Klaproth, Laylah, and Testosticles were brought to a smoky, wet, backwater village by a trader named Fritz. Fritz hired them to travel north, through a treacherous bog, to investigate a steel hatch he found in a hill. Fritz believed that the hatch led to one of the underground bunkers where humans weathered the nuclear holocaust millenia ago. An intact bunker would be worth lots of money as scrap metal. The PCs were sent to investigate the bunker and bring back some initial salvage.

Comment by Russell:
This phase of the session took about five minutes. This is [/i]Donjon, after all, where plot hooks are meant to be straightforward. None of the players took advantage of their NPC-manipulating abilities here; they were pretty much still in the DM-centric mindset of our d20 game.

The PCs entered the bog, and encountered a group of goblins, who they quickly dispatched.

Comment by Russell:
This was a fairly straightforward combat, though they started to use their facts in interesting ways. For example, Locke cut the arms off of a goblin and then slapped him in the face with one.

As they camped in the bog, Laylah spotted a fire in the distance. The next morning, the party found the charred remains of a small house. In the basement, they found the entrance to a tunnel.

Comment by Russell:
This part of the scenario was where the players really started having fun with Donjon's fact currency. The fire, the house, the basement, and the tunnel were all player-created.

Chased into the tunnel by a horde of goblins, the party found a series of hidden doors and fragmentary inscriptions.

Comment by Russell:
This was mostly player-driven. Laylah's player, Angela, took to using each of her facts as a word of the damaged inscriptions. Sometimes, I would hand her a couple more words or an entire phrase. Meanwhile, Locke and Klaproth's players busied themselves finding doors and ways to open them.

The party found a large crypt containing statues, empty coffins, and a lot of rats. The rats circled around the room, squeaking simultaneously at varied pitches so as to speak in a single, human-like voice. They seemed to be telling the party to go further into the crypt.

Comment by Russell:
The outer crypt scene was the beginning of the players and I really beginning to jam together, fact-wise. The rats and many of the details were invented by the players, and I spun them off in the rats-speaking-as-one direction.

Entering the inner crypt, the party found what seemed to be a large chapel, with an ancient congregation mumbling prayers. On closer inspection, the party found that the congregation had been locked into their pews and kneeling positions, and were terribly old- so much so that layers of dirt covered them like layers of additional skin. Bats flying back and forth over them only made the party more cautious. On the altar, they found a woman bound with her mouth open, blood dripping slowly into it in a fashion vaguely reminiscent of water torture.

Comment by Russell:
Again, the players were really getting into the fact system. Many of the really creepy elements here were invented by the players, and then became integral parts of the DM narration.

Studying the scenes in the artificially backlit stained glass, the party decided that the people here probably weren't vampires, or at least weren't vampires associated with the reigning nobility. They decided to free the woman on the altar. She seemed grateful, but couldn't speak their language.

Removing her from the altar, however, created other problems. It set off a distant bell, and the bats began transforming into armed monks who appeared to be vampires themselves. Seeing the party's attempts to free the imprisoned congregation, the monks began executing them.

Comment by Russell:
Most of this was DM-driven.

The party charged into action, and after a tense battle, defeated the monks.

Comment by Russell:
This combat was pretty tough on the PCs- two player characters hit 0 Flesh Wounds and had to search their provisions for healing potions. Looting the corpses afterwards, they didn't search for anything really special- just Wealth and more healing potions.

As the session ended, the party found their way back into daylight, though they were followed by mysterious laughter. The hatch they emerged through turned out to be the one they were looking for in the first place, and they set off back towards the village with their newly-rescued friend.

Final Notes

[i]Donjon played pretty smoothly. One thing we noticed, though, is that the characters made unskilled Discernment checks more often than anything else (mostly when listening or looking in an effort to add facts to a scene). This makes me think that more perception-related abilities would be a good choice in character creation. Also, we didn't really get much of a test of the treasure system in. The magic system didn't get tried at all, more or less because Klaproth's player saw more direct ways to get what he wanted.

The biggest problem I had as DM was NPC stats. The default system is a little cumbersome for inventing monsters on the fly. Moreover, the initiative system, while really excellent for PCs, got a little slow when rolling for 5+ monsters. For the next adventure, I'm going to design a stripped-down monster management system.

Where the system really shone was in the players creating most of the dungeon for themselves, and especially in adding little details that were developed into important discoveries. I'm really looking forward to the next session.

Comment by Russell:
The tense here is inconsistent with the other episodes. I'll fix it eventually...