After a few weeks of delay due to my poor health, I finally ran another Dungeons and Dragons session for The Rotten Labyrinth. It was a bit shorter than usual, due to starting almost an hour and a half late, but we still got to do some stuff. There was a discussion of what to do next and how to avoid the monster that nearly took out the entire party, there was some deliberation about how to proceed with three of the more combat-inclined party members, a surprise combat encounter complete with magical compulsions, and then a bit of treasure at the end of a long passage, accessibly only via some kind of blood magic. It wasn’t the least-busy session we’ve had and the amount of ground covered does not amount to all that much, but a lot of stuff happened on the back end that was not immediately visible to my players so a decent amount of progress was made. I’ve also solidified that they’re all going to get a level-up with their next long-rest, since they’ve clearly reached the threshold for it after their last few encounters, but I find myself wondering just how long it is going to take them to explore this labyrinth or if there’s anything I could do to speed things up. As much as I enjoy having them work their way through traps and monsters and find treasure in what amounts to maybe an eighth, at most (and even that feels like a massive overestimation), of the entire first-floor of the labyrinth, I’m worried about how much actual time it is going to take to get them anywhere. Or to, you know, develop the plot. There’s really not a lot going on in this part of the labyrinth other than the introduction to the general mystery of it all and a plethora of random encounters.