Goodman Games

We've been playing regularly. I just haven't had time to write things up.

Are people still interested?

I am! My group is currently at the level 9/10 breakpoint. They've been contracted to locate and eliminate the Drow of lvl 9a. Are you running this ad 3.5 or pathfinder?

We're in 3.5 since it works best with our online gaming table.

I just wanted to drop a quick note after all these years. As you may have guessed, the campaign broke up when I stopped posting. Our gaming table Klooge.Werks pretty much just stopped working with all the updates to Java, and it wasn't being updated or supported. Rather than move everything I had already prepared into a different gaming table, we decided to just call it a day and start something new in a new table (d20 Pro) and a new system (Pathfinder).

We're still all playing together, just not Castle Whiterock. I run Giantslayer and two of my players trade off with me so I won't completely burn out. One is doing Carrion Crown and the other is running Rappan Athuk.

That being said, I find myself getting the Castle Whiterock itch again, so I'm working on bringing it into d20 Pro and adapting it to Pathfinder. I may run it for a new group of suckers... err players soon.

I can't say enough how much we enjoyed playing and running this adventure. I'd love Goodman to adapt it to Pathfinder and 5e and get it back out there. It blows all the other mega dungeons away.

I read the entire thread and the play through that you described will be very helpful to me in the near future. I plan on running Castle Whiterock during the Spring and into the Summer of this year at least until school starts again. It sounded as if your players had fun and you enjoyed it too so I'm looking forward to it as well.

I'm actually starting Castle Whiterock next Sunday with a new group of mostly strangers. I have the first 7 levels all converted and ready to go. It's going to be exciting.

Assuming I manage to keep up with the recaps, I'll post them here.

I hope the first campaign run through CW makes this one even more successful. I know I've certainly learned a lot and am much more familiar with the material this time around.

And word on your experience has your group panned out and played?

The new game write ups are being done by the players on our campaign page here: http://www.epicwords.com/campaigns/4752

It's time for a new group and a new run through Castle Whiterock. We're about 4-5 sessions in so far and I'm going to try to start writing up our exciting adventures here.

The party is:

Ashianna - A female elf. Ashi (for short) is an Oracle who lost her hearing at an early age. Ashianna is dedicated to exploring Castle Whiterock because she's been having visions concerning Cillamar.

The oracle found herself floating above the city of Cillamar. In the distance, a foul army of creatures from the lowest depths of the Underdark poured from the mountains to the West, streaming out of the ruins of Castle Whiterock and at the head of the vast army was a gigantic dark wyrm of old.

Standing in opposition to the army of darkness were the forces of Cillamar, led by the Paladins of Justicia. In addition to the forces of Man, Ashianna could see an army of elves from her home kingdom, as well as warriors from the other races of Light.

Somewhere is the distance, a great horn sounded and the two armies smashed against one another. Then nothingness.

Ashianna found herself floating high in the night sky. All around her the celestial bodies danced. A soothing voice filled her head.

"A time of great conflict and pain is coming unless you can stop it. I have chosen you as my instrument. Root out the darkness below Whiterock before it unites and moves to conquer the North.

This will not be easy, but you will find many allies along the way. I have faith in you, my Chosen."

And the vision ended.

Thanabo - Thanabo the ranger is a childhood friend of Ashianna and Zartyr (the Paladin in the group). The three elves traveled from their homeland about a decade ago, determined to make their mark on the World. Thanabo is a master of two-weapon fighting and has proved a loyal and brave companion on multiple occasions.

Zartyr - The Paladin Zartyr is the third of the three elven friends who now adventure in Castle Whiterock. Zartyr is a distant cousin of the Oracle, and grew up with her. They were always very close, more so after she lost her hearing. The two of them learned a method of speaking with their fingers that allow them to more easily communicate which they are trying to teach to the rest of the party.

Franklin Brightaxe - Franklin was a prisoner, being held by the Orcs under Castle Whiterock. The dwarf had been captured weeks before the party found him in the underground dungeons. Working together, they were able to escape and get back to Cillamar. Not having any better prospects, Franklin decided to stay and travel with the party of elves.

Katanya Glimmer - Katanya is a rogue and sorceress, also rescued from the Orcish dungeons. She is with the party until she can discover the fate of her brother Findle.

Hugin - Hugin is a young human fighter. Brash and brave, Hugin has pledged his loyalty to the party for rescuing him from the Orc prison.

I'm going to skip over level one right now. It happened quite a while ago and maybe I can eventually go back and fill in the gaps.

Most recently, the party has defeated almost the entire tribe of orcs on level two, including their leader Kaernga. The battle was epic! The four heroes (down to four now since Katanya led her brother out of the dungeon, and poor Hugin was killed by Kaernga's armored trollhound) fought against more than a dozen orcs, including Tarik, the Taskmaster.

Tarik managed to escape back into the mines before the party could bring him to justice. It was just as well, the group was completely out of spells, and healing potions. They would have been hard pressed to fight off a group of girl scouts with the resources they had on hand.

The party locked themselves in the secret hallway between the torture chamber and storeroom for a day to recover, then escaped the dungeon and made their way back to town.

Lessons learned: Orcs cannot hit a dwarf in Heavy Armor and a Tower Shield no matter how hard they may try.

Hooboy! Where to begin?

We took a couple of sessions off for various real life reasons and had a short side quest to bring in a new player (a druid named Tempest). When we finally got back to Whiterock, the party was pleased to see the first level was still uninhabited and the second level now seemed deserted.

They took a bit of time and found what they believed was Tarik's blood trail, though at this point it was several weeks old and very hard for the ranger, Thanabo to follow. But luck was with him, and he was able to track Tarik through a secret door and into what looked like a business office for the slave operation. It too was empty.

They searched the area and found another secret passage leading to a very large room with a shaft in the floor and a ogre chained to a great wooden wheel (controlling an elevator, the soon found out). The ogre was malnourished, and had clearly been savagely abused during its enslavement. He piteously rattled his chains at the party and beckoned them for help.

Suckers.

Tempest moved to help the monster and was rewarded with an overhanded smash from the ogre. Of course a battle broke out. Franklin, the dwarf in the most armor chose to fight the ogre next to the pit. This proved to be a poor idea. Since the dungeon was not up to OSHA regulations, the floor shaft was not surrounded by a railing. This allowed the Ogre to ignore the dwarf's ridiculous armor class and use CMB to shove his stout arse into the pit. Sadly, the drop was a bit more extensive than the dwarf assumed, and he found himself falling 100' to the 7th level of the dungeon. Amazingly, he survived (stupid falling rules don't work). That was the good news. The bad news was he was not alone. He fell into a 7th level encounter with Derro slavers who immediately put him to sleep and set about putting him in irons.

While the rest of the party continued fighting the ogre, Thanabo moved to rescue the dwarf. He tied off a rope and swung into action! In three rounds, Thanabo was at the bottom of the shaft (having dropped and rolled the last 30 feet. Another ouch there, since he failed his acrobatics roll and landed hard on his left leg). The derro pointed repeating crossbows and the hero and said something to him in a language he didn't understand (They wanted him to surrender).

Once the ogre was down, the rest of the party started spinning the wheel trying to get the elevator down to the bottom where Thanabo and Franklin could use it.

The derro sorcerer cast Sleep on Thanabo, but he was immune. Seeing that, he barked an order at his minions and they began applying poison while two of the slavers engaged the ranger in melee.

And that's where we ended for the night.

I can't imagine that Thanabo and Franklin can be rescued. I think the best their players can hope for is to someday rescue them from the Underdark in another adventure. But we will see.

No game this week. Thanabo's player can't make it and I won't NPC him for something like this. Stay tuned!

The campaign is still going on. I've stopped doing write ups, but hope to get back in the habit.

Currently the original party was TPKed and are about the be sacrificed by Benthoc.

A second "rescue" party is working their was down the levels and I'm going to have them show up just in time to have a chance to prevent the sacrifice. I've beefed up Benthoc a bit and he should be able to give 10 PCs a run for their money.

In this update, the new rescue party is following the path of the party that's been captured by Benthoc on level four. Two of the captives were able to escape and will meet the new party soon.

Banthum was disappointed. So much for the challenge of Castle Whiterock! So far he had found nothing worthy of battle. It was as if the creatures (if there were any) were hiding from him. And worse yet, he hadn't found a single tin groat. How would he pay for ale back in Cillamar if there were no monsters or treasure in the most infamous dungeon in all of Morrain?

The barbarian kicked a loose stone, which flew like a bullet from a sling and ricocheted off the far wall and smashed the wizard Marvin in the back, between his shoulder blades.

"Gah!" he squeaked as he was knocked to the ground from the force of the blow. "We're under attack!"

"If only." thought the barbarian.

Ariella the hunter studied the tracks in the room.

"These are old, but there was a large battle here and in the halls beyond. It looks as though at least thirty orcs fought with a handful of adventurers." Ariella stood gracefully and glided further into the dark, cold halls, following faint signs only she could see.

She led the group into a crude throne room, dominated by a fire pit, now cold and dark.

"This is where the final battle was fought." She crawled around the edge of the pit. "Bring that torch closer Wren. I think I can see..."

Ariella moved to the far end of the room, behind the large carved throne and touched a spot on the wall. A hidden door sprung open revealing a spiral staircase descending into the depths.

"Hold! How many times have I told you, you don't touch doors, hidden or otherwise until I have a look. I wouldn't want you to walk into some sort of mechanical trap. Who would look after Willow?" said Elriond the rogue, gesturing to the hunter's large white tiger. He was finding himself constantly having to chastise the young hunter for her enthusiasm.

Wren wrinkled her nose. "Can you smell that? It smells of death and blood." The witch peered into the darkness.

"I feel restless spirits below. Be on your guard." This was the sort of mumbo jumbo her adopted mother routinely spouted. Was she turning into her mother?!?

Marvin, who had been reading a treatise on the interplay between light and dark pustules when attempting to summon creatures from the 73rd overplane suddenly slammed down his tome.

"Spirits?!? I cast Magic Missile!" he looked about for a target and saw naught but darkness. A light bulb seemed to go off over his head.

"I shall cast Magic Missile at the DARKNESS!" he solemnly intoned.

Wren smacked him in the ribs before he could complete his spell.

She looked tired as she attempted to explain to Marvin she was speaking metaphorically about spirits.

Banthum pushed to the front of the line and stood at the top of the spiral stairs.

"I tire of this. Come. We find something to kill now. Follow." With that, the barbarian trudged down the stairs.

Rather than going down the secret stairs the DM led them to, the stubborn party wandered off, into the nearly empty level once occupied by orc slavers.

They meandered from empty cavern to empty cavern until finding a secret door in one, which led them into a small office where a dark dwarf was busy packing up pagers. The fell on him like a pack of homeless junkies on a clean needle.

They trussed him up and found that the ledgers he had were records of slaves being moved from the orcs down into the Underdark. Ariella found that her missing father had been captured and shipped off to something called the Bleak Theater, which was a large gladiatorial and meeting center (like Epcott Center) where slaves were sold, traded, and forced to battle for the amusement of their derro and drow masters (again, like Epcott Center).

The party discarded the derro accountant (yeah, they murdered him), and explored the secret door they found in this room. It led to a chamber with a large shaft in the center and a complicated mechanism of ropes and gears that raised and lowered a pair of gigantic mushroom cap baskets from this level to level 7, currently broken.

Wren cast light on a stone which she popped into her mouth, as well as a fly spell and glided down the shaft. She made her way down 60' before seeing the floor another 40' below her. At this point she saw small, dark creatures scurrying to attack. Acting quickly, Wren spit out the light stone and began flying back towards the surface, but not quickly enough. The creatures fired their crossbow bolts at the witch, and managed to hit her several times. The damage was not the problem, it was the poison on their bolts. Wren was rendered unconscious and began floating gently down towards her attackers.

Banthum saw what happened and acted quickly. He leaped into the pit (wearing a ring of feather falling) and when he got close to the fallen witch, pushed her into one of the mushroom baskets. She was safe, but Banthum was only just able to grasp the side of the basket, and was a tempting target for the creatures and their poisoned bolts.

Marvin took advantage of the situation and peppered the creatures with multiple fireballs, from which they had no protection. And while he was unable to kill any of them, he did succeed at driving them off and buying time for Elriond and Ariella to repair the elevator mechanism and pull the basket with their companions to the surface.

After securing the elevator once again, the party searched the rest of the level and found it empty. They had no choice but to go to the stairs I had put them at several hours earlier.

On the third level the group found and disabled several traps (as well as triggering one, which shattered many of Elriond's ribs).

Heading into the hall, looking for signs of troglodytes (which their noses told them were near), the party heard the sounds of a great number of creatures running down the hall in their direction. The group quickly set up to receive them and waited.

Suddenly a somewhat plain, though nearly nude human woman ran into view, followed by a beautiful elven woman, also nude save for a loin cloth. Hot on their heels were several armored troglodytes, out for blood.

A short battle ensued, and this is where we start next week.