I ran a spontaneous online game last night via skype, inviting players I did not previously know for a 3-4 hour session. I planned to run a short delve using the maps from the Dungeon Delve book but with a different storyline. Because none of us knew each other before the game began, I am calling this a con-style game.
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Cast of Characters:
Grolsh, Dwarven Battlemind
Oren, Elven Monk
Jezah, 1/2 Elf Ardent
Valika, Elven Druid
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Background:
The party is under the employ of The Society of Arcanic Protectors, a little-known group of powerful people that seek to gather knowledge about the world in an effort to protect it from the threat of another Demon War. This group’s primary interest lies in gathering artifacts from around the world and placing them in protective custody.
Our party has been sent to investigate a strange incident at a mine in a small town to the north. As the party enters town they see a run-down place full of unemployed humans, a closed mine, and a ramshackle marketplace.
The party is told by the 16 year old human guard at the gate that they should seek Dirril (his father) if they want to know more about the mine. Grolsh and Val enter the tavern to search for Dirril as Oren and Jezah investigate the marketplace.
In Town:
The tavernkeep, who turns out to be Dirril, openly tells the party that Prot, the mine foreman, has closed the mining operation. This closure has pushed the town into a poverty state and most young men have left town to find work elsewhere, leaving old injured mine-workers and local farmers. He is very irritated at Prot because it seems the miners had found a large pocket of platinum ore and he had hoped the town would prosper. Instead, Prot closed the mine and the town has suffered since. He did admit that one man had died and two were seriously injured the week before closure.
As they are leaving they notice that the tavern has very fine quality tables and chairs and is very clean. In fact, this seems to be the cleanest place they have seen: the best lighting and in the best state of repair of any other building in town.
The group in the marketplace didn’t find anything of interest, other than poorly grown fruits and vegetables, and some old bushels of wheat. They decided to explore the temple instead. Inside the temple they find a vast house of worship devoted to the god of craftsmanship and metalwork. The walls of the temple are covered in silver – rather than tapestries hung along the walls showing great scenes and depicting parables, the pictures have been etched into the silver. The ceiling has a sistine-chapel-like motif but is made of stamped silver sheets, with contours making up the picture rather than paint. This place is also very clean and well-kept. They approach a priest snuffing candles near the back of the podium and speak to him.
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The priest begins in a polite manner, but as soon as the monk mentions that the party is investigating strange things at the mine, he becomes much less willing to talk openly to the party. In fact, he basically tells them that they should leave as they have no business butting in to the workings of the town. He starts asking them who they are and from whence they came, but refuses to divulge any information himself.
Meanwhile, Grolsh and Jezah have left the tavern and are looking around the marketplace when they see the barkeep rush across the road and enter the temple, furtively looking around to make sure no-one is watching him. They follow and sneak into the temple after him.
As he enters and rushes up to the priest, he notices the monk and druid standing near the priest. He turns to leave, but the priest tells him to enter without despair and motions for him to come up behind the podium. The group slowly exits the temple, straining to hear any conversation that may take place between the barkeep and priest, but they hear nothing. As soon as they are outside, they hear the door locks slide into place.
The Foreman:
The group decides this may be a dead-end and go to see if they can find the mine foreman, Prot. They do indeed find him, an old stocky man dressed in finery and writing in a book at his desk. He talks to them about the mine and they express an interest in purchasing it. At first he doesn’t believe them, but he eventually decides to arrange a tour so that they can see what they may be purchasing. He leaves the room, mentioning the need to get a tour-guide…
When he is out of the room, the party notices a flash of brown outside the window and as they look out they see the priest (in his friars robes) go by. Oren follows him and figures out that it isn’t the priest at all, but the barkeep dressed like the priest. He follows him to a large pile of rubble and sees him go into what is obviously the mine entrance. He decides to go back and tell the party what he has seen rather than enter the mines himself. (note: the player couldn’t decide, so he flipped a coin – this story would have had a very different ending if he had gotten heads and followed the man in friar’s robes!)
As Oren returned to Prot’s office, he finds that Prot is handing out hand-picks and offering to show the party where the mine entrance is located. “You can go on a self-guided tour!” He says, smiling large, “and you can spend one hour down there looking around and then come back up and make me an offer, if you still want to buy the place.” He leads them to the mine entrance and quickly departs.
The Mine:
As they are standing there looking at the mine entrance, they look at the hand-picks and notice that they are of little value as tools or weapons. They are rather shabby novelty reproductions with the words Prot Mining Co. stamped into the lead pick-heads. The put the picks away and get out their real weapons, inspecting the large piles of rock and mining debris.
The piles look like they have been strategically placed and “set-up” – the druid notices several sets of footprints, more-so than one might expect from a defunct mine-site. As Grolsh moves forward and attempts to move over a pile of rubble in front of him, a small javelin comes flying out of the northeast and hits him in the shoulder. As it hits, 6-8 small flat-faced little grey skinned creatures jump out from behind rock piles and get ready to throw their javelins at the rest of the party. These humanoids are known as Cave Jabbers, and they are nasty little big-nosed creatures that live a life of indentured servitude moving piles of rock for wealthy mine owners. Their hard life has made them vicious and they are ready to pounce on the party.
After the first round, the Cave Jabbers are joined by 3 dark dwarven miners who throw hammers and stab with short swords. The party makes relatively quick work of the Jabbers and Dwarves, but one of the latter escapes.
As they descend down the mine shaft they note that the sides are smooth, but there is a sheen of slime on the walls. None of them can think of what might make this sort of secretion, but they all seem to have opinions about it. They debate about whether it is a giant cave slug or a sentient cave snail – not coming to an agreeable conclusion on the matter.
As they enter the chamber at the bottom of the shaft, they note that the walls are glowing with a bluish slime and they proceed with caution. As they round the corner, the druid hears chanting and they notice that the blue glow is getting stronger. Around another short corner they see the barkeep in his friar’s outfit and they immediately charge into the room.
When they reach Dirril, they turn and see four human women in robes chanting along with him, performing some sort of seemingly vile ritual. The women are positioned to surround a large bluish silver creature. The creature has a large, toad-like mouth and huge bulbous eyes. It’s skin is stippled with warty outgrowths and covered in a thick slimy substance. As they run up and attack Dirril, the creature opens its eyes and stares directly at them.
The battle ensues and the party makes quick work of Dirril, knocking him out so they can question him later. The chanting women are more difficult to dispatch, but when the tide turns they try to escape, taking Dirril with them. Eventually the Toad-creature (a platinum slaad, they now know) speaks to them and tells them that they should stop invading his home and stealing his children. He is very upset that they are here now and tells them to leave. When 3 of them run off to chase Dirril, he seems to relax and doesn’t attack anymore.
As they are chasing after the women, Grolsh decides that he cannot let this ugly, stinky beast remain and attacks it. As the group is returning with the unconscious Dirril, they see Grolsh on the ground with the Slaad on top of him, with its mouth open and slime dripping down into his face. They make quick work of the Slaad (after some debate as to whether he deserves to get rescued, since it has stopped attacking them).
And this is where we left it… not bad for a spontaneous delve based on the maps from Dungeon Delve.
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This was an interesting experience for me. It was very fun and though it lasted much longer than I had originally intended, I think all the players had a good time. I’ve never played or DMed at a Con before, so this experience was completely new to me and I feel like it was a success. As a DM that is used to running long campaigns I am in the habit of sprinkling interesting tidbits throughout the story, ready to be expanded upon later if the group ever gets together again. This began as an idea to run a short delve directly out of the dungeon delve supplement, but I just couldn’t bring myself to run straight from the book, so I made up a whole new story as I went. Hope you enjoyed it! Drop me a comment and tell me what you think.
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I used the GameTable program to run this adventure. GameTable is a basic java-based application that can show maps and pogs to all players logged onto the same table. This is quite like a whiteboard in that anyone can draw on the board and all can see. I used pogs/tokens that come standard with the program, but imported the maps myself.
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Until next time, I wish you good gaming!
~DM Samuel
Well done! It sounds like this was a good session. Personally, I have always liked the Coppernight Hold scenario, and have used it as a testing ground for various things, as written.
Good work, and I’d love to be along for one of these in the future.
I found out about DM Samuel’s Malevolent Mines game yesterday, thanks to a retweet by Sarah Darkmagic. I hadn’t been following DM Samuel on Twitter (an oversight that has been corrected), but I read the BLOG occasionally, so I had a basic idea of who he is. I thought that using Twitter to advertise the game and solicit players was a great idea.
At that point, there were still a couple of spots open, and while I’d have loved to play, I was still pretty tired after recovering from food poisoning a day earlier, and my wife was home with a nasty cold, hoping to get to bed early. Because I didn’t know how long or loud the game would be, I sent off a request to observe, and DM Samuel accepted.
I was able to spend almost three hours listening to and watching the game from the sidelines, and I enjoyed doing so. Because none of the players or the DM knew each other beforehand, the game definitely had a convention game quality about it. By that, I mean that everyone came to play: Each individual gathered around the virtual game table was respectful of each other person present, and everyone was focused on moving the story forward.
DM Samuel did a great job, especially given how difficult it is to keep everyone involved when one can’t see their players’ faces and read their expressions. Likewise, I thought the players all contributed to a fun session, representing their characters well both during role-play and combat encounters.
I learned two things observing this game. First, I should have played, no matter how much it meant I’d have needed to drink coffee over Green Flash Brewing’s West Coast IPA. Second, I will absolutely use this method for putting together some spontaneous virtual games of my own in the future. While I’ve used virtual tabletop tools many times before, especially when a member of my regular face-to-face gaming group is out of town, I’ve never run or played in a purely virtual game. Well, I can tell you that’s about to change. It’s a perfect way to run a playtest, or a one-shot, or a pick-up game whenever the mood strikes.
@DM Samuel: Thanks for the opportunity to experience this type of play, and I congratulate you on a job well done, sir!
Thanks! I’m glad everyone enjoyed the session. Online gameplay has its issues, but I think it also has its place. I know several people that are unable to play in any face-to-face games for a variety of reasons (kids, illness, location, timing, etc.) and for the majority of them, playing online has been a great way to get their role-playing fix.
While I still prefer face-to-face games, playing online has grown on me to the point that I run a game every other week, play in one every other week, and then play in another one weekly! How did this happen? What can I say, I just love to game.
Cheers!
Excellent recap! I run games online for my own play group, and it’s great to hear about other people having good experiences with these tools. Gametable (technically called OSU-gt now) is a nifty little program, and it’s quick and easy to put together maps with it. I’ve migrated to MapTool now, but if you want a pick-up game I can see the appeal of Gametable instead.
Maybe I’ll have to join Twitter now, just to watch out for future games that you advertise! I’ve had lots of fun with in-person one-shot games, and I think trying one online would be a cool experience. If I get inspired, I may one day follow your example and try to do something similar!
Wouldn’t it be cool if a group of online dungeon masters got together for a rotating series of online one-shots? Say, once a month or something like that?
Good you had a good time, hope you guys resume the game later to see what all ends to ^^
I have NEVER been to a Con before, money & time just don’t allow for it. So I do not know what the feel of it is. I have to say that it was fun, though too long for me at that time of night. My original expectations were that we just were testing things and so I expected maybe three hours. Running until 4 (CT) in the morning for me was rough, and made it harder to play the next night at my friend’s house.
I was surprised by the camaraderie that seemed to develop and that so many of us had chosen psychic character classes.
The other thing that caught me off guard is that we split up the group and the story still seemed to work well, and that no one felt left out. The groups I play with in general make a real effort to keep everyone together so everyone can contribute to that one scene and the DM doesn’t have to keep track of two threads at once. You handled it very well though and I have a feeling that if all the characters were together they would have had a couple people watching the others handle things.
Hopefully I can join in on the action again, but it might be a while so I can recover.
-B. Lynn