Saturday, October 18, 2014

[Actual Play OD&D] Non-canon Kobolds and a Jail Break

DMing for newbies is such fun. This is a little update to this post about starting a Holmes blue book campaign for some middle-schoolers.

The PCs are all first level. Wizard, cleric, thief, and fighter.

The wizard and the thief are street urchins living in a dilapidated warren on the outskirts of town, under the tutelage of a Fagin-like crime boss who also happens to be the thief's mom. The PCs wake one morning to find every adult in the town turned to stone. 

The cleric shows up. She's an elf who has been sent by her mother superior to investigate a disturbance in the force the natural order and deal with it as a test to earn her holy orders. She finds the wizard and the thief and they agree to, yes, team up.

Making a recon of the town, they find that the only thing out of place is that someone has smashed one of three statues topping the town fountain -- a monument to a trio of heroes who saved the town from destruction a hundred years ago.

"Hoooey! Ahoy there!" calls out a voice from afar. They look out into the harbor to see a wizened figure of a man waving from the barred window of the tiny town lockup, which is on a rock in the harbor. They come to within comfortable shouting distance, and he introduces himself as Corvax, a wizard who was none other than one of the three legendary town heroes commemorated in the town monument. When the statues had been built, he placed a spell on them so that if evil stirred again, any of the three heroes still alive would be teleported to the spot, the release of powerful magic shattering the statue in the process. Unfortunately no one in the town these days remembers that little detail, so the guards arrested Corvax for being a crazy old vandal and locked him up,  despite his dire warnings.

"And whatever this evil is has turned the people to stone?" asks the cleric.
"Oh no, that was another spell I placed, to protect the villagers from the vampires who we drove back the last time. It's for their own good. I would ask you to rescue me and help me find my spell book, but the dread lake pirates must have noticed that the town lighthouse wasn't shining last night, because their ship is just heaving into view out of the morning fog and is headed this way to ransack the town."

He recommends the players hide in the old dwarf mine cut into the bluffs that nearly encircle the town, but not to go in too far, because that's just where the vampire cult is entombed. Unless of course, they want to take on the cult themselves...

The PCs dash to the mine entrance, which has been prettified with an old mining cart that  now serves as a planter full of flowers. The players encounter the challenge of exploring in complete darkness, until the cleric realizes she can cast a light spell on a rock and use it as a lantern. Looking back, they see a figure framed in the entrance to the mine. It's the 4th PC, the fighter, who was a young stowaway on the pirate ship looking for adventure and who has now found it after jumping off as the ship approached the town dock. They agree to, yes, team up.

The thief is playing his low Wisdom to the hilt and brashly strides down a tunnel that leads to a cavern with a deep pit and a sketchy-looking mine elevator/hoist. He's attacked by the vampires' precious little watchdogs, who happen to be stirges.

The other PCs run up, the wizard gets impaled by a stirge proboscis and quickly gets down to 1 hp before the fighter pops the critter with her bare hands, splattering them all with the wizard's blood. The thief gleefully knifes a stirge before it can attach itself. The cleric saves the wizard with a cure light wounds.Four stirges are dead and the PCs have survived their first combat ever, with no punches pulled by the DM!

They find the desiccated body of an earlier explorer, who was wearing a spiffy ruby ring. Agreements are made about how to split any treasure in future.

They rest for a bit. I'm using Dungeonteller-style resting rules, which means you get all your hp back between fights, and in this case, spell casters get back one spell for each rest. Tense moment when a couple of the marauding pirates enter the mine but then turn back, thinking better of it.

After some tinkering, the PCs figure out how to use the mine elevator. The cleric, who is by far the most sober and strategic thinker and the least stabby, decides that the old wizard needs to be rescued from the jail before they go much further. So she doubles back and creeps into town while the others winch themselves to the bottom of the pit.

Minus the cleric, the PCs check out a tunnel that leads from the base of the pit. Tapping sounds are heard ahead. They enter a terraced mine gallery with a boulder-strewn floor. You really don't want to turn your back on these boulders -- they are kobolds who can polymorph into stone, kinda like the trolls in Frozen. Except evil. My kobolds are more like their Germanic folkloric counterparts -- I don't know why they turned into little horned dog-guys with tails in AD&D. Mine are malevolent little dwarf miners whose tapping foretells danger via a well-staged cave-in. They can also telekinese rock.

Anyhow, the fighter decides that throwing her short sword would be a good idea and nails one of them to the floor, but leaving her weaponless. The thief gets another one and the remaining kobolds turtle up as rocks. The thief jumps onto one of them to annoy it. The other ko-boulders begin rolling towards him to grind him into urchin burger. He and the fighter dash to the far end of the gallery. At this point the wizard realizes a fight is going on -- he was investigating some interesting rock formations. He dashes after them, ko-boulders nipping at his heels. Thank goodness he's there, because he's there to cast hold portal on the exit to keep the kobolds at bay. They bounce off the portal forcefield to comic effect.

Meanwhile the cleric sees that the pirates are happily looting the town. A fight breaks out between two scurvy crewmen over a particularly bedbug-free pillowcase, and it provides the cleric just the distraction she needs to get back to the urchin-house, where the other kids welcome her. (These kids will serve as a ready pool of first level PCs if we have any deaths in the campaign). The kids show her to a rowboat hidden in the bushes on the shore, and she rows out to the jail. Crap! The jailhouse is locked with a very sturdy padlock. Fortunately the jailer is standing there in petrified state with his lunchbox and key ring on the ground nearby. The cleric gets into the jail and finds Corvax. He's half-approving, half-scolding. They look around for his spell book and find it in the jailer;s office, along with his +2 dagger and +2 ring of protection. One quick rowboat ride later, they are back in the company of the urchins.

By this time, the pirates are done looting and starting to get freaked out by the statues, and board their ship, lest they too be turned to stone. The cleric and Corvax get back to the mine.

While the hold portal is in effect, the thief explores down the tunnel and finds a spiral ramp heading down. At the bottom is a subterranean stream/river where the kobolds' barge is tied up. Two kobolds are on guard. Stabby McStabalot ganks one of them, and the fighter arrives to mop up. Lots of loot to be had on the barge, but 4:30 rolled around and we had to end the session.

So now the PCs have a high level wizard with few hp on their side. I think he will last long enough to get them through a tough fight or two and then go down because they won't be able to keep a mob of baddies away from melee-ing him. I'll update as I go.


1 comment:

  1. Ko-boulders. Nice. I might have to, erm, borrow that idea.

    ReplyDelete

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