Enter the cave of the kobolds!

My party just finished up their first dungeon. It was kinda hairy there at the end when they came up across their first overpowering encounter and their fighter foolishly charged headlong into battle and got knocked to dying in a single blow. From an attack of opportunity that she triggered. But they managed to pull it off in the end.

All in all, I have to say I'm very pleased with how the dungeon played out. I drew a quick map sitting in Tony's Pizza enjoying a slice. Like all my best work, I put it together the day before I needed it. And I expected to get two sessions out of it. I ended up getting six, including the session they took to get there and the session in the middle where they paused for healing and shopping in town. Not bad for something I basically threw together in an hour.

One of my favorite baddies from fantasy works is the necromancer. I don't know why, but undead are just wonderful enemies. I think it's a combination of the mindless approach and the fact that it's the friggin dead come back to a semblance of life. Plus, their mindlessness makes it really easy to run them. I knew that I wanted to put them in the dungeon, but I decided not to tell my players that they were going to find undead. Gotta have some secrets. (Well, I have a small stack of note cards with secrets, but that's another post.)

I had the players meet a lady who told them that her son, James, had been captured and held by kobolds who used a nearby cave as a base to raid from. I had planned for her to die on the way, but they managed to save her. Which is ok, because that just changed her from dead to missing. It actually might be better, because now they have another mystery what needs unraveling. Gotta keep the players guessing. A wondering player is an engaged and interested player.

The original plan for the first chambers. Also notes on traps and tracking negative health from the final encounter.

I knew I wanted to hit them with a trap straight up. At first I planned on it being a tripwire that dropped a big rock on them, but ended up changing it to an alarm pressure plate. I decided that the kobold leader would be asleep and the kobolds in the first chamber would be distracted by a dice game or something if they didn't trip it. Of course, they did trip it, so the kobolds were waiting for them and the leader showed up after a round or two of combat. But kobolds are unwilling opponents, so they surrendered when the tide of battle started shifting against them.

What the first chambers ended up looking like.

And that's the extent of the kobolds I had planned for the cave that they were told was full of kobolds. One of the kobolds they interrogated told them about the skeletons that were waiting and also about the secret door to the treasure chamber.

The planned next chambers. They ended up being changed around.

Originally I had planned for the party to come across a chamber the had signs of bodies being bleed out and killed in the next chamber, along with a locked door to a cell where James was being held. This chamber ended up getting changed to being the third one, and got a face lift into a whole little temple room to a dark god. Can't have an evil group with undead without a temple to a dark god, after all. I also moved the flaming skeletons (which was a template I found in a book about undead enemies and I just knew I HAD to use them) into it to give it a more impressive feel.

The other room turned into a storeroom. I put a few crates with some adventuring gear that I noticed my party hadn't grabbed (like torches, who doesn't grab at least a torch or two during character creation? Honestly...) but the barbarian came in and smashed the crates, destroying it all. My pressure plate made the party nervous when they found the lever, so they tied a rope to it and pulled it while standing in the hallway. And that was where we ended the first session in the cave. So I suppose that's where I'll end this post. We'll revisit the cave shortly.

The finished storeroom, with opened secret door.

After smashing the skeletons and finding the treasure trove, you take a moment to pause and loll on your new pile of coins to read another few pages of Sam's journal.

Some days you're the dog. Some days, you're the tree. Today, we were the tree. Well, that's just what you get when you hang around with clumsy oxes.

So, there we were, following the goblins down into the sewers. I, knowing full well that we don't want those goblins noticing us, was like the wind, drifting undetectable, making less noise than a shadow. Meanwhile, that daft monk and foolish elf are making as much noise as a child squalling over a dropped lollipop. Of course, the goblins heard.

Now, it was awfully dark (as a player who seemed intent on making us lose pointed out oh -so- helpfully) in that sewer. So we couldn't see squat. However, those goblins could see us just fine. Next thing I know, the monk was down and bleeding out, and the wizard fried a few goblins, which gave me enough light to try and take out the leader with a poisoned bolt. Sadly, the shot missed, and there were more goblins. I tossed a sack of ball bearings, and fled the sewer, with the elf close on my heels.

I suppose the goblins took Ethelon. As to the elf, he made some gibberish about nobility and honor or something. Judging by his pale face, what he was really going on about was safety found in towers. Anyways, he headed off. As to me, well, who knows what kind of loot goblins in the sewers might accrue. Perhaps I can find some stronger meatshields noble companions and we could find out.