GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Session 173 (Part II), Felltower 123 - Dungeons & Dwarves

After we finished the resolution of the previous session, we went ahead and played a delve with the B-Team.

Date: 10/2/2022

Weather: Cool, cloudy.

Characters:
Ambassador Durinn Horthrun, dwarf cleric (250 points)
Belmak Battlebeard, dwarf barbarian (250 points)
Desmond MacDougall, human wizard (265 points)
Kaylee Blackwall, half-elf knight (250 points)

The delvers met in town, meeting recent newcomer Belmak Battlebeard - an enourmous (SM +1) dwarf barbarian. Unable to find any volunteers, they set off just the four of them after gathering some rumors.

The PCs headed down the main entrance and then off to the left, and moved into the "apartment area" and then into the big hall with burn marks. They looked for the trap door in the floor their map indicated, which they'd broken before.

It was sealed off, with Shape Earth. They found the right spot (not the one on their inaccurate map) and spent a bunch of time using Shape Earth and Lend Energy to eventually dig a 10' plug of stone out. They ended up fighting 3 wandering stirges (and killed them easily), and then had to toss one to a lurking giant centipede.

They climbed down only to find the rubble blocking the way to the altar is there, and worked stone. They tried another direction, and the same. So they went back up, went down the stairs, and found their way through the long-abandonded lizard man temple. They used Destroy Water to get past the stuck doors.

They made it to the altar and each touched it, carrying 30 sp each time, hoping it would turn to gold. No luck. All of them got substantial but temporary bonuses.

They used a few Seek Earth spells to locate silver (a short distance ahead, past some walls and doors) and gold (back the way they came.)

They walked ahead to a junk-filled room and looked for secret doors their map indicates are here. They couldn't find them, nor any loot.

They went to a rubble-filled hallway and started to dig a tunnel with Shape Earth. It took a lot of time and energy, as they had to eventually get through almost 30' of rock.

They went into a room with bits of broken stone and the remains of a dozen or so humanoids. The room indicated "bricked stone bird room" on their map. They found a small knife and a pouch with some silver and copper coins amidst the long-decomposed corpses.

On the way back, they tried to go through the mold corridor, but they could see floating spores and bailed on that, and reversed their path.

They headed back to the gold. It turned out to be a single coin, along with five silver coins, in the middle of a black handprint on a floor in a room they'd past. Desmond used Apportation to get the gold coin. He then used Levitation to go get the silver coins . . . but as he reached to the floor it disappeared, revealing blackness below.

He pulled back.

They tossed in a lightstone and it winked out. They tossed in a holy lightstone and it winked out. The floor reappeared in roughly 10 seconds. It disappeared whent they threw another lightstone, which winked out.

They tried a torch on a rope. That worked - they could briefly see in, and saw a slimy mass with bits of bone, eyeballs, etc. floating in it. It made a big PFFFFT noise and smashed the torch, but not before they could see the pit was around 30' diameter, and there was bits of loot at the bottom.

Desmond summoned a water elemental, and convinced it to attack the thing in the pit. They sent it in. It went in, the floor disappeared, and it fell in. They heard PFFFFT and SSSSSS and splashing until the floor appeared. Then they heard nothing.

They torch trick again revealed the slime, no elemental, and then the floor reappeared and cut off the rope.

They decided to toss in an explosive missile (I can't recall which) but after triggering the floor and tossing it in, it disappeared silently as it entered the pit.

They decided to head home with their almost non-existant loot.

Notes:

- That pit with the slime has been sitting there for 11 years, now.

- The inaccurate map of the PCs haunts them very often, as they search for things they aren't there, search in the wrong place for things that are, and get lost when there are doors where they don't have them and vice-versa, or taking a hard route instead of an easy open one because their map doesn't show the easy, open one as easy or open. They really need to update it, but it can't be done on the fly in the VTT.

- Having to figure out what the closest supply of X from every given point in the dungeon sucks.

- So does people figuring out the volume of stone and distance it needs to move over time. I made Felltower a really hard place to do this, but it still happens as people want to brute force through. Yeah, I caused some of this with the orcs blocking areas, but how else were they supposed to deal with adventurers coming in and killing their guards and raiding their quarters, just keep letting people walk in or block off the areas they don't need to get to? Still sucks to deal with.

- Going to the Black Library came up but was shot down because taking Ambassador Durinn would probably result in the library being destroyed by him. It's an ongoing issue - it's essentially off-limits as the clerics all want to go there and destroy the place, and the wizards want to exploit it, and no one has the tools to exploit it (fluent reading in Elder Tongue) since no one wants to loot but but rather exploit it in place. Getting all of those together - no cleric, wizard with Elder Tongue, and time to sit and read (if that's even reasonable) - hasn't been done in any game session since it was first reached.

- Blind GM Rolls in Foundry are excellent. I have people roll their own Perception rolls and Seek spells and I just see the results. I don't need to secretly roll. Love this.

- Everyone got 10 sp. XP for loot and exploration was 0 xp, MVP was Desmond.