Play Report (AD&D 2e): In Search of the Unknown (Session 2)

We had the opportunity to play the second session of our In Search of the Unknown AD&D 2e campaign last night. My session 1 report is here.

For this session, we were missing Aidan (Millisant) and David (Rory the Small), so the roster was as follows:

• Llombaerth, CG elf thief 1 (Adam)
• Barthalo-gnome, CG gnome fighter 1/thief 1 (Matt)
• Pommernar, CE elf mage 1 (Nael)

We started by recapping the last session (and bringing Matt up to speed). The party had reached the town of Timbershore with a map in hand pointing the way to long lost Quasqueton. There, the party had gathered some rumors, inquired about securing passage on a boat downriver, and recruited Colton, a dockworker, as porter and torchbearer. They set off across the southern farmlands and into the forest towards Quasqueton. On the way, they encountered a handful of hobgoblins, whom Pommernar turned away with a clever use of dancing lights. 

Upon reaching Quasqueton, the party delved inside. They discovered what they believed to be a pair of secret doors, but not how to open them. A pair of magic mouths warned them of what would become of them if they pressed on, which rattled Colton. While looting some corpses, they encountered some goblins. After a tense standoff, they met their leader, Grilk, who was more amicable, and informed them of some orcs to the southeast, led by a priest, who now held many of Grilk's goblins under his sway.

We picked up the session where we left the last one. Grilk invited the party to indulge with him in the "finest ale in Quasqueton", and led them through a dining room (where a fourth goblin was scrubbing lichen off of a carved wood throne) and into a room dominated by a large marble statue of a totally bodacious nude woman.

Grilk passed around some ales. The ale was definitely old and sour and tasted nasty. Llombaerth shared some vinegared herring with Grilk. Grilk confided in the party that a band of human ruffians had recently come to Quasqueton and had also passed through the goblins' territory. They had been rude and bullying, insulting the goblins' food and drink and stealing Grilk's special ring, which he had pilfered from a dead wizard some time ago. Grilk would be much obliged if the party could retrieve it.

This would be in addition to helping to liberate the goblins now under the sway of the orcs, who Grilk said worshipped a stone they believed they could speak to. Grilk told the party that the ruffians had headed north, deeper into the dungeon. The party asked about the secret doors in the previous corridor, and Grilk told them that they only opened from the opposite side - a way for the stronghold's defenders to ambush intruders from behind.

The party asked if Grilk could share any other information about the dungeon, but he said he would feel more comfortable if he was more certain that the party was operating in good faith. If he gave them all the information he had up front, there was nothing stopping the party from killing him and stealing his treasure.

This sounded fair. The party asked if they might be able to benefit from the goblins' hospitality in the future in exchange for helping with either of these two tasks. Grilk was agreeable to this. The party deliberated some, and decided to go after the ruffians first. Grilk directed them towards Narka, just down the hall, who could point them in the right direction. On their way out, Llombaerth left some more herring for the goblins to enjoy.

The party met with Narka, who seemed preoccupied listening at one of the walls in a wide corridor. He pointed them in the direction in which the ruffians had gone. He said there were rats in the walls, and if the party found any, they should club them and bring them back to Narka to throw in the stew pot. The party said they would do their best.

Realizing that all present were demihumans with infravision, the party decided to leave Colton to hang back with the goblins. I made a loyalty test to see if Colton would agree to this, with a slight penalty since the magic mouths had already rattled him. To my surprise, he was okay with it - better to hang out with some friendly-seeming goblins than to go venturing off into the dark.

Without Colton, venture off into the dark is precisely what the party did. They proceeded north, as Narka had directed them, and found two parallel corridors heading east. There were muddy boot prints around both corridors - smaller prints in lesser numbers down the northernmost corridor, and larger prints in greater numbers down the southernmost one. They decided to explore the latter.

Llombaerth, being the sneakier of the thieves, crept slowly up ahead. Rounding a corner and heading north, he spotted flickering torchlight from a corridor that went west. He beckoned the rest of the party to catch up, then went to investigate alone, creeping down the westward corridor.

He heard human voices arguing. It sounded like someone was stuck, and others were trying to find a way to free him. It sounded like people were rummaging in a room on the other side of the corridor's north wall. The light source seemed to be just around a corner up ahead, the westward hallway turning north.

Llombaerth proceeded, succeeding on his first Move Silently check, and was able to peer around the corner and spot a rough-looking human man in studded leather, holding a torch, with long sword, shield, pike, and short bow. Beyond him, the corridor turned back towards the east.

The party reconvened out of earshot and planned to listen for a bit to see what would happen. Since the people in the other room were being loud, I made a wandering monster check during this time, but nothing came of it. After a few minutes, they heard additional voices claim they had found a way to get their "boss" out of his predicament. They heard the sound of iron grating against iron, as if multiple people were trying to saw through iron bars.

Llombaerth attempted to sneak further ahead to lay eyes on the scene, but made too much noise, and the whole group turned and spotted him (he failed both his Move Silently and Hide in Shadows checks one after the other). There were three men trying to use hacksaws to cut through an iron portcullis, behind which the fourth was trapped. They demanded Llombaerth show himself, and he did. The rest of the party hurried to join him, pretending to be a family of archaeologists mapping the ruins. In the flickering torchlight, they saw the glint of a ring on the fourth ruffian's finger.

(The assumption in B1 is that the player characters will get stuck in this portcullis trap. When I was stocking the dungeon and rolled up a group of bandits in this room, I thought it would be a great opportunity to have one of them trapped behind the portcullis when the party arrived. +1 for B1's room design.)

The ruffians seemed perplexed and a little suspicious, but weren't looking for a fight. The party offered to help find a way to lift the portcullis and, as a pair of ruffians watched them closely, they searched the adjoining room for any tools which might be of use. There they found:

• A box of wooden pegs
• A 50’ coil of light rope
• A 70’ coil of heavy chain
• A 20’ coil of fine copper wire
• 32 unusable mining picks in poor repair
• 15 chisels
• 13 shovels
• 11 empty barrels stacked against the wall
• 8 mallets
• 29 1” x 8’ iron bars
• A 12” iron vise
• 2 broken mining jacks
• 2 two-man crosscut saws
• A mason’s toolbox containing trowel, stone chisel, plumb line, etc.
• A cobbler’s toolbox containing a small hammer, a knife, heavy needles, etc.
• A small barrel of 60 unfletched arrows
• A 10’ long wooden bench

Great stuff here. Pommernar suggested they use the mason's toolbox, iron bars, and his own block and tackle to engineer a mechanism that could lift the gate. This sounded like a reasonable idea to the ruffians. Since everyone in the party was shorter than an average human, Pommernar suggested one ruffian stand on another's shoulders to hammer some iron bars into the wall near the ceiling.

As the ruffians did as they were told, Pommernar told Llombaerth in Elvish to get ready to snuff the third ruffian's torch and attack.

"What did you say to him?" one ruffian asked.

"Oh, just an Elvish prayer for good luck," Pommernar replied.

"Ha, we're going to need it if this plan is going to work," another remarked.

Then, the party launched their attack. I decided that the ruffians would be surprised, so the whole party had a chance to act first. Llombaerth threw a burlap sack over the first ruffian's torch, plunging the corridor into darkness, then went for a backstab with his short sword - +4 to hit for the backstab attempt, +1 because the ruffians were surprised. Llombaerth hit AC 8 - literally just enough to hit studded leather with no shield. 10 damage (5 x 2 for backstab) slew the ruffian instantly.

Barthalo-gnome similarly made a backstab attempt against the ruffian who was holding the other one up (similarly with a +5 bonus to hit), hitting an AC of 1 for 16 damage (max damage with a short sword, +2 for specialization, and x2 for backstab), killing him as well. The ruffian on top fell down. Barthalo-gnome failed a Dexterity check, so the ruffian fell on top of him, each of them taking 1 damage from the fall.

With the third ruffian prone, Pommernar fell upon him with his dagger (+5 to hit again - this time +4 because the ruffian was prone, and again +1 for surprise). He hit an AC of -2 for 4 damage - the maximum amount, but not enough to kill him outright.

I rolled morale checks for the remaining ruffians (-4 because they had lost 50% of their numbers and -2 because they were surprised - they had a chance to succeed, but it was unlikely). They failed. The third ruffian was spurting up blood, feebly begging for his life, while the leader fell to his knees and pleaded for mercy, not even entirely sure what was going on due to the total darkness.

Pommernar said he would spare the third ruffians' life if the leader handed over his ring and his valuables. The leader tossed the ring and some coins through the bars. Then, Pommernar killed the third ruffian anyway. Barthalo-gnome, incensed by the ruffians' treatment of the goblins, climbed out from beneath the corpse, marched over to the leader, seized hold of him through the portcullis's iron bars, and cut his throat. 

(We talked about this afterward and discussed how it was not exactly a Chaotic Good thing to do - nor was killing the seemingly neutral ruffians in the first place - but players' blood tends to run hot when friendly goblins are being bullied. Alignment is a murky thing, and at some point I'll probably suggest that one player or another change their character's alignment, but I don't think I'll penalize them for this by way of experience points the way AD&D suggests.)

With the ruffians dead, the party pilfered their corpses and took some choice items from the room with all the tools, then we called it a night. They got some XP for defeating the ruffians, and the thieves got some bonus XP for using their special abilities. They'll get some XP for the treasure they recovered once they bring it back to town.

This was a very fun session. Considering the party had one and a half thieves, a mage, and only half a fighter, they approached this encounter very smartly, using the situation to maximize their advantage. The Chaotic Evil Pommernar seems to be an insidious influence on the rest of the characters, so we'll see if he is able to turn a few of them towards the dark side.

Aidan and David were our mapmakers in session 1, so Matt took over mapping duties for this session. The dungeon is definitely difficult to describe, and it seems that the party lost track of the many corridors and twists and turns somewhere along the way. We'll see if that hinders them at all in the upcoming sessions.

We talked for a bit afterward about how THAC0 isn't really that complicated in practice and how refreshing this snappy combat was compared to something like 5e. The group seems to be enjoying their experience with AD&D thus far. I'm eager to see what they get up to next time.