Chatty’s Ptolus 4e Demo: A Tail of Two Shities, Part 1

(This series title was chosen by the players, you have been warned)

As announced here, I organized a D&D 4e demo for 4 members of the Mindnight’s Lair local RPG forum.

I didn’t want to do a big D&D 4e lecture upfront, and I didn’t have to, most players had either played it once before (with me, at a local con) or had read the books enough to know the basic concepts.  I ended up giving little tutorial snippets here and there.

I didn’t note down the PCs names and some were so similar to my French-ear that I ended dropping their use and calling the players name instead (I’ll be using their forum alias here). So we had:

• Dwarven Fighter, played by Rover
• Dwarven Warlord, played by Midnight
• Eladrin Wizard, played by White Wolf
• Elven Avenger, played by WalkerP

Prologue to Great Adventure!

The adventure was to occur in the City of Ptolus, a sprawling multi-tiered metropolis sitting over the Mother of all Megadungeons.  It is assumed that if you start adventuring in Ptolus, you’ll never leave it.

Before we started, I asked each player to provide a short biography of their PC and why they arrived in Ptolus.

Interestingly enough, the 2 dwarves chose ‘Investigate and explore Dwarvenheart” as their reason to be in Ptolus. Dwarvenhearth is an abandoned, and sealed, dwarven city under Ptolus.   The Eladrin also joined that mission, saying he was looking for lost artifacts.  Finally the Avenger had a very simple goal: Fight the encroaching Chaos that was corrupting the city from within and below.

So the baseline was established.

I then asked the players to explain what was the adventure they completed just prior to doing the one we were going to play.  By doing that, I was throwing the ‘you all meet in a tavern’ cliché back in the players hands to come up with a reason to be together.

They really delivered, as they made up a story about helping the stevedores’ guild deal with a Goblin incursion problem under the Docks.  They told me they tracked the leader, a female goblin Witch Doctor, to an abandoned tower, faced her and “resolved” the goblin problem.

Thus, I explained that they had scored enough money to pay the 65 gp Delvers Guild membership.  The delvers are the sanctioned dungeon crawlers of Ptolus and have access to the best intel, equipment and can even get death insurance.

Like all Guild newbies, they learned about the “Kill the Rats for the Emperor” quest where the Ptolus Council and the Church offered a bounty of 3 gp per Ratman and Dire Rat tail.

I ended the prologue by having a middling Guild official point out to them.

“Ya know, now that yer Delvers, ya can git the best maps of Rat Warrens from our library.  They need to be cleared every few weeks or so.  Go talk to the old dwarf there, he’ll set ya up fine”

The Old Man and the Mouse Guard

They went to the library and met “The old dwarf”, an ancient and mostly senile librarian.

As soon as the dwarves of the party started discussing rat hunting, the old dwarf launched into a 60 min long story about rats and how his ancestors fought them and yadda yadda.

I asked each player how their PCs would react during the speech:

Dwarven Fighter and Warlord: Polite listening, as is expected of younger dwarves toward their elders.

Eladrin Wizard: Pained patience, subtly rooting around the library for anything interesting.

Elven Avenger: Leaning on a nearby column, sighing audibly.

Chatty: Fortunately, everyone knows that venerable dwarves have the ability to ignore rude elven impatience at-will.

Group: Laughter.

(I already knew the evening was going to be a success)

After being listened to without rude interruption, the old dwarf, becoming strangely lucid (because the plot needed him to be for a few minutes), could tell they were trustworthy kids so he asked them for a special favor.

He fished out a crystal amulet from under his tunic.  It was glowing a sickly green. “This be an old family charm.  It tells of the state of my family’s crypt.   Right now this color means it was broken into and taken over by spawns o’Chaos, ratmen most likey.  I’ll pay you an extra 7 gp per tail and a bonus of 100 gp if the amulet stops glowing.  To do that, ya needs to kill the rat boss, all the ratlings flock to him, they scatter when the boss be killed”

Now at this point I had to rethink my adventure’s plan.  The old dwarf would be giving widely imprecise info on the whereabouts of his crypt and I would have the players play some sort of Mouseguard-like skill challenge to get there.

However, I got the vibe that this group would appreciate a good old fashion kill and loot scenario and it was already near 8 PM anyway… so I changed my plans on the go and made the adventure linear.

Instead I asked for one skill check to piece together the instruction of the old Dwarf.

WalkerP stepped forward to do a Dungeoneering skill check to piece together the info and how dwarven crypts are planned and arranged.  The 2 Dwarves offered to help with Diplomacy (Coax coherent info from the old dwarf) and Endurance (Remain awake during the droning speech and recall details).  The Wizards player then piped up to help too.  I initially said no because he was doing the “I’ll roll too” schtick that RPG players do.

Then I reconsidered and asked him how his roll would help.  While he initially didn’t want to do the roll, respecting my initial call, I insisted and he explained that he would use whatever he found in the library to help.

Midnight: Phil, we’re old school. We’re not used to that new agey “Say Yes” thing.  It’s okay to shut us down.

Sigh… my work will never be done. 🙂

Of course the Avenger flubbed the roll.  But at this point, failure was no longer an option. I needed the adventure to move forward and fast.

Chatty: All right, I’ll give you the info you seek, but I reserve the right to do something horrible to your PC later.

Elf Avenger: Sure thing.

Ominous foreboding music.

The Temple of the Exclamation Point!

I forget the details but the PCs eventually linked the dwarf’s family crypt with the temple of Teun, a Ptolus steampunk god and they made their way there. I still had a quest to give the players and I didn’t see where to fit so I pulled a cheap trick and had a dwarven deacon wait for them by the entry of the crypt behind the temple.  He said his mistress, the high priestess of the temple, had an augury about this crypt and that adventurers would come by it soon.

The deacon asked players to recover any piece of ‘chaos tech’ from whatever was defiling the crypt.

Deacon: We’ll pay 50 gp for each you return

Avenger: We’ll break them before we return them, they are items of Chaos!

Wizard: Hey, if we break them we can get 50 gp per piece!

Deacon: They tend to explode when jostled too hard.

Avenger to Wizard: Okay, you break them!

They clicked on ‘accept quest’

And so our adventurers entered the crypt.

Up Next: When the poop hits the fans.