Our
Sir Bleys of Bronzewater, Human Knight. Bastard half-brother of Sir Morgan.
Garen the Green, Human Orthodox Wizard. Friend and classmate of Sir Morgan.
Smokey the Raven, Ravenling Thief. Previously arrested by Sir Morgan, many times.
The obvious references to weed are the funnier for being (supposedly!) totally accidental. The players were veterans of Pathfinder and D&D, with some experience playing Maze Rats and the Black Hack.
Each of them also rolled a minor magic item here. Smokey had a cheater's coin, which he chose to hide from the party, though he challenged the knight to a coin toss for loot distribution rights. Garen had magic scones. Bleys, disappointingly, rolled up a perpetual motion machine of nondescript functioning.
The Background
Sir Morgan was the eldest son of the local baron, Lord Oberyn. He was sent on an expedition to the nearby swamp to investigate rumors of goblins. That was a few months ago. Since then, the region has become all the more chaotic, with a gang of bandits called the Rat-Catchers forming, under the leadership of Mokvik Hook-Hand, a goblin.
The players tracked the bandits down to a ruined burial mound in the swamp. The sun was setting, and the bulk of the force had left for the night to reave the local area. The players had about eight hours to go through the dungeon before they returned at sunrise, and they had to deal with many more enemies.
The Session
The party began at the main entrance to the mound. They scouted around the dome, and found both a hidden pond and a broken section of wall. This revealed the inside of the dome, with a mangy dog sleeping inside. Tempting it away with a ration, the party discovered a trap door, and dropped down.
They ended up in a yet-sealed room, filled with several sarcophagi, including one with a pentagram and strange message, 'Within lies an invincible spirit. Spill your blood on the seal to summon it forth. Slay it and receive great reward'. In the room to the north, two bandits were arguing while sacking mummies. The players considered turning the sarcophagus on them, but instead chose to rush them, rolling well and killing both before they could get out a cry for help.
Investigating the sarcophagus, they place blood on the seal, and the text changes to 'No weapon nor tool nor spell forged of mortal hand may harm this spirit'. They summon the spirit... a scrawny, red skinned humanoid in a loincloth. It antagonizes the party, before they tackle it, hogtie it and beat its brain in with a rock.
The back of the sarcophagus then opens, and leads down into the treasure room on the second floor. There, the party finds loose coins and trinkets, along with three items on an altar. A crystal ball, a pair of glass bottles containing a murky liquid, and a scroll. The bottles turn out to be poison, the ball is a seeing stone that allows the party to scry in 60', and the scroll contains a charge of force field. Emboldened, the party finds that the room is sealed, with three secret doors leading to the north, east and west. The north leads to a corridor. The east leads to a supply room. The west leads to a gambling room, with five bandits gathered around an improvised roulette wheel. A gnome is tied to the wheel as the bandits chant 'Spin, spin, spin, spin!'.
The party decides to grease the secret door to the west, tempting the guards in with treasure and then setting it on fire. With some lucky dice, they managed to defeat the bandits in short order. Freeing the gnome, they were told of a prisoner in a cell adjacent to this room. Hoping they found Sir Morgan, the players instead encountered a grave nymph.
A skeleton wearing a bright yellow sundress and a wide-brimmed hat, bouncing a ball against the wall of the cell, one hand manacled to the wall. She and the players spoke, and she had no information on Morgan either. They released her, at which point she entombed herself and summoned her ghouls to feed on the corpses of the bandits. It turned out she was bound with thorn manacles, which prevent magic-users and magic creatures from using their abilities.
The supply room to the east contained three hogsheads of blackpowder, a thin section of floor, and a dozen bottled fairies. It's worth noting that fairies are the piranha of the sky. Scrying below, the players see Mokvik. An armored, man-sized goblin, stirring a massive stewpot, filled with body parts, from which more goblins sprout. In the corner of the room, a cage contains a stitch-beast made from the remains of Morgan's horse, an abomination the bandits called Wolvey. The wizard fails his Con roll and spends ten minutes trying not to vomit. Looking closer at the Mokvik, they realize it is in fact Morgan, transformed into a goblin.
The players decide against their previous plan of blowing a hole in the floor and letting the fairies eat Mokvik, instead choosing to take him prisoner. They sneak down the steps to the next room, and Garen casts Sleep, expending his die. Beating Mokvik's HD, he rolls a save and... fails.
The party rushes over and tips the stewpot into a nearby pool of acid. The goblins are corroded, but the hellhawk escapes. Failing its morale check, it flies up the stairs and isn't seen again. Manacled and hog-tied, the players extract Mokvik with minimal fuss, waving goodbye to the nymph and her tuxedoed ghoul companions. They let the fairies out of the bottles by throwing them down a trapdoor and running, and high-tail it back to civilization in the dead of night.
In the denouement, the local villagers had to deal with a hell-hawk and a band of traumatized ex-bandits who saw their fellows eaten by ghouls and fairies. Wolvey remains on the third level, in constant pain. The players return to Lord Oberyn, and after a good deal of convincing, he decides to honor his son's memory by tossing the thing he became in the deepest dungeon and declaring he died heroically.
Bleys got a small grant of land. Garen got a swanky new laboratory. Smokey had the charges dropped from the last time he tried to burn down the tavern (where do you think he got his name?).
Takeaways
This is the first time I've run for players significantly older than myself. I'm used to running for players new to RPGs, or at least unfamiliar with OSR. These guys were another breed. They knew the ropes, combats with them were lightning-fast, and they were extremely thorough in searching their environment.
I have a bit of a problem with making antagonistic NPCs. Unless they're straight up insane (and sometimes even then) I have a tendency to make them extremely reasonable, without a real conflict with the PCs. It's partly because I know the PCs tend to keep their word. I need encourage my players to be more opportunistic.
Having experienced players made the combats incredibly fast. I also have a problem with calibrating challenge in combats, and take to make them a but too easy. I want to include more in the way of puzzles and riddles.
I also want to include more exploration of the dungeon, with more entrances, exits, loops and general jaquaying. To that end I've been reading the Underworld and Wilderness Adventures booklet from the OD&D white box. The rules there for precise dungeoneering, dungeon population and the sample dungeons are enlightening, and I'll be using that in the near future.
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