Okay, so a group of players got together to do some dungeon crawling. Most of these guys and girls aren't that used to actual OSR stuff, but come from a more modern era of roleplaying games, where it takes a huge amount of time to create a character. One guy already had his character made; Gregor the Cleric, from the Shadowbrook Manor episode. Well the village of Talb... Tolb... whatever just got its name changed to Chelmfordshire and some caravan guards just entered The Grotesque Cousin lookin' for some help about some merchant family getting attacked.
Let me introduce the new characters:
Fenriz
Human
Cha 6, Con 16, Dex 15, Int 18, Str 10, Wis 12
Dinah Mantorande
Human Fighter
Cha 10, Con 14, Dex 11, Int 13, Str 13, Wis 11
Being the kindly souls that they are, and Terry and Phil (the caravan guards) also mentioning something about a chest full of gold, they decide that they should probably see if there's something they can do about it all.
They get there, notice that the dead caravan guards had much better armour than they themselves and immediately strip them of their armour. Totally not unhinged at all. They find the obvious track of the moktar attack, and follow it to the dungeon/lair. Fenriz immediately falls into the pit trap, and seconds later gets a visit from a fairly confused wolf that he proceeds to drown, but only after Gregor jumps down to help him. Dinah suddenly comes to think about the fact that nobody brought a rope, immediately goes "you guys hang tight, I'll fetch some rope. Be right back!" and before anyone can reply she's off. So Gregor and Fenriz have to sit in that disgusting, star wars-esque trash pit for two hours and some (the Moktars come by and look for their wolf, but they're all too sick to make an effort and they figure it's run off or something, they never check the pit itself). Dinah returns and helps the guys up. They dispatch of the lone guard, then kill the 6 moktars in the guard room (I actually switched that and the common room around), barely. Retreat to the Kennel room and hole up for the night -- Terry and Phil have been more than useless up to now, so they're put on guard duty.
Next day they clear out the rest of the dungeon -- most everyone is almost dead or actually dead from the sick stone, but Fenriz finds the map. Dinah realizes what the stone actually is, and drops it into the refuse pit. I had the chest moved from the crab spider room to the Chieftain's room because I felt like it, and when they find it and see that it's full of gold they immediately go "splitting it three-ways is much better than five-ways..." Commence operation murder caravan guards. Phil bolts, but forgets about the pit trap and gets caught in it. Fenriz kills him from above (with bow and arrows).
They find metal plate, when Fenriz finds the small switch and flips it to "up" position. Dinah and Gregor nearly dies, but nobody gets squished. Fenriz actually thinks twice and pads the floor with dirty rags and stuff, so that they don't take damage when he puts the switch to "down" position. They debate for a while, then quickly checks the spider crab room, but decide that fuck it, it's not worth risking our lives for. Drop steel pyramid, get the hell out of there. Fenriz volunteers in fetching the sick stone, because he don't want the others to know how Phil died.
They get to the Gatehouse, waltz around for a bit and Fenriz finds the pit/cage trap (above room... 17?) -- I go with the "traps only go off on a 1 on 1d6" for some stuff, because they're only three and I can be kind at times -- nearly dies, again. But they have a rope with them, so they haul him up. They draft the automatons in room 5 and force them to lead them to the Sergeant, after having shown them the golden wings pins. They muck about a bit and take the money in room... 31?
They've expanded on the Sergeant's squad with some lesser automatons that they forced into service (because otherwise: violence), and have gotten many of the rooms mapped out by the Sergeant's guys... It's always a good idea to act like you're actually the guy running things around there. They haven't found room 14 and 15, nor the secret corridor, and they've yet to visit 29, 24 and 25. They flip the lever opening/activating the ASE, as a final gesture.
Hoping to find awesome laser weapons that the Sergeant said might exist in the lower levels (he actually didn't say anything like that, but they thought he did and I didn't feel like correcting them) they go downstairs into Level 1. They find the letter in room 1, found the corridor of bones (and opted to NOT enter it), then found room 4 but didn't trip any traps, before they decide that maybe later.
They quit the place and go back to Chelmfordshire to get some kegs of gunpowder because the Abomination sounds like something they can't deal with. So they get to Chelmfordshire, noting the searchlights and all that jazz (since it's just an hour or so since they opened it, nothing much have had time to happen yet), buy a new horse for their wagon (which they bought earlier) and off to Denethix. They sell some of their phat lewtz, and return to Chelmfordshire the day after-ish, drunk as fuck on their wagon (they rented a coachman in Denethix), only to find that the inn has become super popular (because you know, something's afoot in Mount Rendon and adventurers might wanna check that out), but for some sexual favours from Fenriz the innkeeper might let them have their old rooms back.
When they wake up, with the hangover from hell, the first thing the cleric says is "Fuck! We forgot the gunpowder!" and that's where we ended today's session.
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A few thoughts: might move from LotFP to LL; not a huge difference but I feel that I might you know? Gonna check to see what they take for printing it at the local print shop. LotFP rules are still very fast to create characters, and combat is fluid enough. Not very good at integrating other races into the game, although there were some "this cave [the moktar one] must have been made by dwarves." (with the response "fucking dwarves, always ruining something") and other shit going around. Gonna have to work on that. Need a name list so I can just grab a name for an NPC, because I fucking suck at coming up with names on the spot. I'm not amazing at describing combat either, but on the plus side Dinah's player is so much better at it and revels in providing gory details. I feel comfortable leaving it as it is -- that is, players describe their shit if they want to, or I give them a generic battle-ish description -- but I definitely want to improve on that. NPCs in Gatehouse could have acted better, but they were super lucky with encounter rolls. Group will need to learn to check for traps better than they do, but pit traps made sure they remembered to do so for a while afterwards and that's good enuf for me. Their searches are also not really that descriptive, but I'm fine with that for now -- it'll come in time.
Next time we'll hopefully also have a completely new player with us, and Mother Russia might also join and I think that's a pretty good line-up: 2 fighters, a cleric and a thief, with one slot for newbie and whatever she wants to play.
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