User:Bill/City of Sepulcher/Session Notes

Session One

Pre-game

Aaron and Matt arrived a little late; they got lost trying to find my apartment. They were the only two players in attendance this week, so the pre-game conversation went pretty quickly. I had prepared some simple questions intended to give me an idea of what they would most be interested in and guide my decisions regarding the tone of the campaign. The guys seem to want fairly standard D&D; focused on character development and brief challenges such as encounters and traps. They're most interested, setting-wise, in Forgotten Realms. I am not substantially familiar with the realms, but I've got some of the books on it and I can fill in the blanks. For the time being I offered them a choice between City of Sepulcher, Magocracy of Dholavira, and an untitled home-brew setting built around the idea of a magically induced ice-age. Aaron and Matt chose City of Sepulcher, a boom-town city built over a dungeon.

Summary

Aaron and Matt had brought first-level characters with them but after a little discussion they elected to upgrade to fourth level. Aaron is playing a Whisper Gnome Rogue and Matt a Dwarf Barbarian. Anyone wishing to join the game is welcome to create any ECL4 character with 5400GP, no more than a third of which may be spent on any single magical item.

Sepulcher's entire economy is built around the dungeon that the city is constructed over; a series of catacombs that lead to a buried ancient city said to be the capital of a lost empire. The entire dungeon complex is known to be enormous and densely populated with a wide variety of monsters; mostly undead, but also many other predatory creatures summoned by early explorers of the catacombs. The city council demands that all maps be turned over by adventurers exiting the catacombs, on pain of death, so no maps are readily available. Entry into the catacombs is strictly limited. A chit, a small black disk purchased from the gate guards or one of the city offices, must be presented to the garrison at the entrance to the catacombs to be granted passage in or out. Additionally, all supplies and services that an adventurer might require to successfully plumb the depths of the ancient ruin are substantially taxed; a 50% markup on material goods and a 33% markup on spell-casting, including healing.

Aaron and Matt's characters purchased their chits immediately upon entering the city. Aaron had intended to use his diplomacy skill to try and talk the guard into a discount, but Matt's more pragmatic barbarian elected to just hand over the 10 gold without argument. They then proceeded without pause to the garrison to enter the catacombs.

The city itself appears quite prosperous and all manner of adventurers press through the crowded streets, most of them heavily armed. While the players did not investigate it, there certainly appears to be no law against going about armed and armored. The mix of races in Sepulcher is dizzying. No obvious majority is present, and quite a few aggressive or evil races can be seen walking the streets with impunity. The treasures rumored to be hidden in the buried city attract all kinds. The characters did not witness any fights before their descent. In practical terms this means that any character can find a place in this game, regardless of race, class, or alignment. I would prefer to avoid evil alignments in general, but the only one I'm going to need specific justification for is chaotic evil.

The garrison itself is a large fortified structure. Matt's character immediately noted that the building is not intended to keep people out, but rather to prevent something from escaping the catacombs. A pair of goliaths in plate armor, carrying great swords, stand guard at the portcullis that bars entry into the garrison. After a little small-talk, one of the guards asked the player characters to show their chits and ordered the portcullis opened. As they made their way to the inner court, Matt's character noted the many deadfalls, murder holes, and secondary portcullises engineered into the passage. I wanted to make it clear that they are going into a place with very dangerous creatures and that the people running this show are pretty serious about keeping the place secure.

The inner court of the garrison features a crenelated wall manned by several more goliaths in plate armor, these armed with large heavy crossbows that they keep trained on the circular entrance into the catacombs themselves. A very large spiral stair leads down sixty feet to the catacombs. A heavy iron gate that may be lowered over the aperture stands over it. Again without hesitation, Aaron and Matt's characters plunged into the darkness below.

Conveniently, both characters possess sixty feet of dark vision. This eliminated any need for me to track who had a torch or how long it had been burning. Because I am a little on the lazy side, I used Jamis Buck's random dungeon utility to create the catacomb. The random dungeon generator takes a little practice to make things that are really usable, but I found the results to be satisfactory for now. If you'd like the actual program let me know and I'll email you a copy. The MythWeaver's site doesn't look like it has a download option. I provided graph paper for mapping, though I didn't require it to be done. After the first couple thousand feet of corridor, the guys decided to trust that I wouldn't screw them for not mapping rather than deal with the insane scale of the place; I set the width and height to max. While the program handles room descriptions and room based encounters well, it doesn't include anything for the corridors themselves; so I also used the random encounter and trap tables from the DMG at irregular intervals. I'll need to customize these before the next session, but they were serviceable for now.

The guys ran into a total of three encounters and four traps. The magical traps proved to be more than the rogue was up to disarming or even really noticing, but the physical traps were only a minor inconvenience. The encounters included a pair of first level gray elves which briefly joined up with our heroes, a shocker lizard that Aaron skewered with a single shot from his bow, and a gargoyle that proved to be a bit more challenging. The gargoyle actually killed one of the gray elves by biting its head off and it whittled down the dwarf's hit points a little at a time. That encounter was probably a little frustrating for Aaron because his character couldn't get behind it, he wasn't willing to go toe-to-toe with it, and his arrows couldn't penetrate its damage reduction. He was able to mess it up with a tanglefoot bag though and is somewhat responsible for its defeat because of that. Matt's character managed to hit the gargoyle several times, but again due to its damage reduction was unable to deliver a significant amount of injury until he succeeded at confirming a critical with his greataxe. This did not incapacitate the beast though and it managed to tear itself free from the tanglefoot binding then flee down the corridor. Our short protagonists were unable to keep up, so the wounded gargoyle successfully escaped. It will most likely become lunch for some other beast in the dark corners of the pit.

Distraught by the loss of his cousin the remaining gray elf, a wizard who was about out of magic at this point anyway and who had been totally ineffective against the gargoyle, bit the mountain folk farewell. Before parting he cut a finger from the headless corpse of his fallen companion and warned our duo that the ancient ruin beneath them hides mind warping evil that will not be contained. Aaron and Matt's characters proceeded onward until encountering a bestow curse trap, at which point they headed back to the surface. On the way they found the broken body of their wizard friend at the bottom of the pit trap they had crossed earlier. In an effort to avoid losing their map, Aaron's character concealed it in the secret chamber where they had first met the elves.

Before being allowed to exit the garrison, both characters were forced to surrender their chits and swear that they were not carrying a map while holding a presumably enchanted stone. They then proceeded to the temple district to find a priest of Moradin and have the curse removed. The priest naturally kept the dwarven barbarian busy for some time reciting his lineage, praying, gossiping about his sept, and singing ancient victory songs. Aaron's character took the opportunity to replenish his supply of tanglefoot bags and arrows. The session closed with the guys finding lodging for the night, luxury accommodations. This may attract some undesired attention.

Evaluation

Overall, I would rate this as a successful, if somewhat slapdash, session. Both players enjoyed themselves and there seemed to be a decent amount of stuff to occupy them. Dungeon crawls aren't really my thing, and I think that showed in the lackadaisical attitude I had towards things like mapping and search rolls, but I had a good time anyway. I enjoyed describing the sparseness of a well picked-over dungeon with few traps and monsters left lurking. I intend for the game to get progressively more dangerous and rewarding as they make their way deeper into the catacombs, as they exit the more well-trod regions. Above ground I'll be pitching some story hooks their direction, but it should be possible for them to evade those if they really aren't interested.

Over the week I will read up on the characters' races and classes so I am better familiar with the necessary details. I will also try to complete customized random encounter and trap tables.