Okay, the party is heading back through the swamp to the village of Glavheim. Enter Dean Harper, the new PC, being chased by a bear. A zombie bear. Testosticles and Klaproth manage to take down the bear. Harper introduces himself and tells them he found a salvageable satellite dish. Even though farmboy Klaproth, who's sort of the leader by default, doesn't understand what this "super-light" dish is for, he's quick to realize the value of it being made of metal.

Comment by Russell:
This was all quite fun in a very traditional (for us) D&D way. Particularly entertaining was Harper trying to explain why he'd want to take apart something and then put it back together.

Wandering through the swamps toward the dish, the players hear a moaning sound. A listen check by Harper tells them it's wood scraping on wood, and Klaproth scouts ahead and discovers it's the cart they lost to goblins in the last adventure, being pulled by zombies. Klaproth rushes the cart, kills one zombie, then kills the other one with thrown zombie parts.

Comment by Russell:
Klaproth's player, Pat, had five un-necessary successes on his attack roll. He put them to good use.

They also encounter a caravan run by Fritz, the merchant who hired them in the last adventure. He's disappointed that the salvage operation didn't work out, but has much bigger hassles- apparently, a local Noble has spread soldiers throughout the entire region, looking for rebels. Gavriella, who heretofore has shown no sign that she speaks English, ducks down in the cart when she hears this.

The party reaches the dish. While trying to get it loose, they capture a goblin (pinning him under a convenient "No Tresspassing" sign) and dispatch a zombie work crew who shows up for some reason.

Comment by Russell:
The zombie fight was pure slapstick. Klaproth used his magic to throw the monsters around, and Laylah hypnotised one of them into attacking the others using his best impression of kung fu. Also, the debate over whether the zombies' constant shouts meant that one of them was named "Brains" was pretty hilarious.

Testosticles finds a door in the ground, and they open it up, only to find an irate old lady inside shaking a stick at them. Harper knocks her down into the darkness. Laylah walks down the steps and... gets turned into a frog. The very angry crone shouts for "Cedric."

Cedric turns out to be the lady's grandson- a tentacled giant inside his own portable cloud of fog. Klaproth engages him with limited success. Meanwhile, Laylah tries transforming into a bird, but ends up a raven with frog's feet. She's chased around the room by Granny, who attacks with a zombie-head on a stick (it gnashes when she presses a button). Seems she's planning to eat Laylah.

Klaproth and Testosticles continue to fight Cedric. Gavriella comes to Klaproth's aid, though she's only wielding a stick. Harper disables the frog-spell-trap, and manages to subdue Granny. After negotiating for a while, they manage to buy her satellite dish (which hasn't worked in the four hundred years she's lived here) and some monkey jerky (which they don't really want) in exchange for the goblin prisoner (she names him "Wimpy") and a moldy book from the last adventure ("No good for readin', but at least it's still edible").

After disassembling the dish and loading it into the wagon, the party gets going, joined once again by Gavriella, who sure has sharpened a lot of sticks...

Final Notes

This was a lot of fun, though more for the characters than the action content (which there was relatively little of during the session). I had a lot of fun listening to the character byplay.

I had lots of fun with the NPCs, too. Granny was entertaining in a very cartoony witch sort of way, and I'm happy with Gavriella's balance of cute and creepy. The overall feel was sort of a cross between an old Sierra adventure game and comic anime. In that sense it was pretty different than last time, which felt a lot more like the Vampire Hunter D movies which I've been stealing from shamelessly.

As far as the Donjon system, I had to prompt the players to make stuff up a little more than last time. Their contributions were fun, anyway, though. The game also dragged in some places due to unimpressive rolls on both sides of the proverbial table. Klaproth played with his magic some this time, though not really in combat. That worked smoothly. The players are still very conservative about treasure searches, though. I have to convince them I really mean it when I say they can look for whatever the heck they want. (Exception: Harper's player has been looking for Robot Pants of +1 Adroitness. He hasn't succeeded, yet.)

Comment by jeff:
Ah, the Robot Pants, a joke that became a campaign calling. My two cents about the treasure searches - I don't particularly like how Donjon handles this aspect. Not because you can make up whatever you want to find; I'm cool with that. The problem is, you've got an abysmally low number of inventory slots, so even though you could find all sorts of great new loot after each fight, you'll be hard pressed to find the ability to carry it without abandoning, say, your weapon or your armor. This is one of the many reasons why whenever I find I need a new tool/toy, I build it into the same wrist/gauntlet/doodad I have, so that I don't end up needing another slot. To put it another, more mechanical way - after any given fight, I can roll a few dice for the chance to find an item I want. However, at any time, I can roll more dice to build/convert an item I want. It's very rare that I have a want, at the exact moment of NPC death, that I couldn't deal with in a different, better way. For an example of a rare expection, see Five.