Nerd Saturday The Second

So, today was the second C&C game.  When we last left our heroes, they'd managed to flee the goblins in Dyson's Delve after killing a number of vermin as well as a ghoul who'd killed a local shepherd boy.  They returned to the local inn (The Roasting Rack) to heal their wounds and count their treasures.  Bhaaahb the bard drank himself under the table (his player had to miss the game), but two new adventurers had wandered in: Xasha, a paladin of Tyr and Gav, a half-orc barbarian.  The PCs offered them the chance to join them in raiding the goblin nest on the morrow.  However, as it turned out, the goblins had other ideas...

In the early hours of the morning, the goblins launched a preemptive strike, intending to burn the inn to the ground with the heroes inside.  The heroes were alerted to their presence and sallied forth to drive them off.  What followed was a battle royale of low die rolls, as neither side managed to do much harm to the other for several rounds.  It got rather silly after a bit, but just about the time it became unbearable, Leaf the elven fighter hit the Hobgoblin chief and killed him with a single stroke of her battleaxe.   The tide began to turn, and Vultrude the Prosperity Cleric of Waukeen was able to save her loot from the flames before they claimed the inn.

The rest of the night past in tense quiet.

The next day, the party elected to use the same method they'd used to infiltrate the goblin lair before, a series of narrow caves that ran into the worked tunnels.  They found the goblins on alert, but through a clever combination of stealth and gnomish illusion magic, they were able to lure the initial set of guards into position for a quick and quiet takedown.  This allowed them to take out the other goblins and hobgoblins on the first level in pieces without raising the alarm.  And that's where we left off today, with them healing up a few wounds and psyching themselves up to go down a level to take out the rest.

So, all in all a good time.  The two new players were an interesting set of contrasts.  Xasha's player is an experienced gamer (tabletop, online RPGs, and MMOs) who's been looking for a tabletop game.  Gav's is the husband of Lux the Gnome Monk's player.  He's played one session of an RPG before, and was basically completely new at it.  It took him a little while to get into the game, but when he did, Gav swung his mighty mace with gusto at all comers, and will be back next time.

(I'm sure Justin will be along later with the various clever quotes from this session.)

There were a few minor problems, in that a number of the newer players don't have their own dice.  Not a huge problem, since I've accumulated quite a few over the years, but it turned out that a lot of my old Gamescience d20s are number 0-9 twice, instead of 1-20.  It took a while for us to realize it, which is part of the reason why the initial battle at the inn was such a whiff-fest.  When we caught and corrected the problem, I declared there would be double XP this session to make up for it.

My only worry is that we're now up to 7 PCs when everyone shows up.  I'm afraid my poor dinner table can't take any more.