With characters made but a few weeks left before the full team could gather I talked to the available players and we decided to get together and play some prequel sessions. This came together fairly quickly so was searching a bit to find some decent and short intro adventures. I didn't have anything home-brewed for 5th so I went back to my Saltmarsh idea. Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, as presented in 5E's Ghosts of Saltmarsh, is nicely divided into two parts. This was a perfect fit since I had time for two sessions so I read through the thing, focusing on the Haunted House part in particular. This was a good fit for an opening adventure of a new campaign and a new set of rules. It also pushed the nostalgia button pretty hard as Saltmarsh was the first published adventure I ever played in back when it was new - and all of us playing it were still fairly new too.
So I started things off telling the players they needed to think of why their characters would have made the journey to Saltmarsh and what they might be looking for as they poked around town for news & rumors. our cast of characters:
- Paladin Steve: Human Paladin
- Boom-Gun Brandon: Human Fighter
- Shootist Will:
MechanistHuman Cleric - Blaster: Human-ish Wizard
- Official Spouse: Dwarf Warlock
So ... a couple of new bits of information there. Steve settled on trying out the new Paladin which most of us thought he would. Will is embracing the troupe-style play by making a cleric as his "backup" character while still intending to play a mechanist in the main campaign. Blaster went with wizard and not an elf which is uncommon for him but he has a concept he is pretty fired up about. Finally, the Official Spouse joined the game for her first RPG session ever! She figured she ought to play at least a few games so she would understand what we're all talking about and maybe get more of the jokes/references - even more nostalgia triggers are firing off here now.
I want to mention that Brandon is Steve's son and Steve is a friend I have known since the 80's. Blaster is my own son, and with the Official Spouse joining this run is a family-heavy affair and it is a blast. If you get a chance to play with your kids as they grow up it is incredibly rewarding.
So with a 5-person party of first level characters roaming around the village of Saltmarsh, nostalgia feelings active, they head off to that same Haunted House I did with my friends back in 1981, right?
No.
I made the mistake of mentioning that outside of town there were actually two main areas of interest. The haunted house is one but there is also ... the Tower of Zenopus! Yes, they put that reference in the 5E version! Did they put the dungeon in it? No! Of course not! Did the greedy wizard immediately focus on "definite wizard's tower" over "possibly haunted house" and push the party to go that way? Yes, yes he did.
Insert DM scramble here. The blog's namesake tower is the intro dungeon from the Holmes Basic Set circa 1977. It was the first dungeon I ever saw, ever read, and ever ran for some very uncertain friends around 1980. I pulled up a 5th edition version of it that I found a while back - because I couldn't find the one I did myself years ago - and started describing stone steps down into darkness ...
Side track - if you think it's tricky to tell people what D&D is about now you should envision what it was like then when there were no video or computer games to use as references, fantasy movies were mostly terrible, and the concept of an RPG was so unknown we hadn't even had the satanic panic yet. it was tricky to say the least.
So, drowning in more nostalgia feelings than I had expected I started describing the sights and sounds as our brave heroes formed up a marching order, cast some light spells, and descended into the dungeon.
The short version is "they went right" and ended up in the ghoul room where "Two fanged and clawed humanoids are lurking...". This is where the group discovers that Sir Kentor (the paladin) has a -1 Dex modifier as he pulls off a mighty "zero" for his initiative. Despite this the group manages to take down the ghouls in just a couple of rounds with no one being paralyzed. The warlock is figuring out that a) eldritch blast is a pretty handy thing in a fight and b) a pseudodragon familiar (she's pact of the chain) with unlimited range for seeing and hearing through it is a damn handy thing everywhere else.
Ghouls are a tough first encounter for a new party but there were only two of them and the party is strong with ranged attacks. Paladin-Fighter-Fighty Cleric is a strong front line and a Wizard-Warlock backfield means they can do some damage at range. I was just glad we didn't immediately get into a multiple party member paralysis situation.
The party finds a long dirt tunnel leading out of the room and the familiar gets sent off down the thing first until it finds a group of people in a room chanting around an idol. That draws the rest of the PC's in and despite being offered a chance to join in the ritual our heroes choose violence when the Paladin throws a hammer at the lead cultist as he finishes his invitation. This goes poorly for the cultists and they are soon relieved of their lives and their nice shiny silver masks. The quick assessment is that this was a group of Orcus cultists (given the statue) trying to animate another ghoul (given the dead body laying at it's feet) and they probably did a good thing here. The cleric and paladin rebury the body and then we all move along.
This is a new section added as an optional piece by this version. It's a good addition as it adds a little more to the goings-on both in the dungeon and potentially to the town. Orcus cultists in the big graveyard outside of town? Sounds like trouble!
Heading south the group moves into a smaller room and finds 3 skeletons leaning against the walls. apparently they are angry skeletons because they animate and attack! This is another short, though bloodier, fight as the party takes down the undead but the cleric takes a rusty sword to the gut (a critical) and goes down as well. Now the party gets a quick refresh on how death saves work and the cleric lives though it's a little tricky for him as he is the only one with healing magic - the paladin used his lay on hands earlier after taking some damage in the ghoul fight.
This is normally an empty room but I wanted to keep things lively so I'm dropping wandering monster entries into these for now. The cleric only had 10 hit points so he couldn't do much about that hit. That's just how it goes at low levels sometimes - one hit can drop you.
This is an important lesson re-learned. Our heroes decide to pull back to the village to regroup and get the cleric back into shape. They end up with roughly 150 gold each after some wheeling and dealing with the local silversmith and retire to the inn to review the day's events.
The next room they enter is full of piles of trash and they quickly spot multiple giant rats who look to charge as they enter the room but ranged attacks cut down many of them and Sir Kentor manages to kill one with an opportunity attack thanks to one of his talents when it tries to bite the fighter instead of him.
The party is getting more organized here as they wiped out most of the rats at range and then finished them off in melee on round 2. Strategies are starting to form.
Kicking down another door we find a seemingly empty room until someone looks up - and sees a couple of giant spiders hanging on the ceiling. The party does manage to get the drop on them and kill one quickly which is fortunate as the other starts shooing web across the room trying to entangle the fighters. It's not enough and soon the fight is over.
This could have been a dangerous fight but the spiders did not have great luck and there were not enough of them to offset some bad rolls.
Our heroes press on and find a long hallway with a couple of door options. Opening one reveals a round room with stairs going up... and the biggest snake they've ever seen lounging on those stairs. It notices them and raises its head but otherwise does not move. They decide it's time to head on back and recruit some help before they try to fight or sneak past this thing and so the second expedition ends with a rapid withdrawal to the surface and then to the village.
There was some dissension here between "oh we can take 'im" and "we're doing well so let's not screw it up at the end of the night." They chose caution and made it out OK. Once we worked through things these 4 had gained enough XP to make 2nd level.
Some initial thoughts on the game:
- I see people talking like ToV has power creep over 5E and it might but it's not because of stat inflation. Sure, you get more points but you lose the racial stat bonuses so you can end up slightly lower as the points do not make up for sticking another +1 or +2 on top of a 16. Having to buy those at full cost keeps the ability scores down more than you might think.
- The index for ToV is not great. Look under H for healing - nothing. Look under P for potions - nothing. Look under C for cure - nothing. Look under S for skills - nothing. That's just a few seemingly obvious things from the first session. It's not crippling but it is inconvenient.
- My guys are a well-oiled machine when it comes to playing D&D. They know what they are doing at this point even with some new rules. It snaps back into place for me too hanging the initiative trackers on the new screen, knocking off hit points, watching for conditions ... it's a lot of fun and flows really easily.
- Luck is looking like a pretty decent mechanic as it was earned and used for various things all during this session. My players love it.
- The updated version of the tower is good - you can find it here.
So there's our first run done - the next one is this weekend so more to come!
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