We had a smaller group again, as work and family obligations kept a few people away. This was a more ‘role-playing heavy’ session — although really I’m terrible about giving opportunities for role-playing; maybe it would be more accurate to say it was planning and reconnaissance-heavy session. Even so, I’m finding these sessions with smaller parties a lot of fun, as they are less hectic to DM and I can enjoy listening to the player’s discussions. I would not want to lose any of players permanently but a small group makes for a nice change. In the previous campaign there were a couple of sessions with just two players and even those were more fun than I expected, because a smaller group seems to get more cautious and spend more time planning, talking to NPCs, etc. Still I like big groups too — the jokes always come fast and furious, the party as a whole is more ‘resilient’ in that I can down multiple PCs without having a TPK, and more personalities at the table can lead to more interesting interactions.
The players decided to start going after the statues of ‘ye heroes of olde,’ and remembered a rumor about some dude called ‘Master Argos’ who was sending minions out to collect statues. They tracked down a shopkeeper they’d asked before but fumbled on the password, and this time decided to ask again, each PC offering a different password until they got it right. In the event, their first guess was good enough and soon they were arranging a deal (claiming to have a statue to sell) and trailing the merchant (who led them to the old Citadel of Chaos, a tower that was mostly sealed off from the town in an abandoned block).
It’s always very entertaining when Matt and Ken do reconnaissance, and this time was no exception. Part of it is all the ribbing and abuse they get from Tom and John, which sort of raises the stakes (and the pressure) not to fail by some combination of bad choices and bad luck. The resignation on Ken & Matt’s faces as they set out always crack me up.
Anyway this time they managed to do a pretty good job of trailing the merchant without attracting attention, and were happy to report back to the party on how well things went. Tom wondered why one did not stay back to see if the merchant *left* the citadel.
But they lucked out, and managed to ambush and kidnap the merchant on his return trip, which led to the first torture-free interrogation ever to happen in Telengard!
The party then began debating plans about what to do next. Everything from frontal assault to disguising one or more characters as a statue were considered, and the final plan was to disguise the assassin as the merchant, pretend to have more statues to sell, and make it up as they went along from there.
The disguise fooled everyone, and things were going pretty well until the dwarf saw an opportunity to get close to Master Argos (who was surrounded by minions in plate armor) and all hell broke loose. The party came within about two rounds of a TPK (well, the assassin might have made it away) but in the end they carried the day by sheer grit. A rolling combat filled the second half of the session as the party defeated the boss and his main force, then fought the reinforcements (skeletons in full plate and some drunken berserkers), and finally waded through two lower levels of dungeon below the citadel. They did not have time to thoroughly explore or loot the citadel, but did find some prisoners to free and made off with a few scrolls and pair of magic boots. Next session no doubt they will finish exploring the upper levels of the citadel and perhaps recover the two statues believed to be there.
Tagged: DMing, session report, Telengard
