Idylls of the Rat King, how my group did

[snakewing]

*SPOILERS*

If you haven't played "Idylls of the Rat King" and don't want some of the details ruined, then stop reading, otherwise, keep going.







My three man group played through all four levels of Idylls of the Rat King. They were interested in starting a D20 D&D campaign, so we all rolled up 1st level characters and I put them through the adventure.

The group did pretty well, discovering just about all of the rooms and killing everything they came across (with the exception of the females and babies found on level 2).

They originally hough the Wererat Goblin Chieftan on the last room of Level 1 was the 'rat king' mentioned in the title, but their hopes for quick success were dashed when they found the grate going to level 2.

Some of the battles were tough, but none were as difficult as the battle with the Necromancer and the zombies on level 3. The Necromancer rolled a low Init, so he was dispatched pretty quickly but the five zombies with high hit points (even more than the characters) caused serious problems in a battle which left my character unconscious and another bleeeding heavy. Don't even ask how we managed to get through that in one piece.

At level 4, one of my characters noticed the similarity between the map they had found earlier and level 4. Fortunately, they didn't try to find the room listed on the map, but wasn't immeidately obvious. One character actually convinced the party that it probably meant he room had been destroyed in a cave-in, considering how old the map was. It's for the best considering that they probably wouldn't have been able to beat the vampire who was trapped in that room.

Eventually just about the entire fourth floor was cleared except for the last room with Lawrence Dannu and his two Fiendish Dire Rats. The battle went surprisingly quickly, since our wizard had a high init. He used the level 5 Lightning Bolt scroll found on the goblin wizard from level 2 and killed Gannu on the first action. I believe he dealt a little over 20 points of damage with his quick thinking. Afterwards the dungeon was a cake walk, with the entire group accidentally traveling to Archbridge via the magic circle in the Gannu Family Crypt. Eventually they made it back to Silverton and collected their reward (500 gp to deal with the raiders and 10% of the value of any silver shipments they could recover, they even got a 'finder's fee' for making the Gannu Silver Mine safe for the Miner's Guild, the city just took over the original functions of the gnome necromancer's zombies and everything seemed to go well).

All told, the group enjoyed their selves and if al of their characters die and we have to start over, then I'll probably run them through the Lost Vault of Tezhar Rhou, or whatever the second volume is called.

BTW, Joseph, is there any chance of you giving us details on the next couple of installements of Dungeon Crawl Classics. They're really effective for getting a group started (the wizard member of the group was happy with the three spellbooks he collected from the adventure, and the Dwarven Barbarian liked the magic items he got which boosted his AC pretty high for a second level character).

[goodmangames]

Tim,

Great recap! It's cool to hear how your guys did on the adventure. The next one in the series is "The Mysterious Tower" for levels 4-6. It's an exploration of a bizarre wizard's tower that has stood in pristine condition, surrounded by an almost-impenetrable magic force field, for centuries. The next one after that is still in the works but I'll post details as soon as I can.

[Black Knight]

Very cool recap!

I'm really glad you liked the adventure. And I'm also glad that Silverton was able to reclaim the mine from the evil of the Gannu family... or did they? mwahahahahahaha

Jeffrey Quinn
Writer, DCC #1

[snakewing]

Coincidentally, I plan for the Silverton miners to eventually 'discover' the vampire's room and accidentally free. It'll be like 100 years ago, except that the heroes aren't around to be blamed and there isn't really anyone around to help the town. The lady vampire will probably be a little bit more discreet this time around and just make many of the miners her slaves, acting normally while she tries to take over the rest of the villagers. If my group comes back in a few weeks, the town will be remarkably different from when they left. The vampire will want to corrupt the adventurers the same as the village and will capture them to be turned.

Of course I may go in a different direction. Either way the vampire will be awake and there will definitiely be problems for the group when they come back (maybe they run into one of the vilagers fleeing from town that they met on their first run through).

They'll obviously be wondering what happened.

[goodmangames]

Either way the vampire will be awake and there will definitiely be problems for the group when they come back (maybe they run into one of the vilagers fleeing from town that they met on their first run through).

Good thinking. That's a great hook for another adventure... and a great way for the world to stay dynamic.

[snakewing]

After the 'idylls' adventure, the group got hired to stop a Bugbear clan terrorizing a small farming village. It turned out that there were more bugbears than they originally thought, but they managed to get them all, ater surprising the bugbears during a meeting with a orc. they don't know the full story, but the orc was actually a member of the Redtooth Brood recruiting the Bugbears.

I didn't reveal the orc as a wererat yet (I figured the players would be freaked because we just finished an adventure centering around a gang of wererats), so I didn't have the orc change. The players are suspiscious about what was going on and I gave them enough clues (a document of the orc's written in various goblinoid languages with the words Asyra and Redtooth mentioned and an interrogation of one of the bugears saying they were being approached by someon from a group called the Redteeth), but I doubt they suspect anything.

I eventually plan to have the Redtooth Brood retaliate against the village (blaming them for the massacre of the bugbears and their orc ambassador). If the players come back through, the entire town will either be destroyed or it will be in the middle stages of the attack.

Either way it's going to be good.

If I get the party involved with the Asyra brood somehow, then I'll have them get attacked by the redteeth while in a meeting with them. By rationalization is that the Redteeth are planning retaliation against the Asyra (though how they find out where the Asyra Brood wererats are is another story entirely).

To be quite honest, I ddin't intend to use wererats so much but I had to think of a reason for the bugbears to suddenly start hostilities against a far farming village with no visible spoils of war (the reason was all part of thje orc diplomat forcing the bugbears to prove their intention to join the redteeth)

Tim

[goodmangames]

Wow, that's pretty good use of the wererat hook! I might use a similar plot structure in an upcoming game. I have the characters making their way toward a particular city in my DragonMech game, but I haven't figured out exactly what to do with them once they're there. I like the idea of monsters plotting...