So we finished the great dungeon adventure to close out our summer D&D program at the library. Here are a few highlights to enjoy:
Teen, whose character is buried under a rock fall, grabs a bean-bag armchair and turns it upside down over his head. (Muffled): "I'm buried under rock."
As the other PCs dig him out, he moves aside the chair. Suddenly, arrows fly in from the darkness, striking two of the others. He flips chair back over himself. (Muffled): "I think I'll stay buried under the rock."
After falling prey to multiple traps, surprise attacks, and general nasty dangers (accompanied by the sounds of kobolds barking and laughing in the dark), the party comes to a mine shaft, facing a large pile of rubble that leads up to 3'h x 3'w gap. They can see just enough to suspect there's another similar pile beyond it. Reaching the gap will require scrambling on hands and knees, holding no weapons. They send a character up. He reports seeing an identical rubble pile ten feet beyond, as they suspected, with a similar gap. Suddenly, he gets pelted by darts, goes rigid (paralyzed) and (rolling a 1), falls through the gap to slide down on the other side of the rubble. Another party member goes up to the gap. He too is pelted by darts, goes rigid, and (rolls a 1 again), slides through!
One by one, the party follows, but only in time to see the previous two PCs being drug through the gap on the next rubble pile. More darts come through; they see kobold heads firing blowguns through the gap. Two more party members down. Behind them, more kobold blowguns appear in the gap the PCs just came through. One more PC goes down. One remains. "Give up!" cries a kobold. "We are many, and many, and many more. You are few!"
"There are lots of us!" cries the lone PC.
Wrong answer (hey, even a kobold can count higher than one). The last party member goes rigid in a hailstorm of darts.
Teen: "I hate kobolds."
Me: 
Teens are dumped in a pit by kobolds, who declare they now belong "to the Great Stone-eyes!." They see a rope hanging from the opposite end of the pit (they're on a mission to rescue a missing dwarf, known to be exploring this mine). Here's the exchange:
Me: "You see a rope hanging from the edge of the pit."
Teen: "It's a basilisk! Run!"
Me: "No, it's a rope."
They've been expecting a baslisk. They've talked about how to fight the baslisk with mirrors. They even know a baslisk is in the chamber they have just entered, because they found a petrified dwarf at the entrance.
They see the basilisk.
Teen: "It's a dinosaur! Run!"
Me: ?????
XP tally afterwards.
Teen to me: "My druid is second level! What special abilities do I get?"
Me, consulting S&W druid rules (grafted into BECMI D&D by me): "You can identify pure water, and identify any plant by sight, smell, touch or taste, and you can move through heavy vines and thorns without slowing."
Teen: "Druids suck."
Ah, well! A good time was had by all, and they're taking over next weekend, with one of their own as DM. So a new crop of RPGers has been sown.
sets a benchmark (of sorts) in painting animals.
