The Dragonslayers (my kids' 3.x game) ventured into the classic module White Plume Mountain. I changed the set up a bit, they have been hired by one of my more infamous NPCs, Crazy Omar, to recover Whelm, which he claims is owned by his family. He tells them of Wave and Blackrazor and that representatives of their owners (which of course are already dead now).
I spent a couple days cutting out and taping the the White Plume Mountain Dungeon tiles I reviewed a while back, and the boys loved them! They liked being able to see the doors and being able to write on the maps themselves. BTW i figured if I printed the map out and connected all the tiles they would be about 7 feet by 5 feet.
Astute readers will recognize Fire and Ice back there as well (they are quasi NPCs in this game). Our minis are an eclectic lot of D&D minis, Heroclix, Darksword, and Heroscape. More astute OSR players will recognize this as room 10.
My sons' ranger/arcane archer found the deeper pool and they made short work of Sea Hag and her pet, even with me boosting the Hag using some of my new rules on the witch (all hags in my game can take levels in Witch).
We had to cut short the adventure, diner was ready, but we will be getting back to it very soon. I think my youngest wants Blackrazor, my oldest, who plays the Dragonborn Paladin, wants nothing to do with it.
I am dropping some of the Cthulhu-ish ideas I had earlier in favor of running it "straight", but there is something I just can't pass up. A totally throw-away by Erol Otis I am sure, but the picture has always intrigued me.
My boys after all are the "Dargonslayers" and Dragotha has to be one of the most powerful dracolich around. I figure he is a ancient (1,000+ years) red dragon lich. I'll have him breath "black fire". Give the boys something to really remember. Maybe even put Kerapis on top of him, a lich of course. Make them both pretty difficult to beat.
Spoke too soon! I found this online, http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4pr/20081105a. Sweet. And given that he is in 4th Edition, I might let him escape to plague the characters when we move over to 4e. Plus, his stats are pretty much custom made for my son Liam! Red dragon, dracolich, breaths cold blue necrotic fire, I am a bit surprised he never pointed this dragon out to me before in fact. He does own all the Draconomicons.
To fit it into themythology of the game, Dragotha was once the red dragon consort of Tiamat. Like all her consorts though he did something to offend the great Queen of Dragons and she killed him. Of course Dragotha and Kerapis had already struck up a deal. Kerapis, already a lich himself, turned the great dragon into a demi-lich and has been in Kerapis' service ever since. If the players kill Kerapis first then Dragotha is free and he will use that freedom to lay waste to Kerapis' lair; ignoring the characters (till another time!). The Dragonslayers only need his tooth to complete their own ritual to create a portal to Tiamat's lair.
This will be fun!
I love those dungeon tiles. I'll remember to grab a set of those if I ever run that module in the future.
ReplyDeleteThis was the first module I ever payed for myself (versus getting them as gifts from my parents for holidays). I have very fond memories of it.
ReplyDeleteCoincidentally I'm running a group through the next module in the "S" series, S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, which you can read about over on my blog:
http://daddyrolleda1.blogspot.com/2011/02/old-school-ad-game-characters.html
Awesome. And yes I had noticed that. I was wondering if my group of kids could go through that one or is it one of the modules that is very much part of it's time.
ReplyDeleteMy boys have lived on a steady diet of Star Wars, Star Trek and all sorts of otehr sci-fi that a crashed spaceship in D&D might not have the same sense of wonder.
Now if it were a crashed spell jamming ship...
Oh man, I dig the minis and terrain. Very cool.
ReplyDelete