Stirring the Hornet's Nest at Het Thamsya, Part 2
Dropping in dazed & dusty
Session 2 of Het Thamsya was played with two players, the dynamic duo of Thaep Hok the pig man, and Mo Che the bearcat thief. I like running games for 2 players. If they have a good rapport there can be a really smooth momentum to the play. I remember many episodes of 3d6 Down The Line with this setup working really well (if you haven't checked out 3d6DTL, do they are great).
Anyway the session opened with the pig man and the cat thief prone, dazed and dusty in the courtyard of Het Thamsya, having fallen through off the roof at the end of the last gaming session. As the dust settled and the pair regained their senses, they heard voices that sounded like clockwork vocoders, chanting STEPS NO IN - STEPS NO IN...
They were sharing the courtyard with 4 tortotons. As GM/ referee, I was a bit daunted by these monsters. They are pretty big ("cow sized") and hit really hard (d10 stomp) which makes them a bit scary1. Actually, I think my apprehension about this was productive for the game because the players picked up on it which charged the encounters, and steered them away from combat to a more strategic playstyle.
A chase, some slapstick fails
So Thaep Hok and Mo Che booked it out of the courtyard looking to make a quick escape through the doorway to the south. I had both PCs make DEX saves to see how they navigated moving top speed through unfamiliar space. Thaep Hok's hooves failed him, and he fell over in the next room, while the agile Mo Che ran ahead straight through the room to check out what lay further south. As the tortotons emerged from the courtyard, gaining on them, Mo Che didn't like what he saw further south (detritus, signs of animal life) and quickly gestured to Thaep Hok (now back on his hooves) to take the door to the east. Another failed DEX save saw Thaep Hok splayed out on the floor again, this time in the store room to the east, while Mo Che made it as far as the closed door on the far wall as the thudding steps and mechanical chant of the tortotons grew relentlessly closer...
Thaep Hok, now backed against the wall between two shelving units finally made a DEX save, shakily climbing the shelves to evade the patrolling automata. Moments earlier, Mo Che breathed a sigh of relief as the door opened into an unoccupied dormitory room, and bravely hid in a wardrobe to wait for the danger to pass.
As the PCs waited for the tortotons' patrol to take them a safe distance away, I rolled on the temple encounter table provided in the module: the result was a monitor lizard skidding into the room, chased by automata. This made the environment feel alive and occupied with it's own dramas, and also helped to distract the other tortotons from their pursuit of the PCs.
This whole "exploration as chase scene" sequence was very fun to play. The slow threat of the tortotons worked well to push the PCs forward, their failures were funny but also built tension, and they both ended up in interesting places...
The rewards of retreat
Thaep Hok was squeezed between the top of a shelving unit and the ceiling, his porcine heart beating like a drum, when he found an intriguing slip of paper2 gathering dust. Mo Che hid among monk robes hanging in the wardrobe (which would prove useful later).
So, with the patrolling automata distracted, our dynamic duo were reunited. As they took a shaky minute to rest, recover HP and exchange breathless "what the fuck"s, one of them noticed the strange angle of the wardrobe...
It wasn't Narnia
This was kind of the final turn of the session for us, we play shortish sessions after work and everyone has real life beckoning after an hour or two max...
So the PC's carefully move the wardrobe to discover a doorway to a secret passage! Cue light source management, marching order etc.. They made their way along, checking for traps until they reached a locked door (generously described as "easy to lockpick or bash down") at the end of the passage. Mo Che got to use his lockpicks. Can't remember how I adjudicated this given the description. I think I made him roll to see if he needed to mark a usage by them, Mausritter style. I don't like including uneccessary rolls but players do like having a dice roll when they're doing some adventuring stuff...
The door opened into a very juicy library room which was the perfect location to end the session in: satisfying and tantalising in equal measure. We were close to time so we handwaved some of the room exploration - I gave them some loot3, and made a note to roll encounter dice at the beginning of the next play session.
This was a really satisfying & fun gaming session, really enjoyed the writing and was fortunate to have players who really met the adventure design with playful care and attention.
After playing through more of this module, however, I got more of a balanced sense of how to play them based on the way they are written and illustrated. For example, while they are dangerous, they look pretty slow and cumbersome from the images, and would struggle in tight spaces and could definitely not climb. As well as the more obvious fact that they are following rudimentary commands which can be subverted. In the end I figured that an encounter with these things would only get seriously dangerous if a PC trips, slips or is knocked over so that the automata can get some stomps in. This would be most likely during a melee combat with them, but can be managed with careful tactical retreats. It's not that I wanted to avoid character death, but if that happened I wanted it to feel disastrous, not arbitrary or frustrating or anticlimactic.↩
The paper fit the description of a command slip, something which Sumgan the temple abbot had mentioned to the party during their first session with this module.↩
Scrolls of insect speak, reptile speak and bird speak. Incredibly helpful for later parts of this adventure. Also some books on automata and bronzecrafting.↩