the water is roughly chest deep. They can see a door on one side of the lane, and darkness beyond, but Kumiko can hear the deep bassitone boom of a bunyip. They think about making a plank bridge, but can’t figure out how to make one that would hold Feurlina’s weight, and turn back instead.

    Batwing Surplus is an old storehouse or dry goods store, with jumbled shelves and ratted merchandise everywhere. They begin to explore, finding some dried coffee and distilled alcohol, before they hear the chirping war cries of kobolds. Eager for a fight, Feurlina rushes ahead into the darkness. She is accustomed to fighting blind, having spent many years of her childhood playing knight before Flossie gave her the idea to drill holes in the bucket.

    In the dark, she feels a heavy weight on her back, and poisoned pincers sink into the unarmored back of her neck. The kobolds brought a beast with them, an arthropleura, a giant centipede almost as big as Feurlina herself.

    Her companions are then surrounded, the jumbled shelves make it hard for them to move, and the kobolds take advantage of the situation to surround them and jab them with spears from where it is difficult to strike back. Though they take down more than a few kobolds, soon each of the companions is down and bleeding from numerous jab wounds. Even the tulpa is slain.

    Fortunately, Feurlina manages to triumph over the centipede, just barely, and it is the smoldering shield that surrounds her rather than her mace that finishes off the beast. She stomps and screams, scaring away the kobolds, and drags her friends out into the lane, and pours Flossie’s healing tonic down their throats. They decide to fall back to town, to rest up and come back when they are better prepared.

    As they leave Dennis asks them if they found the other side.
    “No.”
    “Did you find the missing kid?”
    “No.”
    “Did you kill the monsters?”
    “We killed a lot of monsters.”
    “Did you kill all the monsters?”
    “We killed a lot of monsters.”

    They return to the lodge where Arianna cleans and dresses their wounds and cooks them a hot meal. Kumiko theorizes that maybe there is some sort of special rift under the town, pulling in creatures from far-away lands at random. Flossie considers it a possibility, but has no real information from which to draw a conclusion.


    So, I was really concerned about resource management.

    My previous attempts at a hex-crawl had ultra-cautious players who went back to town after every setback (and, honestly, that was the mechanically optimal thing to do, true power-gamers would have done it after even a minor resource expenditure) and fluctuated between playing cowardly and playing dumb. IMO a hero is going to be both brave and cunning; one who lacks bravery doesn't adventure and one who lacks cunning doesn't survive, but I could never get better than one out of two.

    My system is not really designed for sandbox play, rather time sensitive specific missions, so I was afraid the mega dungeon would have the same issues as the hex-crawl. But, it didn't. They pressed on past several rough fights; they are still getting their legs, and once they got beaten up by kobolds (kobolds don't need Tucker's BS, just tight corridors!) they debated turning back rather than taking it as a given. In the end, they were stalemated, and it was me who told them it was getting late IRL and I would actually prefer we ended the session here.

    I will say its fascinating how megadungeons work; this one is HUGE, but still the PCs are never more than 10-20 rooms away from any other point in the dungeon. Its amazing how free-form it is despite the confined map, and how endless the possibilities are for where they will go or what they will do. Its also weird to think about the differences between generating it randomly as they go, coming up with it on the fly improv style, and having it mapped out in advance, as from the player's perspective these are all more or less identical given that it is mostly blind choices, but are hugely different behind the screen.

    Overall, great session, if the whole campaign runs like this, it may be one of my all time best!

    See you in a week!
    Last edited by Talakeal; 2023-02-27 at 12:06 PM.
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

  3. - Top - End - #3
    Bugbear in the Playground
    Join Date
    Jul 2021
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Gateway to the Dreamscapes: Megadungeon Campaign Log

    A mega dungeon sounds fun but I'll probably never get to play in one most likely. Given the only games i can get are play by posts and one on ones with my lil bro. But perhaps when my lil bro is older either of us can run one for the other. That might be fun.

    2 Questions about your system. 1 would you say it's simpler to learn then chronicles of darkness. I teied gming cod for my lil bro but immediately after character creation he wanted to play before i could prepare and i barely managed it until we got to combat. Next time i better insist he let me read the rules before we start. Also sultan dispite not making a combat focused character was pretty quick to point a gun at people. Excepted of a 11 year old but still lol.

    2ed would you say it's possible for a 11 year old to learn it. If not I'll probably just use risus for now.
    Just a note i got adhd and autism.

  4. - Top - End - #4
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Talakeal's Avatar

    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Location
    Denver.
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Gateway to the Dreamscapes: Megadungeon Campaign Log

    Quote Originally Posted by Ameraaaaaa View Post
    A mega dungeon sounds fun but I'll probably never get to play in one most likely. Given the only games i can get are play by posts and one on ones with my lil bro. But perhaps when my lil bro is older either of us can run one for the other. That might be fun.

    2 Questions about your system. 1 would you say it's simpler to learn then chronicles of darkness. I teied gming cod for my lil bro but immediately after character creation he wanted to play before i could prepare and i barely managed it until we got to combat. Next time i better insist he let me read the rules before we start. Also sultan dispite not making a combat focused character was pretty quick to point a gun at people. Excepted of a 11 year old but still lol.

    2ed would you say it's possible for a 11 year old to learn it. If not I'll probably just use risus for now.
    Hmm.

    I would say it is probably more complicated than Chronicles of Darkness but less complicated than its crunchier cousins like Exalted.

    I am probably the wrong person to ask about how easy it is to learn. I have a fairly high IQ, but also a fairly severe processing disorder, so I tend to have a harder time teaching myself games but an easier time learning them when taught. I have certainly been able to teach the game to high school age students, and I am fairly confident I could have been taught it as a preteen, but I am not typical, and some adults still have trouble grasping the system.

    So in short, it really depends on the individual, but I would probably wait 2-3 years.
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

  5. - Top - End - #5
    Bugbear in the Playground
    Join Date
    Jul 2021
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Gateway to the Dreamscapes: Megadungeon Campaign Log

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    Hmm.

    I would say it is probably more complicated than Chronicles of Darkness but less complicated than its crunchier cousins like Exalted.

    I am probably the wrong person to ask about how easy it is to learn. I have a fairly high IQ, but also a fairly severe processing disorder, so I tend to have a harder time teaching myself games but an easier time learning them when taught. I have certainly been able to teach the game to high school age students, and I am fairly confident I could have been taught it as a preteen, but I am not typical, and some adults still have trouble grasping the system.

    So in short, it really depends on the individual, but I would probably wait 2-3 years.
    Thanks for the honest answer. I guess for now I'll just run risus and see if that works.
    Just a note i got adhd and autism.

  6. - Top - End - #6
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Talakeal's Avatar

    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Location
    Denver.
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Gateway to the Dreamscapes: Megadungeon Campaign Log

    Chapter Two: July.

    Spoiler: Market Street Expedition 2
    Show
    July is a slow time for the temple of Dionysus. Though in many lands the High Summer festival is a large one, in this region, most people choose to spend it by making a trip to the seashore. Perhaps it is because they remember being seafaring folk before the Cataclysm and still honor Poseidon and his ways, more likely it is because it is the only time of year warm enough to warrant a swim.

    Kumiko remarks that it doesn’t seem like High Summer without fireworks, and Flossie wonders if it might be possible for her to make some.

    Arianna moves her large stuffed black panther, Monquiro, into the wood-cutters lodge. Kumiko, who still thinks of her as a housekeeper, finds this strange, but Flossie allays her suspicion.

    Their next expedition into the buried city follows much the same path, though they are slightly better prepared. This time, the tulpa is in the shape of a large but unobtrusive spider with a glowing round abdomen. It prefers to crawl on the ceiling like a living lamp while staying safely above the combat.

    Their first stop is the building labeled “The Eternal Mortuary”. Inside is, as to be expected, a funeral parlor, with an upstairs sitting chamber and an embalming room in the rear. It is also home to eleven bodies that have been sealed in here for almost a century, and which have been animated and with no place to go for several decades, likely a product of the Night of the Restless Dead that presaged the return of the Black King to Pangaea. They would be mummified in any other climate, but down here their skin has been wetted and dried so many times it is more like putrid canvas flaps hanging from a moldy skeleton.

    Kumiko’s response is to leap up their stairs. Her warrior instinct is sharp, but she is not used to working with a team. The hungry dead shamble toward her companions, Jesse’s bolts doing nothing, and Feurlina grapples with them, being strangled by several pairs of rotting hands before Flossie is able to channel the right prayer to lay the zombies back down to rest.

    There is no treasure in the mortuary, and a search of the back room reveals only slabs built into a dozen lockers along the rear wall.

    They exit and go to the far end of the street. There, they find a zig-zagging tunnel of crystalline glass. Along its sides are statues that might be meant to represent angels, smooth humanoid figures with large disks above their heads; a traditional depiction of a halo. Jesse notes how this hall has near-perfect acoustics.

    Our heroes come around one corner and find a group of eight kobolds listening to what appears to be a sermon given by the shaman. The warriors attack, and some of the diminutive humanoids flee while the others grab crude spears and try and hold them off. The kobolds go down, but not before putting up a tenacious fight, hiding between the statues and darting out to stab their attackers, and inflicting more wounds than such small beings have any right to.

    As Jesse binds their wounds, the group jokes about how they should be ok as long as they don’t encounter any more kobolds. Then they move to the end of the chamber and open up a door into what a sign calls “The Ancient Lyceum”. Inside, they see a vast dark chamber and, reflecting back at them, a hundred pairs of tiny kobold eyes.

    They immediately back out into the Hall of Silent Angels, and Feurlina uses her great strength to push one of the statues down behind them, blocking off the door. They backtrack a bit and take the southern fork out of the chamber back to the main street. The ceiling has collapsed to the East, burying the passage under tons of mud, and trying to dig it out would be folly as it would surely collapse again, likely burying them alive.

    Further south, the road dead ends, the cul-de-sac containing stores called Falconer’s Square, Cordwood Junction, The Merciful Bleed, Dissenting Discoveries, and Cryptic Stores. They enter the latter and find an old building that appears to be a storehouse, long since gone to ruin. As they are adjusting to the light and trying to pick valuables out of the mess, Kumiko is startled by a mewling thing, eyeless, skinless, and with six long arms. It wraps its hands around her throat, leaving a dark purple bruise that will endure for a month, before Feurlina smashes it to a pulp with her mace.

    Jesse finds a few instruments that she thinks might be of some value, and Flossie confirms they are precision weights and measures for alchemical or scientific work.

    They exit through the service entrance in the back, and exit into another street. This one is flooded and sloped, with knee-deep running water. A swinging sign proclaims it Winsome Heights, but all of the buildings they see are ruined and the doors boarded shut. They decline to venture into the dark water to see where the street leads and decide to head back.

    Near the entrance fissure, they find a small side door. Feurlina opens it and is surprised to find a man inside. He is kneeling, breathing heavily, and covered in tattoos and sweat. He looks up and groans something that sounds like “No!” in a panicked voice, and then rises to his feet. He is nearly as tall as Feurlina is, but he keeps growing, his features rounding and his beard swelling. In a moment, he has transformed into an enormous bear and lunges for the armored woman. She strikes him across the mouth with her mace, and his jaw shatters. He swipes her away and then laughs, pushing his jaw back into place and says something nobody quite makes out, although they think they hear the word “silver” in his thick northern accent.

    In the end, the companions can put him down before he kills Feurlina, although it takes a tremendous amount of damage, and he is finally slain by a blast of lunar energy that leaves Flossie’s hair gray. After death, he resumes his human visage.

    Within the room, they find a small roadside shrine dedicated to Callisto the bear goddess, and among several sticks of incense and moldering offerings of nuts and berries, they find a bowl of holy water which Flossie adds to her store.

    The group returns to town to rest up that night; they took a pretty good beating and can use this opportunity to heal before pushing on. Jesse picks up some silver arrows in case they encounter more were-beasts.


    Spoiler: Market Street Expedition 3
    Show

    The next morning they return, and decide to venture into the eastern reaches, but first Jesse asks if they might return to the Hall of Silent Angels for their morning hymns. It is a mistake.

    As they draw close, the cobblestones collapse under them, leaving Jesse and Feurlina at the bottom of a deep muddy pit. Suddenly, the door in front of them opens and kobolds armed with crude bows pour out, and behind them, a small door that they had previously missed opens in the wall and spear-armed humanoids push them toward the pit. An ambush!

    Kumiko drops a rope while Flossie conjures up a wall of tentacles between them and the tiny encroaching phalanx. They are pelted with arrows. Jesse climbs up next to them and returns fire along with Flossie, but Feurlina, born down by her heavy metal harness, is much slower in getting up. When she does, she grabs Flossie and leaps across the pit, scattering the archers. At the same time, one of the kobold shamans manages to banish the tentacles back to limbo.

    Past the door in the crystalline hallway, Feurlina spies a kobold champion approaching. The tiny figure is clad in crude armor, wields a pair of human sizes gladiuses, and is flanked on either side by a pair of trained scoffins. Scoffins are creatures that are distantly related to drakes and crocodiles, but with only two legs and a stubby tail, resembling nothing so much as walking jaws. Feurlina rushes forward to engage them before they can near Flossie, but as soon as she moves into the Hall of Silent Angels, the door swings shut behind her and there is a loud crash, the kobolds have learned from her tactics and figured out some mechanism to topple the statues on their own!

    Flossie and Jesse take out many of the kobolds, but when she attempts to conjure a second wall of tentacles, her magic goes wrong, and a wall of white-hot fire appears above the pit, cutting her off from her companions.

    Feurlina duels the kobold champion in the dark, wedging herself between two statues so that the scoffins cannot bite at her knees. It is more or less a stalemate, she cannot hit the tiny creature in the dark, but it cannot pierce her armor and must make do with small cuts to non-vital areas. Still, it is only a matter of time before one of them grows too tired to defend themselves, and the gigantic woman is not likely to win out in a contest of endurance.

    Backed up against the wall of fire, Kumiko and Jesse are soon brought low. Before the shaman can move to finish them off as a sacrifice to their god, Kumiko pulls out her coin purse, hands it over, and then gestures to the ceiling; pantomiming the ransom they are worth. The shaman calls off the attack and drags the bleeding captives back to their lair in the Ancient Lyceum.

    The four companions are reunited and disarmed.

    The Lyceum is a great two-story library. It was once grand, but most of the books and shelves have been converted into crude huts and nests for the kobold families. Around a small bonfire, a deal is made between the four companions and the one shaman who speaks a pidgin form of the Terran language.

    Then Jesse asks if, instead of a ransom, they could purchase items in town that the kobolds can’t acquire for themselves. The shaman floats the idea, and the hordes are visibly excited at the prospect of luxuries, and they seem to accept, providing a crude list of all the things that they want.

    They come to the following deal; the humans are allowed to journey freely through the kobold’s territory, but if they take any plunder, half of it will be used to buy the things that they need in the human town. In addition, half of all prisoners will be taken to their god for sacrifice. They will not escort the humans, as there are many invaders these days and they cannot risk their warriors protecting outsiders, especially ones who were once enemies and might turn on them in time.

    They learn the following:

    The kobolds are called the “three heads”.

    Their territory extends from the river in the north to the mine in the west.

    They collapsed the eastern road and don’t go down into the under-city for fear of the bone men.

    They have lived here since the beginning of time.

    To the north is a castle inhabited by “two heads”.

    They are protected by a god and a goddess who live to the south. The god’s name is the “world eater”.

    There is a door in the back of the Lyceum. A sign above it reads “Royal Furnace. All printed materials are to be brought here to check for sedition. Templar Lord Bellhuon.”

    The kobolds say that danger lies behind that door, the shamans blessed it to keep the clan safe. The big folk are free to open it if they like, the kobolds will assist by cheering for them (or maybe he said laughing at them?)

    The humans explore the shop next to the lyceum called “Tungsten Tomorrows” and find that it is a specialty store that sells prosthetic limbs of exquisite craftsmanship. A clockwork servitor still lives here, a marvel to them all, and with a phonographic voice it tells them that they appear to be whole and healthy, but if they bring a patient to it, it would be happy to arrange a fitting. They decline.

    The secret passage on the main street leads to a tunnel that one can crawl through to find the remains of an abandoned and buried apartment. It is not pleasant, but could be cleaned up to serve as a safe place to store treasure or to hide from a larger creature.

    The group heads north beyond the Path of Tribulations and the charred remains of the gong house. They come to a castle as the kobolds said. Before the castle is a drawbridge that is fed by an underground stream. The stream continues to the northeast, and they think they hear something big splashing about further up the tunnel. The castle itself is guarded by a pair of giant two-headed ettins. The guards seem completely unconcerned, as if they have nothing to fear from the inhabitants of the buried city.

    Leaving the castle behind, our heroes finally decide to make for the western side of town. Beyond the fissure is a rundown dry-goods store called Grover’s Mercantile. When they open the door, they free a short humanoid creature shaped like a salamander. Its flesh is rotted, its eyes large and milky white, its nails reduced to talons from clawing at the door. They hope it will be content with its freedom, but it attacks them nonetheless. Kumiko decapitates it, but the body continues to claw at them until they pound it to mush, and even so it still twitches. Flossie dissolves it with conjured acid, her hair turning a sickly green.

    Kumiko helps herself to a box of silver coins hidden beneath one of the shelves. They exit through the back into a small street called The Lost Lane. They can hear drums to the south.

    The only shop on Lost Lane is called The Last Ember, a candle maker’s shop. They open the door and find it to be a total mess, melted wax everywhere, smashed shelves, lamp oil pooling on the floor, and, inexplicably, a pair of great apes. When Feurlina crashes in the door, the gorillas respond with aggression. Flossie strikes out with her magic, and as she becomes an unnatural redhead, the room goes up in flames, taking the panicking apes with it. They shut the door and wait for the smoke to dissipate and the pained screams to subside.

    When they again venture into the shop and over the char, ignoring the smell of burning fur, and enter a small chamber in the back called “Candlelight Studies”. It is lined with bookshelves and writing desks, and it is surmised that it was a place of tutelage. Four hooded figures stand about a table, and Kumiko greets them.

    They look at her with baleful red eyes, their features completely dark, and in a whispering voice, say “We have been denied the warmth of life for a century. You best be here on a matter of grave urgency if you wish to stay our hands.” At a loss for words, Kumiko apologizes and excuses herself. The quartet of wraiths floats toward them. Kumiko draws her sword, but the ghostly figures pass right through it.

    Flossie lets out a prayer, and the four recoil from the holy word. She then blesses her allies’ weapons. The wraiths attack again, and even blessed weapons and silver arrows pass right through them. They travel straight through Kumiko and Jesse, chilling their souls with a touch. They move to drink Flossie’s life force, and Feurlina can do little but watch and swat at them ineffectively.
    Kumiko draws her lighter and sets a book aflame, and bids Jesse do the same. They then bat at the wraiths with the flaming books. The books do little to harm the wraiths, but distract them long enough for Flossie to banish them with a holy word.

    Each was wearing a golden amulet, a fine prize.

    Behind one of the shelves, they find a secret staircase leading deeper underground, but they decline to investigate.

    At the end of the Lost Lane, they come to double doors leading into something called The Vernaculum. It is a vast chamber, what once may have been an indoor arena, with a sandy floor and rusting gymnastic equipment scattered about. They hear distant drumming, and the breathing of something massive. Soon they see its source, a great four-legged creature the size of a dinosaur, with three long necks and three sharp-toothed heads. It looks as them slowly and approaches languidly, but as it does so, they run. The beast lopes along behind them, and when they slam the doors behind they can hear it baying in disappointment.

    They calculate their odds against the huge monster, and don’t think they have a chance. They consider trying to get it stuck in the doorway, but aren’t sure if that will work. Flossie stares winsomely at the door, she sensed something powerful and at the same time familiar within.

    They return to the main street and follow it to the west, coming to what was once an expensive covered bridge running over another underground stream. It is called the Rose Wine according to a plaque. Through the windows on the bridge, they can see small watchtowers built into the walls on either side, good places to snipe at invaders. Upon the bridge is a an armored kobold riding on the back of a scaly drake. He squeaks that they are not to pass without permission, and then they explain their deal with kobolds in the library and he waves them on and follows behind.

    The road continues to a crossroads. The kobold tells them that if they continue on they will find the mines, called the Fibrous Delve, but warns them against it, for it is now home to a dangerous breed of big people who kill kobolds for sport. They are square, with two legs, two arms, and two horns, are even less scaly than the humans, and all covered in metal and fur.

    Instead, the group goes north, to a small tailor’s shop called The Becalming Windle. The kobold warns them not to touch the door with their bare hands, and they narrowly avoid a poisoned needle trap.

    Within they find many moldered cloth goods and another money box. Kumiko thinks it odd that this room intersects with the mortuary on her map, and wonders if she has made a mistake or if the floor has sloped beneath it. Jesse soon discovers a hidden passage, and they find that it leads to one of the crypts in the back of the mortuary.

    The back door out of the tailor’s shop leads to something called the Industrial Park, and they turn around instead, heading south along Tabernacle Lane, past the Rose Wine Bridge and Fibrous Delve.

    At the end of the hall is a great bronze idol, in the shape of a giant full-figured woman with no face. The statue is covered in green patina, but her pregnant belly is rubbed clean and glistens in the lantern light like a new penny.

    Two shops are on this street, the Forgotten Gyre and the Parthenon Savings and Loan.

    The latter is obviously a bank, and it has collapsed. They find some coins in the wreckage, but Flossie theorizes that the vault, which is totally inaccessible from here, but they might be able to get in from next door.

    Next door is the Forgotten Gyre, a boat-builders' shop. A pair of large crustaceans have made their lairs here, hiding in the hulls of half-finished boats like hermit crabs, but they are dispatched without injury. Above them, the party can see hoists which once lifted the finished boats up and out a great bay window that is now covered in dirt.

    The tools and money box are plundered, while the crustaceans are shelled to the best of the adventurer’s ability, and the flesh is cooked using one of the locals' many recipes for crawfish. They look at the wall, and find that it is solid stone once the rotted wooden veneer is cut away. Jesse surmises they can make their way into the bank, but doing so will require an explosive charge.

    They return to town for the explosives, as well as the items on the kobolds' list. Jesse wants to renege on the contract citing a technicality in the wording, but Kumiko will not hear of it. Monsieur Gallefort is surprised to fulfill an order consisting primarily of explosives, toys, and recreational drugs, but keeps his mouth shut.


    Spoiler: Market Street Expedition 4
    Show
    The next morning they return to the underground, and they find the kobolds waiting for them on the main street. Their forces were pushed back from the bridge by invaders from the mine, and they warn the humans not to go there.

    Instead, they move north through the cloven heap back to Shakey Lane. Kumiko tosses a grenade into the dark water, and soon a pair of angry bunyips leap forth and bite at her legs. The group slays the wounded and disoriented creatures and then moves down the street. The only shop on the street is called Long John’s Union. The group has to climb through waist-deep water and mud to reach the door, and it is slow going. Feurlina enters first along with the tulpa, and disturbs the inhabitants, a pair of batlike ahool.

    The creatures attempt to destroy the tulpa first, leaving the invaders helpless in the dark, but when Feurlina gets in a lucky hit and kills the female, her mate loses all sense of tactics and attacks in a rage, and he soon joins her in death. The group sees a large room full of desks, decorated in a nautical theme, and cannot decide if this is a yacht club or a secretarial pool. Flossie senses something above her, and has Feurlina boost her up onto her shoulders, climbing into the ahool’s nest built from a ship’s rigging.

    Inside, she finds several knickknacks that do not interest her, but also a lime green orb that feels both familiar and strange. The material is odd, totally smooth, soft and yielding but at the same time indestructible and eager to return to a spherical shape.

    Shakey Lane turns into Privateer’s Street, where, a large monitor lizard is eating the guts of a slain wild boar. Flossie doesn’t want to kill the beast and tries to sneak past, but it takes offense to Jesse, and when Feurlina moves to protect her, the large woman gets bitten in the unarmored spot between her legs for the trouble, and they decide to put the animal down.

    To the south is a jeweler’s store called Willie’s Trove. Inside they chase off a pack of large weasel-like earth hounds. They find that this place has already been ransacked, and suffered severe damage from the eruption of the gong house with which it shares a wall. There is an obsidian unicorn statue that is valuable but too large to move.

    Across from Willie’s Trove is a door upon which someone has scrawled “Your Last Chance!”. Opening it, the group finds what looks to be a half-flooded beer garden. It is inhabited by a tribe of kobolds wearing oversized executioner’s hoods and wielding huge war-hammers. They do not attack and they do not speak. They warn the group not to proceed north, miming chomping jaws and convulsing from poison, but allow them to enter the tavern on the garden’s edge, called The Wolf’s Head.

    This was once an upscale saloon, built in imitation of a hunter’s lodge; lots of polished wood and taxidermy, animal heads adorning every wall. Within are three huge figures which, in the dim light, the group first mistakes for more were-bears, but then they realize are either ogres or trolls wearing the skins of animals. They are drinking through the bar’s stash at an alarming rate, and are laughing and making animal noises. When they see Kumiko, one of them pulls her toward them, scooping up her backside in its enormous palm.

    She objects most harshly, aiming her sword to cleanly sever the brute’s radial artery. He pulls back and shouts in pain as she dashes outside, Feurlina blocking the door with her shield, set to receive the charge.

    Flossie attempts to conjure up a spell to destroy the giant trio, but, as it so often does, her magic goes wrong, and a flaming meteor falls into the ground beside her and explodes. The kobolds shriek and run, and Flossie is down for the count.

    The group calls a retreat, but Jesse insists they stop for the unicorn statue despite the danger.

    It is massively heavy, over 20 stone, and Feurlina cannot carry it and Flossie, so Jesse takes the priestess despite her large friend’s protestations and her own aching back.

    Feurlina staggers under the statue’s weight, and when it comes time to climb out of the bog that was once Shakey’s Lane she needs help lifting it. Kumiko tries to steady it, but isn’t strong enough, and they very nearly lose the statue forever in the mud.

    By the time they get the statue back above ground, Feurlina’s and Jesse’s backs are shot, and they will not be up for any more adventures this month.

    Once Flossie has recovered, she begins experimenting with the strange orb. She does alchemical tests upon the sphere, and finds that it is of no substance known to Imperial or even Atlantean science.

    She casts a spell of oinomancy, divination using a wine glass, and receives a vision of herself as a child, and of the milky orb she brought out of a child’s game which was the source of her supernatural powers.

    Kumiko thinks it looks like it could socket into something, and so they try, and find that whatever it is put into gains supernatural powers.

    When placed in a weapon in a pommel stone, it guides the bearer’s hands and makes it impossible to miss, even when firing blind.
    When put in armor, it reflects damage back on the attacker.
    When put on an amulet, it amplifies the wearer’s strength.
    When put in a cloak, it absorbs magic.
    When put in a wand, it delays one's spells.
    When put in a staff, it can bless attempts at medicine or fortitude.
    It does not react with any tool they have to put it in.

    Finally, Flossie throws caution to the wind and wants to know if it can grant supernatural powers like the one from her childhood, and she swallows it, chasing it down with her strongest red wine.

    She finds that is gives her a compulsion to climb trees, and amplifies her skill at doing so. In addition, when she touches a wall, grapevines spring forth and hold her up. She has eaten the heart of leaves, and is now arboreal.

    Mayor Hallbreight invites Kumiko to his office and asks for a report. She is honest, but leaves out the part about their alliance with the kobolds. She is sad to report she has not yet found the other exit or the missing child. He pours her a glass of expensive bourbon and tells her that there have been no more deaths, but one of the farmers found a nest of infant monsters in his barn. Horrible things unlike anything found in the region. He then asks her if joining this Imperium of hers might bring a railroad into town, and she enthusiastically says yes, thinking nothing of the logistical and engineering nightmare of attempting to build and maintain train tracks in the Sundered Lands.

    Later, Flossie casts doubt on the mission as a whole.

    “We don’t have the training for this. We don’t have the skills for this. We don’t have the gear for this. We aren’t prepared for this. We aren’t heroes, we are just a bunch of random idiots. We got out butts kicked by kobolds! Three times!”


    All in all, the campaign is going really well.

    Still have some concerns about the characters, both their builds and quirks, but overall its great.

    The party really has trouble dealing with crowds, and they are struggling with the kobolds. I am really proud of them for surrendering and then making a deal with them, that is a level of maturity I haven't seen before; normally they fight to the bitter end out of pride or spite.

    Its sad that they are planning to betray their new allies, actually having alliances with the dungeon's denizens could really help them in the long run and make for a richer game overall imo.

    Not much story line yet, but there are hints of lore that they are putting together. I hope to introduce some more townsfolk next time and maybe they can put some information together to formulate a long term plan.

    I had concerns about pacing, but they are pushing on at just about the right pace with no nudging. I think its more about the players than anything I did, normally Bob wants to turn back constantly and Brian wants to push on until the end. In the previous campaign Johnny and Sarah would side with Bob, this game the new girl and the new guy (need to get them proper KoDT alliases) tend to side with Brian. I have also been vague about the mechanics with them, merely telling them that they get XP for progress but the dungeon gets more dangerous over time. Right now, I give them one character point for every five rooms they secure, and each time they leave the dungeon I roll a dice for every room to see if new monsters have moved in, and give the dice a +1 bonus each time. I will almost certainly tweak these mechanics when they move onto the next floor.

    See you again in two weeks!
    Last edited by Talakeal; 2023-03-08 at 10:06 AM.
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

  7. - Top - End - #7
    Bugbear in the Playground
    Join Date
    Jul 2021
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Gateway to the Dreamscapes: Megadungeon Campaign Log

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    Chapter Two: July.

    Spoiler: Market Street Expedition 2
    Show
    July is a slow time for the temple of Dionysus. Though in many lands the High Summer festival is a large one, in this region, most people choose to spend it by making a trip to the seashore. Perhaps it is because they remember being seafaring folk before the Cataclysm and still honor Poseidon and his ways, more likely it is because it is the only time of year warm enough to warrant a swim.

    Kumiko remarks that it doesn’t seem like High Summer without fireworks, and Flossie wonders if it might be possible for her to make some.

    Arianna moves her large stuffed black panther, Monquiro, into the wood-cutters lodge. Kumiko, who still thinks of her as a housekeeper, finds this strange, but Flossie allays her suspicion.

    Their next expedition into the buried city follows much the same path, though they are slightly better prepared. This time, the tulpa is in the shape of a large but unobtrusive spider with a glowing round abdomen. It prefers to crawl on the ceiling like a living lamp while staying safely above the combat.

    Their first stop is the building labeled “The Eternal Mortuary”. Inside is, as to be expected, a funeral parlor, with an upstairs sitting chamber and an embalming room in the rear. It is also home to eleven bodies that have been sealed in here for almost a century, and which have been animated and with no place to go for several decades, likely a product of the Night of the Restless Dead that presaged the return of the Black King to Pangaea. They would be mummified in any other climate, but down here their skin has been wetted and dried so many times it is more like putrid canvas flaps hanging from a moldy skeleton.

    Kumiko’s response is to leap up their stairs. Her warrior instinct is sharp, but she is not used to working with a team. The hungry dead shamble toward her companions, Jesse’s bolts doing nothing, and Feurlina grapples with them, being strangled by several pairs of rotting hands before Flossie is able to channel the right prayer to lay the zombies back down to rest.

    There is no treasure in the mortuary, and a search of the back room reveals only slabs built into a dozen lockers along the rear wall.

    They exit and go to the far end of the street. There, they find a zig-zagging tunnel of crystalline glass. Along its sides are statues that might be meant to represent angels, smooth humanoid figures with large disks above their heads; a traditional depiction of a halo. Jesse notes how this hall has near-perfect acoustics.

    Our heroes come around one corner and find a group of eight kobolds listening to what appears to be a sermon given by the shaman. The warriors attack, and some of the diminutive humanoids flee while the others grab crude spears and try and hold them off. The kobolds go down, but not before putting up a tenacious fight, hiding between the statues and darting out to stab their attackers, and inflicting more wounds than such small beings have any right to.

    As Jesse binds their wounds, the group jokes about how they should be ok as long as they don’t encounter any more kobolds. Then they move to the end of the chamber and open up a door into what a sign calls “The Ancient Lyceum”. Inside, they see a vast dark chamber and, reflecting back at them, a hundred pairs of tiny kobold eyes.

    They immediately back out into the Hall of Silent Angels, and Feurlina uses her great strength to push one of the statues down behind them, blocking off the door. They backtrack a bit and take the southern fork out of the chamber back to the main street. The ceiling has collapsed to the East, burying the passage under tons of mud, and trying to dig it out would be folly as it would surely collapse again, likely burying them alive.

    Further south, the road dead ends, the cul-de-sac containing stores called Falconer’s Square, Cordwood Junction, The Merciful Bleed, Dissenting Discoveries, and Cryptic Stores. They enter the latter and find an old building that appears to be a storehouse, long since gone to ruin. As they are adjusting to the light and trying to pick valuables out of the mess, Kumiko is startled by a mewling thing, eyeless, skinless, and with six long arms. It wraps its hands around her throat, leaving a dark purple bruise that will endure for a month, before Feurlina smashes it to a pulp with her mace.

    Jesse finds a few instruments that she thinks might be of some value, and Flossie confirms they are precision weights and measures for alchemical or scientific work.

    They exit through the service entrance in the back, and exit into another street. This one is flooded and sloped, with knee-deep running water. A swinging sign proclaims it Winsome Heights, but all of the buildings they see are ruined and the doors boarded shut. They decline to venture into the dark water to see where the street leads and decide to head back.

    Near the entrance fissure, they find a small side door. Feurlina opens it and is surprised to find a man inside. He is kneeling, breathing heavily, and covered in tattoos and sweat. He looks up and groans something that sounds like “No!” in a panicked voice, and then rises to his feet. He is nearly as tall as Feurlina is, but he keeps growing, his features rounding and his beard swelling. In a moment, he has transformed into an enormous bear and lunges for the armored woman. She strikes him across the mouth with her mace, and his jaw shatters. He swipes her away and then laughs, pushing his jaw back into place and says something nobody quite makes out, although they think they hear the word “silver” in his thick northern accent.

    In the end, the companions can put him down before he kills Feurlina, although it takes a tremendous amount of damage, and he is finally slain by a blast of lunar energy that leaves Flossie’s hair gray. After death, he resumes his human visage.

    Within the room, they find a small roadside shrine dedicated to Callisto the bear goddess, and among several sticks of incense and moldering offerings of nuts and berries, they find a bowl of holy water which Flossie adds to her store.

    The group returns to town to rest up that night; they took a pretty good beating and can use this opportunity to heal before pushing on. Jesse picks up some silver arrows in case they encounter more were-beasts.


    Spoiler: Market Street Expedition 3
    Show

    The next morning they return, and decide to venture into the eastern reaches, but first Jesse asks if they might return to the Hall of Silent Angels for their morning hymns. It is a mistake.

    As they draw close, the cobblestones collapse under them, leaving Jesse and Feurlina at the bottom of a deep muddy pit. Suddenly, the door in front of them opens and kobolds armed with crude bows pour out, and behind them, a small door that they had previously missed opens in the wall and spear-armed humanoids push them toward the pit. An ambush!

    Kumiko drops a rope while Flossie conjures up a wall of tentacles between them and the tiny encroaching phalanx. They are pelted with arrows. Jesse climbs up next to them and returns fire along with Flossie, but Feurlina, born down by her heavy metal harness, is much slower in getting up. When she does, she grabs Flossie and leaps across the pit, scattering the archers. At the same time, one of the kobold shamans manages to banish the tentacles back to limbo.

    Past the door in the crystalline hallway, Feurlina spies a kobold champion approaching. The tiny figure is clad in crude armor, wields a pair of human sizes gladiuses, and is flanked on either side by a pair of trained scoffins. Scoffins are creatures that are distantly related to drakes and crocodiles, but with only two legs and a stubby tail, resembling nothing so much as walking jaws. Feurlina rushes forward to engage them before they can near Flossie, but as soon as she moves into the Hall of Silent Angels, the door swings shut behind her and there is a loud crash, the kobolds have learned from her tactics and figured out some mechanism to topple the statues on their own!

    Flossie and Jesse take out many of the kobolds, but when she attempts to conjure a second wall of tentacles, her magic goes wrong, and a wall of white-hot fire appears above the pit, cutting her off from her companions.

    Feurlina duels the kobold champion in the dark, wedging herself between two statues so that the scoffins cannot bite at her knees. It is more or less a stalemate, she cannot hit the tiny creature in the dark, but it cannot pierce her armor and must make do with small cuts to non-vital areas. Still, it is only a matter of time before one of them grows too tired to defend themselves, and the gigantic woman is not likely to win out in a contest of endurance.

    Backed up against the wall of fire, Kumiko and Jesse are soon brought low. Before the shaman can move to finish them off as a sacrifice to their god, Kumiko pulls out her coin purse, hands it over, and then gestures to the ceiling; pantomiming the ransom they are worth. The shaman calls off the attack and drags the bleeding captives back to their lair in the Ancient Lyceum.

    The four companions are reunited and disarmed.

    The Lyceum is a great two-story library. It was once grand, but most of the books and shelves have been converted into crude huts and nests for the kobold families. Around a small bonfire, a deal is made between the four companions and the one shaman who speaks a pidgin form of the Terran language.

    Then Jesse asks if, instead of a ransom, they could purchase items in town that the kobolds can’t acquire for themselves. The shaman floats the idea, and the hordes are visibly excited at the prospect of luxuries, and they seem to accept, providing a crude list of all the things that they want.

    They come to the following deal; the humans are allowed to journey freely through the kobold’s territory, but if they take any plunder, half of it will be used to buy the things that they need in the human town. In addition, half of all prisoners will be taken to their god for sacrifice. They will not escort the humans, as there are many invaders these days and they cannot risk their warriors protecting outsiders, especially ones who were once enemies and might turn on them in time.

    They learn the following:

    The kobolds are called the “three heads”.

    Their territory extends from the river in the north to the mine in the west.

    They collapsed the eastern road and don’t go down into the under-city for fear of the bone men.

    They have lived here since the beginning of time.

    To the north is a castle inhabited by “two heads”.

    They are protected by a god and a goddess who live to the south. The god’s name is the “world eater”.

    There is a door in the back of the Lyceum. A sign above it reads “Royal Furnace. All printed materials are to be brought here to check for sedition. Templar Lord Bellhuon.”

    The kobolds say that danger lies behind that door, the shamans blessed it to keep the clan safe. The big folk are free to open it if they like, the kobolds will assist by cheering for them (or maybe he said laughing at them?)

    The humans explore the shop next to the lyceum called “Tungsten Tomorrows” and find that it is a specialty store that sells prosthetic limbs of exquisite craftsmanship. A clockwork servitor still lives here, a marvel to them all, and with a phonographic voice it tells them that they appear to be whole and healthy, but if they bring a patient to it, it would be happy to arrange a fitting. They decline.

    The secret passage on the main street leads to a tunnel that one can crawl through to find the remains of an abandoned and buried apartment. It is not pleasant, but could be cleaned up to serve as a safe place to store treasure or to hide from a larger creature.

    The group heads north beyond the Path of Tribulations and the charred remains of the gong house. They come to a castle as the kobolds said. Before the castle is a drawbridge that is fed by an underground stream. The stream continues to the northeast, and they think they hear something big splashing about further up the tunnel. The castle itself is guarded by a pair of giant two-headed ettins. The guards seem completely unconcerned, as if they have nothing to fear from the inhabitants of the buried city.

    Leaving the castle behind, our heroes finally decide to make for the western side of town. Beyond the fissure is a rundown dry-goods store called Grover’s Mercantile. When they open the door, they free a short humanoid creature shaped like a salamander. Its flesh is rotted, its eyes large and milky white, its nails reduced to talons from clawing at the door. They hope it will be content with its freedom, but it attacks them nonetheless. Kumiko decapitates it, but the body continues to claw at them until they pound it to mush, and even so it still twitches. Flossie dissolves it with conjured acid, her hair turning a sickly green.

    Kumiko helps herself to a box of silver coins hidden beneath one of the shelves. They exit through the back into a small street called The Lost Lane. They can hear drums to the south.

    The only shop on Lost Lane is called The Last Ember, a candle maker’s shop. They open the door and find it to be a total mess, melted wax everywhere, smashed shelves, lamp oil pooling on the floor, and, inexplicably, a pair of great apes. When Feurlina crashes in the door, the gorillas respond with aggression. Flossie strikes out with her magic, and as she becomes an unnatural redhead, the room goes up in flames, taking the panicking apes with it. They shut the door and wait for the smoke to dissipate and the pained screams to subside.

    When they again venture into the shop and over the char, ignoring the smell of burning fur, and enter a small chamber in the back called “Candlelight Studies”. It is lined with bookshelves and writing desks, and it is surmised that it was a place of tutelage. Four hooded figures stand about a table, and Kumiko greets them.

    They look at her with baleful red eyes, their features completely dark, and in a whispering voice, say “We have been denied the warmth of life for a century. You best be here on a matter of grave urgency if you wish to stay our hands.” At a loss for words, Kumiko apologizes and excuses herself. The quartet of wraiths floats toward them. Kumiko draws her sword, but the ghostly figures pass right through it.

    Flossie lets out a prayer, and the four recoil from the holy word. She then blesses her allies’ weapons. The wraiths attack again, and even blessed weapons and silver arrows pass right through them. They travel straight through Kumiko and Jesse, chilling their souls with a touch. They move to drink Flossie’s life force, and Feurlina can do little but watch and swat at them ineffectively.
    Kumiko draws her lighter and sets a book aflame, and bids Jesse do the same. They then bat at the wraiths with the flaming books. The books do little to harm the wraiths, but distract them long enough for Flossie to banish them with a holy word.

    Each was wearing a golden amulet, a fine prize.

    Behind one of the shelves, they find a secret staircase leading deeper underground, but they decline to investigate.

    At the end of the Lost Lane, they come to double doors leading into something called The Vernaculum. It is a vast chamber, what once may have been an indoor arena, with a sandy floor and rusting gymnastic equipment scattered about. They hear distant drumming, and the breathing of something massive. Soon they see its source, a great four-legged creature the size of a dinosaur, with three long necks and three sharp-toothed heads. It looks as them slowly and approaches languidly, but as it does so, they run. The beast lopes along behind them, and when they slam the doors behind they can hear it baying in disappointment.

    They calculate their odds against the huge monster, and don’t think they have a chance. They consider trying to get it stuck in the doorway, but aren’t sure if that will work. Flossie stares winsomely at the door, she sensed something powerful and at the same time familiar within.

    They return to the main street and follow it to the west, coming to what was once an expensive covered bridge running over another underground stream. It is called the Rose Wine according to a plaque. Through the windows on the bridge, they can see small watchtowers built into the walls on either side, good places to snipe at invaders. Upon the bridge is a an armored kobold riding on the back of a scaly drake. He squeaks that they are not to pass without permission, and then they explain their deal with kobolds in the library and he waves them on and follows behind.

    The road continues to a crossroads. The kobold tells them that if they continue on they will find the mines, called the Fibrous Delve, but warns them against it, for it is now home to a dangerous breed of big people who kill kobolds for sport. They are square, with two legs, two arms, and two horns, are even less scaly than the humans, and all covered in metal and fur.

    Instead, the group goes north, to a small tailor’s shop called The Becalming Windle. The kobold warns them not to touch the door with their bare hands, and they narrowly avoid a poisoned needle trap.

    Within they find many moldered cloth goods and another money box. Kumiko thinks it odd that this room intersects with the mortuary on her map, and wonders if she has made a mistake or if the floor has sloped beneath it. Jesse soon discovers a hidden passage, and they find that it leads to one of the crypts in the back of the mortuary.

    The back door out of the tailor’s shop leads to something called the Industrial Park, and they turn around instead, heading south along Tabernacle Lane, past the Rose Wine Bridge and Fibrous Delve.

    At the end of the hall is a great bronze idol, in the shape of a giant full-figured woman with no face. The statue is covered in green patina, but her pregnant belly is rubbed clean and glistens in the lantern light like a new penny.

    Two shops are on this street, the Forgotten Gyre and the Parthenon Savings and Loan.

    The latter is obviously a bank, and it has collapsed. They find some coins in the wreckage, but Flossie theorizes that the vault, which is totally inaccessible from here, but they might be able to get in from next door.

    Next door is the Forgotten Gyre, a boat-builders' shop. A pair of large crustaceans have made their lairs here, hiding in the hulls of half-finished boats like hermit crabs, but they are dispatched without injury. Above them, the party can see hoists which once lifted the finished boats up and out a great bay window that is now covered in dirt.

    The tools and money box are plundered, while the crustaceans are shelled to the best of the adventurer’s ability, and the flesh is cooked using one of the locals' many recipes for crawfish. They look at the wall, and find that it is solid stone once the rotted wooden veneer is cut away. Jesse surmises they can make their way into the bank, but doing so will require an explosive charge.

    They return to town for the explosives, as well as the items on the kobolds' list. Jesse wants to renege on the contract citing a technicality in the wording, but Kumiko will not hear of it. Monsieur Gallefort is surprised to fulfill an order consisting primarily of explosives, toys, and recreational drugs, but keeps his mouth shut.


    Spoiler: Market Street Expedition 4
    Show
    The next morning they return to the underground, and they find the kobolds waiting for them on the main street. Their forces were pushed back from the bridge by invaders from the mine, and they warn the humans not to go there.

    Instead, they move north through the cloven heap back to Shakey Lane. Kumiko tosses a grenade into the dark water, and soon a pair of angry bunyips leap forth and bite at her legs. The group slays the wounded and disoriented creatures and then moves down the street. The only shop on the street is called Long John’s Union. The group has to climb through waist-deep water and mud to reach the door, and it is slow going. Feurlina enters first along with the tulpa, and disturbs the inhabitants, a pair of batlike ahool.

    The creatures attempt to destroy the tulpa first, leaving the invaders helpless in the dark, but when Feurlina gets in a lucky hit and kills the female, her mate loses all sense of tactics and attacks in a rage, and he soon joins her in death. The group sees a large room full of desks, decorated in a nautical theme, and cannot decide if this is a yacht club or a secretarial pool. Flossie senses something above her, and has Feurlina boost her up onto her shoulders, climbing into the ahool’s nest built from a ship’s rigging.

    Inside, she finds several knickknacks that do not interest her, but also a lime green orb that feels both familiar and strange. The material is odd, totally smooth, soft and yielding but at the same time indestructible and eager to return to a spherical shape.

    Shakey Lane turns into Privateer’s Street, where, a large monitor lizard is eating the guts of a slain wild boar. Flossie doesn’t want to kill the beast and tries to sneak past, but it takes offense to Jesse, and when Feurlina moves to protect her, the large woman gets bitten in the unarmored spot between her legs for the trouble, and they decide to put the animal down.

    To the south is a jeweler’s store called Willie’s Trove. Inside they chase off a pack of large weasel-like earth hounds. They find that this place has already been ransacked, and suffered severe damage from the eruption of the gong house with which it shares a wall. There is an obsidian unicorn statue that is valuable but too large to move.

    Across from Willie’s Trove is a door upon which someone has scrawled “Your Last Chance!”. Opening it, the group finds what looks to be a half-flooded beer garden. It is inhabited by a tribe of kobolds wearing oversized executioner’s hoods and wielding huge war-hammers. They do not attack and they do not speak. They warn the group not to proceed north, miming chomping jaws and convulsing from poison, but allow them to enter the tavern on the garden’s edge, called The Wolf’s Head.

    This was once an upscale saloon, built in imitation of a hunter’s lodge; lots of polished wood and taxidermy, animal heads adorning every wall. Within are three huge figures which, in the dim light, the group first mistakes for more were-bears, but then they realize are either ogres or trolls wearing the skins of animals. They are drinking through the bar’s stash at an alarming rate, and are laughing and making animal noises. When they see Kumiko, one of them pulls her toward them, scooping up her backside in its enormous palm.

    She objects most harshly, aiming her sword to cleanly sever the brute’s radial artery. He pulls back and shouts in pain as she dashes outside, Feurlina blocking the door with her shield, set to receive the charge.

    Flossie attempts to conjure up a spell to destroy the giant trio, but, as it so often does, her magic goes wrong, and a flaming meteor falls into the ground beside her and explodes. The kobolds shriek and run, and Flossie is down for the count.

    The group calls a retreat, but Jesse insists they stop for the unicorn statue despite the danger.

    It is massively heavy, over 20 stone, and Feurlina cannot carry it and Flossie, so Jesse takes the priestess despite her large friend’s protestations and her own aching back.

    Feurlina staggers under the statue’s weight, and when it comes time to climb out of the bog that was once Shakey’s Lane she needs help lifting it. Kumiko tries to steady it, but isn’t strong enough, and they very nearly lose the statue forever in the mud.

    By the time they get the statue back above ground, Feurlina’s and Jesse’s backs are shot, and they will not be up for any more adventures this month.

    Once Flossie has recovered, she begins experimenting with the strange orb. She does alchemical tests upon the sphere, and finds that it is of no substance known to Imperial or even Atlantean science.

    She casts a spell of oinomancy, divination using a wine glass, and receives a vision of herself as a child, and of the milky orb she brought out of a child’s game which was the source of her supernatural powers.

    Kumiko thinks it looks like it could socket into something, and so they try, and find that whatever it is put into gains supernatural powers.

    When placed in a weapon in a pommel stone, it guides the bearer’s hands and makes it impossible to miss, even when firing blind.
    When put in armor, it reflects damage back on the attacker.
    When put on an amulet, it amplifies the wearer’s strength.
    When put in a cloak, it absorbs magic.
    When put in a wand, it delays one's spells.
    When put in a staff, it can bless attempts at medicine or fortitude.
    It does not react with any tool they have to put it in.

    Finally, Flossie throws caution to the wind and wants to know if it can grant supernatural powers like the one from her childhood, and she swallows it, chasing it down with her strongest red wine.

    She finds that is gives her a compulsion to climb trees, and amplifies her skill at doing so. In addition, when she touches a wall, grapevines spring forth and hold her up. She has eaten the heart of leaves, and is now arboreal.

    Mayor Hallbreight invites Kumiko to his office and asks for a report. She is honest, but leaves out the part about their alliance with the kobolds. She is sad to report she has not yet found the other exit or the missing child. He pours her a glass of expensive bourbon and tells her that there have been no more deaths, but one of the farmers found a nest of infant monsters in his barn. Horrible things unlike anything found in the region. He then asks her if joining this Imperium of hers might bring a railroad into town, and she enthusiastically says yes, thinking nothing of the logistical and engineering nightmare of attempting to build and maintain train tracks in the Sundered Lands.

    Later, Flossie casts doubt on the mission as a whole.

    “We don’t have the training for this. We don’t have the skills for this. We don’t have the gear for this. We aren’t prepared for this. We aren’t heroes, we are just a bunch of random idiots. We got out butts kicked by kobolds! Three times!”


    All in all, the campaign is going really well.

    Still have some concerns about the characters, both their builds and quirks, but overall its great.

    The party really has trouble dealing with crowds, and they are struggling with the kobolds. I am really proud of them for surrendering and then making a deal with them, that is a level of maturity I haven't seen before; normally they fight to the bitter end out of pride or spite.

    Its sad that they are planning to betray their new allies, actually having alliances with the dungeon's denizens could really help them in the long run and make for a richer game overall imo.

    Not much story line yet, but there are hints of lore that they are putting together. I hope to introduce some more townsfolk next time and maybe they can put some information together to formulate a long term plan.

    I had concerns about pacing, but they are pushing on at just about the right pace with no nudging. I think its more about the players than anything I did, normally Bob wants to turn back constantly and Brian wants to push on until the end. In the previous campaign Johnny and Sarah would side with Bob, this game the new girl and the new guy (need to get them proper KoDT alliases) tend to side with Brian. I have also been vague about the mechanics with them, merely telling them that they get XP for progress but the dungeon gets more dangerous over time. Right now, I give them one character point for every five rooms they secure, and each time they leave the dungeon I roll a dice for every room to see if new monsters have moved in, and give the dice a +1 bonus each time. I will almost certainly tweak these mechanics when they move onto the next floor.

    See you again in two weeks!
    Nice to see that things are going well. My favourite character of the players is Feurlina and my favourite npc gotta be Kumiko's gal. I'm genuinely curious about how the marriage subplot will end up and of course what is going on in the mega dungeon itself.
    Just a note i got adhd and autism.

  8. - Top - End - #8
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Talakeal's Avatar

    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Location
    Denver.
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Gateway to the Dreamscapes: Megadungeon Campaign Log

    Chapter Three: Early August

    Spoiler: Market Street: Expedition 5
    Show
    Mayor Gallefort calls Kumiko to his office and tells her that from now on she is to give her reports to Christopher Thorne, the publisher of the local gazette. He wants her to work with him in allaying the people’s fears about the monsters and the extra expense of maintaining a watch around the clock. Flossie butts in and asks if he would like them to make it sound like he is doing more to protect the town than sending mentally ill people to their deaths underground, and he nods, thinking they are sharing a joke.

    Flossie outright refuses. She doesn’t trust the mayor or Thorn. She says that the man only runs the paper as an excuse to publish his poetry. Kumiko asks if it is that bad, and Flossie says no, it’s just that nobody around here cares.

    The group returns to the underground, first deciding to explore the street marked as Winsome Heights.

    The street slopes downward and is filled with knee-deep water that they think is probably coming in direct from the aquifer. The current is rough, and they have to brace themselves to remain steady.

    They move down the street, seeing boarded-up storefronts on either side. They don’t have a crowbar, so Feurlina decides to simply bash their doors down with her mace. As she does so, Jesse screams and falls into the water where her lantern goes out; they have attracted the attention of a school of carnivorous eels.

    Flossie climbs onto the wall using her heart of vines, while Kumiko ties herself to the door. Feurlina swipes at the eels with her mace as the current pulls Jesse away.

    The group disperses the eels, but Jesse is unconscious and Feurlina moves to head her off, stepping out of the torchlight and over the ledge of a great pit. With uncanny dexterity, she manages to catch herself with one hand and the unconscious harper with the other.

    Kumiko, bound by rope, moves slowly to them and strains herself pulling the rotund person up and into a dry foyer on the street side. Feurlina has a much harder time lifting herself back up, especially with the weight of her armor pulling her down.

    Eventually, the group finds some manner of shelter, and Flossie revives Jesse with an alchemical tonic, and she does her best to bind the numerous bite marks that mar her body.

    Flossie and her tulpa climb along the walls and look at the pit, and decide it was once a storm drain, but was damaged at some point and is now a yawning hole into the dark unknown below.

    Feurlina gets back to smashing the doors, and finds nothing but a flood of mud, algae, and stagnant water behind them, save for one, which is the back door to the Cordwood Junction.

    This was once a lumber yard, but decades of dampness have ruined the neatly stacked wood. The intruder’s warm breath disturbs a swarm of stymphalians that have nested in here; large heavily armored mosquitos named after the brass owls of legend. Kumiko lights one of the clay grenades that she has prepared to deal with swarms and kills many of them, but those that remain seek the blood of their attackers, their long needle-like beaks finding tender flesh. They are beaten to death, although the last one is crawling about under Feurlina’s armor, causing the big girl to panic until Kumiko deftly jabs with her sword, skewering the creature when it goes for Feurlina’s throat. Rai holds it out for a moment, as if offering a kabob.

    She then looks through the creature’s nests in the rotting wood, and, not knowing that they do not lay eggs until after they have fed, decides to burn them, but cannot get a fire going in the damp. They find an exquisite set of carpenter’s tools in the shop, but there is almost a century of rust upon them, and they decide to take them up to town to sell to a craftsman with a lot of patience and even more oil.

    Emerging from the front door of the shop, they move down the lane to Dissenting Discoveries. This shop is inhabited by four strange humanoid creatures, eyeless and with four arms each, their heads split open by great vertical mouths that do nothing but scream. These beasts are put down by Kumiko’s exquisite swordsmanship and Flossie’s uncanny magic, the latter’s hair turning as black as the void energies she summons up.

    This store appears to be some sort of museum. In the center of the room is a desk filled with numerous mold-stained historical documents, none of which seem significant to the explorers. On the walls and in display cases are numerous strange artifacts, those apparently made by cultures and of technologies not known to any of them, some appearing downright alien. They can’t carry it all, but they take what seems most valuable back to sell at the bazaar next month.

    The next shop is an indoor archery range called Falconer’s Square. It is the nest of a great terror bird, and Kumiko wonders where it came from and what it is eating. They attempt to calm it, but it takes offense to Jesse’s unnatural presence, and attacks savagely.

    The bird destroys the tulpa, and shatters Feurlina’s improvised shield before they can bring it down. They cook the beast and search it’s nest. They find nothing of great value, save some bolts that will fit Jesse’s crossbow, and the remains of a few small animals, mostly earth hounds and kobolds. No eggs, so they eat the bird instead, delivering the leftovers to their goblinoid allies.

    Flossie conjures a new tulpa, this one in the shape of a cloud of fireflies, and well as conjuring a temporary shield for Feurlina out of ectoplasm.

    Finally, they move into a tiled building called the Merciful Bleed. It appears to have once been some sort of hospice or doctor’s office, with several patients’ beds. Everything of value has been cleared out, although they do find an old book of faded photographs that is remarkably well preserved and might be either a valuable clue or a memento for someone in town.

    In the back, there is an adobe arch, and beyond it a hallway leading north and south. To the south, a sign proclaims, lies the Vertex Stash, and to the north, the Rancid Dash. Not much liking the sound of the latter, the group goes south, much to their misfortune.

    The Vertex Stash appears to have once been a storeroom, but it has collapsed into a massive sinkhole. Within the churning mud water-logged human corpses float, and upon sensing living beings they shamble to their feet and moan, much like the zombies in the funeral parlor on the other side of the market.

    The explorers form fighting positions, and do well, although these are tight corners, and Flossie must climb the walls to get a proper line of fire, her hair turning purple to match the eldritch blasts she fires. One of the shambling beasts grapples Jesse, biting his shoulder and causing him to fire his crossbow into the air, striking and wounding Flossie on the wall above.

    The ghasts, for that is what they are, are clumsy, but there are lots of them, and Flossie can see that there are far more in the pit than should be possible, an endless tide of the walking dead. She attempts to cast a spell to collapse the ceiling, but her aim is off, and Kumiko is wounded by falling rocks.

    Flossie conjures a wall of tentacles to cover their escape as they fall back to town.


    Spoiler: Interlude: Evermoon Bayou
    Show
    That night, Kumiko has a dream about visiting Arianna in her bed, running her lips across the softest portions of the girl’s body, and then pulling back, her teeth stained with blood. She awakens to an agonizing sore throat, and though she is terribly thirsty both water and wine burn to drink, and she discovers her well-manicured fingernails are dropping off into pools of black blood.

    She goes to the temple, and finds that Jesse is suffering from similar symptoms. Feurlina does not appear to have been bit, and Flossie seems to have a natural immunity. But Rai and Jesse are in bad shape, and Flossie does the best she can to mix up an alchemical cure for the strange pathogen that the ghasts carry within their tainted fluids.

    Feurlina decides it is cheaper to replace her shield than to have it repaired, and spends the extra money on an actual military shield, an heirloom left over from one of the Warlord’s armies.

    Once they are well, the group returns to the dungeon.


    Spoiler: Market Street: Expedition 6
    Show
    They find that the Merciful Bleed is now overrun with the ghasts, and this fight goes much the same as the last. They are quickly surrounded and Jesse and Feurlina are both bitten, though Kumiko manages to keep her distance through superior grace and skill. Flossie thins out their numbers with a blast of magical fire, and then conjures more tentacles of the old ones to hold their reinforcements at bay. The companions hack the front line of the undead to pieces, and then scurry backward, slamming the door behind them and holding it shut while Jesse goes to find a piece of metal scaffolding to jam the hinges.

    Jesse cleans their wounds as best as she can, hoping they were not again exposed to the diseases that the corpse-men carry.

    They decide to go pay back the Ologs for the previous defeat, and make their way back to the Wolf’s Den Tavern. On Privateer’s Street, they find that there is another monitor lizard in the same spot, and Jesse shrieks that it has come back from the dead. Flossie tosses up her holy symbol to keep it at bay as Feurlina moves to dispatch it, but it doesn’t work, and the large woman is bitten in the leg. It is fortunate for her that the ghastly fever she contracted during the last fight is already altering her metabolism, for this is no mere monitor lizard, but a basilisk, and its bite means almost certain death.

    Kumiko moves in and deftly beheads the lizard, and then takes care to avoid its still snapping jaws as she tosses it’s head into a deep pool of mud.

    The hooded kobolds stare at them as they pass and move in behind them. The group engages the three giants in the tavern, and uses careful hit-and-run tactics, inflicting bleeding wounds that will be fatal in time, although Feurlina is nearly grappled and pulled into the melee.

    These creatures are tougher than stone and do not go down easy, and the group again prepares to fall back, but finds that the kobolds have closed in behind them in the garden, and cross their heavy axes, barring the door. This is, apparently, a fight to the death.

    In the end, Kumiko and Jesse are both downed, and Feurlina is only standing because she is numb to pain due to the combination of ghastly fever and basilisk venom in her blood. But, all three olags have succumbed to the masterful incisions that Kumiko has placed in their veins.

    Then the kobolds bid the pair of tatzelwurms who dwell in the garden to bring Feurlina down. The strange skink-like creatures are surprisingly strong for their size, and their disproportionally large claws can tear through her armored plates with little trouble, and soon she is bleeding on the ground along with her companions.

    Flossie conjures a pair of tulpas with oozing toxic skin to grapple with the monsters, and soon both tatzelwurms and tulpas are slain and she is staring down at the eight kobolds who block her exist, their faces unreadable behind the executioner’s hoods.

    Then, the door to the blacksmith’s shop across the garden opens, and an old raspy voice chuckles and says “This is the part where you beg for your lives and make promises you have no intention of ever keeping.”

    Out walks a manticore, a creature with the body of a large lion, the tail of a scorpion, and the face of a cruel old man.

    Kumiko does her best to stand and bow, asking his name, and the manticore tells her he lost it as part of the transformation process.

    She asks him what he will accept in exchange for their lives, and he tells them they have nothing of value to him.

    They ask if he wants a new name, and the manticore says he will accept it, but he doesn’t much care as he doesn’t like being called on to begin with.

    They say that if he lets them finish their mission he will have no more trouble with the town above, and the manticore laughs and says the town doesn’t trouble him, they don’t come down here, and when he comes up there they are none the wiser.

    He has no use for treasure, only the pleasure of the kill and a hunger for prey with just enough fight left in it to know what is happening.

    They say they will not bring him people to feed on, and he says he wasn’t talking about people, surely there are enough abhuman creatures dwelling above that the town could do with a good cleansing.

    Flossie agrees there are a few non-human residents of the bayou, but she will not sacrifice her neighbors.

    They will, however, bring him captives from below if that is all he values. The manticore looks uncertain, and Feurlina makes the suggestion that he take their harpist. Jesse attempts to sing, hoping to charm the beast, but only coughs up blood and squawks, and the manticore drives his stinger into her, rendering her paralyzed.

    He then smashes her crossbow in his mighty paws and hands the ruin to Flossie, and tells the terrified kobolds to drag Jesse into his lair.

    The manticore looks at them for a long moment and says very well, you may live, for now, in exchange for your bard, a name, and any captives you find below. But I also want one more thing.

    He looks at Kumiko and tells her that he doesn’t trust women or foreigners, but he understands her kind is obsessed with honor, so he wants her to swear that if she believes his life is at risk, she will fight to defend him with her dying breath. Kumiko thinks for a moment, and then nods.

    They then depart, dragging Feurlina along behind them.

    Feurlina is in bad shape, and won’t last long. They send Dennis off to fetch a real doctor, while Arianna and Flossie attempt to keep the giant woman alive.
    Flossie tells Kumiko that Jesse is dead because of her. Jesse was odd, but she was a friend, and if Feurlina doesn’t survive, the two of them are done, she will never adventure with Kumiko again, and will curse the day the stranger ever came into town.

    She says the kobolds are bad enough, but now you have allied us with a maniac who has no obligation to help them or even refrain from killing them for sport. Kumiko thinks back, and realizes that she has sworn to defend the manticore, but it offered no favors in turn, or even a promise of safe conduct.

    Flossie looks at her seriously and says that if they are to remain companions, she needs Kumiko’s promise that if the manticore betrays them, it will be a fight to the death, one way or the other.

    Kumiko is silent, again reflecting on the conflicted loyalties that brought her so far from home.


    This session did not go well, at least from the players perspective.

    First, the players seem really reticent to talk in character, either to each other or to NPCs, which is odd because there was such good RP in the first session.

    Second, Jesse's player is kind of done with him / her. Part of it, I think, it the tone of the game being more serious than she intended and the other players are not really willing to banter with her. Also, mechanically, the character doesn't function, and since I am being much more thorough about policing dice rolls this game, she is struggling mechanically. She stopped to roll up a new character mid session, and then took the first opportunity to volunteer for sacrifice at the end.

    Third, the fight with the ghasts went bad for the party. After the second attempt, they told me how they always struggle with reinforcements. I told them I knew, at which point they, exasperated, asked me why I still used reinforcement mechanics if I knew they would struggle with them. I responded that it isn't my job to handle them easy wins, but to provide variety, and the reason that they struggle is because they don't adjust their tactics; using their usual defensive strategies rather than being more proactive. They told me the fight was "impossible" and I told them they did fine the first time, they just didn't think to seal the door behind them when the retreated, and the second time they failed to adjust their tactics in any way to compensate.


    Finally, they had to cut a deal with a monster for the second time in two sessions. From a mechanical and story line perspective, this is great, it gives them allies in the dungeon, a source of information and lore, safe passage through some areas, and a lot of in character drama. Out of character though, things are not going so great.

    In short, the players value wealth and pride above all else; including XP, completing their objectives, and even their character's lives. As a result, a game where they lose fights and cut deals with monsters is simply not "fun" for them. As I am the only one who is invested in the "lore" or the "story", including their character's personal stories, they consider it a huge favor to me to not suicide their characters when things start going wrong as they would much rather die and start a fresh game than continue one with the sting of a previous setback hanging over their head.


    Next week we are probably going back to Brian's game, hopefully this isn't the end of this one, but at this point who can say?
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

  9. - Top - End - #9
    Bugbear in the Playground
    Join Date
    Jul 2021
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Gateway to the Dreamscapes: Megadungeon Campaign Log

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    Chapter Three: Early August

    Spoiler: Market Street: Expedition 5
    Show
    Mayor Gallefort calls Kumiko to his office and tells her that from now on she is to give her reports to Christopher Thorne, the publisher of the local gazette. He wants her to work with him in allaying the people’s fears about the monsters and the extra expense of maintaining a watch around the clock. Flossie butts in and asks if he would like them to make it sound like he is doing more to protect the town than sending mentally ill people to their deaths underground, and he nods, thinking they are sharing a joke.

    Flossie outright refuses. She doesn’t trust the mayor or Thorn. She says that the man only runs the paper as an excuse to publish his poetry. Kumiko asks if it is that bad, and Flossie says no, it’s just that nobody around here cares.

    The group returns to the underground, first deciding to explore the street marked as Winsome Heights.

    The street slopes downward and is filled with knee-deep water that they think is probably coming in direct from the aquifer. The current is rough, and they have to brace themselves to remain steady.

    They move down the street, seeing boarded-up storefronts on either side. They don’t have a crowbar, so Feurlina decides to simply bash their doors down with her mace. As she does so, Jesse screams and falls into the water where her lantern goes out; they have attracted the attention of a school of carnivorous eels.

    Flossie climbs onto the wall using her heart of vines, while Kumiko ties herself to the door. Feurlina swipes at the eels with her mace as the current pulls Jesse away.

    The group disperses the eels, but Jesse is unconscious and Feurlina moves to head her off, stepping out of the torchlight and over the ledge of a great pit. With uncanny dexterity, she manages to catch herself with one hand and the unconscious harper with the other.

    Kumiko, bound by rope, moves slowly to them and strains herself pulling the rotund person up and into a dry foyer on the street side. Feurlina has a much harder time lifting herself back up, especially with the weight of her armor pulling her down.

    Eventually, the group finds some manner of shelter, and Flossie revives Jesse with an alchemical tonic, and she does her best to bind the numerous bite marks that mar her body.

    Flossie and her tulpa climb along the walls and look at the pit, and decide it was once a storm drain, but was damaged at some point and is now a yawning hole into the dark unknown below.

    Feurlina gets back to smashing the doors, and finds nothing but a flood of mud, algae, and stagnant water behind them, save for one, which is the back door to the Cordwood Junction.

    This was once a lumber yard, but decades of dampness have ruined the neatly stacked wood. The intruder’s warm breath disturbs a swarm of stymphalians that have nested in here; large heavily armored mosquitos named after the brass owls of legend. Kumiko lights one of the clay grenades that she has prepared to deal with swarms and kills many of them, but those that remain seek the blood of their attackers, their long needle-like beaks finding tender flesh. They are beaten to death, although the last one is crawling about under Feurlina’s armor, causing the big girl to panic until Kumiko deftly jabs with her sword, skewering the creature when it goes for Feurlina’s throat. Rai holds it out for a moment, as if offering a kabob.

    She then looks through the creature’s nests in the rotting wood, and, not knowing that they do not lay eggs until after they have fed, decides to burn them, but cannot get a fire going in the damp. They find an exquisite set of carpenter’s tools in the shop, but there is almost a century of rust upon them, and they decide to take them up to town to sell to a craftsman with a lot of patience and even more oil.

    Emerging from the front door of the shop, they move down the lane to Dissenting Discoveries. This shop is inhabited by four strange humanoid creatures, eyeless and with four arms each, their heads split open by great vertical mouths that do nothing but scream. These beasts are put down by Kumiko’s exquisite swordsmanship and Flossie’s uncanny magic, the latter’s hair turning as black as the void energies she summons up.

    This store appears to be some sort of museum. In the center of the room is a desk filled with numerous mold-stained historical documents, none of which seem significant to the explorers. On the walls and in display cases are numerous strange artifacts, those apparently made by cultures and of technologies not known to any of them, some appearing downright alien. They can’t carry it all, but they take what seems most valuable back to sell at the bazaar next month.

    The next shop is an indoor archery range called Falconer’s Square. It is the nest of a great terror bird, and Kumiko wonders where it came from and what it is eating. They attempt to calm it, but it takes offense to Jesse’s unnatural presence, and attacks savagely.

    The bird destroys the tulpa, and shatters Feurlina’s improvised shield before they can bring it down. They cook the beast and search it’s nest. They find nothing of great value, save some bolts that will fit Jesse’s crossbow, and the remains of a few small animals, mostly earth hounds and kobolds. No eggs, so they eat the bird instead, delivering the leftovers to their goblinoid allies.

    Flossie conjures a new tulpa, this one in the shape of a cloud of fireflies, and well as conjuring a temporary shield for Feurlina out of ectoplasm.

    Finally, they move into a tiled building called the Merciful Bleed. It appears to have once been some sort of hospice or doctor’s office, with several patients’ beds. Everything of value has been cleared out, although they do find an old book of faded photographs that is remarkably well preserved and might be either a valuable clue or a memento for someone in town.

    In the back, there is an adobe arch, and beyond it a hallway leading north and south. To the south, a sign proclaims, lies the Vertex Stash, and to the north, the Rancid Dash. Not much liking the sound of the latter, the group goes south, much to their misfortune.

    The Vertex Stash appears to have once been a storeroom, but it has collapsed into a massive sinkhole. Within the churning mud water-logged human corpses float, and upon sensing living beings they shamble to their feet and moan, much like the zombies in the funeral parlor on the other side of the market.

    The explorers form fighting positions, and do well, although these are tight corners, and Flossie must climb the walls to get a proper line of fire, her hair turning purple to match the eldritch blasts she fires. One of the shambling beasts grapples Jesse, biting his shoulder and causing him to fire his crossbow into the air, striking and wounding Flossie on the wall above.

    The ghasts, for that is what they are, are clumsy, but there are lots of them, and Flossie can see that there are far more in the pit than should be possible, an endless tide of the walking dead. She attempts to cast a spell to collapse the ceiling, but her aim is off, and Kumiko is wounded by falling rocks.

    Flossie conjures a wall of tentacles to cover their escape as they fall back to town.


    Spoiler: Interlude: Evermoon Bayou
    Show
    That night, Kumiko has a dream about visiting Arianna in her bed, running her lips across the softest portions of the girl’s body, and then pulling back, her teeth stained with blood. She awakens to an agonizing sore throat, and though she is terribly thirsty both water and wine burn to drink, and she discovers her well-manicured fingernails are dropping off into pools of black blood.

    She goes to the temple, and finds that Jesse is suffering from similar symptoms. Feurlina does not appear to have been bit, and Flossie seems to have a natural immunity. But Rai and Jesse are in bad shape, and Flossie does the best she can to mix up an alchemical cure for the strange pathogen that the ghasts carry within their tainted fluids.

    Feurlina decides it is cheaper to replace her shield than to have it repaired, and spends the extra money on an actual military shield, an heirloom left over from one of the Warlord’s armies.

    Once they are well, the group returns to the dungeon.


    Spoiler: Market Street: Expedition 6
    Show
    They find that the Merciful Bleed is now overrun with the ghasts, and this fight goes much the same as the last. They are quickly surrounded and Jesse and Feurlina are both bitten, though Kumiko manages to keep her distance through superior grace and skill. Flossie thins out their numbers with a blast of magical fire, and then conjures more tentacles of the old ones to hold their reinforcements at bay. The companions hack the front line of the undead to pieces, and then scurry backward, slamming the door behind them and holding it shut while Jesse goes to find a piece of metal scaffolding to jam the hinges.

    Jesse cleans their wounds as best as she can, hoping they were not again exposed to the diseases that the corpse-men carry.

    They decide to go pay back the Ologs for the previous defeat, and make their way back to the Wolf’s Den Tavern. On Privateer’s Street, they find that there is another monitor lizard in the same spot, and Jesse shrieks that it has come back from the dead. Flossie tosses up her holy symbol to keep it at bay as Feurlina moves to dispatch it, but it doesn’t work, and the large woman is bitten in the leg. It is fortunate for her that the ghastly fever she contracted during the last fight is already altering her metabolism, for this is no mere monitor lizard, but a basilisk, and its bite means almost certain death.

    Kumiko moves in and deftly beheads the lizard, and then takes care to avoid its still snapping jaws as she tosses it’s head into a deep pool of mud.

    The hooded kobolds stare at them as they pass and move in behind them. The group engages the three giants in the tavern, and uses careful hit-and-run tactics, inflicting bleeding wounds that will be fatal in time, although Feurlina is nearly grappled and pulled into the melee.

    These creatures are tougher than stone and do not go down easy, and the group again prepares to fall back, but finds that the kobolds have closed in behind them in the garden, and cross their heavy axes, barring the door. This is, apparently, a fight to the death.

    In the end, Kumiko and Jesse are both downed, and Feurlina is only standing because she is numb to pain due to the combination of ghastly fever and basilisk venom in her blood. But, all three olags have succumbed to the masterful incisions that Kumiko has placed in their veins.

    Then the kobolds bid the pair of tatzelwurms who dwell in the garden to bring Feurlina down. The strange skink-like creatures are surprisingly strong for their size, and their disproportionally large claws can tear through her armored plates with little trouble, and soon she is bleeding on the ground along with her companions.

    Flossie conjures a pair of tulpas with oozing toxic skin to grapple with the monsters, and soon both tatzelwurms and tulpas are slain and she is staring down at the eight kobolds who block her exist, their faces unreadable behind the executioner’s hoods.

    Then, the door to the blacksmith’s shop across the garden opens, and an old raspy voice chuckles and says “This is the part where you beg for your lives and make promises you have no intention of ever keeping.”

    Out walks a manticore, a creature with the body of a large lion, the tail of a scorpion, and the face of a cruel old man.

    Kumiko does her best to stand and bow, asking his name, and the manticore tells her he lost it as part of the transformation process.

    She asks him what he will accept in exchange for their lives, and he tells them they have nothing of value to him.

    They ask if he wants a new name, and the manticore says he will accept it, but he doesn’t much care as he doesn’t like being called on to begin with.

    They say that if he lets them finish their mission he will have no more trouble with the town above, and the manticore laughs and says the town doesn’t trouble him, they don’t come down here, and when he comes up there they are none the wiser.

    He has no use for treasure, only the pleasure of the kill and a hunger for prey with just enough fight left in it to know what is happening.

    They say they will not bring him people to feed on, and he says he wasn’t talking about people, surely there are enough abhuman creatures dwelling above that the town could do with a good cleansing.

    Flossie agrees there are a few non-human residents of the bayou, but she will not sacrifice her neighbors.

    They will, however, bring him captives from below if that is all he values. The manticore looks uncertain, and Feurlina makes the suggestion that he take their harpist. Jesse attempts to sing, hoping to charm the beast, but only coughs up blood and squawks, and the manticore drives his stinger into her, rendering her paralyzed.

    He then smashes her crossbow in his mighty paws and hands the ruin to Flossie, and tells the terrified kobolds to drag Jesse into his lair.

    The manticore looks at them for a long moment and says very well, you may live, for now, in exchange for your bard, a name, and any captives you find below. But I also want one more thing.

    He looks at Kumiko and tells her that he doesn’t trust women or foreigners, but he understands her kind is obsessed with honor, so he wants her to swear that if she believes his life is at risk, she will fight to defend him with her dying breath. Kumiko thinks for a moment, and then nods.

    They then depart, dragging Feurlina along behind them.

    Feurlina is in bad shape, and won’t last long. They send Dennis off to fetch a real doctor, while Arianna and Flossie attempt to keep the giant woman alive.
    Flossie tells Kumiko that Jesse is dead because of her. Jesse was odd, but she was a friend, and if Feurlina doesn’t survive, the two of them are done, she will never adventure with Kumiko again, and will curse the day the stranger ever came into town.

    She says the kobolds are bad enough, but now you have allied us with a maniac who has no obligation to help them or even refrain from killing them for sport. Kumiko thinks back, and realizes that she has sworn to defend the manticore, but it offered no favors in turn, or even a promise of safe conduct.

    Flossie looks at her seriously and says that if they are to remain companions, she needs Kumiko’s promise that if the manticore betrays them, it will be a fight to the death, one way or the other.

    Kumiko is silent, again reflecting on the conflicted loyalties that brought her so far from home.


    This session did not go well, at least from the players perspective.

    First, the players seem really reticent to talk in character, either to each other or to NPCs, which is odd because there was such good RP in the first session.

    Second, Jesse's player is kind of done with him / her. Part of it, I think, it the tone of the game being more serious than she intended and the other players are not really willing to banter with her. Also, mechanically, the character doesn't function, and since I am being much more thorough about policing dice rolls this game, she is struggling mechanically. She stopped to roll up a new character mid session, and then took the first opportunity to volunteer for sacrifice at the end.

    Third, the fight with the ghasts went bad for the party. After the second attempt, they told me how they always struggle with reinforcements. I told them I knew, at which point they, exasperated, asked me why I still used reinforcement mechanics if I knew they would struggle with them. I responded that it isn't my job to handle them easy wins, but to provide variety, and the reason that they struggle is because they don't adjust their tactics; using their usual defensive strategies rather than being more proactive. They told me the fight was "impossible" and I told them they did fine the first time, they just didn't think to seal the door behind them when the retreated, and the second time they failed to adjust their tactics in any way to compensate.


    Finally, they had to cut a deal with a monster for the second time in two sessions. From a mechanical and story line perspective, this is great, it gives them allies in the dungeon, a source of information and lore, safe passage through some areas, and a lot of in character drama. Out of character though, things are not going so great.

    In short, the players value wealth and pride above all else; including XP, completing their objectives, and even their character's lives. As a result, a game where they lose fights and cut deals with monsters is simply not "fun" for them. As I am the only one who is invested in the "lore" or the "story", including their character's personal stories, they consider it a huge favor to me to not suicide their characters when things start going wrong as they would much rather die and start a fresh game than continue one with the sting of a previous setback hanging over their head.


    Next week we are probably going back to Brian's game, hopefully this isn't the end of this one, but at this point who can say?
    Sorry about the player troubles. Seems like they are a strange combination of murder hobos of the looting variety and sore losers of the rage quitting variety. I'm sorry you have to deal with them.
    Last edited by Ameraaaaaa; 2023-03-20 at 03:42 PM.

  10. - Top - End - #10
    Ogre in the Playground
    Join Date
    Oct 2013

    Default Re: Gateway to the Dreamscapes: Megadungeon Campaign Log

    Oof, so the kobolds pre betrayed them before they could be betrayed? That's rough.

  11. - Top - End - #11
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Talakeal's Avatar

    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Location
    Denver.
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Gateway to the Dreamscapes: Megadungeon Campaign Log

    Quote Originally Posted by Sapphire Guard View Post
    Oof, so the kobolds pre betrayed them before they could be betrayed? That's rough.
    Its actually a different tribe. The ones that wear the executioners hoods worship the manticore, the initial group worship the three headed monster in Vernaculum.

    Although that would actually have been pretty smart on the kobold's part, assuming they had left no survivors.
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

  12. - Top - End - #12
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Talakeal's Avatar

    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Location
    Denver.
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Gateway to the Dreamscapes: Megadungeon Campaign Log

    Chapter Four: Late August

    Spoiler: Market Street: Expedition 7
    Show
    Kumiko makes her way to the local gazette to deliver her report. Flossie and Feurlina do not accompany her, and say that nothing good can come of this; they are either going to look like fools or monsters.

    Christopher Thorn is a man nearing middle age, with short reddish brown hair, a leather coat two sizes too large for him, unshaven cheeks, and blue eyes that are always staring off into space. Kumiko tells her story, more or less accurately, and makes Jesse out to be a hero who died so her companions could live. When she gets to the part about people living down there and three-headed dragons, Thorns asks if maybe they aren’t just going down there and getting drunk on ceremonial wine.

    She clarifies that the people are kobolds, to which Christopher snorts and says those are vermin, not people. He also asks if they have noticed which direction the smoke of their fires goes while they are down there, and Kumiko shakes her head. As the day drags on, they get to talking about poetry and their mutual irritation with Flossie.

    Flossie takes mid-August off to help with the feast of Vulcan, a craft fair and peddler’s pavilion. It is at this fair that the companions are able to trade some of the treasures they have found in the underground for high quality equipment, most surplus military gear left over from Thanatos’ conquests.

    They hold a memorial for Jesse, though they have no body to inter. In her eulogy, Flossie emphasizes her heroism in giving her life to save the people of the town, but also chastises those who led her into danger in the first place.

    Afterward, they are drinking at a local brewery when they are approached by Amadeesa, the half-elven ranger who first escorted Kumiko to the Sundered Lands. She tells them that she heard about what happened to Jesse, and is sorry for their loss. They ask how she could have possibly heard, and she says that it is her job to pay heed to such things, and besides, her ears are good for more than just picking up human guys.

    The group asks if she will accompany them, and she says no, the underground is no place for a ranger, but she has brought them a surprise.

    A rugged man with a shotgun on his back, six guns on his hips, and a jagged band of scars around his throat steps out from the shadows. Those who are local to the region recognize him by reputation if not in person.

    Miles was a gunfighter who was instrumental in the resistance against Thanatos’ forces after the death of the evil sorcerer, and with every victory, his legend grew larger and larger. As the story goes, he made a deathbed promise to a girl to put his guns away, and became a monk, devoting his life to healing and trying to cleanse the smell of blood that stained his soul. But then his old enemies tracked him down and massacred the entire monastery, the gunslinger included.

    Flossie says that she thought he died. The man shakes his head and points to his throat. Amadeesa explains that he survived his wounds, but lost his ability to speak in the process. He is looking for penance, and if he can save the town by lending his guns to the group, then so be it. They are glad for his aid, and after equipping him for spelunking, they descend into the underworld.

    The group’s first course of action is to go back to the bank vault. They take a hard left, ignoring the kobold’s warnings. They find the door to the Rose Wine Bridge guarded by four humans in strange angular armor. These men do not speak Terran, and are killed after a brief skirmish.

    As they push on, crossing the bridge itself, Flossie and Miles are struck by arrows coming out of the darkness on either side. The group falls back and decides to take the longer route, circling around using the hidden door in the back of the mortuary.

    They travel down Tabernacle Lane, not noticing the rusted iron chains that now lie strewn across the ground. They go through the old boatwright, and attempt to follow Jesse’s instructions for planting the explosive charges.

    They blast their way in, and find the vault mostly buried, although they are able to grab handfuls of coins, most bright copper pennies engraved with the crest of a bee, the family emblem of the Templar who once dwelt here.

    As they leave, they see someone has some to investigate the explosion; a humanoid figure carrying an old lantern, but as soon as he spies the group, he extinguishes his light and disappears into the darkened corridors.

    They head north, to the Industrial Park, and find a broad street with the rusted hulk of a carriage on one side. A pack of malnourished feral dogs lives here, and the group decides to put them out of their misery. The beasts fight with grim determination, and at one point overbear Kumiko. Flossie reacts by casting a spell that causes iron nails to shoot out from Kumiko in all directions, slaying several dogs and driving the others back, although she is wounded, with several gaping bites to her back, thighs, and buttocks.

    They find no treasure here, and nobody knows how to skin a dog.

    To the left is another street, and a sign proclaiming that it leads to the Lonesome Tabernacle. Ahead is a store; The Unknowable Dynamo, and to the right a tavern; Time’s Gone Past. They choose to explore the latter.

    Inside they find half a dozen rat-like hengeyokai, drinking and scrawling graffiti on the walls. Upon seeing the invaders their fur bristles and their eyes glow red in the gloom as they draw filth-encrusted blades. The invaders do not seek to engage them inside, rather they have Feurlina hold open the door while Miles shoots at those behind the bar.

    The rat-folk respond by throwing knives at their attackers and smashing bottles on the floor in the doorway to make improvised caltrops. One stabs Feurlina in the wrist and she pulls back. Flossie then conjures a rift to the astral sea, and tentacles fill the bar. One of the rat-folk escapes into the park, and is captured. The rest are easy pickings while constrained by the writhing mass of extra-dimensional flesh.

    Once the spell fades, they enter the bar. It is in better shape than most of the ruins, but still in shambles. Behind the bar is booze gone to rot, but a few bottles of aged red wine are still preserved and will likely fetch a good price back in town.

    A sign on the back door reads “To Rat Heaven” and there is a symbol upon it that marks the way to an outhouse. They find themselves in an alley, where several of the Nezumi who escaped the barfight fell prey to a trio of Chupacabra that dwell here. The irony is not lost on Miles.

    Chupacabras are strange predators, like a cross between a tiger and a kangaroo, with long fangs that they use to drain the blood from their prey. These three attack almost immediately.

    Kumiko and Feurlina guard the doorway, but the creatures rush past with great agility, seeming intent on taking down Miles, and by the time they are slain, he has lost a lot of blood.

    They search the alley and find an expensive silver pocket watch amongst the bags of refuse that are piled high along the walls. At the end of the alley is a door to “The Soothsayer’s Den” and the business on the opposite side of the alley labeled “Albrecht’s Charge”. The group debates pushing on, thinking that it would be nice to mark this whole wing as explored and head off in another direction next expedition, but in the end, they decide against it and make their way back to town before their injuries get the better of them.

    On their way, they drop their prisoner off with the manticore, who is incensed at being fed literal rats.


    Spoiler: Market Street: Expedition Eight
    Show
    A week later they return, and find a new addition to the dungeon, a burning brazier huge above the main junction. Feurlina goes to take it down, and a bolt flies out of the darkness and lodges in her belly. The group finds itself in an ambush, attacked on three sides by the strange human interlopers. Flossie saves their lives by conjuring ramparts of ectoplasm around them, and they are able to defeat the attackers. Those that survive beg for mercy in strange tongues that nobody can comprehend, and are given over to the kobolds for sacrifice.

    They make their way back to the alley where they left off last time, and as they move through the mortuary the door to the secret passageway bursts open. A leech the size of a draft horse oozes its way in, and riding on its back is a leprous man wearing a mish-mash uniform built from Templar armor and clerical vestments.

    He proclaims that the tabernacle will no longer suffer incursions, and that if the invaders do not retreat, they will face retribution. Kumiko, not realizing that this man does not know who she is, stands her ground and challenges him to a duel.

    The man is mighty and skilled, and his mace inflicts grievous injury on the group, while his mount seeks their lifeblood. When the leech is slain, the rider shouts out his name in Atlantean, a long formal title that roughly translated into Big Mister Worm, but still sounds dignified in that ancient tongue. Soon thereafter, Kumiko slices his throat, and as he dies, the odd friar sprays his foul arterial blood upon the group.

    They curse their luck, after these two ambushes they are in almost as bad a shape as they were a week ago, but still, they press on.

    The Soothsayer’s Den is a very small room, and when the door is opened it fills with mechanical laughter. There isn’t much there, a table, a chair, and a curtain leading into a tiny backroom. Kumiko looks beneath the table and finds forty small ceramic disks stuck to it. She pulls one off and it reads “Ask a question.”

    She thinks for a moment, and then asks “What is the great three-headed beast’s weakness.”

    She then pulls off another disk and reads “Invest 30 thari in the Lanafel shipping company of Nightholm and return for another tile”.

    They leave, perplexed.

    Albrecht’s Charge looks to have once been an open-air market, and as such is mostly buried in mud and muck, with only the central lane still protected by a canopy.

    Across the market is the front of a large casino called The Coin Fall. Standing guard out front is a horrid abomination of rotting flesh. The head of a lion has been sewn to the body of an ogre, and flocks of crows have apparently tried to feed from it, been poisoned by its flesh, and their stiff forms are now adhered to the body by their own and bile and excrement. The stench alone is a powerful weapon, but it also wields a huge silver sword.

    Miles opens fire upon it, and then takes shelter behind a heap of mud when it comes to pursue, and his companions engage it in melee, gagging and struggling to hold down their gorge as they avoid its blade and biting maw.
    Their blows do little, but the act of fighting causes the beast's rotted flesh to slough off in clumps. Flossie fires bolt after bolt of entropy at it to little effect, until she eventually hits it with a pulsating orb of holy energy that leaves her hair white as snow and the creature lying still on the ground. Feurlina quickly grabs the silver sword and moves into the casino to clear her lungs.

    The Coin Fall is large, and though dusty, it is fairly dry. Slot machines line the walls, and card tables can be seen about the lower floor, along with a locked vault behind the cashier’s desk. In the center stands a fountain, coins glittering in its murky waters. There is a raised section in the back, likely the high roller’s tables, and a large shadowy figure sits at one and looks down at the visitors.

    As the humans are investigating the casino, a group of hobgoblins emerges from the shadows and stab at them with curved knives. These creatures resemble common goblins, but are of the fey, with black skin, glowing yellow eyes, and broad hairless heads with dozens of needle teeth. Flossie reacts to the sudden pain by casting a spell of confusion, leaving the assassins disoriented and wandering about aimlessly. Some attack each other, and one seems intent on engaging in mortal combat with a rusted slot machine.

    One hobgoblin climbs atop a card table to get a height advantage, but when Kumiko kicks it out from under him, and the creature screams “Smoke bomb!” and then runs for the door.

    When his mates are dealt with, thunderous applause falls down on them, and they climb the stairs to the high roller’s table. There sits a great beast of a man, over twelve feet tall, with blue skin, long purple horns, and glowing golden eyes.

    He invites them to play cards, and Flossie accepts before even asking what game or what stakes and, with the blessing of Dionysus, is able to best the oni and take his money.

    Afterward, they get to talking, and the ogre mage tells them he is on vacation, having come to this dreary ruin in search of entertainment after coming through the tabernacle. When pressed for information about the Tabernacle, he asks if anyone is familiar with the story of Prince Prospero and the Red Death, and when they nod, he says it is like that, monks who sealed themselves away in order to party on and ignore the apocalypse, and then a disease found them and took their health and their minds. The tabernacle is of average size for a church and home to several dozen of them; he didn’t explore, for they are not friendly, but he had a trio of olag guards with him and they caused no trouble.

    Flossie invites the oni to come with her back to town, and he agrees.

    The only other store that is still accessible from Albrecht’s Charge is called The Under Flume. It was once a small alchemist's shop, and when the door is opened the mass of spilled potions, mud, and algae on the floor rises into the vaguely humanoid hulk that is a Dweomerling. It goes for Flossie, ignoring her companions, and chokes her into unconsciousness and then begins to rummage through her pack before the other three manage to kill the single-minded beast.

    Once Miles revives Flossie, she is able to find some valuable reagents sealed away in the shop. In the back, above the alchemy bench, is a ventilation shaft, and ice-cold water drips down. They ponder the mystery, Feurlina suggesting that maybe it is a cellar, but none of them are small enough to investigate further.

    On their way out, the group enters The Unknowable Dynamo, and finds an old machine shop full of rusted gizmos. The machines hum to life, and bolts of electricity shoot out and coalesce into an elemental spirit. Flossie blesses Kumiko’s sword, and the samurai climbs into the catwalks while her companions are stunned by the electric current. There she duels with the elemental.

    Eventually, Flossie manages to drink a healing tonic, and steady her hands enough to assist Kumiko by firing bolts of trans-dimensional energy, distracting the spirit long enough for Kumiko to finish it off.
    Nobody in their group understands technology, so they take some spark lights and leave the rest.

    Upon reaching Market Street, Flossie tells the oni that he is welcome in town, but isn’t to kill anyone, and warns him that some may not take kindly to his visage. He smiles and tosses sparking dust over himself, transforming into the likeness of a charming human noble, and introduces himself as Chardonac, Baron of Coronet.

    They then go to the kobolds and request that their small allies undertake an expedition to find out what lies above the Under Flume.


    Spoiler: Market Street: Expedition Nine
    Show
    Two days later, the group is summoned by the mayor. His sister Georgette was accosted by a group of small green monsters in her pantry. They go to investigate, and find a great block of river ice in the woman’s cold cellar, and beneath it a drain with a busted open grate. They commend Feurlina on deducing the correct answer, and hire a local smith to reinforce the grate.

    The quartet then pays the kobolds a visit. The tiny goblinoids excitedly tell them about the magical cave full of food that they discovered above the alchemist’s shop, and then say that the way is now blocked off by the interlopers, and ask if their human allies will drive them away. Kumiko tells them no, the feast is over and their partnership is near an end, and the kobolds will need to help themselves from now on. The tiny tribe nods solemnly, and begins hatching plans amongst themselves.

    Having mapped out the entire complex, the explorers decide to ransack the last few rooms.

    North of the kobolds' lair, in the sealed door to the royal furnace, they find a kiln designed for the disposal of books, surrounded by hundreds of texts that were left awaiting judgment. From the ashes rises an undead apparition, made of smoke and crossed with red veins, it begins to leech the moisture from the invaders. Kumiko tosses a grenade, and temporarily discorporate it, but it pulls itself back together, and they find that even spells and blessed weapons pass right through it, but Flossie’s holy water is able to banish it for good.

    Amongst the books, they find many valuable tomes, although few are in good condition and most will need to be copied, and a few genuine books of black magic which they will sell to Mordred for a high price.

    They then prepare for round three with the ghasts. Coming up with a brief plan that nobody quite agrees on the specifics of, they burst into the Merciful Bleed. Flossie casts a spell which conjures tentacles blocking the door to the mud pit and their reinforcements, and then raises her holy symbol and drives the undead octet into the back of the room while Kumiko and Feurlina advance and hold the ghasts off.

    Unfortunately, when Miles opens fire, the ghasts rush the group as a mob, most of them focusing on Flossie, the source of the holy energy. In the end, all eight ghasts are killed, and all four humans are bitten and bleeding. Flossie is still naturally immune, Feurlina has built up immunity after her recent near-death experience, and Miles is immune thanks to overcoming a case of ghastly fever years ago on one of his many adventures, thus Kumiko is given the last of the antidote they had prepared the previous month.

    Feurlina then gathers stacks of heavy lumber from the Cordwood Junction and builds what she hopes will be a lasting barricade to block off the Vertex Stash and any more undead that may lie buried within.

    The group goes north to the Rancid Dash, and upon opening the door, they find the room overgrown with algae and vines. Flossie sends in her firefly tulpa, and the ooze on the floor reaches up to devour them. When Feurlina moves to assist, the vines constrict about her. Flossie conjures a second tulpa, this one electric, and also a rotating wave of wooden blades to chop apart anything in the room and cut Feurlina free. They fall back, and the mass of crystal clear ooze slithers after them, across the walls and ceilings of the Merciful Bleed, before Kumiko finally destroys it with a grenade.

    Once they have bound their wounds and the spells have faded, they find the muck-encrusted room has two exit doors, one labeled Nick’s Healing and the other The Dry Well.

    Nick’s healing is a bog. Tanks of and tubs of leeches and eels can be found, once apparently bred for medicinal uses. Most are now dead, but some have escaped and live fallow. An enormous slug-like creature drinks from these tubs like a fetid soup, but once its antenna smells Flossie and her magic, it moves relentlessly toward her, its rubbery bulk pushing her allies aside. Fortunately for Flossie, as it passes they each strike true, and the beast is killed before it can devour her.

    They are able to recover a few supplies from the room to make it worth their trouble, but find nothing else.

    The dry well is a room with tiled floors, adobe walls, and a dusty fountain. True to its name, it is remarkably dry. An armored skeleton lies reaching for the fountain, and Kumiko kicks off its broad metal hat to reveal glowing red eyes beneath, the tell-tale sign of the undead.

    She thinks about destroying it, but instead pours water upon it, and in a dry, choking, voice the skull tells her it will take something a lot stronger than that.

    Kumiko asks Flossie for some wine, but Flossie protests, saying she has nothing that isn’t blessed. Eventually, she relents and provides a small cordial, and when poured down the skeleton’s jaw, the mail-clad figure rises to its feet with one fluid motion.

    “Thank you, friends!” It exclaims.

    They talk, and the revenant explains that it was once a guard for the necromancer Salafi, but one night he got drunk on duty, and allowed a Templar spy to slip past. The dark wizard cursed him to be always thirsty but never able to drink for his failure, and once he died of dehydration, the necromancer raised him as a death knight to continue his torment until the day when he could find a use for him.

    They ask if Salafi was the manticore, and the skeleton shakes his head, saying that the necromancer was a tall, thin man, with curly black hair and rosacea cheeks. The old blacksmith did sometimes make weapons for them though.

    Upon being shown Kumiko’s map, they ask how to find the necromancer, and the skeleton points to the collapsed tunnel outside of the kobold’s den and says this would be the most direct way. He then says he owes them a boon, and if they like, he can escort them to the necromancer’s lair, but they decline, and ask for treasure instead.

    The skeleton shrugs, tells them it’s such a small thing, and takes them to a hidden shed where he shows them packets of well-preserved seeds for valuable medicinal herbs that are not native to this region and will sell for a small fortune.

    He then bows and marches off in search of his final rest.

    The group returns to town, accepts a reward from the mayor for what they did for his sister, and then go about planning on how they are going to take down the creature which the kobolds call the planet-eater and which they have taken to calling the “Tri-ranosaurus Rex”.


    Took me a while to get this one up. Already discussed a few of the issues in my other threads.

    Although Miles is less obviously ridiculous than Jesse, the character's build is really weird, almost anti-optimized, having taken traits that directly counteract each of his skills. I can't tell if this is a troll character, or just a player who doesn't have enough system mastery but is too proud to accept help.

    Flossie is mad that magic missiles aren't the optimal spell in tight dungeon corridors, especially when you have a huge frontline tank like Feurlina, and Feurlina's player is likewise mad that monsters surround the party rather than waiting in line to engage from the front one at a time.

    Still lots of issues with communication and tactics, both between me and the players and between the players. The ghast fight was (finally!) resolved by blocking the door, but it took so many miscommunications and conflicts to get there.
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

  13. - Top - End - #13
    Bugbear in the Playground
    Join Date
    Jul 2021
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Gateway to the Dreamscapes: Megadungeon Campaign Log

    I'd say that optimization isn't that important but given the combat meat grinders your group likes to run I'm not sure if that applies here.
    Just a note i got adhd and autism.

  14. - Top - End - #14
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Talakeal's Avatar

    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Location
    Denver.
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Gateway to the Dreamscapes: Megadungeon Campaign Log

    Quote Originally Posted by Ameraaaaaa View Post
    I'd say that optimization isn't that important but given the combat meat grinders your group likes to run I'm not sure if that applies here.
    Its a weird dichotomy.

    My players really like combat and action, and really like to win, but at the same time tend to make non-serious anti-optimized characters.

    I don't quite understand it myself.
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

  15. - Top - End - #15
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Talakeal's Avatar

    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Location
    Denver.
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Gateway to the Dreamscapes: Megadungeon Campaign Log

    Spoiler: Episode Ten: Market Street Finale
    Show
    The plans for digging a new entrance did not pan out as the group could not agree on a precise spot.

    They didn't want to actually tear down the manor house in which the drain was found, and they decided it was not worth the expense to create an opening leading to one of the large underground chambers nearby such as the Industrial Park or Albrecht's Charge. What they really want is one leading down into Candle Light Studies so they can bypass the first floor entirely as the descend in the under city below, but is lies on the far side of market square from the drain, and they like the surveying skills to pinpoint the spot with any accuracy.

    They invest in the Lanafel Shipping company with the help of the local banker and telegraph operator, but nothing comes of it immediately, and they decline to return to the Soothsayer's Den.

    The group returns to Market Street with little fanfare. They find it quiet, and eerily silent, they are not attacked. They move to the Hall of Silent Angels, and Kumiko does her best to sing a hymn to raise their spirits in Jesse's absence. Beyond, the door to the kobold's library has been sealed, boarded shut and obscured by rubble. Feurlina uses her great strength to kick it open.

    The kobolds have taken up defensive positions and are enraged by the intrusion, but the group is able to placate them with supplies and toys brought from the town above. Kumiko converses with their shaman and asked what happened, and he told them that they have done as requested and taken drastic measures to exterminate the invaders.

    The kobolds have sealed all of the entrances to their warrens which are large enough for the big people to use, and then destroyed or disabled all of the doors between them and the invader's territory. They then ceased feeding their god, the three headed planet killer, gilded it for battle, and cleared a path for it to escape the Vernaculum. Surely it will devour the invaders.

    Flossie asks what the kobolds will do then, and they say that once their food supplies run low, they will send out foragers to return with confirmation of the slaughter, and then they will go about surviving as they always have. When asked if they are afraid that the great three headed beast will eat them, the kobolds say no, they are beneath its notice, there isn't enough food for it to bother chasing something so small.

    They depart from the kobolds lair and decide the time has finally come to kill the great beast.

    They approach its lair, and Flossie casts a cantrip to ensure they won't encounter anything else on the way to its lair in the abandoned Vernaculum. They do not.

    The beast is indeed in its lair, sleeping off the remains of a large meal after a successful hunt. It resembles a sauropod dinosaur, nearly ten paces long with long necks and scaly skin. But, unlike a saurpod, it has three carnivorous heads, six clawed legs, and a long forked tail. It is clad in golden jewelry, and wears three crowns upon its horned heads.

    It rises lazily, and Feurlina charges it. The creature strikes at her, and there is a sound like thunder as she is knocked to the ground.

    Miles opens fire on the beast, and though his bullets strike true, the creature is too large to be felled by them. Flossie attempts to jinx the creature, but it shakes off her enchantments effortlessly.

    Kumiko pours poison over her blade and then moves in to flank the monster, and strikes what could be a fatal blow, but it is like striking a wall of solid iron, and her sword shatters. She is shocked, and moves to fall back, but she is caught by the monster's tail and thrown to the floor.

    The monster holds Feurlina at arm's length, keeping her on the ground and leaving her out of range to strike at anything vital.

    Flossie attempts to scan the room for magical energy, hoping to maybe find the magical orb and then run. She detects not one orb, but three, and pinpoints their locations as being inset into the monster's crowns; and she calls for her companions to flee. She conjures up tentacles to hold it back, but the creature is too strong and rips free.

    As the creature's jaws close upon Kumiko, she finally sees the death she has sought for so long, and it is only at the last moment that she realizes that she still wants to live.

    Feurlina struggles with the three headed monster and yells for Flossie to run while it is distracted, but the priestess refuses to abandon her friend. She conjures up a bolt of acid, her hair turning a sickly green, and splashes it upon the beasts center head, burning it horribly, blinding one eye and revealing the left side of its skull. She gets the beasts attention, and the leftmost head snakes out and tosses her into the air, where its companions assist in tearing her body to bits.

    Miles continues to fire until he is out of ammunition, hoping to bring the monster down, but it just isn't enough, and the monster is never more than half dead. But, in getting a clear line of fire, he realizes he has trapped himself in the monster lair, and once Feurlina stops moving, he realizes there is nowhere to run, and lights one last cigarette, a tiny spark in the gloom.


    Wow. I did not see this one coming.

    The three headed Orthrus was by far the strongest monster on the first level. A sort of optional "super-boss" guarding a single magic orb for each character. High challenge, high reward.

    It seemed like the party had a plan at the end of last session, and I was preparing for a dynamic hit and run boss fight. But I realized something; much like how every puzzle seems obvious to the GM but impossible for the players, so to did I make the mistake of thinking they had a working plan when all they had were a jumble of random ideas that my mind pieced together into a coherent whole.


    I was expecting them to use the tunnel in the Under Flume (or better yet, excavate a new entrance nearby) to provide easy access to the Soothsayer's Den as well as the Tabernacle and the Fibrous Delve, a pair of smaller "side dungeons" which they could use to grind treasure and XP in preperation for the second floor proper with its steep increase in difficulty. Having made the requested investments, their question about how to defeat the Orthrus would have been answered by the next plate, explaining its strengths and weaknesses, and letting them know how each of their proposed plans would have worked out.

    They had the idea to summon an incorporeal tulpa with the bio-electric trait and having it shock the monster to death while they hit outside. This wouldn't have worked anyway, the monster could have used the defend ability to push its resiliance beyond what such a tulpa could harm, but when they saw the doors had been removed they abandoned that, very good, plan entirely and forewent the use of tulpas.


    The kobolds had been busy over the past month. When the party told them that they wouldn't help anymore and that the tribe was on its own to find a solution to deal with the invaders, the kobolds took them seriously and unleashed their "god" upon the attackers.

    On one hand, this meant that it would gain the benefits of the artifacts it was guarding. These were generated randomly; an Aegis which provides immunity to slashing weapons, a thunder-hammer which allows its attacks to trip and stun more effectively, a crown of domination which provides a substantial bonuses to willpower (and thus magic resistance), and an orb which provides the thrasher ability, causing it to grow an additional two legs and receive a resulting +2 bonus to hit.

    This makes the monster a lot stronger, and is especially unfortunate for Kumiko who can't do a whole lot against a beast that is immune to edged weapons (although Flossie could have conjured her a mace out of ectoplasm like she did Feurlina's shield).

    On the other hand, freeing the beast from its lair allows for much greater tactical flexibility; there are many places in the dungeon which are totally inaccessible to such a large creature, or which will slow it down greatly, giving lots of opportunities for hit and run tactics or trapping and corralling the beast. A very interesting and dynamic tactical fight.


    Instead, they decided to attack the creature in its lair without visiting the soothsayer. No plan. No tactics. No pre-buffing. No consumables except a single vial of poison.

    Oh boy.

    But no big deal, I figure that they will get beaten up and then fall back.

    Of course, then Kumiko and Feurlina were tripped and lacked the ability to get back on their feet.

    Then I figured that they would have to sacrifice someone. Feurlina was willing, but nobody else was. I don't know if it was loyalty, depression, or just spite, but they decided that they weren't going to abandon anyone and go down fighting.

    They made a pretty good show of it, all things considered, getting the boss down to half HP even without any sort of prep or tactics, which tells me that the fight was absolutely doable, just not in this manner.

    The result was the first TPK in years, maybe decades.

    I said upfront that this was going to be an old-school campaign where death was possible, but it is still a bit of a shock.

    Mechanically, its easy enough to roll up new characters and continue. But on a story line level it just seems so tragic and pointless, and makes all the plotting and development that came before seem like time wasted.


    Well... I guess there is nowhere to go but forward.

    Back in two weeks with a new party!
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

  16. - Top - End - #16
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Talakeal's Avatar

    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Location
    Denver.
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Gateway to the Dreamscapes: Megadungeon Campaign Log

    Act II:

    Meet the new Party:

    Spoiler: Frith
    Show
    Frith has been traveling with the merchant caravans for some time. She is attractive, incredibly graceful, and tall; at least for a Halfling, with a great mane of curly chestnut brown hair tied back in a ponytail. She makes her living as a thief and a con artist, as well as an entertainer, although she is protective of the traveling folk whom she considers her family and they are normally spared her tricks and predations.

    Most of the locals whom she fleeces are unaware that they have been tricked until she is long gone, and she is often able to play upon her heritage when she is caught; convincing them that she was only curios and borrowing things, for her people have no concept of property and that she is still a child unsure of the ways of the human world.

    Many of them fall for it, though at 38 her own rumspringa is far behind her and she is well old enough to know better. Still, enough see through her deceptions that she has learned to defend herself with knives, her small size and great speed making her a master of the cloak-and-dagger fighting style.


    Spoiler: Gaiana
    Show

    Gaiana is a sturdy woman with freckled olive skin and curly orange hair. Her features are marred by a deformed lip that leaves her speech odd and often hard to understand. She and her older brother were raised to be holy Templar in the service of the war-god Mars, and so strict and orthodox was their sect that she was never allowed to seek treatment for her birth defect.

    She was a great warrior who served faithfully for many years, but was eventually crippled in battle by a shattered hip that nearly took her life. She was unwilling to throw away her broken body, and left the order, traveling to the lands of the wizard Thanatos to seek blasphemous magical healing.

    In the end, she not only found a miracle, but was also taken in by the circle of healers, for she had a talent for magic herself, long suppressed by her authoritarian upbringing. She has been living in the lands of Morpheus these last few years as a miracle worker and a sell-sword, doing her best to forget her past and to be unbothered by the mark of apostasy which stains it.


    Spoiler: Lia
    Show

    Lia was raised by her grandfather, an eccentric hermit who dwelt near the town of Lost Hope in the Time of the Warlords. He was a tinker and a trapper, and taught the young girl his trades. He was also a revolutionary, who had seen civilization swept away by the Cataclysm in his youth and was always prepared for the next catastrophe. He always has a grand plan of overthrowing the Warlord Sladd through some clever trap, and when the Warlord was slain by Lucia, he lost his purpose in life and soon passed from the world, leaving Lia alone.

    The young woman joined a rural convent, becoming a priest of the nature goddess Artemis, but she didn’t stay long, she preferred the open road. Once, she saved the life of a Balam princess, a refugee from the Flooded Palace, and was rewarded with a blue-furred sabercat that had been kinfolk to the cat-blooded hengeyokai.

    Recently she has been traveling with a merchant caravan, working as a tinker while they are in town, and as a trailblazer while they are on the road. It is here that she made friends with Roxy, a relationship that would soon change the course of her life, and indeed the history of Pangaea.


    Spoiler: Roxy Connelly
    Show

    As far as anyone knows, Roxy has no past. She is a lovely young woman with purple hair, and most assume this means she is descended from the fey, but this may also be a lie.

    She is a traveling merchant who specializes in gems and jewelry, particularly those that serve as prisms for mystical energy. Nobody can say where she came from or what people she calls kin, and most only known her as a mysterious merchant, her bedazzling wagon rolling into town where she sells, and sometimes buys, exotic crystals which few people can afford, before moving on again.

    She is also an illusionist, although nobody outside of her inner circle is aware of this fact, and it is likely that she is ultimately pursuing some lost knowledge or power which has been calling to her all her life, even if she was never fully aware of it outside of her dreams.



    Spoiler: Chapter Six: September
    Show
    At the same time, some hundred leagues away from the Sundered Lands, the festival of Hephaestus is occurring in the shadow of the Tower of Morpheus, the one-time capital of the fallen Warlord Thanatos. It is a massive fairground, with peddlers and tinkers coming from all over northwestern Pangaea to sell their wares and search for apprentices. The day is warm and the grass is dead, the air is heavy with dust kicked up by the crowd.

    One stall stands out from the rest, vibrantly colored, adorned with glittering wind-chimes, and the cart behind it glittering and bedecked with stained glass windows, even the old mare that pulls it has hair fur dyed an exotic shade. The woman who runs mans the stall is no less eye-catching, a beautiful thing with vibrant purple hair that marks her as touched by the fey. This is Roxy, and she will be our new hero.

    As evening comes and the crowds who flock around her to marvel at her wares and buy the jewels or glass sculptures that are her art have begun to die down, when another young woman approaches. She has copper skin, long black hair, big lips, and a posh accent that marks her as coming from the city of Dungenus, far to the east. She asks Roxy if the woman has ever heard of an orb that looks like colored glass, feels like rubber, is utterly indestructible, and when socketed into an object, imbues it as an artifact that requires no attunement or magic word.

    Roxy, of course, has not heard of any such thing, and is very curious about their nature. When she asks, she is told that a group of explorers is pulling them out of a labyrinth beneath the town of Evermoon Bayou in the Sundered Lands.

    That evening, after closing up shop for the day, Roxy meets with her friends Lia and Frith over dinner, and tells them of the strange woman who was obviously trying to lure her to Evermoon Bayou, but without a clear reason as to why. They joke about how she might have been a trickster god in disguise. Roxy continues by saying that if these orbs really do exist, they are worth taking the risk of being lured into a trap, although they will need some muscle to see this through. Lia says she might know someone.

    By week’s end, the trio, joined by the former holy Templar Gaianna, are making their way along the sodden and washed-out roads that cross the Sundered Lands and lead into the Evermoon Bayou. Once there, they find the town strangely somber and quiet, almost deserted.

    Roxy talks her way into an appointment with the mayor, who believes them to be the professional monster hunters whom he has sent for. Roxy does not even attempt to play along, and says that she is here to explore the ruins in search of treasure. Mayor Gallefort catches her up on the situation as they sip tea with lemon juice; an earthquake opened up a labyrinth below town, monsters have come out, and people are disappearing. A strange swordswoman came into town and conscripted a few of the locals, and they had mixed success, but haven’t come back from their last expedition two weeks prior. Since then a few more people have gone missing, including the vintner’s daughter, who was engaged to the outsider and presumably took it upon herself to rescue them.

    The mayor promises no payment, although if anyone lives down there a reward will surely be offered, but does agree to let them explore the ruins and keep whatever they find below. Both Roxy and the Mayor walk away from the meeting thinking they got one over on the other.

    They meet with Christopher Thorn at the local gazette, and he gives them the rundown on the previous group; and laments their loss, saying that Rei was almost as lovely as Roxy.

    He shares what they told him, including the fanciful tale of going to slay a three-headed dragon before their disappearance.

    The quartet travels to the entrance in the woods near town and descends below. Roxy casts spells upon them, enhancing Liana’s senses, blurring Frith’s image, creating an illusory duplicate of Gaiana, and making herself dim and easily overlooked by those they encounter. Upon summoning a ghostly orb of light to illuminate their paths, her magic is expended, though she has a few crystal periapts for an emergency.

    Liana can see that there have been many people and creature’s moving through Market Street, but there is little life now. There are signs of battle, blood-stains and rusted weapons in the mud, but few bodies, and no few walls and doors have been recently broken down.

    They explore areas already seen by the previous expedition. They wisely do not attempt to break down the barricades leading into the Vertex Stash or the Ancient Lyceum. They find some valuable lapidary tools in Willie’s Trove, and a book in Dissenting Discoveries which is hand-written and illustrated at great effort; a history of Pangaea but with several glaring errors, not major changes to history, but things that could easily be fact checked by anyone with access to a library. Along with it are the leathery bodies of several dead gugs, not touched by any scavenger.

    Frith slips through a massive portcullis while her companions analyze its mechanics. The bars are held up by a ratcheting mechanism that will only open when it vibrates at the correct pitch, an odd and ingenious bit of engineering. Lia tinkers with it, holding it open and setting up a pull cord to drop it suddenly if need be.

    Beyond the gate, Frith finds a trio of desperate men huddled in the dark, their bodies and equipment ragged, their horses killed and eaten. They do not speak her language, and when she approaches they brandish cutlasses and attempt to drive her off. She returns to her companions and they go a different direction.

    While moving through the alleyways near the Industrial Park, they catch the attention of the Orthrus, the great beast that now stalks these halls in search of food. It pounces upon the mirror image of Giana, giving the others time to move into battle formation.

    Roxy can sense the magic coming from its gilded crowns, and tells Frith to get them for her, but the Halfling cannot reach and instead moves to climb up the monster’s scaly back.

    Liana opens fire recklessly into the gloom, using the monster’s size against it.

    Unfortunately, the real Gaiana goes down almost as quickly as her ephemeral twin, and Roxy calls for a retreat.

    Frith gets the beast’s attention, although she loses a dagger in the process, bouncing out of her hand upon striking its impenetrable hide, and through a combination of luck, agility, and small size, is able to avoid its jaws and slip away to hide in a side room until Lia is able to draw it away and escape down a narrow lane.

    Gaiana is badly injured, but her magic keeps her alive long enough to drag herself back to town.

    The remaining three attempt to devise a trap, cover the sinkhole near the kobold’s lair with a tarp and attempting to lure the monster over it, but the creature does not take the bait. It sniffs at the new construction, and then when Lia opens fire at it from the other side, rather than charging them and falling, the beast’s scales turn icy blue and it spits a beam of freezing cold at them.

    They dive for cover and then run for it, Lia managing to hold the monster off with a series of hit and run ambushes.
    Later Frith attempts to sneak into the monster’s lair while it sleeps, but she is not able to steal its crowns without waking it, and she must flee for the surface, the only thing of value she is able to take during her flight is a small journal bound in waterproof red leather.

    Open returning to town, they are able to study it, and learn that it was Kumiko’s journal, detailing their exploration of the Market Street ruins, and with detailed, if slightly off-scale, maps.

    Their next expedition will be both better supplied and, more importantly, better planned and informed.


    Ok, so first game with the new party.

    Honestly, this was very frustrating for me. The players, through no fault of their own, kept making bad decisions.

    First, they chose to enter through the front rather than attempting to go in through the ice-cellar in the back. This group could certainly have expended the entrance, and Frith could have gone in and scouted by herself.

    Second, several times they were moving toward an unexplored section of the dungeon, but kept turning around and heading back toward the hydra.

    Third, they came up with the portcullis trap, but then didn't actually use it when the monster was chasing them.

    Now, I don't mean to say they were being stupid, most of this was just ignorance and bad luck on their part, but from my perspective as the guy holding the map and who knows where the monster is, it is nerve-wracking and tragic.

    In the end, they wanted to do another straight fight against the monster, once which would have killed the new party just as fast as the old. At this point I broke character and said that they spent two much time on their new characters, and I spent too much time on the rest of the dungeon, to just waste my bi-weekly gaming session throwing parties into the meat-grinder.

    Hopefully next session they will either move on to something new or come up with a killer plan to defeat the three-headed best; I know this party is capable of it if they actually come up with and stick to a plan, prep for it, and use the terrain to their advantage.
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •