How Running the Big Game Went - Part 2
We ran a two-table Shadowdark one-shot for sixteen player characters!
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Introduction
This week’s post is part 2 of walking through the big Shadowdark game a couple weeks ago. To review the prep and initial organizational thoughts, see part 1 here. We will pickup here where we left off last week following our adventurers into the depths of the Buried Chapterhouse of the Assassin looking for Skiptro, the Bludgeon of the Maikari in order to hopefully meet back up with the second group and use it in a ritual to revive the Witch-Queen of Mikros.
We rejoin our adventurers as they enter area (5) the alchemical library and experimentation rooms.
The Game at the Table
I put these rooms here to be a defining flavor of this mini-dungeon. The entire area is an abandoned wizard’s alchemical hideaway taken over by an assassin’s guild, so I figured if the players found this place, they might try to use the equipment and books to make something - and they went for it. One of the wizards decided to try and create some vials of acid so I had her roll a DC 12 INT check, if she had failed by more than 5 points, I was going to have her roll on this fun table I had prepared:
I had also put this workshop and these options here incase the party found the assassin’s pet basilisk in this dungeon and needed to cure petrification - but they didn’t go that way :P
The wizard succeeded and now the party had two throwable vials of acid to throw at something. There was a library of books which I used to allow the players to ask any alchemy related questions they might want answers to in context of the story. I also used their time in these chambers to give them a treasure table roll since they were looking around, they found some gold and a potion of healing.
The party had some debate as to where to go next, they knew they needed to find Skiptro, but they hadn’t yet interacted with any creatures looking for information. After finding the staircase in the northeastern corner of the map, they decided to double back and see what was going on in the room with the arguing voices behind closed doors in area (4). And Area 4 was the meeting room of the beastmen assassin’s guild of the Iron Spider who was currently loudly discussing the ongoing situation with Duke’s men who were stationed there to make sure the guild kept their end of the bargain in keeping the treasure secure.
There was light coming from the meeting room, as the Duke’s men needed light to see, though the beastmen thieves (a spider-person combination) didn’t. The party got the drop on the two groups and turned the scene into a bloodbath. Arrows, spears, magic missile came in a volley through the door and then the fighter and one of the more ambitious thieves charged whomever in the room survived the initial onslaught. After two rounds of combat there was but one Duke’s man still alive that threw his hands up and pled for mercy and to be let free…The players considered it as they interrogated him for information, discovering there was someone named Grecko in a cage upstairs (10), and that Skiptro, the Bludgeon of the Maikari was not too far away in the northwest corner of the map (7). Two of the party’s thieves dispatched of the Duke’s man with coordinated dagger strikes.
I poked the players about their killing of someone who had surrendered, which had the intended effect of getting the table talking about the situation. One of the players (correctly) pointed out that I probably would have had them come back and be a problem later if they’d let him go. I do love seeing new players perform their first war crimes ;P
I do love seeing new players perform their first war crimes ;P
Now at least they had a general idea of where to find their target magic item. After some debate amongst the group, checking their torch timer, they moved to the northwest. Following some of the advice they’d been given they did NOT split the party and they let one two of the thieves scout ahead looking for traps.
They found the door to room seven which was locked, but they made quick work of that. The door opened to a simple stone room with a pedestal in the center of it holding up the item they’d been sent to find. The long mace Skiptro was just sitting there waiting to be grabbed, but the players were immediately weary as they should have been. The room was rigged, as soon as they took the mace off the pedestal, the door would slam shut and anyone in the room would have to come up with a way to solve the ceiling slowly lowering to smash them to a pulp.
They didn’t even step in the room and instead started with the door frame. Clever. They found where the stone slab was intended to slam into place and replace the door, locking them in the room. The close-proximity staircase became their goal, if something was falling into place from above, there must be more to look at above…As part of my original design there was not access to all the innerworkings of the trap in the room above (shown north of 11 on the map), but this clever reasoning I had to reward. When they got up there they could clearly see the room contained both the stone slab to cutoff egress from the room AND the stone block that acted as the ceiling of room (7) that had an opening in the shape of the pedestal that was open all the way down to the treasure.
Gears, pulleys, rope, counter-weights were all visible as operating setup of the trapped room.
One of the players tied off above the opening in the center of the room and lowered themselves down into it. Easy peasy, they grabbed the long mace and were pulled back up with it - this triggered the trap but it didn’t matter. The stone slab slammed down into place and the massive room-sized block started lowering. The party disabled it.
They had the mace, they could head back to Mikros at any time now.
I took a peak at the other table, they were in the heat of battle, but my counterpart GM said they also had gotten their target treasure and could go back - but they were pressing their luck. Excellent! both tables were at about the same point where they could head back. We made it so if either table decided to back, we’d clock the other and let them know it was time to go.
By the time I got back to my table, the party was ready to move on, but they wanted to see what was up with Grecko in the cage (10).
There were, of course, many other rooms and things they could have found and discovered - the Iron Spider himself for one which I fully expected them to go looking for but apparently Grecko was more interesting. :P
The party made their way from the area north of (11) east and found Grecko sitting in a large simple cage wrought from silver. Even my brand new players were expounding about this guy obviously being a werewolf. He had long nails, elongated facial features, and spoke with one of my crappiest most exaggerated new york accents. His clothes were cut and torn in multiple places, but he seemed unharmed. Grecko didnt’ trust the PCs and the PCs were heavily considering leaving Grecko to rot.
One of the party decided to try to befriend Grecko, who was very much interested in getting out of the cage and getting back at the Duke’s men, who were responsible for him being in the cage, but he would not inform the party that he was in fact a Wererat. The party’s imagination started to run a little bit, but Grecko just kept talking about how he was hard to kill and this intrigued some of the party to see if he could be an asset. A chest was in the room with a bloodied magic sword in it that apparently had been used to test how much damage they could do to Grecko - being a wererat he could only take damage from magical sources…more reason for him to hate the Duke’s men and the Asssasin’s guild who currently had him captive.
The thieves got to work opening the cage, but I told them it was soft metal so if they failed twice the lock would be unusable and broken. I didn’t tell them that if Grecko touched the silver it would burn him, but they assumed that much anyway. They managed to free Grecko and he agreed to go with them to hunt down and kill Duke’s men, which means he was now coming with the PCs to the final battle.
Both tables were heading back to the city of Mikros within about 10 minutes of each other. The parties were met by the NPC wizards that would teleport them into the throne room where the Witch-Queen was still held in stasis waiting for the PCs to come complete the ritual of rejuvenation on her and set her free so she might unleash her wrath upon the Duke!
There was much more that could have been found in this dungeon, and it really isn’t even that big, but I am very happy with how well stocked it felt from the DM chair. I’ve been running games for years and I don’t know that I’ve run an adventure of my own making that felt so good to run.
To Be Continued...
We’re going to do one more take on this. There will be a part 3 that will consist of the conclusion of the game, including the ritual to revive the witch queen and the diminishing pools mechanic used therein. I will also review in retrospect what I thought worked best and what GM mindset, tips, and tricks I used that felt to be the most useful in running this larger game. Till then…
What do you think? Comment below!
Thanks for reading! Till next time!
Thanks for Reading!
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Sounds like things are going well. Looking to see the conclusion.