Castle Redvald - Session 6 - I Have No Mouth
Last saturday was the sixth session of my ongoing, open table OD&D game, Castle Redvald.
This time, the party went Downwell, to another dungeon I'd had just drew and tied to a dumb-simple adventure hook: the Duke's son has been abducted, creatures were seen going down a well in the ghost town - Wickerbury, with a child-sized bag that struggled and cried.
The Party
Pastaman played Marvin, Acolyte of Huehueteotl-Xiuhtecuhtli (Aztec God of Fire and Time)
Jack played Krugman, previously associated with Eko's Merchants' Guild (with 18 CHA!)
And Carlos played Klondike, a veteran clad in plate armor, haunted by the techno-ghosts of connectivity issues.
They took some dwarves with them - Mole, Vole & Garfunkel.
What Happened
• A quick exploration of the ruins of Wickerbury led to the discovery of the old well, which had some kind of large cave at the bottom. The party threw a torch a it landed on some sort of steel living statue with red eyes. It claimed to be a Space Cop and required them, in a metallic tone, to come down anFd surrender, for they were all under arrest. They sent a rope and helped the creature up, tried to negotiate a bit, then Marvin brandished his obsidian mirror and the Cop started glitching as he talked to his reflection and eventually tried to shoot it, blowing his own head up in the process. Marvin acquired the laser beam robo arm.
• Down the well, two paths laid ahead. The party went north, and after a while came upon a really weird brown-ish rock formation on the ceiling. Krugman poked at it with his 10' pole, revealing it to be a giant camo camel spider! The party valiantly fought off and killed the beast without suffering casualties. Then they reached a stuck door and couldn't manage to get it open, so they backtracked.
• Another way led to old prison cells, containing strange things: a skeleton holding a fresh apple, another one with a chalice, dying electric eels "hung to dry" on wires, and a bottle with a label saying "DO NOT OPEN". There was also a corpse with a box for a head, buzzing, which they ignored.
Using the laser-beam arm, they cut open the locks and checked inside the cells.
They left the apple, that looked wicked when reflected in the holy mirror of Marvin, and kept the bottle and chalice. They also found a vaguely hidden passage behind one of the cells, pushing away a few loose bricks to reveal a natural cave.
• Deeper into the cave, they stumbled upon something - wild humanoid beasts, as-of-yet unidentified, fornicating. They backed off and avoided their notice. Another path in the caves led to noises of even more of the beasts. Fearing they'd be discovered and have to face what sounded like more than a dozen creatures, they abandoned the caves and went back to an earlier fork.
• A small room filled with electronics was discovered - quick thinking led to the party dismantling most of the stuff to bring it back home as mysterious artifacts and loot for the Antiquarian/Alchemist, Vespero.
• Further ahead, they walked around in circles, then eventually found a downward slope (Dwarves!) and went down a level to see what was deeper within.
• Some more exploration revealed a strange room with a painting of blue dwarves laughing under a grinning green moon, which is when the party heard a strange humming noise coming from the dark. Marvin raised his mirror out of divine prescience/dumb luck (I still don't know why he chose to do so, but it was a great spur-of-the-moment idea) right before a red ray of light beamed from the dark, bounced off the mirror and went back to its source, with a loud thud of rock landing on rock following. After investigating, they found a huge stone eye, about the size of a grown man, with an expression of agony and terror (one giant eye can be very expressive).
• Another corridor had a lever and way too much blood, so they left it alone. Then there was a strange door made of some bone structure, lined with a silvery substance - they took the silver, forced the door open to reveal a bunch of lasers in a room with two more strange exits, and decided they had enough loot and didn't want to stumble upon more dangerous monsters, so they backtracked all the way to the entrance, and went home.
P.S. : right before leaving, actually, they went back to that stuck door, forced it open, and revealed a room full of floating, multi-colored, palette switching jellyfishes. Krugman grabbed one, got stung, saw his whole body filled with a strange shimmering light, then suddenly all of his bones melted and he was just a pile of human-looking sludge. Klondike pierced his brain as a mercy kill. That's actually the third PC death in six sessions of 3LBB OD&D, and the second one technically attributed to another player character (the first was a misfire that hit a guy stuck inside a giant mimic). This means either my dungeon is too nice (which I doubt), or the over-the-top lethality of old-school gaming is highly overestimated by modern gamers (yeah, you can die, but if you're cautious, you can probably keep your character around to see higher levels of play).
Some Issues
• One of the players disappeared before the game began, which is at best a bother and at worst worrying, as there is really no way of knowing what's up when you're playing with strangers on the Internet.
• Connectivity issues and cuts can make it difficult to keep the flow of the game, although noone in particular is to blame in these cases - but that's another thing you have to take into account when running Internet games.
What Worked Well
• Despite having a relatively small party, the group explored more in one sitting than with prior expeditions to Castle Redvald. A lot of it is due to the players being organized and efficient in their exploration, but I do want to believe that the map of Downwell also helps. After reviewing my old dungeon levels for Redvald, I realized how much of a bitch it is to describe and map, and that this actually doesn't contribute that much to the "fun" part of the game. So now I'm doing maps that are still, hopefuly, tricky enough that you can get lost, but overall way easier to read and map for the players.
This time, the party went Downwell, to another dungeon I'd had just drew and tied to a dumb-simple adventure hook: the Duke's son has been abducted, creatures were seen going down a well in the ghost town - Wickerbury, with a child-sized bag that struggled and cried.
The Party
Pastaman played Marvin, Acolyte of Huehueteotl-Xiuhtecuhtli (Aztec God of Fire and Time)
Jack played Krugman, previously associated with Eko's Merchants' Guild (with 18 CHA!)
And Carlos played Klondike, a veteran clad in plate armor, haunted by the techno-ghosts of connectivity issues.
They took some dwarves with them - Mole, Vole & Garfunkel.
What Happened
• A quick exploration of the ruins of Wickerbury led to the discovery of the old well, which had some kind of large cave at the bottom. The party threw a torch a it landed on some sort of steel living statue with red eyes. It claimed to be a Space Cop and required them, in a metallic tone, to come down anFd surrender, for they were all under arrest. They sent a rope and helped the creature up, tried to negotiate a bit, then Marvin brandished his obsidian mirror and the Cop started glitching as he talked to his reflection and eventually tried to shoot it, blowing his own head up in the process. Marvin acquired the laser beam robo arm.
• Down the well, two paths laid ahead. The party went north, and after a while came upon a really weird brown-ish rock formation on the ceiling. Krugman poked at it with his 10' pole, revealing it to be a giant camo camel spider! The party valiantly fought off and killed the beast without suffering casualties. Then they reached a stuck door and couldn't manage to get it open, so they backtracked.
• Another way led to old prison cells, containing strange things: a skeleton holding a fresh apple, another one with a chalice, dying electric eels "hung to dry" on wires, and a bottle with a label saying "DO NOT OPEN". There was also a corpse with a box for a head, buzzing, which they ignored.
Using the laser-beam arm, they cut open the locks and checked inside the cells.
They left the apple, that looked wicked when reflected in the holy mirror of Marvin, and kept the bottle and chalice. They also found a vaguely hidden passage behind one of the cells, pushing away a few loose bricks to reveal a natural cave.
• Deeper into the cave, they stumbled upon something - wild humanoid beasts, as-of-yet unidentified, fornicating. They backed off and avoided their notice. Another path in the caves led to noises of even more of the beasts. Fearing they'd be discovered and have to face what sounded like more than a dozen creatures, they abandoned the caves and went back to an earlier fork.
• A small room filled with electronics was discovered - quick thinking led to the party dismantling most of the stuff to bring it back home as mysterious artifacts and loot for the Antiquarian/Alchemist, Vespero.
• Further ahead, they walked around in circles, then eventually found a downward slope (Dwarves!) and went down a level to see what was deeper within.
• Some more exploration revealed a strange room with a painting of blue dwarves laughing under a grinning green moon, which is when the party heard a strange humming noise coming from the dark. Marvin raised his mirror out of divine prescience/dumb luck (I still don't know why he chose to do so, but it was a great spur-of-the-moment idea) right before a red ray of light beamed from the dark, bounced off the mirror and went back to its source, with a loud thud of rock landing on rock following. After investigating, they found a huge stone eye, about the size of a grown man, with an expression of agony and terror (one giant eye can be very expressive).
• Another corridor had a lever and way too much blood, so they left it alone. Then there was a strange door made of some bone structure, lined with a silvery substance - they took the silver, forced the door open to reveal a bunch of lasers in a room with two more strange exits, and decided they had enough loot and didn't want to stumble upon more dangerous monsters, so they backtracked all the way to the entrance, and went home.
P.S. : right before leaving, actually, they went back to that stuck door, forced it open, and revealed a room full of floating, multi-colored, palette switching jellyfishes. Krugman grabbed one, got stung, saw his whole body filled with a strange shimmering light, then suddenly all of his bones melted and he was just a pile of human-looking sludge. Klondike pierced his brain as a mercy kill. That's actually the third PC death in six sessions of 3LBB OD&D, and the second one technically attributed to another player character (the first was a misfire that hit a guy stuck inside a giant mimic). This means either my dungeon is too nice (which I doubt), or the over-the-top lethality of old-school gaming is highly overestimated by modern gamers (yeah, you can die, but if you're cautious, you can probably keep your character around to see higher levels of play).
Some Issues
• One of the players disappeared before the game began, which is at best a bother and at worst worrying, as there is really no way of knowing what's up when you're playing with strangers on the Internet.
• Connectivity issues and cuts can make it difficult to keep the flow of the game, although noone in particular is to blame in these cases - but that's another thing you have to take into account when running Internet games.
What Worked Well
• Despite having a relatively small party, the group explored more in one sitting than with prior expeditions to Castle Redvald. A lot of it is due to the players being organized and efficient in their exploration, but I do want to believe that the map of Downwell also helps. After reviewing my old dungeon levels for Redvald, I realized how much of a bitch it is to describe and map, and that this actually doesn't contribute that much to the "fun" part of the game. So now I'm doing maps that are still, hopefuly, tricky enough that you can get lost, but overall way easier to read and map for the players.
Comments
Post a Comment