Tuesday 4 March 2014

Silent Nightfall....Epic? Second Session

I just got home from running the second session of Silent Nightfall using 8th level characters.  Well, three 8th level characters, and a cleric and dwarf of a bit lower level.

Last week, two of my regular players were unavailable due to work commitments, so I ran Well of the Worm as a 0-level funnel instead.  Creepy fun, and as soon as there was 10 XP to be had, the survivors fled, leaving the nearby dales to deal with the menace themselves.

Tonight's session was a lot more cautious creeping around the 2nd and 3rd levels.  The PCs discovered the bedroom, entered it, and dealt with what was there.  They pulled the red lever.  The party's wizard has been hearing whispering and the psychic voice of Silent Nightfall, buzzing and crackling with barely constrained power.  It requested that the party go away (the wizard could read Mortmallion's recovered journals) and return in a day, but they decided to press on instead.  

Mike, who is playing the wizard, remembered that his bonded invisible companion might have some information, and began plying his unseen servant, Alfred, with questions.  This gave me a chance to give the party some idea of the background of the Silent Nightfall complex, as well as some insight into what they were encountering there.  Alfred was able to say for certain that the voice would ask them to push the green button, and, having located it, they are determined to do so....just to see what it does.

In the meanwhile, they are getting ready to fight another battle on the 3rd level....if you own the adventure, you can probably guess which one.

It is really fun for me to watch people running extremely powerful characters acting with such a level of caution in a level 2+ module.  In fact, in the post-game wrap-up, Mike admitted that he had forgotten the level of the module.  Just as well; taken without caution, Silent Nightfall can be deadly.

It also shows the versatility of the Dungeon Crawl Classics game, and just how much difference it makes that monsters are mysterious, and that the rules should not be taken for granted.  In the first session, for instance, the shaft crawler really gave them pause when they eventually realized that their chosen course of action was making the thing stronger instead of killing it.

I am very much looking forward to next week!

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