Deeper into the Mines

Last night, Gabe, Phil, and I fired up Apocalypse D&D again to continue our adventure in the mines of Khunmar.

When we last left them, the party was trapped in a flooding room with the Antlion King. Ebag the Thief was unable to disable the trap, but with his enormous strength, Karl was able to bust down the door before Ston the Dwarf started to seriously drown. The Antlion King got away in the fracas, however.

Beyond the flooding room, behind a secret door, the party found the Antlions’ real treasure, a horde of coins and some minor magic items. As they were counting it out, however, a group of goblins entered through the *other* secret door. Seems they’d been skimming Antlion treasure for weeks. There was a tense standoff, and one of the frightened goblins shot Ebag with a crossbow (dropping him to -1 HP) before fleeing for their lives.

Some time later, in their search for the escaped King, the party discovered a large cavern where a group of ogres had set up a sort of bar where the various monster groups met in relative neutrality. Since several goblins were already there (including the party’s escaped prisoner Toe Snap), there followed a tense dinner discussion. The goblins ended by handing the party a couple of tasty adventure hooks, then slipping away into the gloom.

But here’s the thing. The goblins definitely got the better of the discussion, thanks to some failed rolls, and ended up handing the party a potentially deadly mission to a lost secret library haunted by a ghost. I was a little nervous that I might have set them up for a TPK, but their native caution served them well. Not only did they get out with the book the goblins wanted, but they avoided the ghost. They did leave behind a potential trove of good loot, however, so I have a hunch they may come back some day.

The adventure ended back at Happy Harry’s underground bar, where the party contemplated their next move, and heard rumors of a horrible creature from another dimension.

The Apocalypse D&D hack functioned very well, with only a couple of head-scratching moments (which can be addressed by fixing up the moves some more). The new trap hunting move worked pretty well. On a good roll, the party can pretty quickly traverse a decent expanse of dungeon safely, but there are still important choices to be made regarding where and how to hunt for traps.