Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Delving Deeper demo game ends with dragonslaying

     
     Tonight we finished the first Delving Deeper demo game, which was started back in August by the co-author Simon Bull as a play-by-post on the OD&D Discussion boards. Most of the party (including several replacements) perished, but three magic-users and an elven fighter survived and killed a young black dragon ([AC 4, HD 3+2, 12 hp]). My character, Mot the Magicien, was amazingly among the characters that survived. His luck with the dice (rolled by the DM) was extraordinary. During an early battle with kobolds he was attacked six times, each of which missed, and he made two attacks, each of which hit and killed a kobold, and he charmed another. During the finale, he hit the dragon with flaming oil and a thrown dagger, and made his saving throw against dragon breath, taking 2 hit points of damage (out of his total of 4). 

The game ended with a twist by the DM:

"Tirandir, Ædelwynn, and Mot can hardly believe their eyes as they eagerly talk of how they will divide the treasure up.

"Very well done indeed, chapsss," says Malaveque [a chaotic elven M-U], who was ever lurking in the shadows behind them.

The three heroes hear Malaveque's scroll unravel, and turn about just in time to see him uttering it while the dangerous Lizardman guards him.

Malaveque's sleep spell goes off and the players tumble immediately into a slumber to dream of fabulous treasures unjustly stolen from them!"


Tirandir, Ædelwynn, and Mot awake some hours later as the first light of dawn falls into the lair from the swampy gap in the ceiling above. All are cold, stiff and grumpy from sleeping awkwardly on the damp, broken cobbles overnight.

They immediately note that Malaveque and the Lizardman are gone. Along with the pick of the treasure!

All that remains to them is 2,000 cp, 23,000 sp, and 6,000 gp. No doubt the treacherous elf couldn't carry any more!

But at least you have your lives, and that is something to be thankful for!"


The remaining coin, however, is enough for each of us survivors to reach 2nd level.
And OOC we learned that the treacherous Malaveque was a later victim of his own greed:

"For your interest, the magic-user scroll from the dragon's hoard was cursed, and the cunning Malaveque was magically transported to an alternate (and rather unfriendly, we suppose!) plane of existence when he opened it."

By seeming coincidence, layout of the illustrated Delving Deeper booklets was also finished today, with links to download the pdfs being sent out to those who ordered the boxed set. 
For anyone interested, the unillustrated Delving Deeper rules can be downloaded for free from RPGnow or DriveThruRPG as a bundle of three pdfs.

2 comments:

  1. I am so looking forward to getting the boxed set. I hadn't planned to get Delving Deeper since I'm pretty happy with S&W Whitebox, but after I read through the free PDFs I was blown away. I'm now a Delving Deeper convert.

    I'm glad to hear that the layout is finished; I hope we'll be seeing the boxed sets soon.

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  2. Sean, that's great to hear. I'm waiting for the boxed set as well. The latest word (posted on OD&D forums) is that they will start printing them this week.

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