Playing in the Sandbox III

My report here is a bit late. I've been busy at work, and didn't have time last night to write this up either. Now the wife and son are asleep, so I've got a bit of time.

Tuesday night I brought D&D to the Board Game Group. Once everyone was there--everyone for this week being myself, Pat, Chloe, Amy (Chloe's Korean friend), Dave, Lucy, Robin and Prada (Lucy and Robin's friend--yes, that's the name she chose for herself in English...).

We spent a bit of time giving Amy and Prada the basic rundown. Amy rolled up a Cleric, and Prada a Fighter. Lucy and Robin had a good laugh when Prada's Charisma ended up below average and I wouldn't let her re-roll. Well, she had a 17 Str, plus decent Int and Dex, so that should be good enough, right? Yeah, I'm an evil DM.

Pat only played his Fighter 3, Dave and Robin had Elves, Lucy had a Cleric 2, and Chloe has her Illusionist in addition to the two new characters.

They started out the session reviewing rumors. Several had gotten the rumor that demons infested the old Chapter House, but that there was lots of treasure there as well. Undaunted by demon rumors, they set out seeking more advice on the subject. They got the basic history of the place from the town historian, and then a bit more advice from the town's most unusual resident, Elmithrisar, an Elf said to be over 3000 years old (and he looks old, unusual for Elves). Elmithrisar wasn't sure what might lurk in the Chapter House, but thought the party might need some magical weapons before they ventured forth there.

Then they started wondering where to get magical gear. Elmithrisar pointed them in the direction of Cliodna, the leader of the local Elf clan that lives in the Black Wood just west of town. They decided to put that on hold for the moment, and investigate another rumor that Lizard Men had abducted a local farm family (I'd decided a little while ago that this was a false rumor--werewolves had killed the family and blamed it on the Lizard Men once they were back in human form).

They went to the farm, and found it deserted and trashed. They found the family dog in the barn, and used some scraps of clothes to get the dog to track by scent. It led them not to the Lizard Man stronghold (it would have eventually if things had gone differently), but to a lair on the path to the Lizard Men, which was the home of some bears.

They investigated the caves. The first bear they found was sleeping, and they left it alone. Dave's Elf snuck in to check out the bones that were on the floor, and found a human skull among them. This shook people up a bit. They assumed that it was from the farm family until they took it outside, saw that it looked old, and the dog didn't seem to find it familiar (not sure a dog could identify it's owner's bones though anyway...).

They went back in and took the other branch in the cave, and found two bears there. The bears were awake and threatening, so they started to back off, but then Pat suggested that they had enough numbers to take two bears. So the party attacked, rather than follow Dave's suggestion of going back to town for long spears to try to fight the bears while keeping them at bay.

It didn't end well. Dave's Elf went down in the first or second round, and Pat's Fighter followed him a few rounds later (bear hugs are nasty, even for a L3 Fighter!). The group managed to take the bears down eventually, once I stopped rolling so well to hit. Lucy's Cleric was damaged a little, but that was all.

Searching the room after looting their comrades for anything of worth (while Pat and Dave took the chance to make a run to the convenience store), they found a boulder blocking another passage. Inside, they found some loot stashed there by bandits long ago (the bones being those of dead bandits). There were some silver and copper coins, some large barrels of fish oil, and a falchion made of greenish steel. They took the loot back to town, paid the Grey Friars to bury their dead comrades properly, then met up with Pat's Cleric and Dave's new Cavalier. We decided to end the session there.

The sword is magical, of course. I rolled one off of my Unique Magic Weapons book which I still need to get around to giving a final edit. The sword wasn't there originally, but since they're interested in the Chapter House and they fought a tough battle with the bears, I decided to throw in a magic weapon for them. It's a +1 dancing weapon, but they have yet to identify it.

In other news, after 2 days of lots of emails and text messages exchanged, it looks like Alex will not be running Heroes Unlimited after all. Dave may be running d20 Conan instead. I've actually got an itch to run some Star Frontiers, but I really don't have the time right now to do it. Unless I ditched the D&D game. So it looks like we'll be running Hyborians and Turanians and Hyperboreans the next time we have a Saturday game.