A Dungeon Game Session 2 - Play Report
Use the tags to find play reports from previous sessions.
This was another small group, the same players as last time. Having not mapped the dungeon in the previous session they entered through the main entrance and began sketching the layout of the place.
Here I got a positive encounter result very early in the session.
Soon after entering they emerged into one of the first corridors after the initial rooms and were set to continue south, as they had done last time, when they heard the sound of heavy, clawed feet on stone and laboured breathing echoing up the southern passage. They quickly ducked back into the first chamber and closed the door, waiting for whatever it was to pass or leave.
Pass it did, the heavy sounds scraping past the door and along the corridor to the west before fading from hearing. After a few moments of waiting they re-emerged into the corridor, where they found the walls scraped and scuffed as though by blades. Someone jokingly suggested that this might be an armoured porcupine. Whatever it was, the group were keen to avoid it, and so headed south, ignoring the chamber where they had met the Rusted Hammer members excavating the statue previously.
Previously they had run due south, so today they decided to explore in a new direction. First, though, the group chose to once again examine the room with the metal hoop in it, embedded in a wall beside one of the two doors. As they examined it they heard the snuffling creature on the other side of that door, and were careful to keep the noise down should it hear them.
After inspecting the hoop, which was mounted onto a metal pole that disappeared into the masonry, Plorg decided to simply pull it out of the wall. The pole extended for a few feet before the group heard the distinct sound of the doors of this room locking, and a heavy thud from beyond the western door. That thud was met with a growl from whatever the large creature was, which began to move in the corridor beyond the door. Its noises quickly faded from earshot again.
The group realised that this might serve as a good safe room in future but, seeing no other use for it and not wishing to investigate beyond the western door where the beast was known to be, they pushed the hoop back into the wall, opened the doors, and continued to the east into new territory.
After exploring a few empty rooms and finding little but crumbling masonry and damp, the group came to a large chamber filled with old dog cages that held the bones of long-dead hounds. Through a hole in the wall they heard a deep, rhythmic rumbling from the next room - something like snoring, but too bassy and loud to come from any human. They also found a door to the south that they were unable to open.
As they were investigating it they heard the sounds of doors slamming from somewhere in the dungeon to the north. This was the result of a positive encounter roll. Many of the encounters on the table for this floor of the dungeon are not creatures but simply noises to add some atmosphere. It’s not fully known to the players yet but this level has been explored by the Rusted Hammer and is largely uninhabited aside from one or two wandering creatures.
In response to the noises from the north, Gladys spiked the door shut. This left the group with no easy way to escape in an emergency, but also would hopefully keep them separated from whatever or whoever was moving around out there. I’ve been running this dungeon from a spreadsheet. The map is marked out in coloured cells and room keys are added as notes. That makes it really easy to make notes about things players do to alter the environment and trust that I won’t miss them when they come back to previously-explored rooms. I highly recommend running games this way.
The door to the south of the dog room was stuck shut and couldn’t be opened. The group debated crowbarring it open, but the snoring from the west put them off. Poking their heads through the hole in the wall into that room they saw a passage immediately to the south. The room itself was too big for them to be able to see the thing making the noise, which lay somewhere to the north, but it also meant that they felt safe slipping through and taking the passage.
A Dungeon Game doesn’t have anything like Perception checks. I debated having the players roll under their Agility to be quiet, but rather than calling for rolls I simply made an encounter check myself and decided that there was a 2-in-6 chance of the creature being disturbed. It remained sleeping.
To the south they found a network of rooms and passages that quickly led back to the door to the dog room, which they now saw was nailed shut from this side. They pried the nails out, giving them a way back without going through the snoring room.
In a side chamber they found some empty coffins, a small wooden chest, and a severed arm with a gold ring on its hand. Trying to take the ring caused the crawling hand to animate and attack, trying to climb Gladys’ pick to get to her throat. With all characters successfully rolling under their Agility and acting before the creature, Manev immediately set the thing on fire with his torch, and it burned to cinders while Plorg held out his holy symbol and attempted to perform a turning.
Monev asked if he was able to set the crawling hand on fire, and we agreed that if his attack hit and was either a critical or dealt full damage, it would ignite. His attack initially missed, but he Exerted himself to convert it into a success. His initial damage roll was 5, and he used his daily Scar to make that into a 6. The crawling hand had 7 hit points, so I ruled that it took more damage at the start of its go due to being on fire and immediately perished. This was a really nice use of the few crunchy bits of A Dungeon Game, and it was nice to see a player engaging with them in a way that felt fun and meaningful.
With the crawling hand dead the group were able to take the ring and the chest, which was filled with gemstones. Sensing that time might be running out they decided to explore one more room, finding a large chamber to the south with a huge iron plate in the ground and pulleys hanging over its corners. They deduced that this may have been used in the past to open an entrance to a lower floor, but all the mechanisms were either rusted shut or missing. They might return in future, but for now it was time to return home.
I still don’t have an “escape” procedure that I like, so I just made an encounter check on a 2-in-6 as they left the dungeon. The increased odds were due to them moving faster through already-mapped territoriy - less cautious, louder, more likely to attract attention. There was no encounter, though, and the group successfully escaped and banked their XP. Since we do a week between delves in both real time and game time, Monev had a chance to recover his Exerted Brawn, which now sits at 17 - one away from the maximum of 18.