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!
