A while back my kids group, the Dragon Slayers, completed an adventure I was calling "Return to the Palace of the Silver Princess". I used elements of both the "Orange" and "Green" versions (sounds like something I might have bought in Northern Ireland), the Tome of Horrors books and a bunch of other materials. I turned it from a low level dungeon crawl to a high-mid level campaign.
But I am not here to talk about my mad DMing skillz.
I want to talk about my players, my boys.
They got to the kitchen area, which is on the second level. They had been through the first level and fought goblins, giant rats, and mutant kobolds all as warm ups. The second level was where Arik's magic was in greater force and there were a couple of beholders floating around and some dwarves that had been turned into orcs and a giant prehistoric were creature that had elements of both bear and wolf (Aliegha*). The Ubues were up next. Like many of the creatures I increased their HD and attacks. Either I multiplied their levels by 3 (which is what I did here) or added 10 levels.
The kitchen was of course home of the Ubues, and home to the art that got the Orange (or Loyalist, wait wrong orange again) version turned into a collector's item.
The boys rationalized that the Ubues, being all weird looking but living in the evil glow, were not really evil, but mutated innocent humans.
So instead of killing them they put them all to sleep (usign one of the sleep spells from my d20 Witch book). They then moved them all to a room and Locked the door with a spell.
Now I could have played this by the book and kept them evil monsters. I didn't, I like their idea so much I decided it was the truth. In fact each Ubue was in fact three servants merged into one creature and that had driven them a little mad. Also by the book rules would have also said they did not get an experience points for this "encounter" I gave them full XP. I decided that since they did in fact defeat them and caused them not to be a threat anymore then they deserved full XP.
I am pleased with what the boys did and glad they were less bloodthirsty than others.
*Coming back to this, they did kill Aliegha. In the Orange version she was a werebear and in the Green she was a werewolf. Since I had already had the dwarves (orange) mutating into orcs (green), I had Aliegha mutating into were creature that was somewhere between bear and wolf. I had just finished reading "
Frostbiten" by Kelley Armstrong and I had been curious about the prehistoric
Amphicyonidae (Bear-dog) since a trip to the Natural History Museum and seeing one on TV. I figure she was changing into some creature that was the ancestor of the "modern" werewolf and werebears. They did kill her, but now I kinda wish she had gotten away. She would have made an interesting character.
