Solo RPG Campaign - 2. The First Delve Under The Mountain Shrine

Side Note: Although I ended the last report at the point where my characters were in jail overnight, which makes it look like these are two discrete sessions, this obscures the messy reality that I haven't been playing complete self-contained sessions. Instead, I might be rolling a few times on various tables or oracles, interpreting and recording the results, maybe looking up a few rules or asking some follow-up questions to the GME, then stepping away for the day, and possibly not returning for a few days. Thus it happened that these first two "sessions" probably took place over the course of a month two, although they covered 6 days in-game. Far from being able to play "into the future" as the 1:1-time crowd does, instead, real-world time keeps running away from me faster than I can find time play (I, as a player, am in "time jail"). I'll have to figure out a way to deal with that if I want to improve. Shorter more manageable sessions should help some, as should greater rules mastery.

Day 5

So my guys begin day 5 sitting in a jail cell, and I want to get them to a dungeon. To get things rolling, I roll for a random event on the Mythic GME, and I get a new NPC with the prompt "oppose opulence". So clearly this guy (or gal) is some kind of ascetic -- perhaps a monk, priest, or druid. He tells them that there "community service" is to attempt to clear out a dungeon underneath a mountain shrine that had to be abandoned due to a mysterious dark magical force that was emanating from beneath it. I deliberately leave the details vague, so I can fill them in during play. (Note: I'm fairly certain I rolled this up before Jon Mollison's solo sessions indicated his dungeon would be located beneath a cloister in the mountains. I'm not just cribbing his notes!)

The party agrees and after retrieving their things, they leave town, following the trail to the shrine. As eventide approaches, they are passing through a defile between two hills and are attacked by a giant bat. Neither side is surprised. The reaction roll indicates the bat will immediately attack. Edelweiss and Timbo fire their bows while Grimace uses his sling, and they down the bat before it can close the distance. They press on and find a camp site near the shrine where the night passes without incident.

Day 6

They next morning they attempt to enter the shrine, but the Mythic GME says this scene must be altered in some way. So the entrance to the shrine has collapsed and they must force their way in through a side window. The side room they are in is mostly empty but appears to have once held various religious texts, a few of which remain. I decide to spend ten minutes to search the room and ask the GME if there are any magic cleric scrolls present among the texts. I deem this to have nearly impossible odds, but to my surprise, there is in fact a scroll of Purify Food and Water.

They pass through the main hall of the shrine, and find the set of stairs leading down into the dungeon. At the bottom of the stairs, they encounter another party of adventurers, consisting of three fighters, a thief, and a cleric. The GME indicates they are badly wounded and are out of resources, and a reaction roll indicates they are favorable, so we help them to the top of the stairs and share some food and water with them. We talk a bit to learn what we might face. The GME indicates "yieldingly faded" and "intensely warm" but this doesn't mean anything for certain to me. (In Retrospect: what I should've done here was roll a random encounter to indicate what they had encountered, instead of the GME. The GME works best when the result is logically interpolated from what is known, but the point of asking the other party was to get concrete details about something unknown. In fact, shortly after this encounter, Jon Mollsion's solo party also encountered an NPC party and collected rumors, and I believe this was how he handled it. Again, I swear I'm not just copying him!).

It's about 11:00 am when the party returns back down the stairs. The room at the bottom (#1) has one door to the right, and one to the left. They choose to go left based on their discussion with the other party. They hear nothing at the door, and find an empty room (#2) with the remains of whatever the previous party fought, as well as two more doors: one to the south, and one to the north west. Going south they find themselves in a short 20' corridor (#3) where Grimace detects some irregular stonework, behind which is a recessed area in the wall holding an unguarded treasure of 700 cp, 200 sp, and 200 ep. 

They hear nothing at the next door, and the hallway beyond (#4) turns west and runs 60'. At the end of it are 4 Spitting Cobras (note: the characters passed their listen checks, but cobras don't generally make noise). Neither side is surprised. They rise up, flare their hoods, and hiss at the party, who take a step back and fire their ranged weapons, taking out one of the snakes. The snakes fail an initiative roll, so they start to crawl through a crack in the wall, one at a time. Chadonius charges before they can all get away. He misses, but so does the last remaining cobra when it spits at him. Chadonius kills the snake, ending the encounter, with two snakes dead, and two escaped. Given a dead end hallway, and the escape of the two snakes, they decide to spend a significant amount of time (40 minutes) searching for a secret door, but none is found (note: all search rolls were failed so there could still be a secret door. If a search is passed, I will probably ask the GME if a door is present.). 

The party retraces their steps to the north door of room (#2) and hear nothing at this door. The time is now 13:00. They open the door and find two more Spitting Cobras (yes, I actually rolled the same number on the encounter table). I ask the GME if these are the same two that escaped, ruling it Very Likely (90% chance) but I roll a 91, so these are two additional cobras! The party is able to take them out without issue, and they conjecture that the perhaps the dungeon has been taken over by snake cultists (a classic Conan trope!). At the far end of the room is another door.

Timbo hears nothing at the door, so he opens it to reveal a wide 60'x20' room (#6) with a pair of doors in each of the opposite corners. The party is surprised when a giant crab spider drops from the ceiling and sinks its mandibles deep into Timbo's neck injecting poison (which he saves against) and dropping him to -2 hp. The spider next attacks Edelweiss, dropping her to just 2 hit points. She is also able to resist the poison. Finally, Chadonius whips into action and kills the spider, while none of the other party members were able to hit it. With the spider killed, they check on Timbo, only to find he succumbed to his wounds, rather than to poison. (Rules Note: BFRPG has a few optional ways of handling death, from the default insta-death at 0 hp, to the more generous lose 1 hp per round until reaching -10. I chose the middle option, to permit one death saving throw. Timbo failed.).

The party carries Timbo's corpse back to the surface, and have a moment of silence. The time is 14:00. They prepare to go back into the dungeon. It was at this point that I ended up taking an unplanned hiatus for several months (Nov-Feb), so I retconned that instead of re-entering the dungeon (which I hadn't started playing yet), they returned to town instead. I'm not too worried about the wandering monster check I might have missed by doing this retcon. 

When we return, there will be new rules, new characters, and new timekeeping. Stay tuned!

XP: 75 (giant bat) + 74 (two cobras) + 74 (two more cobras)  + 100 (giant crab spider) + 127 (treasure) = 450 XP / 4 = 112 each + 2.