This was a quick little crawl in the dungeon beneath Dschungelberg Keep I ran online last Thursday. Just two players, and the session was beset on all sides by terrible dangers (My children were uncooperative at bedtime). But once we actually got down to play, it was a busy session to say the least!
Take One: Common Pitfalls
The crew set out with Tnk (Pronounced "Tank") the Elf and Olaf the Cleric. They each had 5 men-at-arms for a clean dozen men delving down into the dungeon. Now, it should be noted that for the online games where players have been crawling the Dschungelberg dungeon, I've been procedurally generating it using Appendix A and some handy-dandy Abduction. So these sessions really are an analogue rogue-like with the dungeon being generated as it is explored. It's been a very good time to say the least.
So the party set off down to Level 1, stopping off at the one room they've never entered. Almost immediately a pit-trap with spikes culled several of their men-at-arms and nearly killed the two PCs. This was the 6th pit-trap that had been generated on this floor of the dungeon. The dice are a cruel mistress sometimes. They went back up to hire more men, to replenish their numbers, and returned for a new delve. Getting down to the 2nd level of the dungeon, they poked around at some empty rooms, negotiated passage with a cluster of kobolds who did NOT want to tangle with the much larger party of adventurers, and discovered a hidden passage that leads first to the cistern that the keep's well lowers into and then into a room full of 20 brigands! The party, almost certain that they have uncovered a smugglers ring, run some fast talk and good reaction rolls into getting to leave without an altercation. Pressing onward, the dice were ONCE AGAIN a cruel mistress.
Not to the players, mind you. To ME, the poor beleaguered DM, all I want is for the Appendix to give me some of the cool, punitive, EVIL traps from the Tricks/Traps table. But instead of darts, or a covert elevator that plummets them to a deeper level, the party encountered another pit trap. BORING!!!! This one killed both PCs and several more men-at-arms. Technically speaking, the first TPK of the campaign! We were only about 30 minutes in and I had just hit my stride getting into the flow of running, so I asked if they were done for the night or if they wanted to roll up new characters and try again.
Take Two: Just Another Snake Cult
After I went and re-tucked the kids in, got back to my desk and the players had whipped up a new party. Claus the Fighter has been here before, and the other player generated the first thief of the campaign, Han. They rustled up some men-at-arms and set down into the dungeon. It was broadly uneventful for much of the evening, in part because the appendix was giving us a lot of long, empty hallways. But not so fast! Some of the table results saw me have an opportunity to connect this dungeon to the other one thematically.
The adventurers came across a stretch of hallway, straight with one door after the other. The walls in the final stretch were of polished black stone, and the final door was ornately carved brass. The players heard chanting on the other side of the door. They burst in, a group of emaciated men in loincloths were worshiping at an altar covered in various treasures, and on the ground before the altar: a truly enormous sarcophagus. The décor and atmosphere had noticeable overlap with the snake cultists that have been encountered in the Library of Shuga-Koth. These cultists, unlike the ones in the library, had human heads instead of snake heads. They were no less hostile though, and they drew their Thulsa Doom Snake Daggers and attacked. They were no match for the PCs, and the room was soon being looted.
There was a few magic items on the altar, some gems and coinage. But the real treasure was in the sarcophagus. The mummified corpse therein had a huge aztec-style death mask and serpentine jewelry. It was 7 and a half feet tall, with distended fingers, sharp teeth and an elongated skull.
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| Looting this guy will not have any far-reaching consequences |
Han plundered the Acheronian corpse and the party headed back to the surface to sell their loot and cash in the XP. At first I did a double-take, thinking there was no way this much XP could fall in the hands of the players from a single session. And then I remembered that instead of being divided between 6-9 players, it was instead being divided up among 2. Suffice to say, Han sling-shotted his way to Level 4 in a single session (OD&D has no prescriptions for training or slowing the rate of advancement) and Claus made out pretty darn well himself. They sold the mummy's loot to a suspicious broker who claimed to have a buyer lined up. We'll see how this plays out. Mummy treasure never has any consequences for taking it anyway.
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