Sessio XV – If you play your cards right...

I’m playing this session without an AI Dungeon Master. I developed a system for procedurally generating a dungeon using a standard deck of cards. This is a test of that system. The rules will be provided below the summary.

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Once the party realized that Fr. Malachi was carrying a pouch of the cursed coins, they paid for the curse to be permanently removed. It cost them 500gp (everything Fr. Malachi managed to sell his old hammer for) to cleanse the 200gp, but it was worthwhile to make sure that Fr. Malachi suffered no ongoing ill-effects and the coins would not ever find their way into circulation.

They sat with Lorenzo, who had managed to look over the ledgers Fiona had smuggled out of the basement. With them, he was able to determine how many coins had made their way into circulation in the past several months. He was also able to get a rough estimate of how many coins the abbot still had at the abbey.

It was obvious that the mission to distribute the masks had to be put on hold. “This is much more urgent…and dangerous,” said Lorenzo.

He then told them they were going to have come up with a plan to stop the abbot and destroy the coins still in the abbey. They would also need to find the coins that were already in circulation.

While they had yet to form a plan to deal with the abbot and the coins at the abbey, it didn’t take long for Fiona’s underworld contacts to allow the party to figure out where a stash of coins already smuggled into the city were located. Destroying them wouldn’t take care of all the coins in circulation, but it certainly would prevent more from being disbursed anytime soon. The stash was hidden in an underground warren of tunnels maintained by the Red Scarf.

There was no time to waste, and the party chose to strike that very night!

Immediately upon entering the tunnels, the party set off a trap. An explosion caught them all, and the blast alerted a wave of overgrown rodents, followed by a second. Godefroid’s pendant of fire resistance helped him a bit in the blast. The entire party got chewed up pretty badly but did manage to eventually kill all the rodents. They each decided to drink a healing potion before proceeding.

Fiona spotted a trap in the very next room, helping the party avoid it. Unfortunately, she missed the trap in the next room after that, and Godefroid was only slightly injured.

Much to the party’s relief, the next room held only 16 copper pieces. Nobody even bothered to pick them up. The room beyond that contained evidence of dark Red Scarf rituals. Beyond that were only three more giant rats. Godefroid gave one a terrible slash, and Fr. Malachi dispatched one outright. Fiona used her backstab attack to kill the third, and Avicellus finished off the one Godefroid had wounded. In this room were shackles built into the walls, one set of which still contained a corpse partially consumed by the rodents.

A few more coppers strewn on the floor of the next chamber did not give any indication that the next room housed three Red Scarf mercenaries. These were more disciplined than the typical thug associated with the outfit. The first two attacked Godefroid and Fr. Malachi, missing, but the third did not miss Avicellus, wounding him badly. Fiona, for the time being, was unnoticed in her elven cloak.

Godefroid swung and missed, but Fr. Malachi connected with the second one. Fiona attempted a backstab but missed, and Avicellus let loose with magic missiles, serving some pain back to the Red Scarf that hit him. The Red Scarves attacked again, managing only to wound Fiona. Fr. Malachi landed a blow, but he was the only one that managed it that round. The Red Scarves struck again, and Fr. Malachi managed to kill one. The fight went back and forth some more, and eventually all the Red Scarves were felled. Fiona found seven silver pieces, and she decided to keep those.

The party had been extremely unlucky so far. Rather than turn back, Fr. Malachi tried to heal the party as much as he could with skills and spells. Godefroid also used his healing skill, and the party still needed another healing potion each (two for Fr. Malachi).

The next room contained three more giant rodents, which were quickly dispatched. This was their most lucrative cache yet!  Aside from 2000gp (not cursed), they also found a potion of healing and a wand of fear. Beyond that, Fiona found 9 more silver pieces.

The next room, however, contained an immense fire demon, obviously summoned to protect something important.

Avicellus unleashed a cold attack from his staff of cold. This had a doubly-damaging effect on the fire beast. Fiona managed a successful backstab, and Fr. Malachi and Godefroid each landed successful blows.

Barely alive, the creature lashed out with five attacks and a spell. It landed two successful attacks and sent the spell after Avicellus. Godefroid and Fr. Malachi were badly wounded. Godefroid, Fr. Malachi, and Fiona all missed their next attacks, but Avicellus sent a barrage of magic missiles at the creature, finishing it off before it could attack again.

Not wanting to turn back after coming so far, the party finished off almost all its remaining health potions.

In the following room, the party was horrified to find themselves face to face with seven Red Scarves, but, lo and behold, they seemed to be counting out the cursed coins into sacks for distribution!

The fight was on!

Godefroid and Fr. Malachi landed the first blows, while Avicellus let loose with a fireball, fortunately catching all seven Red Scarves while avoiding his allies on the edges of the group.

Battered and bloody, Fr. Malachi cast remove curse on the coins after the sacks had been emptied and one large pile was made. Fiona gave a sad whimper as they watched the coins themselves dissolve with the curse.

The party backtracked through the dungeon, double checking the few branching rooms they had bypassed, finding only a trap (which was successfully avoided, and two more rooms containing 2700 gp, 800 sp, six gems, a potion of invisibility, a dagger +1,  a scroll of protection from undead, and two very fancy pieces of expensive jewelry. Some of the items were sold off to purchase more healing potions.

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Assessment: Overall, the dungeon system seems to work fairly well. I may find that it needs tweaking in the future, but I think this was a successful test. The party got beat up really badly, and had it not been for Avicellus’s two major area of effect spells, this might have been a TPK, but that was mostly because they got really unlucky with rolls early on.

Here are the rules for running this sort of dungeon: https://workdrive.zoho.com/file/gykj3466b638ae4ff4469a0f49f60a1171010

and what the layout looked like at the end: