Dungeoncrawling for Dummies, By Dummies - brought to you by D&D === Well we played D&D again, this time taking

about two hours to help a new player, James2, who played with myself and Rob in Warhammer, roll up a dwarven barbaria n. He's not terribly learned in role-playing etiquette (or patience or strategy) as can be seen, and is a couple of years older than I. Note: This adventure (as well as the first) is part of the Temple of Elemental E vil so may contain spoilers So there we were, the three elven sisters and the dwarven paladin, taking invent ory of the dungeon we had recently captured. On one of my forays into daylight t o make sure no more groups of bandits were around, a vaguely familiar figure cou ld be seen waddling directly toward us. Finally he approached and I couldn't bel ieve it. Noe, an old acquaintance from my own dwarven hometown - a wild-eyed, un predictable barbarian with more nervous ticks than strands of hair (which was on ly three - they were long but he still only had three). He told us he had been l ead to us by the barbarian gods of adventure - yeesh, thanks a lot, gods. After some discussion, we agreed he could stay a while and we'd see how things worked out, though from my own experience with him in the past, it was lucky he hadn't gotten himself killed yet. So we packed up our tons of booty we had forced the bandit army to leave, over 5 0 spears, suits of armor, swords, shields (we kept about 10 of each weapon and a rmor so we could outfit a small militia if need be) - it was quite a haul and bo th warhorses even complained a bit under the immense weight, as we made our way to the nearby trading post and its unscrupulous proprieter, who owned a number o f other buildings in the town of Hommlet. He gave us about 1/2 to 1/3 of what ev erything was worth but charged double or more for anything we bought, but we had little choice, as there were no other towns or merchants in the area (ie, this module). We decided to go to Nulb, since everyone in Hommlet was terrified of it and no one would even talk about it. The merchant had some pack horses, which w e figured we could use to carry any more treasure we got and would be more cost efficient to leave tied up outside a dungeon, if bandits or a monster came along , rather than losing warhorses, so we bought two pack horses, at 60 gold each, g ot 20 minutes outside of town, and they stopped, refusing to move. We went next to the Temple of Tyr (which had no available healing potions) to ha ve a priest there identify a shield that we had found, which we knew was magic. 200 gold poorer, it was written down as "Shield +1". I was instructed to mark th e entirety of this temple's inhabitants down, right under the trading post owner , as people that we would be back to kill mercilessly when we were of a sufficie nt level. We were kidding... probably. The only person with Ride and Animal Handling, our dwarven barbarian colleague, was, unfortunately, near insane and had total disregard for his own manners and hygiene and had a -2 CHA modifier, and so failed his Animal Handling roll. His s olution of course was to go around behind the horses and kick on in the butt, si nce thats the standard practice... One successful DM hit roll later for 4 points of damage from a horse's kick and the barbarian again tried Animal Handling and finally succeeded - it went this way for about 8 hours until we got to the ruin ed and crumbling town of Nulb, which my dwarven paladin detected evil in - I was almost knocked over with the sheer aura of malevolence in what seemed like ever y single person, from the beggers to the merchants. There were no obvious guards , officials or any obvious authority structure. Not a good sign. We finally decided to go to the tavern and our sorceress actually managed to get some info about the Temple of Elemental Evil, which turned out to only be about an hour to the northwest. We rented rooms and the elven rogue and the dwarven b

arbarian and the elven cleric went to check out the horses in Nulb's stables and I am thankful I was not involved in what happened next. "So," the barbarian said as he leaned close to the weaponsmith/stablemaster, "Wh at you're going to do is hand over three of your horses to us quietly and no tri cks... or you're going down." The rogue, who had been instructed to hide in the back of the stables and "get ready", stared, open-mouthed, as she realized what was about to take place. A few deft glints of steel later, the barbarian warrior was pierced and slashed and awash in blood, but made one attempt, his last eart hly act, to strike the 10th level retired ranger/smith/stablemaster, and missed. "Graaaaaghhhh...." the barbarian trailed off weakly and hit the ground with a v ery final thump, as the rogue shook her head and slipped quietly away, followed by the cleric who backed away, stunned, and finally turned and ran back to the h ostel. The smith sighed, stripped the barbarian of his chainmail and greatax and hung them up on the wall as a warning to other thieves, and simply rolled the b ody off into a ditch inside the stables and covered it in hay, and returned to h is work indifferently. The barbarian's player leaned back in satisfaction and said, "FINALLY! Some acti on! God, I thought we were NEVER going to do anything! I can go get the pizza no w." We all shook our heads, absolutely at a loss for words, after he left. I adm it, it does take a long time for this group to do anything, especially consideri ng this is a dungeon crawl, and Warhammer did go a lot quicker, but to me, this "must have action NOW" mindset was just baffling. The DM shoulders a lot of blam e for the excessively drawn out adherence to the module and requiring the player s to check out EVERY 10 foot section, instead of lumping an area together and ba sically giving us one or two particular events or encounters and cutting to the chase, which would improve both time and activity - the original James bears som e responsibility, as he is overly analytical, rulebook lawyers the DM out of som e actions, or will spend time negotiating with the rest of us on a course of act ion, or will choose one and act disheartened if we don't agree, or alternately, will in a sort-of-mock deafeatist way, complain that he is always outvoted if so meone else makes a decision - we all have our share of blame, of course. We went back to our dungeon, left the worthless pack horses there (deciding we c ould eat them if need be, at least they'd serve a purpose) and got a warhorse to use as our loot wagon, presuming we survived the temple. We went back and campe d on the outskirts of Nulb and when we woke up in the morning (even though we to ok watches - I still don't understand how this happened), a scroll had been left in the middle of the camp, with a truly BAD pseudo-mystical poetic riddle on it - a LONG one too. Eugh. What nefarious and powerful entity would creep up on a sleeping band of good warriors and do something so insidious as to leave bad poe try in their midst - truly, evil was already afoot! So something about boxes and a key and a gold orb, yeah yeah ok, on to the temple. We went over the temple grounds; lots and lots of weeds and a few dead birds. We opened the door to an outlying tower... I took 9 arrows and crossbow bolts to t he chest - thank Moridin for plate mail. at least 25 archers, infantrymen and co mmanders were gathered all around the inside of the tower. Hmmm. In a not altoge ther unexpected response by now, the rogue started digging out flasks of oil. Th is time though, she cleverly threw them at the ceiling, while the rest of us thr ew them at the floor, and our sorcerer used Burning Hands to set the ceiling afl ame, which dropped down and did the same to the floor, while I took about 4 more shots to the chest, even feeling a couple this time. Moments later, the entire room was engulfed in flame and the screams of the burning soldiers told us it wo uld only be a short time before we could pursue the handful that disappeared int o a back room. There were two rooms, both with iron-bound chests in them, and one of the rooms had a trap door which the remaining commanders obviously escaped into. Here is w

here the next insane episode happened - I swear this night was just under the in fluence of a full moon or something. Foxglove, the rogue, went all over the first chest, looking for traps, picking t he lock on the chest and instructed everyone to back out of the room, in case so mething happened. For some unknown reason, her sister, the sorceress, refused, a nd insisted she stand right next to her when she opened the chest - I guess she didn't trust her. Fox remedied this by using surprise and knocking her sister ou t the door and locking it behind her, which of course made the sorceress livid, as she just KNEW the rogue was in there stealing everything that wasn't nailed d own. The rogue came out whistling and when asked what was in the chest, said "oh , a few gold pieces, nothing really". This was James trying to get his nephew to realize they were playing sisters and shouldn't be so untrusting, even if one is a rogue, and that role-playing is su pposed to be a team effort. This happened again with the next room and the cleri c (the other nephew) sided with his brother and were both upset when I was taken into the room with the rogue and we locked the door, leaving the other two outs ide. The rogue STILL gave me all the treasure out of both chests to put into our treasury, since I was keeping track of it, and we will split it between all the members, just like always, regardless of how paranoid the sorceress is. Anyway, the two youngins decided they'd just head off on their own if we "are go nna be stupid" and used a rope to tie our door to a torch bracket on the wall ou tside, locking us in. About 20 minutes later, they start pounding on the stone w all from the other side and yelling, but our characters can't hear any of it, so we check the door again and still can't get it open without breaking it, so we decide to camp and rest and shoot the breeze, yelling back "Heeelp, we can't get out! Someone has locked us in this room!" Meanwhile, dozens of giant rats pour into the hallway (wandering monster rolls each hour), forcing the sorceress and the cleric to barricade themselves in the other room. Hours and hours later, the sorceress has opened the door a few times and used Burning Hands to fry about 3 0 rats and sleep some more, some got in and the two kids had to fight them and t he cleric is now almost out of healing spells. Finally the rogue and I decide we 're ready to leave the room, and cut small holes in the door to see outside and fire arrows through the holes at the rats, eventually killing all the ones milli ng around. The rogue also sees the rope and cuts it easily, which frees us. The injured, exhausted sorceress and cleric come dragging out of their door around t he corner and find us leaning against the wall, knee deep in dead rats, without a scratch on us. Turns out, it was all just zany sibling antics and hijinx, says the sorceress to her sister rogue. "I trust you, of course. I apologize for doi ng what I did and not trusting you, I trust you from now on. I just want you to apologize for knocking me out of the room." The amount of sighs and "erghs" and hysterical laughter that the rest of us emit ted during this last session was more than I think I've ever heard in a session lasting only a few hours, but the sorceress player would keep saying he trusted his uncle, the rogue, then would insist she reveal all the items she had on her, and apologize. Then would say it was dropped. Then would bring it up again and becry "everyone is always against me". Any one pity party like that is usually e nough to end the game for the rest of us usually, but for some reason I guess WE were affected by whatever weird influence was in play that night, as we all per severed and continued play, even with the other players yelling and getting upse t. We finally fought a few rats and such but it was well into the early hours of th e morning, about 1AM, and really had accomplished little to no progress. Still, it was SOME progress, which was more than we had had, sadly. We got back to our dungeon, the moathouse, and found our worthless pack animals dead, not of diseas e, just poor health and age apparently. The two warhorses were fine, thankfully.

The trading post owner is quickly climbing to the top of the charts on our "to be dealt with later" list. === Back at the temple, we attempted to enter the front doors and found that some of us (who failed our saves vs magic) could not enter them, though they did not ra diate evil. Obviously, a crusading army of good, had, at an earlier time, laid w aste to the temple and tried to cleanse the evil from it, as we found more runes and protected doors which some of us were unable to enter, warding people away from the temple. We resourcefully entered a side door and explored the temple it self, which was huge and blashphemous, with blood basins, crystal knives and ugl y disease colored columns and such. We discovered the main altar at the far end of the temple, a throne sitting on alternative polished flagstones of red, green , brown and white, which corrosponded to a few intact robes we had found earlier in other rooms in the temple. After what seemed like 4 hours of trying on robes and standing on different colored stones around the throne, we decided the robe s had nothing to do with the stones, to which the DM laughed and replied, "Yep, that's right. Not a thing. I just wanted to see how long you all would do that." Stupid DM. You'd think HE would want the game to go a little quicker too. Next, outside, we went down a set of stairs in what we referred to as the "Lemon Building", an outlying building on the temple grounds that the DM drew on the m ap in what he claimed was a square shape but which was quite obviously a perfect lemon. It lead down into a cellar with a couple of chests with some vaguely val uable items and coinage, and contained a 3 foot passage into another lower level . The bald rogue, ever the brave soul, shimmied down the passage, since she was the lightest, with me anchoring her with a silk rope. A scream later and I yanke d her backward up and out of the hole as over a dozen giant rats poured into our room. A short time later, rats littering the floor, the sorceress volunteered t o enter the hole. Scream, yank, rats, kill. We did this about 4 times, having di spatched, according to the DM, 48 rats, until the passage and wherever it went w as apparently empty. Bravely, the rogue shimmied down the hole one more time and gave us the all clear. Yet ANOTHER chest containing a gem or two and some coins , as well as a few barrels of water and wine were all that could be found in thi s room. No secret doors, no other exits. I looked at the map the DM had started, and realized it was to take up the entir e piece of graph paper, and we had so far explored about 1/8 of it. It was at th is point that I again wondered aloud "who the HELL would spend this kind of time building dungeons like this?! And how can anything else survive down here with all the other things running around? And why were there 50 rats in a 20x20 room that had nothing but scraps of cloth and barrels of wine? Another room in and it was FULL of ghouls and the more intelligent undead, ghast s. Our cleric stepped up and turned a number of undead, yet more filed in from a back room, as the turned undead filed out. We fought our way into the room, the cleric turning every so often, until finally we had chased the remaining undead into a third room, just as the turning began to wear off. We waded in and laid waste to the aberrations, some of us taking serious damage, but finally vanquish ing them. In this room we also found a number of people chained up, all having s igns of having been bruised and injured. Happily, most of them were former men-a t-arms, plus a sailor, who had hit on the wrong barmaid back in Nulb, and been t aken here and given to ghouls by a powerful person - the others were people take n from rural areas near Nulb and some merchants and the like. A little negotiati on and the men-at-arms and sailor agreed to become our retinue back at the moath ouse. Further in, we found a hallway with jail cells on both sides. Three of the six r ooms were occupied by three bedraggled figures each huddled in groups, and made

no motion when we yelled at them and tried to get their attention, so we decided to leave them there until we had made sure the immediate area was safe. The las t room contained a bound and gagged gnome, who struggled and yelled behind his g ag as he saw us look in the door. I instructed the rogue to unlock the door and I strode in, ready for a trap, but there was none. We talked to the gnome a mome nt to make sure he was not obviously a miscreant or some such, but he replied he was an adventurer out for loot. I asked him, "You actually went into the dungeo ns beneath the temple of evil, by yourself?!". He looked at me and said, "Well, obviously I wasn't as good as I thought I was, but yeah." We freed him and gave him a shortsword we had picked up earlier and at some point, after hearing his t ales of previous adventures, we realized he would make a terrific addition to ou r party, so he was cut in for a share of the coins we found, but not any items, unless we gave them to him. We went on and the gnome, whose name was something like Willowillam, which was t oo hard to remember so we called him Steve, identified the torture chamber, and told us the torturer and his bugbear assistant was in there. With little ceremon y, the rogue picked the lock, raised her crossbow and planted a bolt in the tort urer's back, after which the surprised and wounded torturer turned as I charged in and opened up his chest with my longsword. As he collapsed, his bugbear assis tant was getting his wits about him but took a crossbow bolt and an arrow from t he sorceress and cleric in the doorway, and then was dropped by the gnome, who o bviously had a score to settle. No questions asked, no quarter, we just wiped th ese two out, with no compunction. My Paladin truly felt alive at that point, hav ing done in two malevolent beings undoubtedly responsible for great amounts of s uffering. Checking out the room, we found an exhausted and injured man on the ra ck, whom we healed, and two women who had not yet been tortured, as well as two manacled orcs. We freed the man on the rack (another man at arms) and the women and gave them clothing and food and water (which the gnome and other men-at-arms involved themselves in, since we had forgotten to do that), and then myself and the cleric healed everyone. The rest of the party debated what to do with the m anacled orcs, who of course promised to be the best and most loyal members of th e party. I flatly refused to allow the orcs to go with us and said there were on ly two things that would happen before we left this chamber - we would kill the orcs outright or we would leave them manacled here, to die - there was no compro mise and no exception. Wanting cannond fodder and living shields, the other part y members tried to sway me but my honor and hatred for evil was a stone wall and we continued on, leaving the orcs growling pitifully from their eventual tomb. As we emerged from the dungeons, a crossbow bolt screamed out of the darkness an d plunged into one of the women's chest, killing her instantly - the assassin wa s obviously aiming for any of us but she was unlucky enough to take the hit. We all dived back behind the ruins of the temple as our rogue scanned the area, but found nothing. Finally we resumed our trek, more wary. Knowing we needed to get these people back to their families, we left the temple . Back at Hommlet, I and the sorceress decided we'd accompany the two women back to their rural homes outside of town while everyone else took the others back t o town. A few miles out, *THUNK!!!* A poison crossbow bolt took me to half my hi tpoints in one shot, a critical hit, though luckily my sturdy dwarven constituti on saved against the full effects of the poison. We dove off to the sides of the road and the sorceress managed to spot where the attacker, 50 yards off, was fi ring from, and retured bowfire and finally I was able to do the same, but even w ith a high roll, missed. Knowing we couldn't run or stay here forever, I did the only thing I could and charged the position at full speed, which, with plate ar mor, was a lousy 40 feet per round. The sorceress, surprisingly did the same, in a desperation effort and we saw the assassin far off, whose entire form was sha dowy and hard to see, drop something, then pick it back up and almost become inv isible. We could tell, however, that he was running away from us, his position h aving been made. We took this opportunity to grab the two women, one being dead,

and run back to town. We now find out that overnight, literally, Hommlet, which we had been told had only a few buildings, was a bustling metropolist filled wi th merchants, jewellers, crafters, smiths, artisans and more - the DM had appare ntly missed an entire section in the module describing Hommlet. We all groaned b ut were thankful it was now a more fleshed out town. In Hommlet, the sorceress and I recovered from our ordeal, with the cleric heali ng me. In the morning, complimentary breakfast was delivered to our room, as was usual for this nice inn, and all but the sorceress and the gnome ate, then went downstairs. About an hour later, I and everyone else was outside trying to puke up whatever poison the food had been laced with, the save roll being astronomic ally high, meaning the poison was lethally potent. Happily, the rest of our part y got us to the temple of Tyr, who managed to purify the poison in our systems, and we of course heaped money on them and I gave them a suitable Paladin pledge to perform a service for them for their kindness. We searched low and high for h ow this happened and it turns out a new deliveryboy had delivered something to t he kitchen that morning. We tracked down the real deliveryboy who said someone g ave him 5 gold to let him do the delivery - we circulated the description around town later and only the trading post owner knew it offhand. I promised the deli veryboy 5 gold for any useful information he would hear in the future, and we'll see how that goes. We hired 20 laborers and resupplied, so we could start fixing up the moathouse a nd dungeons to have a sturdy, stable base of operations out of which we could op erate. We were told this would likely eliminate the chance that our moathouse wo uld remain fairly unknown, if everyone in town is talking about the band of adve nturers who were fixing up a giant moathouse in the woods, and we simply welcome d the idea, since we could use more workers. We decided to brick up "Antarctica" because we had checked it out again and found that the ghouls had disappeared a nd there was a gaping open tunnel that lead off into thousands of unmappable war rens. Not good. Back in town, we visited the trading post owner, whose name was on an assassin l ist we had found, and spooked him so badly that he closed up shop. We took up wa tch outside his building and saw a rider, presumably from Nulb, deliver a note u nder the door of the post, and ride back out. My Paladin ability told me the rid er was evil, but we don't know what the note said yet. Probably a threat because of his crappy prices - made me want to slip my own note under the door. On our way back to the moathouse, we noticed we were being followed. The rogue h ung back while we went on, drawing our pursuer, who was apparently not very stea lthy. The rogue leaped out of her hiding place and swung at the thief whom we ha d almost hired at the beginning of the game, but he dodged and ran away, outdist ancing even the elven rogue, who shrugged and took him down from a distance with a bow, since he didn't want to do it the easy way. We took the presumed thief, bleeding and injured, back to the moathouse, blindfolded, and interrogated him. He was just following us around looking for gold. While true, I detected a tinge of evil and so didn't like him. After much debate and interrogation, it was dec ided he would be our new point man in the dungeons. While he attempted to talk u s into giving him shares and an equal shake, I bluntly told him he and I would b e tied together and he would do what we said or I myself would rid the world of one more evil soul. If he wasn't interested in this generous offer, I'd cut out the dungeon trek and end his time now. Wisely, he agreed that adventuring would be fun. While that sounds like an interesting little side note, this episode of him following us and us finally leaving the moathouse after deciding what to do with him took over 6 hours. You can see how the game drags here and there. Back in the catacombs beneath the temple of elemental evil, I tried out my new y o-yo, and slung the thief forward and around corners and into rooms, and pulled him back. Sadly, he always came back safe, so I cuffed him on the back of the he

ad every now and then just to keep things in perspective for him. Finally we had him check for traps on a door, and when he gave us the all clear, told him to o pen it, which he apparently was unable to. I decided we'd stand him directly in front of the door as bait and I'd fling the door open and we'd all use bowfire o n whatever was in there. Well, we did this but the room was empty, but we could hear noises coming from another door in that room. We overturned tables for cove r and prepared to rain arrows into the other room. I had the thief open the door and jump aside. Unfortunately, the DM's vicious hatred of our earlier reliance on oil now came back (as we knew it would, since he told us he would break us of using oil), as a roomfull of gnolls readied flaming oil. I was able to act quic kly enough to shut the door, but the next round, someone on their side opened it and in came the flaming oil, coating most of the party and the tables. Myself, the gnome and the thief were the only ones out of range - the cleric began casti ng Create Water and dropped a downpour of 8 gallons of water to douse everyone clever. James at this point alternated between rules lawyering and subtly warning the DM that the gnolls were going to easily win this fight, as he lost 24 points of hi s 28 hit points from the initial splash, and there were at least a dozen gnolls in the other room. To all of our surprise, the thief leapt into the room, unarme d, and pounced on a gnoll, followed by the gnome who zipped past me. Not about t o be outdone, and also sensing this was perhaps the DM's urging of the only way we'd stand a chance, my Paladin also charged into the fray, laying about him wit h his longsword, felling gnolls with each hit. James' rogue tumbled into the roo m with an incredible 27 armor class, and all the way through the room to the bac k where a surprised hobgoblin commander was trying to keep his troops together. A brief melee, puncuated with a few opportune arrows and spells from the sorcere ss and cleric, and we had devastated the roomfull of gnolls, and began looting t heir corpses and gathering up what weapons and armor they had in this room, and headed back to the moathouse, which we really need to name. Thus ends our story for this update.