November 21, 2002
Dungeon Mayhem!
I run a lot of D&D. Every so often, I put together a special event. Last weekend, I ran a group of players through a big dungeon crawl using the Master Maze modular dungeon pieces and accessories from Dwarven Forge and a few props from the Mage Knight line, as well as figures borrowed from my quintessential friend Ginger Stampley. I borrowed my buddy Jason's digital camera to document the event. (Emphatic note to parents and other gift-givers: I still do not want you to give me a camera.)
I will be running similar sessions at Owlcon 2003, which starts pre-registration shortly.
Each thumbnail brings up a picture (JPG) a few hundred K in size.
I went a little nuts on the brightness/contrast controls in Photoshop and some shots don't seem to be rendering as well in my browser as they did in the photo editor. Oops.
The party scouts forward into the caves.
The party confronts the fallen angel Adcelesta, her demon lover Rehnaremme, a drow priestess, and their pet.
The party comes up against a bunch of reptilian humanoids.
Same shot from the reverse angle.
The battle against the reptilioths (or whatever they are) is proceeding nicely.
Vast carnage has been wreaked aganist the varanids (or whatever they are).
A smart dragon might have a reason to want to stay in a cage.... The party rogue was surprised by the dragon's breath weapon, and failed his Reflex save with a 1,
then failed his save against massive damage with a 1, and died.
There are simply no good quadrupedal dragon figures. So I faked it. Badly. This dragon is, and I can't emphasize this enough, not Ginger's fault.
Another angle on the dragon fight.
A couple of ominous idols stand guard over the sweet-smelling waters of the fountain.
The archer overturns a table to use against another trap, only to be surprised by green slime!
A second angle on the green slime incident.
The party has traversed a hallway filled with deadly traps.
A couple of doughty party members comfront the lime jelly.
Their brave companions stay well back, because those jellies are dangerous.
Battle royale against the minotaur guards of a drow wizard.
Ganging up on a gang of orcs.
A second view of the orcs.
A third view of the orcs.
The deadly purple ooze began to swim across the acid pool toward our valiant heroes!
Be sure to protect that log! It's your only way across.
My thanks to Angelo Benedetto, who came an hour and a half early to help me set up, and to all of my players for an entertaining session. Most of them stayed late to help me tear down, too.
Posted by Greg at November 21, 2002 10:23 AM
I'm just not a picture person. I don't take pictures (as is fairly obvious from these 8) and I don't want to accidentally give my mom (whom I love dearly until the end of time) an excuse to get me another camera, forgetting that she's tried three times before to give me a camera I didn't want for Christmas.
Y'know, if you ever need an extra player or someone to warm a seat, I live in Conroe and have an almost physical itch to play DnD....
Am I correct in guessing that the newspaper is covering up parts of the dungeon the players haven't seen yet? I used to use the hallway and room pieces from GW's Advanced Heroquest and put the halls, doors and creatures down as the characters discovered them. I always wondered how this could be done with these pieces. Now, I know. Still, it must be a pain to set up.
Nuadha:
Yup. There are issues--the newspapers still reveal the shape of things to come, so that the players can start making logistical assessments of how much dungeon is left before the big bad guy at the end. I've had players bypass encounters because in part they could tell what was a side-room and what wasn't.
But there's a great joy in revealing pulling the newspaper back and hearing the players gasp at the cool thing that's revealed.
I heard about the game from Ang and it sounded marvelous. I really would have liked to have seen some photos from farther back, though. Give us a sense of the scale of the overall scene.