Tomb of the Serpent Kings write-up 1

So I've got a bit of a confession to make.

I've never DM'ed before.

I know!

And I've only played Dungeons and Dragons for what must be less than 15 sessions, too. That was 5th edition, and the people I ways playing with cared about a lot of stuff I didn't care about (lots of combat and very little thinking or discovering). So what am I doing writing a blog? Well, in my defense, this blog is mostly for me; and secondly, you're in no way obligated to read.

Anyway, I DM'ed Tomb of the Serpent Kings yesterday, for five players, four of which had never played a table-top RPG before. They were all friends and family - one of them was my mom.

I thought this dungeon would absolutely destroy them.

So far they're all fine.

So yeah.

I learned many things. I learned that a DM must keep track of *a lot* of things. I learned that you shouldn't go too easy on players. I learned much more. Here's a write-up.


I was running a home-hacked version of the GLOG, because I find it elegant and pretty simple to explain. Really, this whole exercise was done because I wanted to run the GLOG. It cuts out the tedious number-crunchery bullshit that bored me to tears in 5e and really allows you to dig into the meat of adventuring. However, being as streamlined as it is, you have to make a lot of *rulings*, and this is something you must get a feeling for. I made some judgment calls I really liked, some I despise looking back.

Because time was pretty short and character creation took a long time (and because I had only prepared the dungeon), I just dropped my players off at the dungeon. I know that that's bad form, but hey, it was my first time, give me a break.

So my players enter the dungeon. There's two wizards, a ranger, a thief, and an assassin. They are very careful and skittish - they open the first sarcophagus in the Guard Room from a distance by using Unseen Servant. They find it odd that they find a statue; when they try to lift it and look below, they discover that it is hollow. This discovery makes some of the players shudder.

They break it from a distance with a sling and feel vindicated when I tell them of the white gas that hisses up out of it. I tell them they see something glitter among the wreckage. (Maybe I shouldn't have, but I really suffer from "Wanting to tell too much-itis") They move to the next room and do the same thing. In the room with the scholar-statue, I added some detail about still water, rotted (wooden, fake) grave goods and glowing algae. Same ritual.

In the wizard tomb, they take the ring. A player takes the ring and asks what it looks like. I say there's a snake inscribed on it with a long forked tongue that circles around the silver. She's like ok I put it away. I'm thinking: no! PUT IT ON! Which I really shouldn't be thinking. Another player puts it on and everybody's horrified/amused by how her fingernail turn into a poisonous two-pronged dagger.

The first real trap.

I was worried that my players might die. You must understand, this was my idea. I talked them into this. I didn't want to have to say "you all die now". So I telegraphed the trap. I described how the the ceiling went up into the darkness (where the hammer lies hidden).

They used a light spell to examine the ceiling. I told them they saw lines running through it in a square shape, attached to some sort of hinge above the door.

They reasoned it was probably some sort of trap chute that would drop rocks or snakes on them. They all perfectly aligned out of the way and lifted up the bar.

Here I made another mistake.

I let two players lift up the bar. They could stand to the sides. I had them both make a strength check, but I think actually three players are necessary to lift it up. That would have made it more risky, and in my brain I went "I don't want my clueless wide-eyed players to be punished", which is obviously not the right way to deal with it.

The hammer whizzed just by their faces and smashed the door to bits.

The false tomb.

Here I added that the skeletons are dormant unless light falls on a clay seal inscribed with a spell on the middle of the centre skeletons forehead. I like this because these skeletons are designed as a safety mechanism to guard the true tomb; this seal is like an alarm system that wakes up the guard-skeletons.

They opened the two outer tombs first. Dead skeletons greet them. When they open up the middle sarcophagus and examine the seal, the writing on it flares up and the skeleton attacks. There's a round of combat; the skeleton gets some hits in. After the first round, the other two skeletons join in as well. The first skeleton is destroyed with a dagger. The second has several chunks bitten out of his skull by a goblin player clinging to his back in a succesful manouvre (racial bonus: sharp teeth). Note to self: there should have been a dexterity check to see if he stayed on the back!!! This skeleton dies when the ranger's dog tears off his leg. The last skeleton dies when a rock slung from a sling crashes straight through his skull and bounces around inside. Our wizard learned the spell "raise corpse" from the seal with a succesful intelligence check.

The ranger's dog found the secret entrance underneath the statue; when sniffing he felt the cool air.

In the hallway of statues I made another mistake. I told them "you see six statues; one of them is out of alignment". TMI-ites, again. So of course they found the room.

In the atrium, I made some changes. Following Arnold K's idea that dungeons should contain something to experiment with, I removed the mummy hands from the pool, added fish bones, and added a sacrificial altar with a groove that led into the pool. They figured out the bit about the blood sacrifice and one of them made one; a blue light spread, and the fish bones began swimming again like live fish. They thought this was pretty weird and did nothing with it, even though I added a skeleton to the priest room thinking they would throw it in the pool and talk to it.

The room with the statues freaked them out; they put caltrops and the rusty tools from the unfinished tomb in the hallway, so that if the statues came alive they would hear them coming.

They went into the priest room and found the statue. My mom had opted for "strange languages" as a skill and rolled it when she tried to analyse the scrolls. I told her it contained chronicles of the tombs and the ravings of madmen; and that in the lower levels a demon, a succubus, had been summoned at one point with the name Baltoplat.

They then went into the room with the Black Pudding. Again, out of desire to telegraph danger, I had them all roll constitution or puke, describing the horrid smell. I know this sounds lame, but my motivations were pure - these players didn't even know what a Black Pudding was or how/where to expect it. I even described black ooze dripping from the lid of the sarcophagus.

They opened it anyway. I asked "are you sure?", which I shouldn't have. I was pretty sure they would die. The thing intimidated my players; many players ran out of range. They shot arrows at it from a distance; one threw her dagger. One player was hit and was forced to make a strength check, which he critically failed. I had him engulfed as well as dropping his weapon in the confusion. But the next turn on his strength check to see if he got out, he had a critical succes! So I told him he struggled free and managed to give the thing a hard kick in the process - roll a d6, and he rolled a freaking six! He asked if he could grab his weapon while he ran away. Now technically that would be an action. But I said: if you can roll dexterity, you can grab it off of the ground mid-run. Which he did, the dick!

One of the witches used Prismatic Spray and blinded it. (I was like "Can this thing even be blinded? Probably" but now I'm not so sure.) Then another player threw a torch at him and also critically succeeded. I had it take fire damage and be set on fire. Looking back, the Black Pudding only got one succesful hit in before they killed it. I must have done something wrong, but the critical successes kind of threw me for a loop - I rewarded those with damage bonuses, but maybe I should have done something else.

Anyway. From here they went to the tomb of Franzinbar. They were freaked out by the clattering. One of my players used her racial bonus to talk to one of the rocks in the collapse. The rock told her that for hundreds of years they'd been kept awake by this tiresome skeleton with an axe smashing against them. They decided to leave.

Tomb of Xisor the Green: here I made another error. I described that the room was covered in webs and dust, moreso than the others; as if no one had been there in a long time. THAT'S A CONCLUSION. PLAYERS MUST MAKE THOSE.

But in doing so I forgot to describe the glittering. A player went in and I thought "fuck I didn't describe the chest-high thing that's gonna kill him now". So I gave him a chance to dodge, which he did, the lucky bastard.

Then they went down the stairs. A player triggered the trap and slid down into the spears; did not die. I, again being too soft, did not have the stone guardian activate until they stepped closer. They took a break and healed before they did.

They rolled their initiatives incredibly high. My mom came up with the idea to use an illusion to lure it into the chasm. The others used combat manouvres to push it (which I might have let them do too easily). In his first action, the stone cobra guardian took a shield. Then they fucking pushed it into the chasm; I let it make a saving throw, which it failed.

While I watched it tumble into the depths, having never made a single attack, I thought "maybe I should have let it make attacks as a reaction to being pushed".

I feel really shitty about this fight. They did use lateral thinking, which is good, but I didn't put the fear of god into them. I let them push it too easily and too far; in fact I totally did manouvres wrong. I let them do the opposed attack rolls *BUT THEN DIDN'T DO THE OPPOSED STRENGTH/DEX RULES*. So basically I blew that whole fight, and they all got off scott free.

They asked if they heard the stone guardian crash down into the chasm. I told them no. They heard nothing. They shivered.

We ended the session here.

Now they're all afraid of the big demon Baltoplat they know is down there somewhere. I don't think they're gonna recognize the gardener as her.

So what did I learn?

• DON'T GO EASY. Everybody who told me not to go too easy was right. I was worried about scaring off the new, uncertain players with instanteneous death. But instead I have now made them think that everybody being fine is the normal.
• READ THE RULES. I misremembered combat manouvres and because I didn't look them up, an enormously challenging creature became a joke.
• KEEP QUIET. Don't tell the players ANYTHING that they wouldn't see at a glance. Only tell them more if they look for it. It's only discovery if *they* find it! That you *want* them to see it is not relevant for the game or for fun!
• SERIOUSLY KEEP QUIET. Don't ask people "are you sure?". You're not there to help them. You're there to be the dungeon. And the dungeon wants to kill them; or at least kill them if they make a wrong decision.
• KEEP TRACK OF SHIT. I kept track of time and had them track torches a couple of times; rations as well. But when they camped for a night in the unfinished tomb, I forgot to have the player wearing the fork-ring make a check to see if her finger fell off the next morning.

I'm 50% really content and 50% itching to do it better next time. My players told me they had a blast - including the totally fresh ones. They really appreciated the fact that your imagination is key and limit of the game. They loved the sense of mystery and the discoveries they made. It is very nice to allow people to have that kind of fun.

I'm really angry that I didn't take the TOSK pdf for what it was. I mean, the pool of resurrection and the magic seal detail to the skeletons, I liked how that stuff played out, but how I wanted to take the edge off the traps to save my delicate players - don't. Seriously, don't. Just let them kill themselves.

What will I be doing next time?

• TRY TO KILL THE PLAYERS. Not *really* kill them; but at least try not to *want* them to succeed. If they are stupid, they die. I mean, someone has to die. The behaviour they showed up until now - run into the room, open sarcophagus, rush down the stairs - has to be shown to be risky. They can't get too attached. I will not be allowing second chances again. In fact, I might have to add another deadly trap like the lighting trap in Xisor the Green's tomb. The spike traps will not cut it. Perhaps the second door/hammer trap... They will likely recognize it. So I would have to add another. Lethal. Avoidable. But not telegraphed. 
• KEEP ORGANIZED NOTES. On HP, on usage dies, on who is in front, and where, et cetera...