Lacking Natural Simplicity

Attending

Clockwise round the table, starting with the Labyrinth Lord:

• T.A. — Labyrinth Lord

• M.A.

  • Gustavio, a male Gnome Magic User. HP 4, AC 5. (green lego base)

  • Karl, a male Dwarf. HP 4, AC 6. (yellow lego base)

• E.A.

  • Semiriah, an Elf Ranger. HP 3, AC 5 (4 with shield). (sparkly pink lego base)

  • Maury, a human Thief. HP 5, AC 6. (tan lego base)

  • Also played L.B.'s Sallee Marie, a female Halfing Fighter. (light blue lego base)

• T.K.B.

  • Orm, a human Cleric of Thor. HP 5, AC 3. (red lego base)

  • Skeggi, a human Cleric of Vidar. HP 6, AC 4 (3 with shield). (blue lego base)

  • Also played L.B.'s Avarey, a male Half-Elf Cleric. (light green lego base)

House Rules

A Critical Hit happens on a natural twenty on an attack roll, and damage is doubled.

There isn't a Critical Misses rule, but sometimes on a natural one on an attack roll something embarrassing and funny but usually non-damaging happens.

Actual Play

Put Symna and Gloin in chain from the last episode. Each hireling has two torches.

Went west down the last unexplored tunnel on Level 2, which we hand overlooked on our map, it being drawn in so lightly, to a room with a complex, fancy silver lock on the other exit door. Trying to bash it off did no good, nor was Maury able to pick the lock. We obviously need a key.

“Oh no, we're stuck in a video game, gathering keys!” [1]

We gather wood and leather waste from The Lonely Room (the room with the “walk through walls” A.K.A. teleport trap), threw it in The Bat Room, lit it on fire, and brought in torches to drive the bats towards the chimney to the surface. Semiriah kills one giant bat with a natural twenty. Gustavio kills another giant bat. Orm kills a giant bat. Avarey kills the last giant bat. We search the room, twice, but find nothing. We travel back to town.

We don't want to tangle with the wight who's room is near the stairs down, but we have no choice. What should we do? Throw money and blather at it: buy silver weapons and come up with a good tactical plan to overrun the wight (and the Labyrinth Lord).

We travel to a town where we buy 4 silver tipped spears (30 gp, 8' long), 1 silver dager (30 gp), 3 silver maces (50 gp). Unfortunately for Gustavio's desire to spice up his wardrobe and Karl 's desire to adorn his beard with jewels, the caravan that was to bring the town its yearly load of fancy cloth and expensive jewels was attacked, so Karl and Gustavio will have to return in a year. (The rest of the party was rather relieved.)

We return to the dungeon and form up before approaching the wight's room. We put the silver spears in front: Karl and Sallee Maree first because they're short, and Maury and Semiriah behind them, with Orm, Skeggi, and Avarey ready to move up to support them with silver maces, if they need help, and Gustavio behind them. The plan is to hold the wight off with the some of the 8' long spears, while stabbing him with the others, so he can't touch anybody and steel their life force. T.A. comes up with some rulings on the fly for the situation, and we move forward.

Gustavio lets off with his :spell`Magic Missile` in the first round of combat, while one of the characters manages to entice the wight into impaling himself on his spear. The rest attack with their spears, and in the third round Maury kills it after Semiriah hits it. The wight disintegrates. There is nothing useful or interesting in the room, alas.

On the 3rd level, Karl and Semiriah and Zenith and Sallee Marie step into a crossroad and vanish after an instant. They all hear a slight popping sound and the four who vanished find themselves in a corridor 60' long. Semiriah yells, despite a lot of meta-comments that it will bring monsters, to no avail. Maury, with the other group, also yells, also to no avail. Zenith starts to panic, but the PCs in the small group manage to talk him to a state somewhat closer to calm, despite their lack of empathy and understanding (Charisma is everybody's dump stat!) but the talking has attracted 3 giant rats! Semiriah kills a rat. Karl kills a rat. Sallee Marie kills a rat! Then they explore until they walk through another crossing that pops them back to within sight of one of the hirelings the party strewed around the dungeon as they explored.

We marked the crossroads where they disappeared and appeared on the map.

We all go back to town.

Aftermath

The main party had been using a bulls-eye lantern the whole session, but an uncertainty about the length of the beam prompts us to look it up, and of course it is not in LL or AEC, so I download OSRIC for T.A.