Goblin Waters delve - part 2

Once again our brave delvers fought cunning and dangerous foes in the water logged caves in the mountains above Kobb, the hobb hamlet. We left off with the characters still in the caves, and I must confess I had forgotten how much punishment they had taken, for in the first fight one of them went down after first contact with the enemy. I was way to kind and actually let them fight giant spiders without venom! But, they handled themselves well and fought very smartly with a polearm in a fairly narrow corridor. Nothing beats a polearm set against charge when there's no room to evade that pointed stick if you want to close for melee. Spiders being spiders they wasn't that good at grasping that fine point of tactics.

Apart from some fights, this was a session for sneaking. Everyone who have ever used pitons to keep doors shut or open can probably imagine what happened if I tell you that my players successfully "contained" some danger. I still haven't decided how hard it will be for that poor monster to break down the door.

The most useful lesson learnt so far for me from running this adventure is to always look at rooms close by and try to imagine how the inhabitants of those rooms would be able to roam about. Having the dungeon be a place where people move around makes for a more dynamic setting, and it was quite suspenseful when the characters kept hearing splashing of oars in the distance and suchlike.

If you have never had players plunder an alchemical lab, or some other place with strange bottles, I suggest you do so! How entertaining it is to see how they try to discover what those mysterious liquids do. My only disappointment this session was that they never did try to drink that massage oil they found. It would have been fun.

There are still more dangers to be found in tha caves, and we will meet again in a few weeks time. I really love to be playing T&T again!

Gobling Waters delve!

This last Sunday we played T&T, and great fun was had. Three brave adventurers managed to be in the hobb hamlet of Kobb, and answered the pleas for help from the vertically challenged.

Grötz - a very stout dwarf
Farhandian - a very charming fairy
Jack - roguish human

Later on, Farhandian was lovingly carried back to town in an envelope to be buried and the very sturty hobb Sam took his place. Nothing stops adventure!

So, what happened? We were playing Garen Ewing's small GM adventure Goblin Waters, since it was of fitting size and I had it printed out. I really wish Garen had published the map in some other format than jpg, though. With a lossy compression format like that it was very hard to read the keys from the printout. Use png, people!

Our brave adventurers, broke as usual, came to a small hamlet where everyone was sad because their mayor and their dragon mascot had been stolen. Our brave delvers accepted their hospitality and enjoyed themselves among good food and fair hobb maidens. Then they grabbed their weapons and followed a young hobb named Sam to where he had seen the vile goblins disappear into the mountainside.

All the while they was in the caves and tunnels, goblin patrols managed to run into them. For some reason it always meant a fight instead of evasion. I guess they took that kind of serious about "punish those vile goblins". I tried to be good with hints when they encountered bigger and more well trained goblins. All those hints fell on deaf ears, but when the dwarf decided to behave like a bowling ball, and the fairy focusing on diversion it went very smooth indeed. Then the delver with gossamer wings and 4 in CON decided to go up against a goblin. Fairy past against his shield and the cavern wall. At least his comrades in arms decided to buy him a nice card to be sent home in. Suddenly Sam realized he had qualities hereto unknown, and joined the group as a spell caster. They brought poor Farhandian back to the village and Grötz had to scream very loud and recruit and train a local militia to get them to think positively again after that. Then they got back.

My favourite scene was when they had dared to enter one of the tunnels off the under ground lake and found the goblin accountant! He was totally non plussed by the appearance of intruders and even got them to help him work! Don't let anyone say that there are no NPC interactions and no character role play and immersion in a dungeon crawl! Questioning him was great fun.

What can be said about that session? Well, everyone seemed to think T&T was very fun, and that the freedom allowed by the Saving Rolls system was making the system come alive for them all. I tried to be quite generous with AP for good ideas and making us laugh. A sense of accomplishment is not to be underestimated, and the constant trickle of AP from SRs helped that. I ignored Kremm Resistance, since I haven't decided what to make of it. We also used my House rule with 4d and pick 3, for humans to measure up to other kin. Paragons I only allow after a triples, since the 4d makes all 12+ more likely.

My players will have to chime in with details I have forgotten.

Playing the Dungeon of Voorand - Goblins galore

Having done an attack on a temple of amphibian abominations, the players tonight got involved in some scuffling in close quarters. After realising that the way to the temple had closed, they decided to explore some of the parts of the map of level two which still was mostly stubs of hallways unexplored. Having picked a direction the wandered off. I remember how one thing often mentioned in discussion threads about good dungeons very often was how fun it was to give the players a hint of stuff to come, and then force them to take a long exploratory route to get there. I liked that, and have used it at some points in my own dungeon. This time I think I was too obvious about it, though. So, after seeing arrow slits in the wall, and hearing snoring noises they didn't just take note and move on, they smashed down the nearest wall to get to the source of the snoring!

Now, I had put in a dead end in a corridor a bit away from the room with the snoring and guess where they brought out the hammers? The first one to stumble through the rubble of mortar och stone yelled at the top of his lungs, and since behind him were a wolf troll, a centaur and a dwarf and a very martial looking fairy, they actually paused. Then someone made a wrong move, and the slaughter began.

So, in a very crowded area 15 goblins and five delvers tried to kill each other. I called for DEX SR just to be able to made a successful attack, and our wolf troll decided he contributed best by sitting on top of a bunch of the goblins. Even with that limiting the fight a bit, it took fifteen combat rounds before it was over!

Compared to other nights I've played T&T it was slow slogging, and not all that smooth. We almost every round tried to do things like running away, tripping and pinning opponents and maybe that was why. I liked the idea of evening the odds a bit by grappling and pinning opponents. I let it happen as a plain CON based Saving Roll, and let as many opponents as the level be pinned and subtracted them from the Monster Rating. Even subtracting those goblins it was a fight where we regularly rolled combat totals in the 300-400 range. I'm beginning to think that the fact that armor in modern editions is not ablative might have contributed to the long time this fight took. Almost every point of damage dealt was spite damage!

After delving for a while my players have now almost run out of things to spend their money on. I haven't been that generous, but they still have armor values in the 20-40 range and then it becomes kind of hard to do anything but spite damage. It would be interesting to hear how other T&T game masters have handled that.

Finally I brought in the golem from the next door, since it seemed likely that he would be disturbed. He was not much of a hindrance, though, since all of my players seem to prefer blunt weapons! A couple of whammy's later and he was down and they brought him out of the dungeon and sold him for scrap metal. Pure entrepreneur spirit in my players. I like that.

So, now is the question if I keep ramping up the opposition or try to bring them decent challenges some other way. We will see next week.