On a longish car ride (your definition
of what constitutes a long car ride may greatly vary), my older son
and I played a session of Copper GLOG, as invented by my favourite
ttrpg-blogger of all times, Arnold K. For our randomizer we used
even/uneven licence plate end numbers (foreign ones didn't count even
if they did end in a number) of cars we passed or that passed us,
depending on what came first.
My son chose a ratling warrior as his
character class – Fighter level 1, good skill sneaking, special
equipment: Bow and arrow. He was sent by his clan to rescue the
princess of his clan, the forest ratlings. She had been kidnapped by
goblins, presumably for some higher-up ruler, and dragged to the
Discarded Giant's Boot, a one-index-card-dungeon I had made up
sometime last year. The nameless ratling hero started before the
gaping maw of the enormous boot (the entrance into it is about half a
kilometer wide), a mountain cave made out of leather of an ancient
beast of titanic proportions.
The ratling managed to sneak into the
boot's shaft, which contained the hovels of a goblin village.
Listening to two of the greenskins converse in one of the huts he
found out that the princess had been brought into the boot's tip. He
left the goblin village, going deeper into the boot. There was little
light coming from holes rotted into the thick leather roof, otherwise
it was a detritus-strewn dark cave. A random encounter got our hero
his first fight: A giant flea (Level 1) attacked. The ratling managed
to fend it off but got hurt in the fight, losing one of his two HP.
He decided to take lunch and move on,
triggering another random encounter, this time with a herd of fleas
herded by goblin herdsmen, who were driving their disgusting flock
towards the village. A successful stealth check meant that the
ratling was undiscovered but listening to the goblins only revealed
dirty songs the goblin herdsmen were singing.
Delving deeper into the boot, the hero
found himself with the choice of going left towards the boot's tip or
into a hole gnawed into the heel, where the goblins presumably were
mining leather. He decided to explore the leather mine first, went
inside and found himself in a hollowed-out area with a big mushroom
surrounded by slime on the floor, out of which half-finished goblins
were growing. This was their mothershroom, the place where the
goblins of the village spawned. On the far end, he could make out
cages.
He decided to investigate, sneaking
around the half-grown goblins and reaching the caves. One contained
five of the fleas, one contained a desiccated skeleton, one a live
ratling who begged to be released. The hero freed the prisoner and
gave him his bow and arrow, making a Friend for the rest of the
adventure. The two of them, however, failed to sneak out – and had
to fight their way through four half-grown goblins (Level 0). They
succeeded after a long and somewhat tedious battle, losing no HP in
the process.
Despite the freed prisoner's fear of
the deeper areas of the boot, they pressed onwards towards the tip.
They managed to sneak past a giant earwig (Level 2) and saw the lit
entrance of a wooden house at the end of the cavernous boot-cave. The
house was larger than human-sized (enormous for two ratlings, who
stand about a meter tall in our world) and guarded by two goblins.
One of them was asleep, the other was picking his nose – the Friend
killed both with well-placed arrows.
The two ratlings had to stand on top of
each other in order to reach the doorknob. They did and went into the
house. On the ground floor, the first door lead into a room full of
cages. Six of them contained princesses: The ratling princess, an orc
princess, a human princess, an aelph princess, a beetle princess and
a kobold princess. The princesses told the two ratlings that the keys
to their prison were in the posession of the Orgre (Level 3, two
attacks) whose house this was. He was planning to make a Princess
Stew, the recipe of which demanded for eight different types of
princess.
The two ratlings snuk up the stairs to
confront the monster. The orgre had been lying on his bed but smelled
the two newcomers enter his bedroom. Grabbing two huge butcher-knives
from the nightstand, he got up and a healthbar grew on the bottom of
the screen and boss-music started. The two Level-1-ratlings had a
difficult time with this boss monster but in the end were successful.
The nameless hero slew the ogre with one HP left and the resusciated
his Friend who was at 0 HP. He'd have to stay in the back, shooting
arrows, from now on.
The two heroes freed all six princesses
from their cages – and then armed them with oversized kitchen
utensils. They princesses counted as a Swarm of Princesses (Level 6,
fights as level 0 single creature but has Lvl HP). The group left the
house and went back towards the heel of the boot.
On the way a random encounter delivered
an agressive giant earwig their way. The ratling hero attacked in
close combat, the princesses did too and the Friend fired arrows. In
the end, the hero had to be patched up after the battle (0 HP) but
the group succeeded. This marked the occasion of the hero leveling up
(10x current level in XP; Defeating monsters results in Monster-Lvl
XP). Now level 2 he'd be a better fighter still but do not gain an
additional HP yet.
At the leather mine into the heel, the
ratlings decided that a large-scale distraction was needed if the
group was to get through the goblin village and leave the boot. They
snuk past the mothershroom and freed the captive giant fleas which
fled into the larger cave, spooking the herds of fleas the goblins
were keeping and causing widespread chaos, pandemonium and
destruction.
A failed stealth-roll led to the
princesses each having to do a roll on their survival. Luckily, only
two of them didn't make it out: The human princess and the beetle
princess died upon trying to get through the chaos of the goblin
village. Five rescued prisoners brought our hero another five XP. He
had also accomplished the mission (rescue the ratling princess) and
made some valuable new allies. With the ogre dead, the goblins would
soon be subject to a new ruler and we decided it would make sense for
the orc princess to return with a retinue of her warriors to now
become ruling queen of the discarded giant's boot.
The whole thing took about three hours
of play time, which we spent with some interruptions, whenever I had
to concentrate on more complicated parts of the road. The simple
resolution system makes for an easy way of playing hands-free and the
minimal bookkeeping helps as well. You can only use a simple dungeon
if you want to keep it all in your head – I did cheat in that by
placing one dungeon (the ogre's house) inside another dungeon (the
giant's boot). But keep it simple and this works just fine. Thanks,Arnold!
