I’m returning to my roll as DM for the rest of the weekend. One of the players is heading to the USA for a month, so we’re trying to wind up an adventure I started while he’s here by doubling up our game session this weekend. I showed off my new dice, and we did some trades for some dice people liked.
It started off with a near disaster, as my players charged some well prepared hobgoblins and tried to carve them up. I kept the tactics tight and used good positioning to overwhelm the player characters for their arrogance. They had to retreat after they all missed with their encounter powers. They weren’t willing to go all in on the battle, so they got beat up and bruised for it. Luck was not on their side, and they set up a trap outside the dungeon to give it a second shot.
I decided to throw the players a bone and set up some minions for them to bowl over to build their confidence back up. They took the encounter seriously and wiped the floor with them. A trap that really wasn’t much to worry about had them skittish. I shouldn’t have made it the big deal it turned out to be, but they weren’t moving into the dungeon deeply after their first room almost lead to their death.
Eventually, I got them into another encounter with the goblins that nearly killed them which went a little better. They took down a goblin soldier and forced two crossbow wielding underlings to go running for reinforcements. After routing the goblin warren, they totally failed to heed my warnings about a strange tapestry hanging on a wall and started to check it out. This caused an ochre jelly ooze to seep out and rock their faces.
The ooze was aided by some specters that chased down the retreating party and melee with them until the ooze could catch up. The specters got turned by the cleric, which basically saved the entire party. Once the specters retreated, the ooze arrived and totally rocked the paladin’s world. I rolled two consecutive 20’s for maximum damage. The second twenty was a called roll. “Wouldn’t it be terrible if I rolled a…TWENTY! DAMN.”
The paladin fell. The warlock and cleric headed for the first room in the encounter, and wizard left to try to lure it into a pit they discovered. Eventually the cleric raised the paladin through healing and then fled. The Wizard and paladin stood together against the ooze, which had by this time split in half. The diminished ooze was no threat to the party at this point, and they slaughtered it. The collected the magical tapestry portal off the wall and rolled it up for future loot.
Later, they discovered two Rage Drakes (large T-Rex like dinosaurs) in a room with lots of magical mushrooms. These particular mushrooms either caused sleep, poison, or exploded to provide cover. The Players wisely decided to try to force the oversized creatures to fall asleep. This bought them time. The cleric ran for a door that I said marked the end of the encounter for the day, while the paladin ran for the hills. The wizard and warlock took out a drake by forcing it into a small passageway and peppering it with shots while they retreated. The drake would be charging them, get stuck right before it could land the final blow, and they’d skate away from the chomping claws of death to try once again. It was pretty awesome.
They’ve only reached the third milestone of the adventure, but since they were having so much difficulty I decided to let them level up in the middle of the adventure. It might be bad form, but it’ll be more fun. This will let them have access to a few more utility spells and abilities that will hopefully allow them to deal with some of the challenges in this premade dungeon. They haven’t yet put a dent in the rest of the rooms, and there is some stuff that is going to really get up into them later.
I keep making it out like it’s “me against them”, but it’s not. We’re working together to make a kick ass adventure story, and it’s working. I’m really enjoying the hosting and “it goes to 11″-ness of the adventure so far. I like that every room is a struggle to survive, and that if they don’t make the right calls they’ll get punished for it. None of my Player Characters escaped damage, and all of them had to make the good calls they chose to avoid falling victim to the challenge I set before them. They are playing on “hard mode” being one man down, so if it wasn’t overwhelming them, I wasn’t doing my job. If they could just roll better the tide would be turning in their favor as much as it turns in mine as DM.
Tomorrow I’ll be playing the game again, same time, same place. They’ll be attempting the impossible to get throught the entire dungeon in a day, but without the full allotment of characters, it’d be suicidal to continue this campaign. Since one of the guys is leaving for a month, I’ll step down as DM and get to run my character for once while we do some light weight side adventures. Role reversal, as I go from DM to player character and someone else takes me spot. While I want to finish this adventure I also want someone else to take over. I want to try out the new Warlord class and see how it’ll fit into the party.
