Another week, another Tabletop RPG session! Last weekend, we got five of the six players together for The Rotting Labyrinth and started diving deeper into said labyrinth. We talked quickly through what was going to be the format for the group now that we’ve got so many players, caught the players who’d missed the last session up on who everyone was, and then I sent them on their way, deeper into the labyrinthine depths, in search of more treasure. After they spent a little time figuring out what direction to explore next, they eventually worked their way through three different little events. In one, they find a Non-Magical?/Magical? Tent Kit, in another they find a pair of curiosities with small tidbits of information about the purpose of the labyrinth and what might be at its center, and in the final one they find some kind of fake treasure that was supposed to distract them from the secret room–which they also found immediately–so that the undead spellcaster inside could bust out, trap people on the other sides of the door, and force everyone to fight some kind of ghostie creatures in close quarters. The party’s bad luck with rolls continued, but the monsters in this fight also had terrible luck so the fight dragged on for quite a while as both parties occasionally chipped away at each other. All of which made for a very full day of adventuring.

Getting the two original players caught up took a bit of work. We had more time in this session than we’d set aside for the previous one and I had a bit more energy in general as well, so I didn’t mind taking the time to better flesh out everyone’s relationships while reintroducing all the NPCs, characters, and the general situation. Plus, those two players still needed to level-up their characters, so this gave us time to handle everything before my players had to go back to the difficult work of figuring out what path forward to take in this labyrinth. They opted to fill in some parts of the map a bit, spending some time and effort to make sure the area they’d already walked around contained nothing more of interest. They also returned to the scene of a previous battle to find that there was nothing left of the strange, partly dissolved corpses they’d fought the day prior. There wasn’t even so much as a smear of blood on the ground from where the player characters had been injured. Out of the entire party, only one of them rolled well enough to fully notice that and appreciate how strange that was, given the somewhat absorbant nature of the stone used in the labyrinth, and everyone else carried on down the hallway to find a dangerous trap (by walking into it) preventing them from getting access to a crate of some kind.

Once they’d dismantled the hidden trap, collecting the razor-sharp almost-invisible wire for their own purposes (taking quite a bit of damage to do so), they found that the box contained a bunch of oilcloth, some iron stakes, and a bunch of bricks which they were able to quickly figure out was a strange magic item. If they assembled it into a proper tent or shelter, it would provide them with a Tiny Hut spell to keep them safe. I hadn’t planned this originally, but I figured it would be good to stick in some kind of minor magical item to help them set up and maintain a proper camp when it might sometimes be guarded by only NPCs (specifically to give the players confidence that the NPCs wouldn’t be dead or that the camp site wouldn’t be looted while they were away). That said, I’m not one to do anything without a little bit of something-something included to help build towards something else, so I told them it wasn’t exactly magical but it sort of was still. Odd, as far as they could tell, but incredibly practical. Rather than carry around this two hundred pound box of bricks, they took it back to the campsite and moved on. Next, they found a strange pathway that dead-ended quickly in both directions but that had one of those strange tiles with infernal text scribed into it. When one of them went to pass over it a second time, some kind of magic sprang to life around them, creating a pair of creatures, one at the end of each hallway, that seemed to be formed out of some kind of magical, glowing version of the text on the tile. As they gazed at each of these creatures, I had them roll a save to resist the curiosity charm of these creatures I’ve made and called “Curisosities.” The two characters who failed were subtly compelled to feel curious about these creatures and put up some mild resistance as the rest of the party tried to leave.

After realizing that these creatures were at least not intent on violence, the party started to question them and quickly ran into a problem. Rather than speak, the text making up the bodies of the creatures shifted and rearranged itself to spell out answers, but none of the player characters present could understand them since the only player who spoke and read the language was outside the hallway, keeping an eye out for any trouble that might sneak up on them. After running into a dead end and realizing that half the group seemed interested to learn more, they called in this last character who was promptly charmed by the second one he saw. After a bit of back and forth, the party was told that the center of the labyrinth held their heart’s desire, but only one of them learned what that was since the text appeared different to each of them and only the aforementioned player character could read it. From there, the party decided they’d had enough and either left or let themselves be led away, the curiosity’s hold on them weak enough that they merely found themselves wandering what the labyrinth might hold for them.

After that, the party continued exploring, found another trap, figured out from a safe distance that some treasure sitting on the ground was actually just painted wood, and found the secret door hiding the real treasure and the corpse that was animated by the players disturbing it in hopes of getting the treasure within in the chest it had been sitting on. The subequent fight went incredibly poorly for everyone, but in a different way that the last few had gone: we had entire rounds where only one attack would hit. It was an incredibly slog that just went on and on until the player characters finally beat the ghosties and the undead spellcaster back into nothingness. Victorious, the party dug into the treasure they’d found and most poeple rolled really poorly on figuring out what the magic items where, meaning they’ll either need to try to attune to some strange, unknown magic items or find someone who can cast the spells they need to figure out what they’ve gotten their hands on. I’ve had a lot of fun rolling on the random magic item tables, but I wish that I had something more expansive that I could add things to without needing to make an entirely brand new magic item table myself. I’ve got enough tables made up for this campaign as it is… I really need a good loot generation tool that includes more than what is in the Dungeon Master’s guide so I can give them a proper spread of everything that should be available to them. Which is my own homework for the next session. Work on the labyrinth map (as always) and figure out a long-term solution to the treasure table problem. I also really need to codify the resource collection system, too, since that’s going to be important for my players should they manage to survive the labyrinth long enough to emerge from it.