I'm starting my first in-person game in a while this summer, and I may need some help brainstorming for the first session, as it's been moved up to today on sort of short notice.

I'll probably be running 3.5, the players are all new to the game, and one person seems interested in the whole "spelunking" aspect of the dungeon crawl.

My ideas so far are as follows:

>Everyone needs money. I'll let them decide what they need it for, and use that as adventure hooks later.

>The game starts with someone hiring the party to go into the dungeon and pick up an artifact of some kind. Not yet sure what it's important for. The guy hiring the party intends to sell it to someone. This character will probably die in a trap or puzzle, but I'm not gonna force it or anything.

>The dungeon is a vault specifically made to protect the artifact, but it's meant to be accessed by the proper owner.

>There's a rival party at the front door. They're not interested in cooperating.

>There's a second (secret) way in. If they take it, I want it to be clear that they're taking a much easier way in, and that this may be the only reason they've managed to get so far. I may want to build the dungeon in such a way that they'll find the corpses of the rival party later too.

>The thing they're after may or may not be still in the dungeon. I might want the party to find out what it's for and whether to go after it or not at the end (and if they go after it, what to do with it). Not sure if I'm going to go with this idea or not.

I need more ideas to flesh this out. They may not be needed in the first session, but I want them in case I do need them.

Having the party start out poor and hired to find the McGuffin is a tried-and-true classic!

I like that you are providing options for the party to access and, possibly, obtain the McGuffin; i.e., no train ride to Railroad Town.

I really like the idea of a rival group of adventurers in the dungeon at the same time.  It could even be revealed that the Boss who hired the party hedged his bets and also hired the second party as well.  

The second party could even be composed of friends, acquaintances, or family members of the PC party to add some tension to the mix so it could go either way:  a friendly race competition, or a balls-to-the-wall deadly race with winner takes all.

Lastly, since the Vault was specifically built to house the McGuffin, I think that it should be stocked with non-standard monsters or guardians for the appropriate level; i.e., the McGuffin isn't guarded by kobolds if the PC party is 1st level.

Quote from: Drohem;546074Having the party start out poor and hired to find the McGuffin is a tried-and-true classic!

One of my favorites.

QuoteI like that you are providing options for the party to access and, possibly, obtain the McGuffin; i.e., no train ride to Railroad Town.

Yeah, it's definitely a balance with new players. You gotta provide some options, but also something specific to do.

QuoteI really like the idea of a rival group of adventurers in the dungeon at the same time.  It could even be revealed that the Boss who hired the party hedged his bets and also hired the second party as well.  

This one I probably wouldn't use, if only so that there's a choice between two buyers if they get the thing and don't want to keep it for some reason.

QuoteThe second party could even be composed of friends, acquaintances, or family members of the PC party to add some tension to the mix so it could go either way:  a friendly race competition, or a balls-to-the-wall deadly race with winner takes all.

I was thinking more of a confrontation at the door followed by lots of corpses next to (or inside of) half-solved puzzles and traps. Or no confrontation at the door and surprise corpses.

QuoteLastly, since the Vault was specifically built to house the McGuffin, I think that it should be stocked with non-standard monsters or guardians for the appropriate level; i.e., the McGuffin isn't guarded by kobolds if the PC party is 1st level.

Definitely. I intend for this crawl to be more about bypassing than engaging the main track. So no kid gloves on the main track.

Also, the sealed vault thing will probably limit monsters to constructs, undead, or summoned monsters.

I'm thinking of including a cross-shaped arrangement of halls, with gates on all sides. If the gates are opened from inside the hall, the hall will squeeze shut (not affecting the other hall). But if the gates are opened from outside the hall, the hall will remain open.

Two questions: If you knew this was how the halls in this intersection worked, how would you solve this puzzle? And how do I provide a hint that this is how such halls will work in this vault?

Okay, so I've built a decent dungeon around this. I added an extra hall between the cross and the entrance. The PCs' shortcut will take them past the first hall, but the one survivor of the first trap who got inside can tell them how the halls operate now. He stays put in fear after the torch-bearer was crushed to death.

Each room is linked to one of the rooms next to it, but not both. So the party will have to attempt a closing hall at least once. The "links" between chambers happen on the lower levels, with some secret doors, traps, locks, water (mostly to douse torches) and ghouls. All just getting some basic gameplay stuff in so everybody learns it.

I keep feeling like I'm missing something important. I mean, besides what the mac guffin is and why anyone should care. Last time, I had the thing unleash a curse when it was taken from its rightful place. The PCs tried to retrieve it, but it got destroyed when a hostage situation went bad. I don't necessarily want to replay the same game, so I'm looking for something a little different in the particulars. I'm sure it will come to me.

EDIT: I rolled the person taking them on this trip. Picked cleric so no one else would have to. Random character was a neutral evil woman with destruction and luck domains. I could maybe use this somehow. Who does a lawful evil cleric of destruction and luck work for? And what do they want with this macguffin?

Now for the recap.

Two of the three players who signed on showed up. We all sort of knew each other from the anime club at my college, but not necessarily well. One guy walked past us before coming back, and didn't recognize us, so that's possibly what happened to the third player.

Each of the players are of the "played once or twice" variety. One of them has only played under the playtest rules of DDN, but has read a lot of campaign stories online for some reason. I wonder how common that level of exposure is.

One of the players rolled up a human paladin with improved toughness and I can't remember the other feat. The one who had participated in the playtest rolled up a halfling ranger, more or less in line with what his Next character was (a halfling rogue). Gave him Alertness, max spot ranks, and a longbow. I ran the patron who hired them, an NPC cleric, as well as a first level rogue from the rival party (whom they befriended; we'll get into that later).

When it came to the "why do you need this gold?" question, I think they found that interesting. The halfling ranger went with being after revenge. He's trying to hunt some guy down or something and might have wanted to put out a bounty. The paladin immediately said he wanted to buy a town. I let him know that might be aiming a bit high for first level, but he's after land in any case and I've been looking for an excuse to buy ACKS, AER, or both, so we'll see how that goes.

We rolled gold according to the formulas under equipment. Last time I had rolled gold randomly was 3.0 so there was some flipping around for that. The players were kind of stingy. The paladin actually considered going without armor, and still ended up going with something less than he could afford. Looks like gold matters here, which is interesting. I think the rolling, the "you want gold" bit, and so on helped with that.

So the rogue and the paladin meet the cleric patron in a tavern. They discuss terms, there's some haggling, they try to figure out if they can ditch each other / the cleric, she lets them know she's a healer and the only one who knows the anonymous buyer, and so on. They are interrupted by a local trying to sell them a map to an alternate entrance. The players are looking for any excuse not to spend money already, and Brynn says that the local might skip town after selling them a fake map. So the party turns down the map to the second entrance, and decides to get going. I let them know it's late night. They go anyway.

When the party arrives at the main entrance to the dungeon, they find the rival party (lots of tents and a few awake people) scampering about in front of a dungeon that sealed itself off with the first few scouts on the inside. They go to talk to the rival party and found out about the situation (they also saw a limp hand sticking out of the door) and eventually manage to convince the leader, Jason (the level 1 rogue) to allow them to participate. Jason asks for some information about them that he can use in case he can't trust them, and they come up with a bit of backstory on the fly. The paladin lies here (one of a few cases of the paladin being less than paladin-ly this session, but I'll get to that later) about a family out of town, and I make a note of the town and family name (I'll probably turn the lie back on him later, if they visit that town). The ranger tells Jason about his quest for vengeance against the guy that killed his wife (so now I know a bit more about that). And somehow I forgot to have Brynn say anything. I'm not yet back to being used to the pace of gaming in person. It's been too damn long.

So they decide to look for an alternate entrance to the dungeon in the morning. They wake up, they do something like a police line (taking advantage of the large number of people they are now a part of) and after seven hours or so of looking, they find a deep hole in the ground. The paladin: "I jump into the hole!" I let him know he doesn't know how deep it is and he changes it to "I tie myself to a nearby rock or tree and jump into the hole!" I let him know he's dangling, he lets go of the rope, and he falls twenty feet into the pitch darkness and nearly dies. There's sobbing, he lights a torch, and he finds one of the first scouts that got trapped inside without a torch. Down the rope (and a second rope tied to the bottom so no one else falls) comes the rest of the party (the ranger, the cleric, and the rogue) and they send the guy who's been trapped in here so long back up. They also use up one of the two healing spells the cleric prepped.

The guy who was trapped explained how the most common trap in this dungeon works: If you open a door by the lever outside the hall, the hall remains stable. If you open a door by the lever inside the hall, the hall squeezes shut and stays like that for a few hundred years. People get stuck in here and starve to death.

So the party doesn't open the hall from the outside even (which could have helped them in the long run) and takes the stairs down to a segment of dungeon that leads to a second chamber. There was a secret door missed, some keys found, some doors exploded, some ten foot poles splintered, and some ghouls fought. Eventually they get to the east chamber on the cross and they've got a hallway to traverse. It's the cross shaped hallway, but I didn't even get to describe it fully before one of the players ran to the end and pulled the lever. Everybody ran through to keep up before it closed. With the exception of the paladin who wasn't sure. I let him know that when this hall shut it would stay shut, and he eventually decided to go through. We left it there.

I'll leave speculation about the next few games in the next post.