Goodman Games

Two of my friends and my beloved JediWife got together today and rolled up one first level character apiece.

Ragnar1965 has a female human cleric/magic-user named Madriel

Zach rolled up a human male ranger named Greyson

JediWife selected the same thing she always does: an elf fighter specializing in the bow. This incarnation of the elven bow fighter is a female by the name of Alura.

This group of three started and completed DCC #0. We had a blast of a time and as time permits I will regale any who read this thread what happened.

SPOILER ALERT! Don't read beyond this post if you plan on being an adventurer in Legends are Made, not Born.

Well met JediOre --

I'm excited you've started another DCC story thread for all of us to read. Your journaling makes it feel like we're along for the ride!

I'm kind of jealous of you WRT your JediWife. That is so great that she games with you and Ragnar1965. I really cannot get TacoWife (or Mrs. Taco) interested in playing D&D or any other RPG with us 'greybeards'. She has joined one of my OD&D/AD&D Juniors groups for our three sessions, but I think that is merely out of courtesy to TacoDaughter#1 and the other parents in the group.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading along, dieing vicariously!

tacojohn4547

Hey TacoJohn, sorry for you. I have been so blest with my wife. I can't say enough good thing about her, or her cooking. Just ask me!

Here is part one of the whole. I'll post more as I can. Ragnar1965 this is really all I have written!

Again, we had so much fun. Chris Doyle did such a good job with this module!

We started out with the three characters all stopping at the Merry Riot Inn independently of one another. Each PC had some vague reason to be traveling through Dundraville (like my detailed background info?). When the mayor was told that three adventurers had booked rooms for the night he went to the inn just before supper and asked them to help Dundraville.

Since all four of us were in the mood for dice rolling, I wanted to make the exploration of Dundraville quick. I had photocopied the map and simply placed it before the group so they could see the important locations and focus on them. I told them about the ogre and the tragic turn of events two weeks prior to the PCs arriving in town. I had each roll a d10 to see which rumor each PC heard as they traveled about town.

Ragnar1965 got #3 (the ancient warrior’s tomb), Zach got #9 (the dwarven carpenter), and JediWife got #5 (the ogre’s club can kill a man). The fellows teased my wife about the lame rumor she got. Ultimately I let her roll again (something about her “Ring of DM Control” – i.e. her wedding band!) since I know I’d not hear the end of this. She got #1 (the rat attacking the dog). That rumor rocked! It had Ragnar1965 thinking that the villains in this module would wind up being wererats.

Anyway, they made Zach party leader since he had the ranger. He thus decided to go to the Wizard’s Tower first. They were taken aback that the wizard, Nerenethos, would have traveled away when Dundraville needed him. Zach commented that it seems odd the magic-user didn’t put a stop to the ogre’s racket long ago. I recall him saying, “either he is unable or unwilling to help.” My wife and Ragnar1965 agreed and seemed to have a feeling this was not a good thing. With nothing left to see at the tower they stopped by the Brewery.

Since we didn’t feel like role-playing much, I read them the background of the halflings. They got a kick out of the not-quite-on-the “straight and narrow” halfling. It was here they learned about the markings on the poisoned barrels.

From here they went to Old Tarik’s home. I had him out front chopping wood one handed as the sun sank low on the horizon. The ranger asked if they could talk to him for a spell. Tarik replied back, “No, can’t you see I’m busy!” Zach had his PC say they are going to go find and kill the ogre. Could he help them with information? I laughed and said, “Kill the ogre? Why sure I’ll help you. I know rumors two, three, six, and seven! Let me read them to you now.” They laughed about that too. Tarik gave the elven warrior his magic arrow (which I don’t believe ever got used in this adventure!) Ragnar1965 latched onto rumor #6, the one where the speaker didn’t trust the mayor and figured he was in on the extortion with the ogre. He begins to see a triangle forming between the ogre, the mayor, and the wizard. My wife was far more interested in rumor #7, the smoke out of the eyehole. Perhaps this would be a secret way into the ogre’s den?

They left Old Tarik and traveled to the Druid’s Circle. There they met Sheryn-ella and her owl. She spoke with them and offered them rumor 10 (the wolves), four goodberrys, and an invitation to visit her at Fairweather, her druidic commune, upon completion of thier task. She told them she was in Dundraville to look over this druidic circle and harvest mistletoe since tonight was a full moon.

Lastly the party visited Kerwin’s Outfitters. They pooled their coin and purchased the silver dagger for 20 gp.

Zach asked me which two people had been kidnapped and I remember I had to pause the game to hunt down the info. Ah yes, one of the barmaids from the Merry Riot Inn, and a gnome merchant who was well known in Dundraville (he loved to rent a boat and go fishing in the lake).

That was that for information gathering in the village.

Since there was to be a full moon that night and they had an elf with keen vision as well as a ranger well skilled in outdoor lore, the three left to visit Skulltop Hill. They planned on returning by morning with the beasts head!

Thus the intro to the module was over. Adventure was just ahead!

After the track to Skulltop, the party arrives with the full moon shining down upon them. They find the cave entrance, but a large rock has been pushed into the entrance. Zach’s ranger takes a torch and begins looking about for signs of life. He finds the ogre’s footprints leading in and out of the opening. He also finds tracks of some kind of domestic animal. Zach’s roll for tracking wasn’t high enough for me to tell him they were sheep tracks. However, the three players didn’t need me to tell them that. They figured it out from the background information they had. The one item that puzzled Zach was his ranger finding the tracks of a booted humanoid that seemed to follow the animal tracks. These prints went with the animals out of the cave and back with the animals to the cave.

They think about what this might mean. “Does the ogre have a shepherd watching his flock?” “Is this humanoid one of the prisoners?” This question gets answered when they recall a gnome and a barmaid are the only two known prisoners. The ranger explores the tracks further while the elf keeps her sharp eyes scanning for night time visitors. All is quite at Skulltop Hillock.

The animal tracks lead around to the west side of the hill, the same side one of the rumors claims has a hidden entrance. The ranger again performs a tracking roll when they get to the west of the hill. He finds a game trail which leads straight to the hill. They find the hidden cave, but JediWife really wants to take her elf to the eye sockets and explore the possibility of yet another entrance.

Ragnar1965 and Zach both agree to allow the elf to explore the top of the hill. Zach’s ranger is to wait at the bottom incase the elven fighter needs assistance. Since it is night time and Ragnar1965’s cleric/magic-user can’t see very well, they decide to have her hide by a large solitary tree not far from the game trail.

The elf climbs up with no problems. JediWife brags briefly about the abilities of the elf and has her PC inspect the eye sockets. The elf does not have a torch since her eyes can see perfectly fine in the full moonlight. She sees the large bird nesting in one of the sockets and tries to stay away from it. The bird, for its part, puffs up and acts very aggressive. The lady elf finds the hole in the second eye socket. As she is getting a closer look at it, she is attacked by the bird who is trying to defend her eggs. The elf pulls out her blade and lops the nasty vulture’s head clean off in one swing! Boo-yah! The first melee of the night! It’s over in three rolls. The bird misses, the elf hits, and the long sword does good damage. The elf explores the bird’s nest and finds a small bit of treasure. She leaves the eggs alone.

Meanwhile, Zach’s ranger makes the track up the hill with several coils of rope. After a couple of mishaps the ranger makes it to the eye sockets. The three of them debate about which PC to send down the tunnel. JediWife thinks the choice is easy; her elf is the smallest of the two. All agree and after the ranger ties a rope around her, down the elf goes. After a while the elf makes her way into the ogre’s lair. She sees him asleep with his head in his plate of food and snoring loud enough to wake the dead. The players really have a hard time as to let the elf attempt to kill the ogre in his sleep or have her retreat back up and report what she saw. In the end, they play it safe and JediWife has her PC climb up to tell the ranger what happened.

If I recall correctly, this is the point where the players spend more time discussing how to tackle the mission. Should all three go down the eye socket tunnel and attack the ogre? Should they explore the hidden cave and hope it leads to the ogre? Should they wait until morning and hope the rock has been removed from the main entrance? They went back and forth on this for a bit. I set back and let them talk. Finally the group reached an agreement. The whys and wherefores I’ll leave up to them if they decide to post to this thread. They decided to brave the hidden cave.

That’s where I’ll pick up on my next post.

Hi again JediOre, I'm gonna be a pain and ask you to post any conversion notes you have on this adventure if you have them.

Hey slimykuotoan!

I know this sounds cheesy, but I didn't do a thing on paper. I "converted" on the fly.

As you'll read when I get to it, the conjurer kept his 3.X spells since monster summoning reverted to first edition rules in C&C. That would completely cripple the intent of this magic-user.


The "voice from below" got more attention from me than anything else. In C&C the creature's hit dice dropped to 1 and it has no cause fear ability. I reduced the HD to one, but I kept the cause fear since it is very important to its tactics.

Sorry I can't give more details, there simply isn't any. Now, that being said, once you get above 7th level modules the details are going to have to appear. The variances between 3.X and C&C grow greater at the higher levels.

The party of three entered the small cave with the ranger in the fore and the cleric/magic-user in the rear. The came to the first cave and were not happy about having the PCs walk through the bat guano. Since it was night they missed the cave’s residents. As the party left this cave the ranger lost the track of the wild animal (poor tracking roll, even with some good modifiers.)

They came to a fork in the tunnel and the elf searched about until she found faint tracks that the ranger identified as the animal they had been following the trail of. The tracks followed the left fork. Zach’s ranger still was unable to determine what kind of animal beyond the fact it was mammalian. So the party readied their weapons and followed the tracks. They encountered the giant skunk. Zach couldn’t believe such a thing was in the game. Ragnar1965 chuckled and JediWife wanted to back out of the room. They discussed if it was worth the risk of angering the skunk to find out what may be in this cavern. Ragnar1965 persuaded the party to back out and not provoke the skunk. I know JediWife needed no persuasion, but I wonder if Zach wanted to “take it on.”

They next came to a large stone door with a large keyhole. They read the runes and were very intrigued. They examined the whole of the door and made out the ruined dwarven runes, but that was all. Since they had not thief they had no way past the locked door. Rangar1965 had hopes of his PC’s 0-level spell ‘open/close’ might have a shot at the door. No, it didn’t.

They left the door behind and hoped to find a key that may fit the lock. Next they ran afoul of the three fire beetles. This was the first combat that all got to be involved in. It was short and sweet. The players all rolled good initiatives while the DM didn’t. Zach didn’t know what to make of two-foot long beetles with lightning bug-type glowing stalks. The party cut off several of the stalks to use in lue of torches.

Next they went north and encountered the mushroom room. This was the first challenge of the day for the party. The ranger determined the mushrooms to be poisonous but didn’t know in what way. They tossed a rock or dead fire beetle carcass in the room and didn’t like the “puff-ball-like” effect they witnessed. The three talked quite a while about what on earth to do to get to the ledge. They started to try and walk through the mushrooms but when I said they’ll need to make several dexterity checks, they stopped and worked on a different plan. I was laughing inside for not once did they think about gathering lots of debris, throwing it into the room killing the mushrooms and waiting for the spores to settle. However, Zach and JediWife came up with a truly heroic idea. They decided to have the lady elf hold several coils of rope along with the ranger’s grappling hook and the big human ranger would toss her over the mushrooms and against the wall, beneath the ledge. I told Zach it wouldn’t be easy and in my head gave him a challenge rating of 4. If he didn’t do well the elf would crash prone into the mushrooms and would get a heavy dose of spores. JediWife looked at Zach, and Zach gave his self assured look and nod. He felt sure his ranger could do it. He rolled a natural 20! The lady elf landed on her feet just below the ledge. She climbed up to the ledge and explored the low-ceilinged tunnel that wandered back further into the hill. The elf found the dead body and came back to tell the others. At that the players opted to clear the room of mushrooms by throwing lots of rocks into it. They waited until the spores had settled and crossed the room. All three climbed up the ledge and entered the room with the body. As they looked it over the centipedes attacked. One of the party members failed their save against the poison, but I don’t recall which one. The ranger was able, after the battle, to actually neutralize the poison with an outstanding roll on his ranger ability.

Ragnar1965 kept coming back to the blue cloak. I finally allowed him to find the gold necklace since he was going to have his PC feel every square inch of the cloak. He knew something had to be hidden in there since the deceased was a thief. They did find a large key. [I added the key since the stone door they couldn’t open was the portal to a truly neat encounter. I didn’t want to penalize them since a thief wasn’t in the party. I altered the motives of the dead half-elf for my own peace of mind since the players didn’t know why he was there. The half-elf stole the key and found out about the dwarven crypt. He had hopes of plundering it, but was attacked by the rats as the module relates. He decided to poke further into the caverns before he opened the door and found the mushrooms.]

Okay, thus far the posts have been fairly boring. I’m not doing a good job of evoking the feel of anticipation the players felt. They knew they had a short time to find the ogre before he woke up. They believed if they could slay him while he was drunk and asleep they would get through the module without any deaths. All the while we are gaming they are trying to put the various clues they had into a working solution. Ragnar1965 was continuing to work out in his mind the three-way triangle of the mayor, the ogre, and the wizard. JediWife is wondering if these search in the back side of the cave is fruitless, perhaps this goes nowhere and they are losing precious time. Zach was trying to determine how the ogre used these caves. Was it possible the fire beetles were pets of the ogre? Who is the shepherd??

Any way, thanks for reading what I’ve got so far. The tempo picks up when the party leaves the body and travels back to the stone door with the ancient dwarven key.

Zach here (The Ranger) I have not been playing long but I never thought I would come across a giant skunk. When I play I always picture Lord of the Rings and the skunk so far has been the strangest thing I have seen.





The only reason I have the grappling hook is because of my resounding love of Batman.

The party came back to the stone door. The inscription about Lord Tulwar is short but great. Despicable is a wonderful word; very descriptive. The party was again intrigued by the defaced dwarven runes. They use the key and enter into the burial chamber. Ragnar1965 makes a note about the dwarven skeleton. He knows this skeleton has been defiled.

The three PCs open the tomb and melee breaks out. I’m excited! Here is going to be a tough battle. His AC is 19, very hard for first level PCs to hit. He’s a ghoul for goodness sake. They are dangerous at any level. Paralysis on a failed save can kill a tenth level fighter as well as a first. I get a surprise attack and I have Lord Tulwar lash out at Nightwing’s (Zach) ranger. I rolled poorly so the surprise came to not. “Oh well,” I’m thinking, “he’ll get the ranger next round.” I’m figuring I’ll have both Ragnar1965 and Nightwing’s character out of action by round three. That will leave just my wife’s elven archer to take out this beast. To be honest, I figured she’d be able to pull it out since the ghoul had 15 hp and I was guessing Ragnar19565 was going to pump one magic missle into Lord Tulwar.

Only one thing could turn the tables on this cool encounter: the cleric/magic-user’s turn undead ability. However, Ragnar1965 would have to roll an unmodified 16 to do the turning so the odds were against it. Ragnar1965 got to go first on initiative and he was going to try to turn the beast.

Rangar1965 rolled a 20. Game over. Poor Lord Tulwar, he had nowhere to run and no where to hide. It was shameful. JediWife and Nightwing had their characters beat the ghoul into lifelessness and thus ended what was going to be a memorable encounter. Curses!

The party replaced the dishonored remains of the dwarf back into his tomb and resealed the lid as best they could. They kept Lord Tulwar’s sword and chain mail.

From here they headed to the secret door that, unbeknownst to them, lead to the ogre’s store room.

More later.

So ends another encounter that Jedi couldn't wait for. It's funny, because I can always tell when a fight he's been waiting for comes up...he gets all giddy and...well, let's just say that he would NOT make a good poker player. I almost feel bad raining on his dm parade, but then I think...nah. I just want to go on record right here and tell you that I haven't shown my true prowess yet. That's gonna come in the Ogre fight. Yessiree Bob...true prowess...that's what coming.

Jediore,

Chris Doyle here. I just wanted to let you know how much I'm enjoying this thread! Keep 'em coming! I'm glad you are having a blast-I had a great time writing Legends, and I love hearing how others tackled the challenges.

I also share in your joy of having a wife who games. My wife has actually been gaming longer than I, and its nice getting away from the shackles of life at the gaming table and sharing time with her. And I understand how rare this relationship is.

Again, keep those stories coming...

Chris

*laugh* That is so cool.

//H

With the aid of JediWife’s sharp-eyed elf, the party had little problem with secret doors. Through the first one they found, the party entered into the ogre’s store room. They poked around the stuff and showed interest in the cart (for later….)

From there they choose the path that leads them straight to the sleeping ogre. Of course the loud snoring helped them pick. The party peered into the large cave where the ogre continued to sleep off his drunken & drugged stupor. The elf peeked behind the curtain to see the barrels. She slipped behind the curtain and closely looked at the barrels. While she was at it she spotted the secret door. The fact that the drugged barrels of ale showed signs of heavy usage pleased the gamers.

Ragnar1965, Nightwing, and JediWife put their heads together and come up with the sure-fire plan to take out the ogre. The ranger is to sneak under the table and tie the ogres legs/ankles together while the cleric/magic-user and the elf are to sneak up to the club and stealthily remove it from the room. The party works on the timing and truly works on a great idea. Nightwing makes his ranger’s DEX check and hides under the table, pulling out rope. Part one is a go.

However, Part two runs into a snag. JediWife’s elf is a quite as a moonless night. She glides along. Rangar1965’s lady cleric/magic-user first role on her DEX check is a 3. She fails. The ogre stirs but doesn’t awake – he’s drunk for crying out loud. Ragnar1965’s PC recovers and proceeds onwards. Time for another DEX check.
The die rolls about and up comes a one!

The ogre (DM) can’t ignore a fall-on-your face crash. One blood shot eye opens to gaze upon a fearful elf, whose player is put out by Ragnar1965’s stinky rolls!

Surprise round: The ranger swings his sword to lop of part of a shin bone. Nightwing rolls a stunningly low number and his sword lodges into the underside of the table with a loud thud! The elf pulls her bow and pops and arrow into the ogre’s side at point blank range. Ragnar1965 attempts to get his clumsy PC off the floor.

Initiative is rolled and the ogre gets high roll. I plan on having the ogre send JediWife’s elf into next week! The ogre grabs his club and swings. I roll a one! The club flies from his hand, into the curtained area, and out of play. DOH! Oh how the players howled in joy at that. Ragnar1965 kept saying a drunken ogre throwing his club is so perfect. He loved the imagery of it. The elf ducks the club and fires a second arrow. Second hit. The cleric/magic-user fires a “magic missile” for more damage. The ranger pulls his blade from the table.

Round two: The ogre pushes the table aside, shoving it towards the elf. He glares down at the ranger and reaches for him. I rolled poorly. It was obvious to the ranger the ogre planned on using HIM as a club next. Nightwing’s ranger hits the ogre hard with his bastard sword. The ogre staggers back. A third arrow is shot into him and he goes down to the ground. The cleric/magic-user hits him again with a “magic missile.”

Round three is the end of the fight. The ogre had few hit points and heavy penalties to hit. A fourth arrow and a large blade inserted into the gut tend to cause the life in a body to flee and that’s what happened.

All celebrated! The adventure is almost over! Nightwing has his ranger lop off the head of the ogre to return it to Dundraville. They decide to explore the other passage before checking out the secret door.

As they head off to the other passage they begin to hear sheep. They find the log trap and don’t set it off. They slay the wolf and continue to find the sheep. The hobgoblin, Gurt, rushes out of his bedchamber to confront the party. As soon as the ranger holds up the head of the ogre, Gurt surrenders. They have Gurt load up all the stolen goods from the caves into the wagon and tell him to return it to Dundraville. They leave him be and return to the ogre’s cave. The chest of silver made them confused. How does an ogre demand gold, get gold, and wind up with a heavy chest of silver coins???

Perhaps the adventure isn’t over yet? They go to the secret door, open it and proceed along the corridor beyond the ogre’s cave.

More to come.

The plan hatched in the cleric/magic user's mind....it's only fitting that it should fail at the same hands. In my defense, uh, let's see...ok there is no defense. But, we won the day. All because of my brilliant plan!!! My stumble was a ruse, you see. A plan to make my comrades look like heroes. Don't worry, my true power will be displayed before the end...I'm...just...sure of it.

I actually don't own this module yet. After Jedi's tale, I'll have to pick this one up!

I was hoping we could find something flammable or explosive to load up in the wagon/cart and plow it right into the Orge while he was passed out.

I was sweating a bit under that table when our plan fell through.

That makes me happy to know you're enjoying my attempt at your module. I hope me and mine did justice to your fine adventure!

They came to the ladder down. Ragnar1965’s quick thinking solved the mystery of the eight marks in the stone. He asked Nightwing’s ranger be careful as he placed weight on the eighth rung of the ladder. The ranger was able to break the trap, but was in no danger himself since he was expecting it.

The trapped corridor, however, was not avoided. Nightwing’s ranger got a blow that took him down to -1 hit points. Ouch. After a few cure spells the party entered the workshop.

They went over this room quite carefully. JediWife and Ragnar1965 showed interest in the diary while Nightwing spied the runes on the broom and was intrigued. Even though Nightwing is still “wet behind the ears” RPG-wise, he has good instincts. The runes seemed to be a magical phrase so he neither spoke the words nor touched the broom. The diary was a great method to bring everyone into the loop. Many puzzle pieces began to fall into place. The party left the broom untouched and traveled south.

The found the prison and the dwarf working overtime. The PCs did not raise the portcullis but looked in to see what was going on. The barmaid saw them and began to make a commotion. Ragnar1965 had his PC motion for her to remain silent. Nightwing’s ranger held up the severed head of the ogre and the barmaid knew things where in good hands. The party noticed the gnome and how beat-up he was but decided to press on and find this man Suto and the Voice from Below. With the promise to return given to the barmaid, the party headed north and found Suto’s bedchamber. On the way, Nightwing again had his PC examine the broom. He didn’t touch it.

They looked over Suto’s living space and encounter the animated books. Ragnar1965 HATES animated books even more than undead! The look on his face was priceless. He had a bad experience with attacking books in a short adventure I have from AEG. Anyway, they dispatch the books and continue to look through the room. They opened the chest and one of them got attacked by the viper. I missed on my roll to hit with the viper, and the party didn’t take kindly to this nasty little threat. They stood back and let the elven archer shoot arrows at the viper until she scored a hit. They than realized the importance of the heavy leather gloves!

They left and headed down the only remaining exit. Again, Nightwing expressed interest in the broom, but left it alone since they were on the hunt.

The climax is upon the party. More later!

[Nightwing, what about the broom interested you so much. Ragnar1965 -- this is an unabashed post troll by me!]

yeah .... that could have gotten ugly. way to carry the day!

"Nightwing, what about the broom interested you so much. Ragnar1965 -- this is an unabashed post troll by me!"


Because of the movie Fantasia. Something told me that the broom was (Transformers reference ahead) "More than meets the eye."

That's a good reason by me.

I was so curious as to why you showed such interest in the broom, but wouldn't touch it to that point.

By the time the game was over I forgot to ask. Both Ragnar1965 and JediWife only had a passing interest in it, but not you.

Since it belonged to a magic user I thought it might not be safe to touch it. As to the interest in it I am much like Locke from the show LOST I can not turn my back on the unknown. I must know. The stranger things seem or out of place the more curious I get.

Down the final corridor they go. The elf notices an unusual growth up ahead. At about the same time, this unusual growth begins to emit a horrible, high level, piercing cry. They PCs see the stone doors that “suggest” this may be the big encounter. I’m excited. The fungi has alerted the complex, things are going on behind the scenes (for those with the module, you know what Suto is up to at this point), and the party is going to walk into a trap!

Nightwing speaks up at this moment, words to the effect of, “Let’s go back to the previous room because I want to experiment with the broom.” So they did!

Back to the workshop they go. I’m incredulous. I’m sure my mouth dropped open at this turn of events. Oh well, what do you do?

The ranger tries various things with the broom. He gets poked in the ribs and smacked on the head before he and the others started to get the hang of this. After about ten minutes in real time, Nightwing has figured out the broom’s “rules” and is very excited about having his character using this broom upon monsters. They look over the room one last time before returning to the now quiet fungi and the stone double doors.

The party bursts through the double doors, ignoring the shrieking fungi, and the ranger slides right onto his bottom courtesy of a grease spell. The elven archer makes her DEX save and comes to a stop at the door’s frame. She pulls an arrow back and is ready to fire. The man in this summoning chamber is horrifically ugly; diseased. It was easy for the party to see no good was to come of this room or its inhabitant. The conjurer is nervously trying to get as much silver melted as possible when the party enters. Sadly, he blew two of his spells waiting for the party. The spider was summoned since he could only wait so long and the mist had dissipated by the time the party decided to show. Suto began to levitate since a burly ranger had spilled close by. Suto cackles madly as he lobed the molten silver at the ranger however he missed. Molten silver spatters across the room not harming anyone but ruining any chance of finishing the circle. Sadly for the conjurer, the elf didn’t repeat his error. Shhhhwaappp! Arrow number one hit home with high damage. The conjurer went to less than half hit points. The cleric/magic-user attempts to slide across the grease spell as if she were sliding across ice. It sounded reasonable to me so I let Ragnar1965 make a DEX check which he passed.

Round two: Nightwing has his ranger fire his heavy crossbow from the ground. A miss. That crossbow hasn’t hit anything its owner has attempted to hit to date! Suto gets off his summoning spell and sends the fire elemental after the elf. Ragnar1965’s cleric/magic-user has no offensive spells left so he has her throw a dagger. Believe it or not, the silly thing pegs Suto! More damage to the evil conjurer. JediWife doesn’t seem to be concerned about the fact that a living flame is about to attack her PC. The lady elf fires a second arrow into Suto. Yet another high roll. Suto is struck again! This time the arrow ends Suto’s life and the summoned fire elemental gladly returns to its home plane.

The party loots Suto very carefully and examines the room. They pry the gemstone eyes out of the idol. Ragnar1965 is very excited about Suto’s spell book.

Speaking (typing) of the spell book, Slimykuotoan, this is one of the few things I had to alter heavily for Castles & Crusades. I had no problem keeping the conjurer with his 3.X spells, but I had to change his book so the PCs could use it. I wrote down the spells I thought would still have the flavor of a conjurer but only used spells from the C&C Players Handbook. I wrote it on a blue Post-it note and gave it to Ragnar1965. He’ll have to post the spells if you’re interested.

After checking out the room the only place left to go was down the hole. The party used a couple of healing potions and spells to make sure they were ready to tackle the “Voice Below.” They also coated the rangers bastard sword, several of the elf’s arrows, and the silver dagger with Suto’s magic oil to help destroy whatever this horror was.

Down they go, the ranger, then the elf, and last the cleric/magic-user. All arrive in the lair. It is tight, cramped, and the elf can feel the evil. All of a sudden, a tiny, demonic being reveals itself to them and a wave of supernatural fear surges over the heroic PCs. JediWife rolls her elf’s saving throw. She fails. Nightwing rolls for his ranger. He fails. Ragnar1965 rolls for his cleric/magic-user and succeeds! Real fear enters into the hearts of not the PCs but the players. Both fighters flee up the rope as fast as they can, dropping their weapons as they run. That leaves a weak (5 or 6 hp) cleric/magic-user to fight “The Voice Below” alone with a silver dagger.

Initiative is rolled and Ragnar1965 gets first go at it. This thing has an AC of 18. Rangar1965 needs something like a 16 to hope to hit it. I however will be getting three attacks and won’t need such a high number. As I mentioned earlier, I reduced this demon’s hit dice to one in keeping with C&C rules and rolled its hit points at six. This was done before we started the module. Ragnar1965 gets that high number he so desperately needed. His character got +1 for strength and +1 for the oil on damage. He has no idea how many hit points the monster has. He figures this is it for his brand new character. He flips out his 4-sided and up comes a four. He says six hit points damage. As simple as that, his cleric/magic-user with no spells, minimum hit points, and brandishing a silver dagger does the task the fighters should have done.

High fives went all around! The quest was successful. It was truly amazing. We had the most fun I’ve had in years. Thank you Mr. Doyle for this fine opportunity to enjoy time with my friends.

The gnome merchant, Jonas, sent the party a reward for his rescue. In addition when the party cast identify on Lord Tulwar’s chain they found it to be +2 elven chain mail (yes I changed it) so the cleric/magic-user could use it and still cast spells. [With only three PCs, I figured this would be essential to keep the only spell caster alive.]

This was a great quest in my opinion. As always our castle keeper does a good job of making us feel we are really there. I am glad a began gaming.

Upon conclusion of the module experience was handed out.

Ragnar1965's cleric/magic-user remained at first level while the others both went to second level.

JediWife opted to use one of our house rules to purchase a 3.X feat "precise shot" for her elf's ability to fire into combat with out the penalties. So the elven fighter purchased her feat with hard earned xp and remained at first level.

Nightwing's ranger went to second level and he was ready to hit the next adventure.

Again, I highly recommend DCC #0.

I laid down several modules from various publishers and various editions of D&D. They had to pick which module they wanted to go through next.

They chose to go through one of the mini-adventures from DCC #29 (Tower of the Black Pearl to be exact) before attempting DCC #2. I will post the link to my write up of the gang's quest to find the Black Pearl as soon as I can write it.