Night's End

Refreshed, eager, and with the taste of first blood in their bellies the party continued onward. At this point, I was a little concerned. The party had been sent to take care of some human bandits and were tussling with kobolds instead. Of course I knew why this was, but no one seemed particularly concerned with this discrepancy. I filed this piece of information away for later. While the mission had come together without much planning or larger background, I was starting to 1) get a feel for what people expected and 2) how to string together my ad hoc decisions.

Peredu lit his sunrod. Essentially lighting the way with a miniature sun, as opposed to grabbing a torch off the walls, or using one from their packs. Not exactly the best way to sneak up on people..."Oi! Nigel! What's that light coming down the 'allway burning with the might of the sun?" "I dunno Stan. Probably nothing."

Oblivious, or uncaring, of this little fact the party continued trumpets announcing their progress (so to speak). They ventured down a short corridor, down some steps into the next room of the dungeon. Torches blazed brightly in all corners, and in the hallway that led out the opposite way of the room. I prodded the group to make a nature check, so they could know a little something about the kobolds they were facing. The main reason for this was to add this little piece of information: Kobolds can see in the dark...it doesn't make sense for them to have torches lighting up the rooms and hallways. I'm not sure if that sunk in...but hey, whether they pay attention or not isn't my problem. In seriousness, I was starting to test how much "plot" and "intrigue" (such as my limited abilities allow) they wanted, or could handle. We were still trying to remember how to add modifiers, so clearly plot wasn't going to be the main thrust. This still was functioning as a warm-up.

The room was an old crypt, with sarcophagi lining the floor, and shelves cut into the rock walls for the placement of relics, bodies, or other burial related items. These shelves had had their contents dumped on the floor, and replaced with cots...occupied by filthy piles of rags: kobold beds. The effigies upon the sarcofagi had been defaced to the point where the origin of the inhabitants was unknowable. Well, as one can imagine, the Kobolds didn't take too kindly to non-kobolds bursting into this room, weapons still wet with the blood of their compatriot. A general melee ensued.

This room I had built so it was more of a test for the group, not a walkover. Unfortunately, a ridiculously high perception check from Mairwen let the group know that there were pit traps on the floor. I was a little bummed out, because I had already concocted some brilliant strategies involving those pits the kobolds (and halfling, grumble) could walk over but not the big people. Peredu spent a good portion of this encounter on fire or trapped in glue. Oh those crafty kobolds. The kobolds had a good opening round, gluing the paladin to the ground and doing a fair amount of damage to Norge. However, Peredu got free, Avyx healed up Norge, and they started smashing the kobolds. In the back Mairwen and Ember were having difficulties with their dice rolls. Ember was pretty much done with her spells (as mentioned before her construction made it hard for her to hit these) and we hadn't gotten the hang of the rogue rules, combat advantage, etc. So there were hits from the back...but the strikers weren't exactly "striking it up." Also, towards the end of the encounter, when things had fallen apart for the monsters, the remaining kobolds slingers (who had used up all of their fire and glue keeping the paladin in place and on fire) decided the best course of action was to get all stabby with the halfling.

Ultimately this action proved futile. Peredu saved from the last of the glue bombs. Avyx and Norge kept up a good smash/heal duo. Mairwen ran away from lots of things, and helped the Ember escape stabby death.

There were two points to this (ultimately) futile action. The first was to make the combat exciting for me, because it's no fun losing all the time. Coming as close as possible to winning (without doing so) is a tough gig. More importantly it was to "train" the party and make them use tactics and stuff. "Peredu to the front! We'll heal you!" needs to be expanded a little more. So doing an end-round and stabbing the squishy targets served to make sure the party didn't get too comfortable in a set role. Having Ember and Mairwen decide to just chill in the back and launch missile after missile is their stated goal...but they shouldn't get complacent. Peredu, Avyx, and Norge were actually cut off from Ember by the last spear wielding Kobold, the tombs, and the traps. This feeling of helplessness (as they slowly ran around the circumference of the room trying to help the frantic halfling/halfelf team) was what I was trying to cultivate. But eventually, there was a final twang of a crossbow, and final slice of a sword, and the last kobold went fleeing down into the depths of the catacombs.

Again, the party settled down to heal up, patch up the dwarf, and put the still on-fire paladin out. The room was tossed, some gold was found *yay* and the general description of the room was expanded. Nothing terribly revealing at that point because...the night was over. Every entry you have read up until this point was a single session of the game. A meeting, a long walk, and two rooms of the dungeon. It had taken 5...6...more? hours to get that "only" that far, and they were ~1/3 of the way through.

I realized I had a small problem, but was more or less stuck. Combat takes a long time. Each fight took an hour or more. Yeah, you read it in 3 minutes...and in game time they only lasted 30 seconds for the spider battle and maybe a minute for the crypt fight. But here in the real world it took over an hour, close to an hour and a half. Of course this is going to speed up with time...there was lots of "uhm...wait...what?" as people didn't have their course of action prepared, or were just unfamiliar with the mechanical aspect of the game. However, at the very core DnD is combat oriented, so there's not terribly much I can do to change that. I didn't feel that I could legitimately eliminate the rooms left in the dungeon, so there was nothing to do but have them slog on through. The next adventure I'd construct, I told myself, would do something to break up the monotony of room(fight)-room(fight)-room(fight). Also, even though it was only our first session I decided I was going to write some background information to give the characters to spice up their crawl. I thought at that point I'd have a good enough handle on things to be able to expand my repertoire and focus on the story, and not just not messing up the rules.