Dungeon Fantasy Adventure Summary

[Harald387]

So I promised in this thread to post the summary of the Dungeon Fantasy campaign that I've begun co-GMing with Bruno. We've decided to swap off GMly duties between adventures, mostly so that we both get a chance to play.

I initially emailed 9 friends, not all of whom knew each other, to see if they'd be interested in the game. I expected four or five would be; after all, I was running it on Monday nights, via OpenRPG, and either the day or the format was bound to be too inconvenient for some of them. Right?

No.

Eight people got back to me, so it looked like I was in for a LARGE game at least. Level of experience with roleplaying games for all of these people is best described as 'extensive', though proficiency with GURPS ran the full range from longtime playtesters (Hi, Bruno!), to complete rookies, to people who'd tried the system (in 3e or 4e) and hated it.

After almost two days spent coordinating with various people for character creation, we had... The Cast.

Merenwen, a scout from the elvish forests who has apparently left them in search of adventures to have, people to save, and bunnies to touch fondly. She can bullseye a sparrow at forty paces with her bow, but would never hurt an innocent sparrow that way. She has a passionate hatred of the undead, and no fondness for goblin-kin either.

Jon Trapspringer, Halfling explorer extraordinaire. "Explorer" is so much more suave than "Thief". Short and decidedly on the stout side, he's nonetheless quick on his feet. While he's in the delving business for the money, he'd never sell out his friends - after all, they'd be mad, and that could get unhealthy.

Mrugnak, an eight-foot-tall minotaur with muscles on top of his muscles. He looks like an overdeveloped bodybuilder with the head and neck of a brown yak; he tends to have all kinds of dangerous sharp objects strapped to his body, and his left horn is twisted and bent out of shape. He's a bit sensitive about that, mostly in the sense that minotaurs are sensitive about everything; the entire race has a bad habit of flying off the handle and breaking whatever - or whoever - is in sight. He hails from a particularly backward tribe in the frozen north, and has a deep suspicion of anything more mechanical than the average lever.

Ten Ox Ogden, a human from a mountain country far to the east. Tall and muscular, if not quite so bulging as the minotaur, with tribal scars on his arms and face. He's prone to quoting the wisdom of his ancient masters and lives a pure life of meditation, contemplation, and carefully controlled violence.

Tybalt, a thin and wiry gray-furred catfolk lad. Like Trapspringer, he delves because the rewards are good and it's easier than a real job; he specializes in [strike]not being around when there's hard work to do[/strike] sneaking, pilfering, and detecting all sorts of problems before they become problems.

Lady Altricia Miriandella, an exile from the Darkhome of the Shadow Elves. While lacking her culture's general cruelty, she still seems to not 'get' what drives others and her assistance in the form of clerical magic tends to come with a sense that she's only doing it only because it happens to not inconvenience her too much. She's accompanied at all times by her manservant and bodyguard Homm, a taciturn and humorless warrior.

Obrim Worcestershire, a tall, scruffy human chap who likes nothing quite so much as bashing things or cutting them in half. A true master with swords, and dangerously competent with nearly anything that's meant to be used to kill other people. He seems to have great faith in the power of sufficient violence or sufficient alcohol to solve any problem.

Nymora, a Nymph who seems to have followed Mrugnak down from the northlands. Inquisitive, cheerful, and not quite versed in human social mores (clothing is optional, right?), she has little trouble making friends. Maybe it's the pale blue skin, or the hair that seems like fresh-fallen snow. She's well-trained in the wizardly arts, with an unsurprisingly strong talent for spells involving water and ice.

In the following post, a summary of the adventure setup and the game itself!

[Harald387]

The Setup

I decided from the beginning that I was going to use pre-written modules for this game, at least when I was running it. While I really rather enjoy writing adventures, I sadly don't have time in my schedule to write them rapidly enough so that I can run a weekly game. Since this was supposed to be a classic dungeon-crawling hack-and-slash game, I looked around for classic-style modules that would have the feel I was going for while not being well-known tropes like Keep on the Borderlands.

What I found was the Dungeon Crawl Classics line from Goodman Games, conveniently available through e23. I've got three of the modules so far, and apart from (very) few (extremely) nitpicky editing errors that I found, I love them completely. If these were written for GURPS instead of That Other Game, I wouldn't be able to recommend them highly enough; as it is, I can only recommend them very highly indeed, and say that the conversion from D&D to GURPS was worth the effort.

Since this was the first adventure, I decided to start with #1 in the series, Idylls of the Rat King. Keeping in mind that I had eight players - with 275-point characters, no less - I made some fairly significant changes to the threat level of the module, adjusting numbers, skill, and general danger level of the enemies fairly high upward.

And so, the adventure began:

The characters have come to the small mining village of Silverton, which lies on the King's highway between Soulgrave to the south and Archbridge to the north. Silverton was once a much more prosperous town, but has declined in the last couple of generations as one of its better mines was abandoned. Home now to under a hundred people, mostly miners and their families, they still manage to send a respectable amount of high-grade silver ore to the smelters in Archbridge. The Silver Tankard, Silverton's only inn, is the last civilized place to rest before the two-day trip on towards Archbridge and it's a good opportunity to rest sore feet.

From there, we got down into the gaming! Third (and final, for now) post to come.

[Harald387]

Game On!

It's a miserable early autumn night; the rain outside is practically horizontal, and Blas Ainsil's ale is particularly good. The inkeeper is apparently used to odd-looking strangers traveling through town, not batting an eye at the eclectic group and even preparing a special oversized room for the minotaur. Our Heroes are enjoying a quiet and comfortable evening of ale, cards, and music provided by a traveling minstrel, when a badly wounded man stumbles in.

"Well, that's a call for impulsive heroing if ever I heard one."

After a somewhat reluctant application of healing magic and some brief questioning, we learn that the man was a guard for one of the caravans hauling ore north to Archbridge; attacks on these caravans have become more frequent in recent months as a tribe of goblins have moved into the abandoned mine near town. There's even a reward for anyone who can clear the warren and kill the leader of the goblin tribe. Our injured guard warns, though, that the goblins seemed to be accompanied by an ogre - and that the ogre seemed to be rotting.

"'Substantial reward', did I hear?"
"'Significant', not 'substantial', but it will probably do."
"'Significant' is also a good number."

Further questioning of the innkeeper determines that the abandoned mine is thought to be cursed; 100 years ago several miners died there, and the Gannu family, who discovered the mine and founded the town, were run out of it. Nobody is exactly sure what happened; some say there was simply a bad cave-in and that Jasper Gannu was blamed. Some say that it's haunted by the ghosts of the dead miners; others say that there was a great demon trapped in the ground, and that all the force the Church could muster failed to do more than bind it back up.

"The best plan is to set out bright and early in the morning, and go clean the place up."
"Sounds good! ...How early?"
"Brightly early."
"So, around noon?"
"Old master says, it is brightest at dawn."

Our Heroes pack in for the night, and leave in the morning, led by one of the miners from town who shows them the overgrown trail leading to the Gannu mine. Following the tracks of two stolen wagons and two pair of oxen is easy; however, the rumors of some kind of ogre are also confirmed when Merenwen and Mrugnak find a scrap of rotten, thick, warty skin sloughed off on a bush near some decidedly-too-large-to-be-goblin footprints. It's not long after this that the trail opens up to a clearing, and the entrance to the mine dug into the side of a hill.

The trail leads into the cave, and the footprints in the dirt clearly lead to a large pile of caved-in rubble, then vanish. Finding the switch that opens this not-so-secret door is easy, and our heroes advance through a rough-hewn stone tunnel to find another door. As it opens, they're greeted by the sight of nine goblins, weapons at the ready - clearly the front-line troops, which is to say that these are the goblins who are either too stupid or too weak to avoid front-line guard duty. One of them immediately dashes out through a door in the south wall; the others charge the intruders.

"Uh.... skill of *24*?"
*beam*
"Now I feel inadequate."

Mrugnak immediately takes the fight to the enemy, swinging a great morningstar at the nearest goblin while Altricia and Nymora begin casting spells. Trapspringer and Tybalt dive into the shadows, and come up behind a pair of goblins who discover just why it is they call it 'backstabbing'. Merenwen's arrows find their mark in goblins' eyes, and Obrim's broadsword cleaves one nearly in half while Ten Ox's fist crushes another's windpipe. In all, less than three seconds of applied violence leave all of the creatures dead or disabled, but one got away and is presumably alerting his friends...

[Bruno]

Mrugnak's War Journal, if he could write, would say:

Today Mrugnak squish goblin. Goblin make dis funny noise when he squish dem. Mrugnak laugh.

It good day.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by Harald387

What I found was the Dungeon Crawl Classics line from Goodman Games, conveniently available through e23. I've got three of the modules so far, and apart from (very) few (extremely) nitpicky editing errors that I found, I love them completely. If these were written for GURPS instead of That Other Game, I wouldn't be able to recommend them highly enough; as it is, I can only recommend them very highly indeed, and say that the conversion from D&D to GURPS was worth the effort.

It sounds like a great game.

As far as the DCC series goes, #28 (Into the Wilderness) is another keep. It's a mixed wilderness/dungeon adventure, with 4 interlinked dungeons and a nasty surprise at the end. There's a lot of quirky D&Disms that I don't like, but it could easily be adapted to an excellent DF adventure.

[robertsconley]

Originally Posted by Harald387

The Setup
What I found was the Dungeon Crawl Classics line from Goodman Games, conveniently available through e23. I've got three of the modules so far, and apart from (very) few (extremely) nitpicky editing errors that I found, I love them completely. If these were written for GURPS instead of That Other Game, I wouldn't be able to recommend them highly enough; as it is, I can only recommend them very highly indeed, and say that the conversion from D&D to GURPS was worth the effort.

I am a bit biased but you may want to check out JG1: Thieves of Fortress Badabaskor. While written for D20 you have to consider that I GMed GURPS from 1989 onwards pretty much exclusively. Thieves is an old school style dungeon but has a lot of situations that would work for a system like GURPS.

Basically it is a bandit town on top of a dungeon that has, among other things, the surviving remnant of the fortress' previous owner and a band of dragons.

http://www.goodman-games.com/4600preview.php

There is a preview of the fourth level available.

Also JG3 Dark Tower was used successfully as GURPS Campaign by a friend of mine some years back (We had a copy of the original).

I did the layout for all three Goodman Judges Guild module and i put the d20 stuff in highlighted boxes so that GMs of other system can see what can be ignored.

[demonsbane]

A lot of players!

It seems a fun party.

I'm interested in how the game was run through OpenRPG. Were you using tactical combat rules (wich is, with some map)?

Thanks Harald387 for posting this. I remain interested in seeing how the adventure continues!

[Harald387]

Originally Posted by demonsbane

A lot of players!

It seems a fun party.

I'm interested in how the game was run through OpenRPG. Were you using tactical combat rules (wich is, with some map)?

Thanks Harald387 for posting this. I remain interested in seeing how the adventure continues!

I've even had other friends of mine asking to join, now that they've seen the summaries posted. I hate turning people down, but I think I'd hate running a 12-person dungeon crawl more.

I used tactical combat rules, taking a screenshot of the map in the PDF file then cleaning all the square grid off of it; I blew it up so that the OpenRPG hexgrid overlay would have the right scale, and loaded it through there. Miniatures were grabbed from the various OpenRPG resources available, and overall it worked great.

Next game is next Monday, so expect another update Tuesday.

[tg_ambro]

wow, really cool sounding, makes me think that i know i have to step up my GMing lol.

[demonsbane]

Originally Posted by Harald387

I used tactical combat rules (...) Miniatures were grabbed from the various OpenRPG resources available, and overall it worked great.

At risk of making an almost hijacking request, I think some screenshots of OpenRPG working in all its glory would be great!

Next game is next Monday, so expect another update Tuesday.

OK.