Hard story beats should be as follows.
* More time has passed.
* Any fallout from previous session
* what did your players do
* Someone announces the discovery of a local dungeon
* adventuring spot
* hunting ground
* mining site
* Players go investigate the dungeon
* They’ve got to map it out
* Survey the land
* Stake their claim
* Dungeon boss fight
* Crystal at the end summoning monsters
* super beast pack leader is very territorial
* rock monsters
* Success leads to future problems.
* Dungeon goes crazy
* Animal stampede
* destabilized caves will cause landslide
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I went into this session without more detailed notes beyond the ‘hard story beats’ above. Generally taking it easy because I wanted to give the players an almost pure dungeon crawl kind of session.
Down a player (Milo) because they went camping.
Returning player (Elon) back from life event.
Brother Elon decided to spend their time proselytizing the good word of Scientology. They hit up Farmer Bill as their target of choice. Whenever they said the word ‘science’ I had Bill wince in pain and they asked how Elon was speaking that fast.
I wanted to emphasize the pseudo language barrier for the players. Certain ‘words’ just don’t translate as easily.
Elon wanted to provide a copy of dianetics, which as I recall is actually a fairly thick paperback book that used to grace my shelves a couple of house moves and decades ago. So We did a flashback in a flashback and Elon purchased a scroll of parchment from the travelling merchant caravan. Wrote out some nonsense about how they need to donate to the cause and your crops will improve.
Farmer Bill could not read the ‘English’ that Elon wrote, further emphasizing the language barrier that the players can all speak, but not read.
A persuasion roll ended up being very lucky as Elon explained what was written so I had Farmer Bill acquiesce to donating some of his grain to help Elon, specifically to Greta the innkeeper at a discount. Small town economics folks!
Taro spent their time hunting and looking for iron ore. This was the same thing they did the previous flashback break, so no dice on the iron as before.
They also attempted to get more quests from the adventuring guild. So I put in the Everett being ‘geased’ or bound to complete five quests for free. Everett was stalking the quest board. Little interaction between the two.
King just worked at the Inn, the player dropped that they were from Jackson and I immediately latched on to that with Greta mentioning “Oh how nice that your memory is coming back”. This is a point that I think the players forgot about their backstory.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
King also bought some winter clothes from Esmeralda. She didn’t charge King any coins because Taro was consistently bringing in small furred game.
Crispin the player forgot about what they promised to do about the broken window they smashed through in Greta’s Inn. As such I had all their coin removed as the townsfolk did him no favors and always charged him for every service.
Beyond that Crispin attempted to ‘learn their new body’ by doing stuntman pratfalls and other things. The other things included a walk outside of town. This walk produced the ‘hunger for magic’ that they noticed the previous excursion outside of town.
Flashbacks over, the players were gathered in Greta’s Inn, the cup and crown, on a cold winters evening. They started discussing moving on out of the town.
I had The Hermit come in at this point and announce the dungeon had appeared.
The players got all conspiratorial in their preparations for the dungeon. They attempted to ‘sneak’ about and gather up camping supplies. Easy enough to do for the more mundane items.
Crispin however has different dietary requirements. So they sought out a source of magical potency. With Milo not being available (The goodberry spell) Crispin corralled Gary the mage via intimidation. Gary was happy to go to the dungeon, slightly less happy to have to keep their mouth shut. But Gary and Nelly are attached at the hip as it were, so Nelly was brought along.
The seven (Four players, Hermit, Gary, Nelly) people walked into the forest.
First campsite, the players interrogate the Hermit for details, basically gives nothing much except ‘red pin pricks of light’. Gary corroborates summoned creatures.
The gang arrives at dungeon entrance. Gary and Nelly clear out the entrance. Did the whole “time does not stop” thing which the players caught on to and commented on. The plan’s all coming together.
They enter the dungeon after setting up a base camp at the entrance.
Dungeon theme was ‘kobolds’ but the animé kobolds which are medium sized dog people and not small sized lizard people. Small kick out of that from the Taro player who is very genre savy.
At this point I highly recommend using a dungeon generator. I used the ones from https://donjon.bin.sh/ which is an excellent resource. Specifically I used the one in the DnD 5E section which includes appropriately leveled challenged and trapped doors and rooms. Ignore whatever flavour text as appropriate.
The players were still joking around a bunch. They knocked on doors, alerted the kobold denizens. Got hit a bunch because of readied actions. By the third room they smartened up.
I had set up three ‘floors’ of the dungeon if it was needed, but as the fights went on I cut out the second ‘floor’ and just loaded up the final floor. We were at the five hour mark in real time when they finished the first.
Final boss time! I loaded up a giant room and sprinkled it with pillars, a glowing green crystal (dungeon core) on a daïs and a talking guardian.
Guardian talk about ‘how are you speaking kobold’ and ‘where were we summoned’ and ‘the crystal sings at me’
Players tried to grab the core. Smack the core. Fight ensues.
The mechanics were supposed to be kill the guardian, then core starts summoning skeletons infinitely. Then players escape. Elon is a cleric with turn undead so I figured they would be safe.
Players being players, being told they hit a thing and did damage, attacked the core willy nilly. Actually guardian went down relatively easy due to smart positioning and Crispin’s fighter shove ability knocking it prone.
The players refused to run so I adhoc gave the core 100 HP and a ‘stun’ effect at 50 HP and 75 HP of damage on the skeletons. Each round it would summon one additional skeleton than the previous time. (1 at round 1, 2 at round 2, so on and so forth) Skeletons have 13 HP so they weren’t going down in a single hit like the kobolds before. The player got to round 7 and a gaggle of skeletons surrounding them on the daïs when they did the 100 HP of damage to the core.
Core gets knocked flying, they all get sucked into a portal (else the skeletons maul them all to death/they get the dungeon core) Maybe they walk out because of turn undead, but I didn’t want to roll 30 some odd will saves.
Side note: I didn’t want them taking the dungeon core with them. Just because that wasn’t the game I wanted to run. If you would like to see what that’s like, I would suggest reading Magic is Programming. Good story, I’m enjoying it.
Deposited outside into the snow. They make their way back into town. Conversation with Tom the guard about ‘you’re not skeletons right?’
Go to the adventurers guild get the whole spiel about ‘we are going to be rich’ with the dungeon being nearby. Convert the gold to nibs (1880 GP to 37 nibs with 30 GP remaining) players complain about being poor, and there was much rejoicing.
Few more flashbacks. Taro finds a geode while out digging, tastes like a peach or some fruit.
King visits Cole the cobbler who passes them a water skin and loans them an animal skin for a tent. Call back to the previous session where Cole felt bad about some fault in King’s backpack.
Crispin did their ‘parkour’ in town which caused a number of children to follow along chasing and attempting it as well.
Session 3 comes to a close. Took about seven hours total.
Hard part now is that I haven’t written a word for Session 4 in the main story. All the prep work for these previous sessions was ‘easy’ because I just followed my own story beats. Ah hell.