BSSS - Session 1

Today was the inaugural session of my new campaign - Between the Serpents of Smoke & Steel (BSSS for short). I've been posting a few things about it here as it approached, so now I'd like to talk about how the actual session went.

While I would not delude myself that any of my players actually bother reading this blog, they do have access to it so I will not be sharing any referee-facing information on here, just a quick recap of what happened and some observations and thoughts on it from my own perspective. 

The session had a full table, which in my case means 6 players. I find that 6 is probably close to the maximum number I can really handle well for an OSR game, and even then that is with a help from a caller to keep things moving along. 

People showed up and generated characters, which ended up with a party of 3 fighters, 3 sorcerers. After a quick introduction to the set up they headed out into the Old City ruins, in search of a lead they got from some of the Scavengers back in Riverside. 

Characters

• Shem - Fighter [Now Dead]
• Ushar - Fighter [Now Dead]
• Tibidun - Fighter [Now Dead]
• Maru the Witch - Sorcerer
• Esho - Sorcerer
• Syphon Gandu - Sorcerer

Overview of the session

As I don't have a finished encounters table for travel outside the dungeon yet, this was uneventful, but the players did wisely mark general landmarks they ran into in order to be able to navigate back to the dungeon later.

Also as part of the pre-game set up the party divided the three major Player functions between them two - a party leader/caller, a mapper and a quartermaster. From my observation during the game all three did their jobs quite well, so good job on that!

Anyway, the actual dungeon itself was not explored that deeply - the party had a fight against eight bandits that were guarding the entrance, managing to negate very effectively four of their archers by one of the Fighter PCs rushing at them from the side and engaging them in melee, making them essentially lose a round in trying to scramble and pull out a weapon. 

What followed was a very quick and brutal fight, with the Players ganging up on individual fighters, one of the sorcerers disabling two more people with blindness and just general mayhem. 

That, unfortunately, did not stop as just as everyone was catching their breath the bandit's leader along with some more people came out from the dungeon, with a second fight ensuing. In the end, one bandit was allowed to simply leave, 2 were pressganged to march in front of the party and act as trap detectors, and the others were dead.

Once into the actual dungeon, their plan paid off as the bandits spotted an obviously raised stone plate on the floor, clearly some kind of trap, and avoided it easily. One of the mercenaries that the party brought along was left to guard the room, and the rest of the group continued exploring, eventually finding a large hall with some more bandits (which managed to spot the lights of the players and ducked into a nearby room). The players followed, another fight happened (I had rolled a 2, 4 and 2 for each of the reactions so far, the bandits clearly not being interested in talking!) and 3 bandits were all that survived.

The group forced one of them to pry open the enormous gem in the middle of the statue that was in the room, while one of the fighters guarded him, two others were near by the braziers with unearthly blue flames lighting up the room, in case something odd happened. The party clearly knew that something would happen when the gem was messed with, but they didn't know what. Well, the captive managed to pry the gem open and they realized what was to happen quite soon - the room started to fill VERY rapidly with a poisonous black cloud, and everyone on near the statue was blasted directly into the face.

Some saving throws later, and the tally was 1 surviving mercenary, and one bandit and 2 player characters dead from poison. The others had only a few seconds to act, most simply booking it out of the door, while one player decided to rush into the poison cloud in order to grab the gem. Another failed saving throw, and another limp body on the floor.

From there the group decided to leave, inspecting a second site they knew of from a map the bandits had given them in an effort to save their lives (it didn't work). They found another ruined building with a merchant's hand-pulled cart upturned in front of it. They got the cart upright, which luckily only had one of its 4 wheels broken, and found a very nice bounty of tanned leather and spices. Deciding to not push it any more for the session, and also with nightfall fast approaching on the characters, they headed back to town and for a month of downtime. 

Observations

* I am so far pleased with combat in the game. Both fights were relatively fast (though could have been faster in real world time. Something to think about), brutal and none lasted beyond I think 2 or 3 rounds. That for me is ideal! 

* Conversely, I was genuinely surprised just how unscathed the party made it out of both encounters. Bad rolls on the side of the bandits I suppose.

* Three dead in the first session is not that surprising, although I did not expect it to be due to a trap. Then again, the party as I said was aware that something was going to happen, they simply would have had no real way of knowing what, and so decided to take the risk of simply "poke it and see what it does." After the fact someone did have the idea that they could have just all stood back and only had the bandit up by the statue, so maybe they will learn from this experience in the future! 

* All of the Sorcerers were tempted by the ability to simply cast extra spells at the risk of Corruption, though also nobody actually decided to take the plunge. For me that's a good sign that Corruption is working as intended - as both a deterrent to Sorcerer power, but also a temptation that...hey if you ever really need that extra spell, you can get it! 

* Something I knew I would need, but was shocked by just how much its lack made the process slow, are quick reference sheets for several rules not easily found within the player's books that I made. Something to try and get done for next week! 

* On first impression it seems the players mostly enjoyed the game overall. How much of that will continue onwards I don't know, but I hope the game gets more enjoyable, not less, as more sessions happen.