Almost Total Party Kill at the Lizardman Temple

It's been a while since our face-to-face crew has gotten together.  We remedied that yesterday.  Our host +Dwayne Gillingham, is in the process of developing his own system and wanted to give it a test drive.  The adventuring party included me, +Rob Conley and +Daniel McEntee.  The system is not considered a class system because anyone can take abilities as they progress.  So you can go from taking warrior skills then jump to magic or cleric.  But at first level you pretty much are you you are.  I was a dwarven warrior, Rob played a human mage and Dan was a halfling rogue.

The adventure started with us signing indentured contracts for one year, and if we survived that year each of us would be granted 40 acres of land to forge our own in Darthmead Forest, located just south of the City-State of the Invincible Overlord.

Our first test was an ambush by a dozen kobolds.  We were protected a wagon full of women and children headed to Darthmead to work.  No you may or may not be surprised, but I was rolling like crap.  Couldn't hit water if I fell out of a boat kinda bad.  But we ended up defeating the kobolds.  However, it was not simple.  You think of kobolds them to be a fairly easy opponent, but they proved to be more challenging than we expected.  The new system proved to be deadly.

We arrived at Fang Tower, met with the Myrmidon of Set.  She assigned us our first mission after resting a couple of days.  The masons that were scouting the area for more stone have not returned.  We were assigned to find the masons and return them.

We scouted the creek, Dan found a secret path through magical briers.  When we navigated through the path we came upon this gorgeous looking set piece.  Let me set aside the game for a second.  In today's gaming when someone brings out a set piece like this the game stops and everyone has to take pictures.  I did.  Shared it on Google + and watch the +'s rack up.  Dwayne is one of those folks who can build Mordor out of egg cartons, paper machete and some glue.

Back to the game.  The setting is a lizardman temple, with the ruins of the elven temple scattered around it.  What you can't see is under the far bridge is a pool of blood.  We get into a battle with the lizardmen.  We do fairly well.  Dan almost killed the shaman with a single knife throw, but he escaped by diving into the pool of blood below.  We take out a few of the other lizardmen, I shattered the far bridge causing two other lizardmen to vanish into the blood.

After the battle we found one of the masons with his throat slit.  But there were four others.  We searched the temple and the only other access we found was a cavern beneath the pool of blood.  Being the foolhardy adventurers we were, we dove in.

We crept down a hallway where I set off an acid trap.  Figures.  Then we reach a doorway and see this fantastic set piece.

Some of us, may just some, will recognize the statue.  While Dwayne's sculpting skill may not rival Michelangelo, but I loved it.  So cool.  He really went all in for this adventure.

And this is the room where Dan and Rob died.  I ran.  We took on a bunch of lizardmen with spears, blowguns, the shaman and two demon lizardmen.  It was too much for our little group.  It was a lot of fun.  Playtesting the system and the beautiful set pieces.

After the game we spent time discussing what we thought worked, what needed tweaked or needed more explanation or included.  This is why I miss a weekly face-to-face game.  You get to feed off of each others energy and I much prefer rolling my 1's with real dice.