The inn was called The Green Griffin, and humorously, when I told the players that that was where they were going to meet in the Facebook group, one of them did a google maps search for the Green Griffin Inn—predictably he failed to find it. The set up was a large space that could hold 100 patrons but on this night it only held half that, half of which started a brawl with the player characters and this is what threw them all together. It was very odd. Since two thirds of the players had never played before any version of D&D or any RPG, it was interesting what they did. One subdued two so they never entered the brawl, one bribed 5 of the NPCs with beer and they left the fight, one character tried his best not to even hit any of the combatants. Another waded in with flailing fists. A spell caster put one group to sleep and engaged a few others, the last character punched th lights out of a few of the others. Truly chaotic.
They did learn that if they wanted to keep their weapons in the town, they would have to gain notoriety by bringing in bounties of humanoid ears and that it was a good way to also get a bit of gold. They also learned the fickle nature of dice. Most of the characters rolled an average of 8 or less on a d20 and two characters rolled 20 four times among all the rolls. A few 1s were rolled too. The combat involved twenty commoners and two fighter types. The experience total for the encounter was 250, but augmented to 750 for the difficulty of it.
Next they decided to head to Neloar via Sunnydale and I told them to roll one d12 for a random encounter and I told them that if they rolled a 11 or 12 they would get one, but the 12 it would be more difficult. That was I lie, either way the encounter was going to be the same. They rolled another d6 and I told them okay and then said that it really sucked. I then described the trip to Sunnydale and then I let them know that in the late afternoon they heard something in the bushes far from them. The elf noticed it first and she called for quiet. Out of the shrubbery emerged an Earth Dragon, I giant lizard similar to a Komodo Dragon if a Komodo was the size of a bear! It had stubby wings and it's brown scales skin was turning a bright green in places. They froze and tried to figure out what they were going to do in this case. There was a lot of talk about sending the Gnome's mount, a goat, out so the beasty would ignore them and eat the goat. The gnome was not going to have any of that! They players argued about what they were going to do and the Earth Dragon got bored and shambled off into the woods again. Technically they would get experience for defeating it, but since they just stood around arguing I was not going to give them a thing.
They got to Sunnydale, where they heard there was rumours of Orcs near there and they wanted to go bag some orcs. There was adventure there soon, but after they had gained a couple levels. So I DMed them in to thinking the Curse on the town was not a priority for now and they did a lot of questioning about Neloar so they did not go in blind. They approached the village from the wrong direction, but that was fine. There was no major encounter on the road.
When they got close to town the Character who grew up there said, "We should go and check on my Master's hut and look for clues." This allowed me to change the direction that they approached the map. They discovered the Master's hut much the same way as the Player Character found it a week ago. But with five extra sets of eyes they discovered more information. His master was kidnaped!
They moved on to the Town seeking more clues and they encountered the Temple of Xeric, which was a personal add. The temple was deserted and it looked like for months. One of the characters rolled really well and determined that they too had been kidnaped.
In the village they encountered a very suspicious group of citizens. They were uncomfortable with the characters just dropping in to the village and treated them like, well, adventurers: heavily armed strangers with no roots in the area who would cause many people to die at the slightest provocation. Not sure at the PCs got that. But that is how they acted. The children acted like they were a new sight and their parents fearfully brought them into the house. When the characters asked after their children, I made sure that this caused a little fear among the nonplayer characters. The party split up to cover more ground. One set went to talk to the local garrison and tax collector for e area, my addition, and the others went deeper into e village, saying that they would meet up at the temple of Austria, the goddess of prosperity.
The players asked me and the NPCs why a temple to prosperity in a farming village and I told them that this was the most fertile and productive land in the area, and I added that because the farms were on reclaimed marsh lands. Blank stares. They said to me that I was the closest thing to a farmer amongst all of the players and they collectively knew nothing about growing stuff. A real travesty in my mind. They accepted that this was a wealthy community though. The other characters decided to push further into the village. And then it was pushing 11pm and I was tired and Natural20 was tired and I was dog sitting and I had to go rescue the dog and take it for a walk.
I hope everyone had fun. I think 900 experience, or 150 for each character, enough to push them half way to the next level. I was surprised about how far they got. I was told that they would only get past four encounters, but maybe that was four combats. I am looking forward to the next session where I predict they will get into at least three fights and finish off first part of the adventure.
No comments:
Post a Comment