The Dungeon Game: Weekends at Stonehell, session 14
The party start working on the last quarter of floor 1 and kill a whole lot of undead while getting caught off-guard by traps.
Party Members
- Tina the Titanic - Level 6 Fighter
- Telperion Desh - Level 6 Magician
- Vaco Adjacent - Level 5 Paladin
- Balthasar Finkelstein - Level 4 Paladin
- Sneaky Jan - Level 5 Thief
Followers
Zorrel "Captain Nasty" Gnast (Fighter 5), Tiny Tina (Cleric 6), Rutger (Robot 5), Brother Blue (Martial Artist 4) and Kurgan (War Dog 4)
Session Recap
Deciding to finish mapping the rest of floor 1 (and getting their sweet commission for doing so from Lord Krofax), the Crownless Company go bus down the doors to the north-eastern quarter of Stonehell. The part of the dungeon feels even more run down and abandoned, without even the shitty patchwork repairs of the kobolds to maintain it.
The next few hours are a mix of busting down doors, destroying zombies and skeletons and looting whatever they could find. The group do run into some curiosities though: a rusted statue of some chaotic godling. A cursed scroll hidden among the papers of said godling's worshipper, which temporarily rendered Telperion blind until Tiny Tina lifted the curse off him. A strange basalt obelisk that was clearly evil, but nobody could discern what it did. A haunted cremation furnace which spewed fire at the party. A strange room with black-blue flames dancing through the floor and walls, guarding a trapped chest. A strange bone-encrusted sword somehow being held by a statue of a demon. A giant pair of stone scales that weigh the soul of the person who sits on them.
Being as powerful as they were, the party had no real trouble dealing with all of it, eventually deciding it was time to call it and head back. However before they left, Telperion Desh decided to use his newly acquired Animate Dead spell and animate the skeletal remains of a giant snake, which he dubbed Slinky and brought back with him.
During the rest, Crownfall Keep, the party's headquarters on top of Stonehell added more facilities, with a cookhouse and a bunkhouse now offering slightly better food and lodging for the other adventuring parties that use the dungeon as well. Tiny Tina, after having saved both Telperion and her boss Tina the Titanic from their fates via her magic, ended up helping Telperion to file the extensive and mind-destroyingly long paperwork needed by the Church of Law to allow a reanimated undead to be considered lawful and not be destroyed.
Observations
The session was, indeed, mostly typical kicking down the door and killing shit kind of affair. The party are now so absurdly overpowered compare to the dangers present, that it really was just a breeze of a session! However I will say the NE quarter of stonehell definitely has a lot of fun stuff in it, and the only thing I added myself is that I simply had to include The Greatsword of Rhus in my own game, and this is where I put it.
The two real challenges faced was the cursed scroll which blinded Telperion (neutralized by a Remove Curse from Tiny Tina) and then Tina the Titanic triggering the poison trap on the chest and failing her save...which was then neutralized by Tiny Tina's Negate Poison spell, saving the party the hassle and money of having to pay for Tina's resurrection.
And in fact, with Tiny Tina now becoming level 6, she can in fact cast Raise Dead herself, meaning that the party now have repeatable resurrection as needed, though of course there are plenty of consequences to being brought back from the dead regardless of how easy it is to do.
Overall the session was fun, the players seemed to enjoy the rhythm of it and things worked out overall pretty well. The high level difference definitely makes the game be a lot looser as there's not as many enemies that can pose serious danger to level 4-6 PCs.
As the session it self does not have much worth really commenting on, I will instead use the rest of this post to talk about my quick and dirty domain system thing I set up. Tina the Titanic's player is may partner and someone who is very interested in the building up a base element of domain play. However, the name of the campaign is, as you can see above, The Dungeon Game and so I did not want to spend too much time dealing with that element of downtime.
So we came to a compromise with a simple and straightforward system. Crownfall Keep, the name for their base of operations in the valley above Stonehell, has a Domain Level, and to increase that level three distinct improvements have to be done to it, either in the form of buildings, personnel or other resources that make it...well, better. Once those happen, the domain levels up, which leads to several other things.
First off, the upkeep of the place is tied to its level. The bigger it is, the more money it needs to operate effectively. Plus the PCs upkeep is also rolled into it, as the party now basically reside there almost permanently, only going back to Zorb when necessary.
Secondly, the level of the keep dictates how many other adventuring parties go into the dungeon to delve it for riches during downtime. This is simulated through a 1d6+1 roll per level of the keep to generate the number of expeditions, then for each expedition I roll to see how well they do, and then how much treasure they get. Since the Crownless Company have an official charter to collect taxes in the name of Lord Krofax and the city of Zorb, this matters so I had to implement a quick system to handle it.
Thirdly, related to the above, the keep's level also dictates the level of the parties that go do those expeditions, with that being half the keep's level rounded down (so at levels 1 and 2, there are level 1 parties. At level 3&4 it's 2, etc) and those multiply whatever treasure they get by the party level.
This has worked quite well so far for multiple sessions, as it provides just enough structure so I don't have to just hand wave everything, while also keeping things simple so that I do not get overwhelmed tracking numerous elements of running a domain. Overall I think this can be adjusted easily for other types of domains as well, and I might eventually make a separate post going into detail about it.