First Forays

This is part of a series. Click here to go to part 1.

Lots of interesting developments here. We played November 8, which is where the in-game calendar started. As mentioned in the overview, the game runs in real-time between sessions.

Calendar start: November 8

Calendar end: November 25

Players:
Keldo - Dwarven Vaultguard Priest
Theren Theon - Elven Arcanist Guardian
Malger Zoilus - Thief Footpad
Bollo Bobila - Mercenary Fighter (arrived later in the session)

Everyone created more characters, even though Keldo and Theren had made theirs previously. I wanted to ensure everyone had two characters so we didn’t have to stop the action if someone died.

After about an hour of character creation, I gave an overview of the campaign to the players. The briefest history of Muntberg (nicknamed “Mudberg”) was given. The players met in a tavern and introduced themselves. I introduced a hireling named Bollo who basically invited himself to the group (because the players wouldn’t know they needed hirelings until they died, so this was my way of teaching them). Bollo asked for a 25% cut of the loot, and the party headed to the mountain.

I explained how timekeeping and exploration work in the game. The players understood the potential lethality and danger, and they quickly settled into the rhythm of listening at doors and describing how they investigate things. I was surprised at how smooth the transition was from our standard 5e way of playing.

First, they found a room full of statues whose heads had been replaced by an ancient cult leader named Turms Turmax. The players didn’t make much of it. Theren has a dog named Luna, whom I ruled can “smell” at doors (I gave her a chance of success on an 18+, which is garbage). They decided to head northeast where they encountered some strange crab-spider things eating a corpse. This was the party’s first combat in the new system, and everyone sucked except Bollo, who killed all three of the spiders. I didn't have the stats available for the crab-spiders, so I just winged it. Later I learned that if I had used the proper stats, the party likely would have died.

At the end of the hall, the party found a storage closet full of dusty crates. The dust caused coughing fits which had me roll random encounters three times, but the group got lucky. Down a southern hallway, the players found a door leading west. Listening at the door gave them no indication of what might lay beyond, but Keldo cleverly had Malger circle around and knock on the other side of the door. When he did, they opened the door and found seven orcs inside. They immediately closed the door and ran away. Malger was able to hide in the shadows and the orcs walked right past him. The party continued exploring around, discovering a circular room with six demon-masks mounted to the walls and a corpse on the ground with a mask nearby. The players deduced the masks were trapped and suspected they might be cursed, and so carefully used the arm of the corpse to knock the masks off the wall. The result was a jet of poison gas, but their precautions paid off; no one was harmed. They carefully collected the masks, wrapped them in a cloak and carried them out of the dungeon.

Keldo and Theren wanted to find a sage in Muntberg who could identify the masks. I explained how cities work in this game, and how they were very unlikely to find a sage in a class V market (only a 5% chance after a week of searching!) So they decided to head to the largest city in the region, Adamas.

Adamas provides a 65% chance of finding a sage (this was also incorrect because Adamas is large enough to guarantee an available sage). The result of their search was Marion Cerellas, who runs a small scroll-scribing shop in one of the nicer districts. She was nervous and excitable, apparently due to deadlines but also because of the players' fearsome appearance. The players explained they had been to Dwimmermount and recovered several strange masks with demon faces. Marion told them what they were doing was risky, and she had heard a rumor that the ruler of Adamas, Duke Cheron was planning on banning everyone except sanctioned parties from entering Dwimmermount. She agreed to run some experiments on two of the masks, taking one of them as her payment. The players agreed to return four days later when the work was complete.

Marion asked the players where they were storing their things, which gave the players the idea of buying an apartment in the city. They quickly realized they had no money, and couldn't afford first and last month's rent, so they returned to Dwimmermount.

In total, one in-game week passed before the players returned to the mountain. I quickly rolled dungeon restock to see if there were any new developments in the dungeon. Two rooms now contained giant centipedes, but without stats, I wasn't sure what to do. Note that this issue has been resolved for the next session.

Around this time, another one of my friends just decided to come over, so I made Bollo into a full-fledged player character. Across the board, he had the greatest stats of any character. Fortunately, he had negotiated his 25% cut, which was a full portion of the treasure.

The party of orcs the party had seen were nowhere to be found. This time, the players headed west. First, they encountered a room with a giant metal head, whose mouth moved without sound. Theren spread some oil on the jaw hinges, and the mouth explained that it could answer one question. The players noted that the face looked like Terms Turmax, which made them suspicious. Keldo decided not to ask any questions until they had more information about this floor of the dungeon. Then, they crossed the hallway and found a room with a black basalt pillar carved in strange runes. No one was able to read it. They wanted to take a rubbing, but only had quills and ink, and no paper or graphite.

Theren heard noises coming from the next room, what sounded like an argument, and this time not in orcish. They barged inside to find two ghosts playing some ancient boardgame. The ghosts were unaware of the party and seemed to be stuck in a time loop.

At this point, a random encounter was triggered, which generated the twelve terrifying black skeletons, called eldritch bones. As the players opened an eastern door into a large hallway, they saw a dozen orcs in a melee with a dozen blackened skeletons. The orcs seemed to be losing when Theren closed the door and announced that the party should run away. They returned back the way they came, still heading generally west, and came across a posse of six orcs. Their reaction roll was neutral, so they were cautious but not aggressive. Fortunately, Theren can speak the orc language and explained that the party meant no harm, but had seen many orcs fighting black skeletons. The orcs seemed nervous and challenged the players to prove their "worthiness" by helping the orcs defeat the bones. The party accepted, and the large mass of players and NPCs moved to the large central hallway where the battle had been witnessed.

Stepping over the corpses of their fallen brethren, at first they couldn't see any sign of the black bones, but soon the battle was had. This was only the second combat of the whole evening, and the first one with proper monster statistics. We learned how B/X handles constantly-shifting initiative (which made things very tense) and the low-HP orcs and bones meant that everything died in just one or two hits. Bollo took advantage of the cleaving rules that I nearly forgot, and all but two orcs fell to the spears of the bones. Blessedly, the bones rolled a 1 on the final turn, which turned a possible total party kill into a decisive victory. All in all, we had a combat with nearly two dozen combatants that resolved in under fifteen minutes. The players heaved a sigh of relief.

The two surviving orcs were impressed by the party's fighting skills and offered to join the party, who gladly accepted. Their names are Gormok and Fearsome Fanga, who turned out to be female (orcs in this world don't have physical sex traits). After they figured out how to get in touch with the orcs when they returned (because the orcs simply refuse to leave the mountain), the party gathered all of the spears of the fallen and headed back to Adamas to check on Marion Cerellas.

Marion explained the masks provided +1 to reaction rolls to orcs, which got a laugh from the party, who had just spent in-game hours interacting with orcs. The party sold three masks for 200 gold each, totaling 600 gp. Keldo explained his plan, which I have outlined thusly, so I can easily make interesting complications for the players.

• The party wants to create a small festival (think: Robinhood archery contest) to find the best fighters in the city.
• They want to get fliers printed and passed around the town for weeks before starting the event.
• Once the best fighters are determined, the people in second and third place will be offered positions in a new organization, a kind of adventuring guild.
• Then, the party will try to win exclusive rights to enter the mountain with their guild. 

The journey continues in part 3.