Rappan Athuk book 1: session 2

So anyways. 2nd session of Rappan Athuk book 1 today (well, we played on 4/13/08).

It went smoothly, I wanted to sorta speed past these early level because I had ran this module before for two of the five (sometimes six) players, and while I changed some things on those levels, I didn't really alter a lot because last time I ran it it was already altered, and because Rappan is a huge dungeon and I want to get to the very bottom, or at least significantly far, into the this book (third book offers several endings and good end points and creative jumping off points, the second book also has several ways to convert the campaign to a different setting (this is very useful)if need be. So i wanna give em a running start because I can see several points where they will hit some painful (but not necessarily slowing walls). I'm working on everyone making full fleshed (or primordially so) so I can have insertion points for them.

They started at the entrance, and was surprised/failed to guess that they genuinenly had forgotten (except one guy) where the key to the entrance was, I was almost sort of hoping they would decide to go down the well (entrance to level 4, which has an entrance to level 6 and 9) but they were too conservative for that.

I killed off the guy who wanted it (he a had a last minute change of heart) and handled the death quite mysteriously, thereby prodding them forward with sense danger. I really got a kick out of the furtive glances I was receiving from the other players while they were fight some of the green gargoyles as each round I quietly asked the PC who was away from the party (out of field of vision for rest of the party) what his fortitude save was. After the round he said 13 I stopped asking and after the battle the others went to look for him, but could find no trace.

3ED Tomb of Horrors in GG's honor

**If you haven't been through Tomb of Horrors, beware as this has some spoilers in it (but not many)**
The one off went rather well. I was impressed that they managed to cover 35-40% of the map. I was also impressed that there was no grumbling about rolling a straight 3d6 without even assigning the stats for themselves, they tend to be whiny at times (massive understatement) so I was expecting an outrage. My group felt emboldened to certain extent due to the fact that they all had rather low statted characters (relative to our norm 4d6 drop lowest), they had (9th level): a dwarvish rogue (w/a 4 str), dwarvish fighter, human paladin (10 str, w/6 dex), and a halfing rogue.

The ball got rolling fast, they narrowly avoided death in the first false entrance (dead fall, false door) but really took a huge amount of damage, the dwarven rogue nearly dying from massive damage. They then (eventually!) found the true entrance and cleared it out, oblivious and uncaring of the obvious painted on secret door! They did however manage to find and spike closed all of the pit traps save one. At the end of the tunnel the dwarven rogue, and the paladin tossed a few items in carved demon face's mouth, certain that it was a passage enchanted with a darkness spell and perhaps a silence spell.

The only thing that stopped our dear dwarven rogue from losing his hand which he was about to put in was the impatience of his fellow party member who decided to ignore the demon face and run right through the archway filled with swirling mist. (the mouth of the demon face is not an entrance but a secured in place Sphere of Annhilation)

(grrr gtg for now but will finish post later!)