Public Game Notes, August 23, 2001

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

The game began with the characters talking in a tavern in a small hamlet. (The tavern is named 'the tavern', or at least that's what it's called by anyone who wants to refer to it. The town is called Shepford, a corruption of 'sheep-ford'.)

Prolix the gnome had just been giving some peasants a lesson in applied probability when he joined the group. There was some spirited discussion of the merits of the local beer with the foreign fop (named Torak).

The priest was the only one who heard the ominous creaking of the floorboards and the high-pitched squeaking. A moment later, the floor collapsed, dumping the whole group and an old cripple at another table into a large roughly circular room, with a wide passage leading north.

In a moment, four dire rats (one of them bleeding badly from a spear embedded in its left flank) were upon them. As the heroes grabbed broken table legs to use as makeshift weapons, the dire rats charged through the group, discovered that the corridor ended, and turned to fight.

In another moment, six bipedal rats, carrying short spears and wearing ragged leather armor, entered in pursuit of the rats. They were overconfident of their ability against the unarmored heroes, and entered combat against them too.

There were some severe losses before the course of battle turned, but no one fell. The heroes managed to kill the rats and drive off the rat-men. Even the old cripple (named Colm) was kept safe from harm. (He turned out to be a merchant, and was most grateful for their help; he promised them discounts on his wares if they were to discover what lay beneath the earth.)

The tavernkeeper was shocked at what had happened, for he had not had any cellar before. (Free drinks for everyone!)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ OOC Notes
I'd intended it to be a more asskicking episode than it was; y'all drove off the rats and the rat-men instead of having to retreat upstairs while they were after you. But that's just fine; good job, y'all.

Part of the problem, of course, was that I rolled a whole bunch of 1's on my attack rolls.

It's also the case that I was pretty darn generous about the attack capability of table legs (to the point that there was no real point in preferring a spear to a table leg). If I were to run it again, I might say that a table leg does 1d4 subdual damage (which makes it only slightly better than a fist in terms of damage; the big benefit is that you don't get attacks of opportunity.)

Thanks to Mike for running the rats. I think that did make things go more smoothly.

I think that we did a good job of keeping the game flowing quickly without having to check the rulebooks too much. I liked that.

I hope this was fun and exciting for y'all.