The second run went much better. Of the twenty humanoids, five chickens, and one goat who entered the dungeon, nine humanoids and one goat remained.
We continued the game recently, and it didn't go so well.
Everyone died.
What happened? Foul luck, really. If you want the official account of events, you can read Escape from the Tomb of Theronna Onyxarm, Part 2. Some notes after the jump.
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The group was smart. They didn't split, conforming to something more like a phalanx. They didn't have mapping tools (and that's intentional; if you haven't read the other entries, the PCs are just college students who aren't prepared for this dungeon), but they used some chalk to mark their way.
When they doubled back to a room with a score of kruthiks, they wisely decided to avoid it. The next door, however, led into the room. As did the secret passage they found — and that's exactly when the random number gods conjured a pack of shadows to close off the only escape route.
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| It's just five shadows. That's not so bad. |
The group has to run, and when they do, kruthiks boil from the tunnels in the walls.
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| That's a lot of kruthiks. We're boned. |
The group loses about half its number, but manages to get through the door and close it behind them.
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| SHITSHITSHITSHITSHI—! |
...and then they wander into a dead end, and get cut off by a horde of dwarf zombies.
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| "Tonight we dine in Hell!" |
In an amazing twist of fate, Paul O'Trieadies, running around with 1 HP and at the front of every line, was the last man standing.
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| "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death..." |
But eventually, entropy takes us all.
Expect the Tomb of Theronna Onyxarm to be posted shortly, likely after I'm done editing. I'll probably convert the business to Labyrinth Lord for ease of reference. Among other reasons, Labyrinth Lord is more readily available than the LBBs.
High attrition...it's not just for OD&D anymore...
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like it was fun; and at least the goat survived. Labyrinth Lord works fine, though we've been looking at & considering using the Advanced Edition Companion for expanding the options for the monster entries a bit more...
Yes, it was a great deal of fun, even with all the character death. I hoped very hard that Paul (one of my characters) would make it out alive, but I will also settle for him miraculously being the last man standing.
ReplyDeleteI know I definitely benefited from having some Lamentations of the Flame Princess under my belt between the night we started this delve and when we completed it. Otherwise, I'd probably not have thought about checking for secret doors and the like, something which has become almost a habit since being introduced to LotFP and OD&D in general.
Since I know we didn't get to explore the entire dungeon, I would not hesitate for a moment at playing this again.