You All Meet at an Inn
 

I just ran a new group of players through their first DFRPG session using Matt Riggsby's excellent adventure, "You All Meet at an Inn," from Pyramid #3/98. I've run "I Smell a Rat" a few times, so I thought I'd try something a bit different.

I offered up a pile of pregens from Delvers to Go and the forums. Kromm's set of forum characters proved popular, with players choosing Lucky the Agile Goon (Swashbuckler), Sir Godfrey Stephen Hauteville (Thief), and Kellan Ellanjan (Bard). Llandor the Gray (Scout) was also selected from DtG. I didn't enforce (or encourage, really) any particular focus on party balance. I usually just adjust challenges to fit the party's particular talent curve.

First off, the players (adults who have some RPG experience, but never DFRPG or GURPS) absolutely loved the array of characters. They immediately appreciated the significance of disadvantages and usually looked at those (and quirks) first. There were howls of laughter about various combination before we even began the game. Even once we started, they definitely wanted some roleplaying time in the common room. Throughout the session, Sir Godfrey's quirk of shouting baseless "tactical advice" was unbelievably fun. Everyone was constantly suggesting new ideas for him to shout, "Llandor, throw down your bow and charge!" Coming up with club jokes for Lucky was also popular.

Indeed, all the roleplaying was so fun that we barely scratched the surface of the adventure plot. (This is always a good sign.) The earthquake happened and zombies emerged. A few NPC merchants died gloriously. Then there was a mad rush to close shutters and secure the place. The main battle took place at the gates while the PCs attempted to close them. Lucky and Llandor did the majority of the slaying, though each character was easily able to contribute. Sir Godfrey didn't dish out much damage without backstab, but his high DR (gotta love a thief in plate armor) meant that he could absorb a lot of attacks without injury. Kellan used Walk on Air to stay above the fray and his Concussion spell helped clear the field outside the gates so that Lucky could shove the gates shut (he was strong enough to close them despite the corpses piling up).

Midway through the battle, I realized that I had completely forgotten to describe the trumpet sound from the well. My solution was to have a zombie head over to the well, mesmerized, and dive in. That piqued everybody's interest.

The PCs emerged largely unscathed. I went fairly easy on them, since they didn't know the combat rules very well, so I didn't take advantage of every opportunity the zombies had. I also didn't bring in the bats and whatnot. Nevertheless, there was a sense of tension because it was clear that the zombie numbers were effectively infinite, so if they couldn't secure the place, they would eventually succumb. Upon closing the gates, we were out of time, so we stopped there.

It was a very satisfying session and we hope to continue later this week.

Re: You All Meet at an Inn
 

Great session report! Thanks for this - it was fun to read. Sounds like y'all had a blast.

Re: You All Meet at an Inn
 

Spoiler warning: If you might play in this adventure, you may want to skip this thread because I've got some questions about specific foes and challenges.

I've been considering the next encounter and have a couple of questions relating to the battle with the Flame Lord and the Toxifiers:

1. Note that I'm adding a hallway between the well and the fire chamber to deal with the problems of characters slowly climbing down ropes and getting slaughtered individually. I may also have the Flame Lord and Toxifiers not pursue people up the well, though the FL may light ropes on fire. This gives the party a chance to regroup if needed and seems like plausible behavior for magical guardians of an unholy temple.
2. Is there any benefit to a fine weapon in terms of DR/HP? Right now, if I'm reading things right, a 3lb wooden club has DR 2 and HP 12; fine quality only helps with parrying heavy weapons. Ok, so if Lucky wants to engage, he'll need to head back upstairs and get something made of metal that can act like a club. (Probably something like that up in an inn with a kitchen and stable, right?) The swords of the other characters won't be affected, but any arrows that hit will be lost.
3. The toxifier(s) can be handled pretty well with Shape Air, but I'm not sure I know how to manage it mechanically. They have ST 0 and x2 vulnerability to wind. The Knockback rules (Exploits 53) say that for ST of 3 or less you get knocked back one yard per point of basic damage. So, if Kellan puts 2 points into Shape air for 1d per turn of knockback, he should be rolling 2d vs. the Toxifier (due to vulnerability) who will be blown back that many yards, right? The toxifier has move 12, but it doesn't make sense for it to be able to move upwind each turn only to get blown back, so I think this would effectively keep it at bay.
4. Another option is stealth. If Kellan wants to burn the FT to cast invisibility on himself and his three companions, they might be able to sneak through the room and through the door to the next area. I would probably rule that the guardians appear regardless, summoned by some sort of spell that detects non-evil foes. The Flame Lord has no special detection abilities and has average IQ and Per, so it's possible the group could slip past him. Toxifiers have vibration sense, so they're a bigger threat. The group would need to deal with them and put the torches out before managing a stealth bypass of the Flame Lord. Any major things I'm missing here?

Of course I know that the group will probably come up with all sorts of ideas that I can't predict, but I like to wrap my head around some basic options. I'll probably nerf the Flame Lord a bit, lowering DR and perhaps reducing skill slightly.

Re: You All Meet at an Inn
 

Hey Dalin,
In case you hadn't seen it, you may enjoy the discussion of this same topic in this thread from last year.

Re: You All Meet at an Inn
 

Our GM tweaked the flame lord such that didn't appear until the barbarian ran into the room and poked at its font, and (importantly!) it didn't appear in immediate homocidal burnination mode. Our wizard make a lore check and groveled appropriately, the rest of the party followed their lead, and we made a deal with the flame lord to release it in exchange for agreements not to set anything on fire anywhere near where we were :)

Re: You All Meet at an Inn
 

Fun! Love that solution.

Re: You All Meet at an Inn
 

Thanks for the link. When I read the thread last year, it actually convinced me to buy the Pyramid issue and run the adventure. When I finally got to it last weekend, I couldn't find the thread anymore. I just reread it and it helped expand my thinking about the range of possibilities.

Re: You All Meet at an Inn
 

I am running a heavily-modified version of this for my gaming group. We just had our first session and we're about one room into the underground, since the majority of the time was spent carousing and Doing NonCombat Character-Building Stuff(TM).

Altered assumptions:

• In order to fit into my campaign setting, the main "horde" type monster outside was Rock Mites, not Zombies.
• In the tavern, one of the NPCs was a severely depressed elven woman who was posted to the local dwarven tribes to do an apprenticeship in gemcutting, since she was good with amber. She ended up drunk, but her sack of uncut gems is also a potential distraction for the Rock Mites, causing them to clump up along whatever portion of the outer wall is close to her interior location. The PCs could use this trait to lure the Rock Mite hordes briefly so they can climb down to the stables and retrieve items.
• The underground tomb is the burial place of a dwarven resistance leader. It was sealed away for centuries but recently part of the underground sealing wall has collapsed, allowing its guardian-themed magic to escape and causing the hordes of rock mites to animate.
• Underground monsters include: Obsidian Jaguars (re-themed to be Granite Wolves), Stone Golems, Rock Trolls, and the main boss are two well-equipped dwarven Draugr (the resistance fighter leader and his brother in arms).
• The living dwarves are a bit cross with the human government, and there are tensions. Once drunk, they often utter a dwarven curse (which translates to "leave our land" and happens to sound a bit like a grammatically nonsensical English term of abuse). Underground, there are ten carvings around the draug's resting place that shows this exact same ancient curse. If the PCs can find and deface them all, the magic fades and the rock mites will disperse. Or, they can also lay the draug to rest permanently.

I've noticed that one potential problem in my PC-to-challenge calculation is that two of my players are playing finesse-style assassin types. Unfortunately, the enemies are mostly stone-based enemies, so DR is high and most of them are also Homogenous, meaning crits and location-specific hits don't really do much.

I'm trying to build in some monsters (e.g. golems and draug and minor undead) that have somewhat scary or inconvenient weapons, so that even though the swashbuckler and assassin don't do full damage against them, they can still disarm or sunder the enemies' own weapons (something you can't really do against, say, a Rock Mite or an Obsidian Jaguar whose natural weapons are stone).

I'm also looking to place multiple traps in the area so these sneakier types get their time in the sun.

One other change: the watery chamber of "You All Meet At An Inn" no longer has a lever to pull. Instead, I've placed a few hanging stalactites at the upstream end of the chamber. A perceptive PC could notice they look pretty fragile, and could be brought down with enough impact. This will block the upstream flow and cause the river to fall in level, making it much less threatening. (The river's monsters - leeches and water snakes - are both still unchanged in my drafting, so there's something living that our finesse-built PCs can hurt.)

Re: You All Meet at an Inn
 

Sounds like a great alteration. I like the idea of luring rock mites. Keep the posts coming; I'd like to know how it goes from here on out.

Re: You All Meet at an Inn
 

I totally added in a rock mites bonus encounter in honor of this thread