DM Chronicles: Session 6: When Fun Trumps Story, Part 2

See part one here.

After some discussions, the party set out for Thunderspire Mountain.  I described what Fizban (eleven Wizard) knew about it since we established that he had visited it before in his researches. That’s when I gave the players a rundown on the setting’s background:  Old Minotaur city now called the Labyrinth, denizens all went crazy and killed themselves. Now filled with monsters and treasure with one little pocket of civilization,the 7-pillared hall, held by Wizards named the Mages of Saruum.

As they approached the labyrinth’s main entrance, the party met with a young perky halfling commoner named Rendil Halfmoon driving a cart filled with produce and meat up the mountain’s path.

Upon hearing its name, the players commented on how Halfmoon was obviously a halfling name… funny that, I picture this as the perfect name for a clan of plumbers.

Anyhoo, when the party offered to escort Rendil to the Seven Pillared Hall, he was more than happy to explain how things worked in there.  He told them he worked at his aunt’s inn inside the hall. He explained how the Hall was like a mini city with services and trading outposts.  He described how goblins, kobold, drow and duergar mixed it up with the surface dwellers in a neutral environment to trade whatever it is that the underdark and the surface wants from each other.

He also mentioned to stay clear of the Mages and particularly to avoid making trouble with their Ogre enforcer Brugg.  He told them that Brugg, while a loud bully and two-bit hustler, was a fearsome opponent backed by the very real power of his bosses.

The PCs made it into the Hall and went to the inn.  What ensued was a 60 minute long discussion among players and some NPCs to establish the next steps. It was highly entertaining to see the players try to come up with a cover story about having recently ‘acquired’ an overpopulated parcel of land that needed some ‘active civilian relocation’ to try to get to see the Bloodreavers.

Now that’s when the story stared showing cracks, especially the ones I added to it.  You see the Bloodreavers have, quite by coincidence, a small outpost near the hall and as written, they start the adventure with Rendil the halfling commoner as a captive and the PCs more or less stumble upon them, just like that!

So as the players are discussing, I describe the halfling’s aunt start calling her nephew and him not answer back.  Franky, always the story nut, takes the hook and mentions that Rendil has probably disappeared.  The group kept on discussing thier strategy to approach the Bloodreavers.

Anyway, long story short, after nearly 90 minutes of intro and roleplaying the PCs are sent to the nearby bloodreaver room where, as Franky guessed, Rendil was trying to smartass himself out of the grips of a small band of slavers.

At this point, I didn’t care about the story so much.  The players were in a good mood and itching for a fight, which started with close to no nudging. Woot!

This was a level 3 encounter (players are level 4) made up of 4 soldiers (Hobgoblins) and a Controller (A Goblin Warcaster) in a tight environment.  I was initially concerned that it would take a long time to play out.  Turns out it was done in about 60 minutes as the players were lucky, hit often and dealt a lot of damage.  The wizard managed quite a few critical hits with his spells and Yan’s fighter showed us just how damn efficient it is to mark more than one creature a turn and prevent them from moving!

After having played several sessions where each fight was more or less a hard challenge for the players, it was refreshing to see a short, easier fight.  It seemed to me that the players were getting in the stride of D&D 4e and things started going faster.

Once the combat was completed, the location of the Bloodreaver’s main hideout was established.  I made the mistake of reverting to the original storyline and mentioned that Rendil, who already knew the PCs were hunting the slavers, said he knew where they were… that got me a few frowns and Fridge Logic looks from the players.  ( I mean if he knew where it was, why didn’t he tell the PCs before?!?…)

Let me retcon this here by saying they  got the info from the defeated Warcaster!

Ensued the eternal ‘what do we do with the prisoner’ scene… which was promptly addressed by Roco who killed the slaver lieutenant, arguing that there was no justice anywhere near here (true) and that the guys were slavers who attacked them to kill (true enough)… So we moved on.

They PCs headed out to the Chamber of Eyes, an abandoned shrine dedicated to the evil god Torog (have you noticed how evil gods are always named with awful, somber sounding name like Moloch or Lolth. I promise to make a heinous deity of Murder and Pestilence soon and name him Maurice or Gwen one day!).

The Chamber of Eyes is where the bloodreavers’ main HQ was situated.

The player set out to the hideout, I rolled my first random encounter roll in more than 10 years and got… nothing.  Oh well they made it to the Chamber of Eyes.

There, they scouted the surrounding and noticed that the entire compound seemed to have just two entrances in the front.  A main door locked and guarded by some goblinoids standing behind it and another smaller door situated on a balcony behind the main shrine.

What followed was a precisely executed ninja-style strike where all PCs lined up behind the smaller door, burst through it and overtook the Bugbear guard and his Goblin Skullcleaver brute acolytes.  Once again I was a bit concerned that a fight against 6 brutes would take forever.  By that time it was passed 9h00 PM and I didn’t want to stretch this passed 10 PM too much.

I was worried for nothing.  Bjerm the fighter was exceedingly efficient at controlling the battlefield and the creatures all fell down rapidly, regardless of thier high HP counts.

In fact, Bjerm was so efficient that a certain point, Eric, playing Fizban the wizard, threw up his arms in the air and said “Man what’s the point, he’s cleaning up the board all by himself!”… and it was true to a certain extent as Yan kept rolling high all night long.  He sent his PC to the other end of the battle map to go pout.

As I predicted here, he rolled mostly over 15 on his d20 over and over again.

That fight lasted about 30 minutes, a perfect time for combating guards at a dungeon’s main entrance.  After that it was about 10h00 PM and it was a perfect time to stop.

All in all, a very pleasant game.  We laughed the whole time and the atmosphere was chummy and light all evening.  I’ll take games like that any night!

Lessons Learned

• Even with a flimsy plot, an adventure can be cool if everyone’s heart is into it.
• Lower level encounters accelerate the speed of play

What players liked:

• Hanging out together
• Having a pair of fight that, while somewhat challenging, was still easily won… you need those sometimes.
• Yan loved his lucky streak!

What players disliked

• Some bristled at the flimsiness of  the plot
• Feeling overshadowed by one character.

Up next in the game: Cleaning up the Bloodreavers and test if the story holds between chapters.