Session Report: Even More Newbies Tackle Tomb of the Serpent Kings

It's college season, and that means one thing - legions of new students desperately trying to (a) hook up and (b) play D&D. Guess which column I'm in.

Turns out, there was already infrastructure here, with a Facebook page and discord set up specifically for D&D. Now all that was left was to convince people, mostly composed of 5e players and some who had never played at all, to join in on the OSR. In the end, it took little convincing, and only a bit of explaining.

Our victims cast:

Chance (Weasel-ling Thief)
Andria (Human Fighter)
Bruce Wayne, gives his name only as 'The Batman' (Bat-ling Barbarian)
Gale Velta (Magpie-ling Wizard)
Oberlin (Magpie-ling Thief)
Loki (Elven Fighter)
Sir Lorius (Hound-ling Knight)
Bronn, Loki's hireling (light infantry/archer)

Whoops, what's that image doing here?

The Session

We generated characters the day before, except for Andria, whose character I quickly drew up and supplied since she was short on time. The players spent a long time on deciding on their extra equipment, and the session started about an hour after scheduled. They spent even longer at the entrance, painstakingly deciding on march order. The group orientation started to show itself, with the wizard throwing caution to the wind, walking in and being grappled by the party. This pattern would repeat itself.

Entering the first corridor, the party examined the statue in the first room, which was already broken, and noted the corrosion on the inside. Exploring the other rooms, Gale removed the silver ring from the sorcerer statue with a cantrip, breaking it and releasing poison gas. Despite being outside he room, the party panicked. Good times. Sir Lorius decided to destroy another with the pommel of his blade... and got a faceful of acid. The party destroyed the last one with a sling, and collected the contents.

Faced with the barred door, the party experimented a bit and held down the pegs. They decided that was too boring, and hacked through the bottom of the door with an axe, leaving the bar in place.

Now in the false tomb, Gale the wizard went off towards the statue of Typhon. After determining that its was not hollow, was made of stone, and would probably not be destroyed by a 1MD magic missile, he elected to hit it with his cane. The rest of the party carefully opened the left-most sarcophagus, and found the skeleton. In a near-perfect repeat of the last time I ran this dungeon, Chance decided he wanted the skeleton's fangs. On trying to remove one, the skeleton animated and attempted to grapple him, and failed. As the party rolled initiative, the thief decided he really wanted the tooth, and critically failed on a roll to remove it.

Cue a fast-paced battle in which the party's wholesale lack of blunt weapons repeatedly messed them up. Nevertheless, Andria got a critical hit, with which she cleaved the skeleton from crown to pelvis, Oberlin smashed in the skull of one with his tool hammer, and Bronn got a solid shot through the skull of the third. It should be noted that the wizard spent the entire fight banging on the statue with his cane in the other room.

(This fight resulted in two quite funny moments. When first asking Andria's player what her Defence was, she answered 'sword'. As a result of some out of out of character chatter, Sir Lorius got into a lock with a skeleton, and though it had no real voice, he swore he heard it say 'Buenos Dias Fuckboy.')

Immediately after the fight, the bulk of the party took a short rest, while Gale and Chance headed down the secret passage under the statue. As the minutes wound down, the Tension Pool (Introduced to my players as the DANGER POOL) triggered. I had forgotten to make an occurrence list or Ladder in my earlier rush, but an unguarded comment by my players gave me inspiration. The hammer trap, long disused and now weakened triggered of its own accord. None of the players were injured, but the screams of fear were their own reward.

Cue the bulk of the party mistaking their compatriots for enemies with The Batman's echolocation, and other shenanigans.

The party was remarkably paranoid about the misaligned statue, with only the Chance and Gale deciding to enter. Not trusting the wizard, Loki sent Bronn to accompany them with orders to incapacitate the wizard for any shenanigans or if he touched anything dangerous. The statue swung closed behind them, trapping them in the secret room. In reality, this was Oberlin, played by Loki's brother, trapping them inside (though he did later unlock it). They proceeded to raid the secret room, taking time to destroy every piece of furniture (even more dice added to the DANGER POOL), plunder the icon and take the polearms. Surprisingly, none of this prompted Bronn to tackle the wizard. If not for external prompting, they may not have even attempted to try opening the door again.

The party explored the octagonal room. They examined the northern door beyond which they heard scrabbling, but decided against clearing the rubble. Instead they examined the ornate door (the carvings of snakes falling from the sky triggered a brief panic regarding the roof) and opened it, Seeing the stairs leading down, they decided instead to reunite with the others and examine the pool. One character (I believe The Batman) stepped up, examining it from a safe distance. At that point, Gale decided to throw a rock into the pool while Sir Lorius was adjacent. Bronn tackled him to the ground, the rock flew, and was subsequently blocked by the rest of the party doing bodyguard jumps.

As the party gathered around the wizard, Sir Lorius took the polearm and used it to plumb the pool before the rest of the party could react. Cue two mummy hands jumping out of the pool, with one seizing Sir Lorius by the throat, provoking a Death and Dismemberment (the REAL D&D!) roll from the previously injured knight. Cue a comedy of errors in which the hand is pried off by Loki, then strangles Loki, then is pried off by The Batman and somehow manages to dodge multiple attacks while being grappled.

Loki, fresh after being strangled, tells Bronn to let the wizard use a spell. He elects to use a cantrip to turn the hand bright pink. Oberlin was the MVP, killing both hands with max damage rolls from his dagger. One concussed knight, arrested wizard and a few demands for preemptive weregild later, the session ends.

Takeaways

A seven-person game was a whole different beast from the five-player TotSK I ran in the summer, and on another planet from the three-person game I'm used to. I showed. The table was often very chaotic, and the fact that the players were relative strangers led to a lot of talking over and argument. Some solid direction and house-keeping kept it moving along, but I can't help but think such a large party may not be the best introduction for a brand new player.

I ran it without the caution and trepidation of past sessions, let the monsters be deadly and let the dice fall where they may. Even with the much larger party, this resulted in one close call and one D&D roll. Even so, I'm scaling up the rest of the dungeon to size.

I have much more sympathy for killer-DMs after this. The cries of terror, the look of fear on the players' faces. Yes. This is what I was made for.

As always, checking in with the players after the session is important, for specific feedback and to gauge continued interest.