A choice was made... An easy choice, but they made it.
The following is a campaign journal where I, the referee, lead my friends in a game of Lamentations of the Flame Princess. For all of us, this is our first venture down the Old School Renaissance style of tabletop roleplaying. Enjoy!
(SPOILERS for Tomb of the Serpent Kings by Skerples)
EPISODE 4: Fall of the Immortal Headsquisher
The party consists of:
Jarvey: a specialist who is really good at knowing when a door has a devastating hammer behind it. Level 1
McDoogle: a fighter who forgot how to hit opponents. Level 1
Sister Cage: a cleric who prays when everyone is dying. Level 1
Harold "Hal" Fling: a halfling who thinks he's a piece of fish bait. Level 1
Zanzibar the Magician: a magic user. Didn't participate this session. Level 1
Jarvey, McDoogle, Cage, Hal
The party scoots down the precarious ledge and finds another door with a stone bar locking it, and they ain't havin' none of that. They debate opening the door as Sister Cage suggests that going south and avoiding the "trapped door" is the real trap and a scene similar to the iocane powder part of The Princess Bride commences. Jarvey investigates the door, and Hal stands the hell away in case a hammer knocks back. Jarvey confirms there is a hammer trap, but they don't know how to remove the bar safely without triggering the trap. They consider using a terracotta statue to weigh the trap down or letting the basilisk turn someone to stone and use them as a weight.
They decide against any of this and proceed down a tunnel about 30 feet away. While in the tunnel, they find a 10 ft. by 10 ft. room that's actually a pit trap. Hal offers to let the party tie a rope around him as he scoots around the edge of the pit trap and sees what's in the hall on the other side DAMMIT it's goblins, but not typical fantasy green goblins. They're mashed potato skin pale doo-doo goblins. Fortunately Hal speaks goblin! He hears them mentioning "hungry" and "king." The party decides the goblins may want to make Hal a goblin king... or eat him. Cage tells Hal to offer them some of his rations, and Hal says, "Fuck no they look like an STD that came to life!"
I can poop my pants as a free action right?
Hal shoots at a goblin, but they flee. Hal then hears an ominous sloshing sound. Initiative is rolled as the off-screen, ominous sloshing noise causes the goblins to flee while Hal is separated from the group by the pit trap. Hal hides, waiting for enforcements from the party. The party enforces him by not crossing the pit as Sister Cage just prays to the Ancestor for help. The sloshing noise is a gelatinous, orange skeleton beast and it flees after the goblins. The goblins then flee past Hal and try crossing the pit, but two fall while shouting, "The immortal headsquisher is coming. Look out!" Hal sneaks back around in front of the goblins as they struggle across the pit. Jarvey shoots a scared goblin as it crosses. Cage draws her sword.
A goblin that was attacking nobody at all until Jarvey shot at them draws a long, dented, kitchen blade and shanks Jarvey's bitchass. He drops to 0 hit points. Another goblin that was also minding its own business until McDoogle tried to kill him and missed jabs McDoogle with a blade, and he drops to -2 hit points. Hal tries making a truce during the chaos. A goblin declines the truce since Jarvey killed one of them. Hal says that the immortal headsquisher will kill everyone if they can't put their differences aside, and that Jarvey is just stubborn because, according to Hal, "He has turnips in its ears!" The goblin doesn't understand the idiom and checks Jarvey's head for turnips, so Hal just shoots him, leaving only one scared goblin. Cage recommends luring the immortal headsquisher over the edge of the cavern like they did with the stone guardian. Sister Cage leaps over and drags Jarvey's unconscious body. The remaining goblin is almost head-squished by the immortal headsquisher, but she escapes. The goblin lady then runs down a hall and finds a locked door. Hal drags Mcdoogle's unconscious body outside the door near the ledge and throws his cloak over McDoogle to hide him. Cage does the same. The immortal headsquisher chases the goblin and misses again, so she flees. Cage puts soap on the cliff ledge and spreads water with her waterskin to try and make it slippery.
"Hello, may I have a moment to talk to you about our lord and savior, Squeez-us?"
The immortal headsquisher finally grabs the goblin and squishes her head, popping it like a tomato right in front of Cage and Hal. The immortal headsquisher then steps towards the adventurers, hands out for squishing, but it fails its Dexterity save on the cliff and slips on the soap, falling to its doom. Sister Cage and Hal realize that their unconscious friends need help, so they drag them out of the dungeon and flee back to town with Waffles the mule. Zanzibar looks up from his scrolls and follows them back to town
Loot Obtained: Two unconscious adventurers.
Materials and Supplements used:
Tomb of the Serpent Kings by Skerples
DonJon Fantasy Town Generator (for creating Narakib)
Vornheim (generating NPC's and town amenities)
Lamentations of the Flame Princess (main rule set)