Due to life events of myself and some of my players, we couldn't continue our
playthrough of Tomb of the Serpent Kings until now.
Almost a year later.
Terrible.
Anyway.
This time I was a little less prepared - I had had less time to go over all the rooms and add "authenticating detail" and stuff. I was tired as well and I missed some things. But overall went well.
THE CHASM
After camping at the edge of the chasm (I chose not to throw a random encounter their way since that would be punishing them from a decision from a year ago, and everybody knows your dog doesn't learn shit if you punish it now for chewing on your shoes five hours ago), the adventurers made their way to the right.
When they came to 22: Stone Door, they recognized that there was likely a trap. (I had recapped the previous session with them). Nobody agreed quite what kind of trap this would be. One Stoneling thief used her species' ability to talk with stone to talk to the door. The door described what room was behind it, but did not know if it was trapped (after all, it wasn't the door but the bar that was trapped, and the trap would destroy the door. Game idea: a friendly sentient door that has dreams and aspirations but that will be obliterated upon opening, knows it, and begs the players not to do it.). They looked at the ceiling, which they concluded probably contained a hammer just like the previous one. They did the same thing as before: people lifting it from the side so that they would not be hit by any swinging hammer. There was some suspicion that something else entirely would happen that would hit EXACTLY from the sides.
When they lifted the bar of the hinges, there was a click and a short interval of silence before the entire door exploded into debris and dust sailing straight into the chasm.
Several of the new RPG players expressed delight at how vivid they saw all the occurences here. Feels good man.
They went in.
23: CEREMONIAL ROOM
They try to see if the wall hangings show something or if there is something behind them. Nothing. They take the gold leaf scraps.
Here they hear the rattling of the basilisk's chain. They found it pretty disconcerting. They found it hard to decide which path to take so mom used a light spell to illuminate the two hallways. They saw one of the petrified snakemen in the guarded hall which spooked them, but they went there anyway.
31: GUARDED HALL
The wizards examined the statues and could figure out that while they weren't under a spell to bring them to life or anything, they weren't ordinary statues. One of them said: "maybe they're turned into stone". The goblin player used his racial biting ability to gnaw a hole in both their heads so if they came to life they wouldn't surprise them. This took a while and in that time a bat flew past them.
32: SUMMONING ROOM
As they pushed open the door, the succubus started shouting for help. Some players were immediately suspicious whereas others wanted to help. Questioning the succubus through the door, they were suspicious about her claim to have been kidnapped by fungus gnomes (I went with gnomes because goblins are an intelligent, playable race in this set-up). The players hadn't actually seen any of those and thought that seemed like a poor lie.
Still some players really wanted to help and the curiosity of the suspicious players won out.
They spent some time clearing the rubble and in the time they did that, they were found by... a party of fungus gnomes. Surprised faces all around.
One of the players immediately wanted to become their king. One of the goblins ran off and came back a while later with the crown. So far, no one has asked what happened to the old king. Only my dad, who wasn't even playing, said: "Yeah he's dead of course", but nobody payed him any attention.
The gnomes said they hadn't kidnapped any woman, and that they never went into that room. They did not want to enter it, they said.
Players, of course, enter it. Goblin woman, innocent, shackled, asks for help. One player (not thinking) approaches. Shackle vanishes. She thanks him, says that actually she just needed him to step over that circle there. She gets closer. What do you do? Uhhh. She gets closer still, what do you do? I say: hey now... She tries to kiss you, what do you do? Uhh, I take a step back. She's
really insistent, what do you do? Fuck it, I'll kiss her.
He survived but aged nine years.
Succubus grew big horns, tail, and wings, and flew off, winking at the kissed player.
Writing this I mishandled it in a couple of ways. She didn't try to isolate anyone, dropped the botanist act as soon has her binding was broken, and all in all wasn't as interesting as she could have been. But shit I was so tired running this.
33: SHRINE ALCOVE
The fungus gnomes had run off when the succubus left so the players carried on without them.
They pushed the statue the wrong way first; they all got gassed. Then they pushed it the other way (from a distance with a pole) and the gold came out.
One crow person character, in line with his motivation to hoard shiny things, ran after the shiny coins into the
35: BLADE TRAP AREA
He got hit for only one HP the first time and dodged the second time. After the second time I gave him a hint (get out) by saying that the entire wooden mechanism in the ceiling was starting to shudder and groan. He got the hint and tried to leave, but got hit by the swinging blade on the way back. It reduced him to -4 HP so I made him roll on a death and dismemberment table I got from somewhere (I think I got it from Arnold Kemp's GLOG but he wasn't the author. Should look it up.) and he got a massive slice; gonna be a thick scar, but he'll live.
THEN the whole thing crashed onto him. He had some lucky rolls however and rolling again on the death and dismemberment table, he managed to evade most of the chaos but got hit in the face by a massive bouncing piece of rubble that shattered a part of his beak (broken bone), bleeding, et cetera. The other players immediately got him out and gave him first aid. The nose part of his beak is still broken and dented and will give massive troubles if he is hit with it in combat later, but he can soldier on for now.
They decide to have a little break next to the rubble, eat some rations, get some HP up. As they eat, a fist-sized spider crawls past them. My mom refuses to eat any further.
34: PRIEST REST AREA
They take the eggs. The wizards figure out what their deal is and one of my players immediately cuts his hand open and is disappointed when the egg "only" becomes warm. They still take them.
Then they went to the
38: BASILISK HALL
They were immediately fascinated with the basilisk hall. They wanted to go in and examine those weird statues again.
When they did so, one of the wizards was still carrying the lantern she had cast a strong "light" spell on, so they could see much further into the hall than they otherwise would have. This meant that they actually glimpsed the basilisk in the distance. It's huge crocodilian head sliding out from behind a distant pillar peered at them. They all felt the sense of pressure of its gaze.
The immediately decided to leg it, with the basilisk in pursuit. They were so close to the end of the hall that I let them escape without a roll.
They were absolutely determined to cross the hall, did not want to take the other path. They wanted to know if it ended there or if there was more.
One brave player went in, thinking to stealth it (they had seen the visor and knew its vision was not great). But the sniffing sounds of the basilisk made him reconsider and he came back.
Then, the stoneling player had a bright idea: she was made of stone and therefore
smelt of stone!
However, she would have to go without a torch because that would certainly draw the basilisk's attention.
I invented some darkness rules and I said: in total darkness you can only see one square around you, so to know what there is at the end of the hall, you need to actually go there and touch it.
I was reluctant to have her do actual stealth rolls, because this was a weird kind of stealth. It wasn't so much being hidden (as it was total darkness), it was being
silent, but more than that:
being silent in total darkness while traversing a room covered in rubble. That sounded like a Dexterity roll for me.
She moved from pillar to pillar, deftly stepping beyond the stones. I invented some rules for "random chance that the restless basilisk stumbles upon you" with a d8, an 8 being a direct run-in. I rolled a 7. I described how the feet padded towards her and how the huge bulk of the basilisk shifted just past her in the darkness. I rolled again to see if the tail brushed her, which would have been cool, but it just slided past her.
She was at the fourth pillar when people began to seriously question the wisdom of this idea.
The wizard cast light on one of the ranger's arrows and he shot it through the hall, straight into the hallway beyond (which I liked a lot). The reveal that the hall
didn't end changed priorities. The logic was: either the stoneling would have to come back (dangerous) OR everyone would have to cross (dangerous).
Because they were treating the basilisk very much as a monster, I described another basilisk noise and instead of a hiss or growl or sniffing I made something half in-between a dog-like yawn or a cat-like purr. This totally made them reconsider the basilisk. One player said: maybe the stone eggs are the basilisk's eggs.
Another said: I'll go in and offer an egg, and so he did.
He got the basilisk's attention alright. I was quite happy with this creative approach and since the basilisk's hunting method consists of stalking and striking, I decided it would not be immediately aggressive, but be confused and guarded in the face of such open approach. This was not prey but challenge.
It came out from behind a pillar, cautiously, growling, all its spines erect. It roared at him and he had to save against fear.
Here I wasn't quite sure what would happen. Because the basilisk was not attacking and also actually looked at the egg, I did not have this player petrify (although I did have him feel the pressure). Then one of the rangers asked if he, as a ranger, an animal lover, could tell anything about the beast.
I said: it's hungry, it's on the hunt because it is hungry.
One player was so delighted by this news that she immediately threw a ration at the beast.
Unfortunately this was the stoneling player who was still in the hall
behind the basilisk.
The sudden surprise of another intruder behind it made the basilisk aggressive. It swept around and roared at the stoneling. She resisted the fear, but she did not resist the petrifying gaze. She could not move. All players decided now was the time for action.
They took
a pretty long time thinking things over whereas this was actually combat but they did have some interesting ideas.
Eventually the wizard cast a shield over the basilisk, trapping it, so that they could pass.
Writing this down, I realize I rolled initiative too late into this encounter. But I'm kind of happy about it. When you say "roll intiative", you say "get ready for battle". But with an animal things are more uncertain and unpredictable. So I'm happy I did it so late.
What I'm
not happy about is that in doing so I basically gave the wizard free initiative, meaning that everybody started with a head start over the basilisk.
The players started running. I didn't know how to resolve this because whereas a chase is usually solved by rolling two Movement stats against each other, this time one of the chasing parties was trapped under a shield. Perhaps I ought to have let it bash against the shield as a reaction to the players running past? I just took the Movement number as the amount of meters you can run in a full sprint (seems a bit large now).
The basilisk, in its turn, tried to charge the player it had petrified and rammed into the shield, shattering the first layer.
(The way my shield spell works is: it's got two "layers"; the first breaks at any blow, the second has HP equal to the sum of the spell dice used to cast it. This is more of a mechanical thing than an aesthetic thing: I just want a shield to be able to withstand
at least one impact no matter how much damage it might inflict.)
This player was no longer being petrified because the shield blocked magic. She could run to safety.
The other players made it past as well as the basilisk swiped at the shield, shattering it. It could not overtake them, however, and as they ran into the hallway to avoid its gaze petrifying them from the hall, it was forced to retreat into the hall.
42: CYLINDER DOOR
They remembered the cylinder trap! They got the gold idol & stuff first, then the gnome warrens, then they got completionist and wanted to know what was on the
other side and got stabbed by spear traps.
Some people were too disgusted to go into the warrens. But it was that or go back to the basilisk I guess so they went in. They dregged the guano for the shiny stuff. Then they went into
48: GOBLIN SPAWNING PIT
They realized it was something special and one player said that they used the halberd they found in the upper levels to pierce one of the sacks. I said that it ripped open and that a bunch of gross fluid and a half-formed fungus gnome came sliding out of it. Everybody was grossed out, it was great.
They left and went to
49: GOBLIN THRONE ROOM
Here were 40 gnomes fucking about. They cheered to receive their new king. They found the backscratcher and realized it was from the fountain. They also payed close attention to the mention of the "real crown".
The gnomes offered their king a tour of his domain. He agreed. So they led them across the other rooms, including the secret entrance to the basilisk chamber, which made them go "ahhhhh".
In the gnome farms, they decided to dredge the whole thing and they were very happy to find THE CROWN OF THE SERPENT KINGS. The stoneling player said I PUT IT ON but managed to withstand its effects. A wizard also took some dungeon cucumber but did not use it.
Explaining that the guard goblin pushes skeleton jellies away threw them off because they had not yet encountered one or even realized... what it was. (Yes there is a skeleton jellie in a hallway they passed and yes it should have come there way but this is my lack of super deep preparation showing for this time).
From here they went to
28: DOMED HALL
Here they were attracted to the iron door of the treasure room. A wizard did two attempts at an Open spell, one of which critically failed, with the quicksilver jet of the spell exploding onto the door and splashing her robe in silvery dregs.
Our stoneling thief managed to crack it open.
29: TREASURE ROOM
Here I must confess my failure. Again lack of preparation, I was forced to INVENT a treasure. So I made some shit up about piles of gold and a massive golden kris-dagger (with as of yet unspecified magical effects). I think it made an impact (wow piles of gold and treasure)
but it feels like a missed opportunity to add in some truly crazy shit. There's always next time.
Lack of inventory space was becoming a problem!!!
Although I had not prepared the village they set out from, I said: you can just go back to the village and we'll deal with that in a very global way.
They sold a looooot of shit. The wizards both bought a wizard's staff on the market (I think it might be funny to have them break at some point - never buy an alleged wizard's staff on some small-time market!), the thief bought a
mysterious package and the crow with the smashed beak went to a healer.
At this point everybody was pretty burned out so we called it a day.
One interesting thing. When they looted the treasure, one player asked: "What kind of treasure did I pick up???"
I, having improvised already 5 different types of treasure there, said: "It's just a 10gp treasure."
She said, "no but
what is it?"
I said, "Uh... It's an elaborately shaped perfume holder with a long golden snout"
It was funny. On our first session I added so much nonsense filler to every room, writing them all out in a kind of short-note style. I added fake grave goods to the fake graves, I added glowing algae to one room. I sometimes felt it was a lot of distracting filler, but the players never felt that way. But *now* they did sometimes feel as if it was not really real.
It wasn't like I was telling them how it was, but that I was kind of making it up. Which was true. In the first session, people were ever so slightly more
immersed. They totally believed everything. Now, somewhat less - especially at this point. It's time-consuming, but not really a lot of work. If you imagine the room you're making easily gameable short-notes from - something like
17 | Tomb of Xisor the Green
Stench! -> roll CON or vomit
Rich wall-carving -> a great king on the right, a thousand tiny slaves on the left. Snakemen hieroglyphs
Coffin -> black stains dripping from the lid -> stench ->
Black Ooze! HD 8 etc...
I stole this organization from some blog, I forgot which (sorry! It was over a year ago).
It works because it is easy: all the things that are immediately noticable are on the left. The arrows pointing right per thing indicates what happens when the players examine it or fuck about with it. This makes describing a room a matter of going from top to bottom, meaning you can easily throw in "huge cobwebs", "still water, it stinks", "wall hanging shows a battle scene against the ancient golden elves", "the skeleton has a baked clay seal with inscriptions on it on its head". I found that my players LOVE that shit.
In literature, they call this
authenticating detail. It's the kind of detail that has no critical plot relevance, but it's the kind of detail that gives the whole thing believability. It
has to be real. It authenticates it.
I didn't have any of that this time. It's hard to come up with authenticating detail on the spot.
It is very easy to do it when preparing such a layout as above. It basically writes itself. But you have to sit down and write it.
I'm definitely doing that for the final few rooms. I'm going to make Xiximanter the great finale of this dungeon crawl and he and his quarters will get some loving, loving authenticating detail.
