DM Chronicles: The legend of the Broken Dice, Session 2, Part 1

Way back in October, I played a one shot adventure using Paizo’s Pathfinder #1, Burnt Offering. I wrote the session’s log here. We reconvened last Sunday for another session in a day long geekfest of Dim Sum, Anime and D&D.

So on Sunday Morning we arrived at PM’s palace of Cats (he has 2) in the Southern suburbs of Montreal. Franky, his brother Mike, Yan and I were arriving to partake in our 1st monthly geekfest.

The day started with my 1st experience eating Dim Sum (or as PM’s brother-in-law puts it: meat wrapped in wet paper towels).

I really liked the meal trolleys that pull up to your table every 5 minutes or so. Like the barbarian gweilo that we were, we gorged ourselves way too fast. I also loved eating around a large round table, shooting the breeze with our buddies, very conducive to some serious Cheetoism.

I can’t say I was completely enchanted with the food. The prevalence of slimy/gelatinous morsels that made up most of the meal, while good, left me with a somewhat unsatisfied impression. But it was the same thing for Sushi, and now I’d eat it everyday… so definitively I want to try it again soon.

After that meal, we went back to PM’s place to watch 2 hours of Cowboy Bebop, a nifty anime series from the nineties.

We watched the first 4 episodes, and while I liked them, I couldn’t shake a small annoyance at my perception of the show’s overuse of the Contrived Coincidence trope. That and the fact that Josh Whedon seemed to have borrowed heavily from the serie’s premises in Firefly (Which I saw first and burst part of the pleasure I usually attribute to a good series’s discovery) .

Somewhere between 2h00 and 3h00 PM, we moved to the gaming table and started setting up our D&D game. The last game had been a long time ago and since everyone was using new PCs, I decided to do a recap where I cast the new PCs in the roles of the heroes of the last session.

I also tried to create one link between each PC and one key NPC of the adventure. For instance, Jubei the Warblade (Yan) was a mercenary friend of the Ranger that patrolled the region to keep goblins in check. Brudach the Totemist (Franky) was an old adventuring buddy of Ameiko the innkeeper and was staying at her place. Orono the amnesiac Favoured Soul (PM) found his calling in Sandpoint’s cathedral.

Finally, Rukai the Ninja (Mike) was around for some yet unspecified reason on a mission from his organization. Ninja players like their secrets… but for Mike’s defense, I’m taking some artistic license here as I had no idea why he would be in the town in the 1st place apart from some Ninja sensei telling him to “go out and prove yourself young recruit”.

That little linking of characters with the setting and NPCs helped start the adventure as I hoped and I’m definitively keeping this in my ‘use again’ box of tricks.

So we started with the town’s sheriff (Hemlock) calling the PC’s over the town hall to meet with the roving elven guardian ranger (i.e. Jubei’s contact). I went into narration mode explaining that goblins were being organized by a third party. The sheriff informed the PCs that he was leaving to get reinforcements from the region’s capital and he asked for them to stay around to keep the townfolk feeling safe.

Then the next scene called for the ranger inviting the PCs for dinner and sharing a whole load of info on the regional goblin threat. Since I wanted to have the game moving as soon as possible, I proposed to players that instead of giving the info now, I’d freely go back to the info dump and share what was relevant whenever it was called for in the rest of the adventure.

Now, remembering that Graham’s players had no intention of sticking around town , waiting for stuff to happen, I sprung the next scene on them while they were still talking to the ranger.

The inn’s owner, ex-adventurer Ameiko, had disappeared the very same day. The chief servant was worried sick that she had been dragged in some horrible trouble by her no good half-elf bastard brother.(I was trying to play her, a halfling matron’ with a mix of genuine worry and nasty gossip). She gave them a note, written by Tsuto the half-brother, she had found in her mistress’ room.

The note mentioned a midnight meeting in their father’s glassworks.

With dinner finished and night setting in, the hereos set out immediately for the glassworks, finding it locked up and all windows covered.

After having been told that they circled the building a few times looking for secret doors, I had a bunch of busybody neighbors approach and ask what it was they were doing. I played up the suburbanite French Canadian ‘I don’t want to intrude in your buisness but I will’ cliché and it worked wonders.

The heroes quickly left, let night fall and came back from the beach to unlock the service entrance.

As soon as the door opened, I let out the characteristic high-pitched laugh of those crazy goblins and said it was coming from the foundry.

How do you call a glassblower’s oven anyway?

The PC’s snuck up on the gobbos, witnessing the gruesome melted glass sculpture molded over the dead body of Ameiko’s father, the owner of the Glasswork.

Long story short, the party made mincemeat of all 8 goblins with no casualties…Not bad for 4 1st level PCs.

The Totemist and Warblade made short work of the gobbos in melee and the Ninja was able to hit a few gobbos with his short bow. Unfortunately, for this fight and all other ones, PM’s Favored Soul played poorly and missed about 95% of his attacks… staying true to what happened in the last game session and giving this part time campaign it’s name: The Legend of the broken Dice!

Following the path a fleeing goblin was running to, calling for Tsuto’s help, the players found the Glasswork’s basement and a recently uncovered secret section behind 2 broken down brick walls,.

They found Tsuto fast asleep and overcame him quickly. He held his own for about 2 rounds, stunning Jubei, but being surrounded he quickly surrendered.

A journal was found hinting at things to come and identifying someone believed to have died in the cathedral’s fire 5 years ago as the adventure’s villain.

The heroes then found a battered and tied-up Ameiko, healed her, freed her and gave her custody of her treacherous brother.

We leveled up to the second one (it took less than 20 minutes) and we took a break for about 15 minutes.

I’ll post the expedition to the Catacombs of Wrath tomorrow.