Torgrim - Session 1

Old Endings, New Beginnings

Welcome to my first session report! I have to say that I was incredibly excited to start up a new campaign. Rolling up characters, plotting out adventures, crafting NPCs. It really gets the creative juices going. The players arrived around 3pm and we started rolling up characters about twenty minutes later. None of the players have had many opportunities to hone their character generation skills. All told, it took about an hour for the most experienced player to create his character and about two hours for everyone else.¹

With card stock character sheets in hand, dice on the table, Krillin Pwnd List on the board and the play mat unrolled, we kicked off our adventures on the continent of Torgrim by introducing the characters to the small town of Everton. Everton is home to the only university in the known world. Bright magical minds, decorated veterans of war, experienced advocates, wealthy merchants and daring adventurers teach and train students from across the continent is their selected program.

One professor of particular note is Curiosity Bounceback, a halfing, she is the leading expert in archaeology and history. She has held her position for the past decade after a famous adventuring career. Her surname is well-deserved as her inexplicable ability to recover from any disaster and return unscathed has never once stopped her from adventuring into peril.² About a week ago, one of the local lumberers uncovered an overgrown entrance to a set of stairs that led underground. In her first attempt to unseal the ruin, one of her grad students was killed by a magical trap.

Since learning about the somewhat unexpected dangers and deciphering some of the scripts, Curiosity has spent the last day or two recruiting bold adventurers to travel into the depths of this suspected First Civilization tomb. The party assembles the next morning and sets out towards the with the professor.

Joining the professor are:

• Valanthe, a Wood Elf ranger
• Hans, a Dwarf fighter
• Helja, a Dwarf fighter
• Diva, a High Elf wizard
• Asandril, a Wood Elf ranger
• Donnal, a Wood Elf druid
• Sir, a Human monk

The expedition to the tomb and back was fairly uneventful as it was a standard dungeon crawl. One of the players (Sir) arrived on the scene late but he still managed to get in a few encounters including the big bad (a mummy) at the end. They got to fight some D&D monster standards including a mimic, a gelatinous cube, some rust monsters plus a variety of undead. They all made it out alive and found a magically sealed entrance to a second level which would be left for another day.

Overall, I felt I ran the session pretty well. I ended up having to scale some of the later encounters down a bit as the party was exhausted. It was a new system and it can be difficult to manage resources without much system knowledge. That being said, I have no plans to continue to scale encounters down unless we’re missing a significant percentage of the party.

Next time, the party delves into the second level of the tomb and the first character death.