Tomb of The Serpent Kings -Part 1

I sat down with five Players, a B/X retro-clone, and a copy of Tomb of The Serpent Kings, by Skerples. Four of the Players have less than half a year’s experience playing D&D, and all of that was playing 5e. One of the players was brand new to RPGs. None of us has ever played or run an OSR game.

This is how it went.

The Party consisted of:

• Eefje Wolter, a wandering knight (Fighter) whose name seemed more in line with a bank manager than a man of war.
• Alonzo "This mini looks exactly like Danny Trejo!" Machete. A Fighter who actually looks like a Fighter.
• Cletus. Cleric of an as-yet-unnamed deity.
• Ramen the Thief, who desperately wishes we were still playing our old game and they were still a wood-elf ranger.
• Maul the Dwarf. Does not fight with a maul.

(I remember reading an excerpt from the OD&D pamphlets that mentioned demi-human characters only had a certain percentage change of speaking the Common tongue. So I asked Maul’s player to roll under 25% on the percentile dice. She failed the roll and thus only Cletus the Cleric can communicate effectively with Maul thru their shared alignment of Law. Shared alignment as a means of communication is a weird OD&D & B/X thing, but I really like it.)

What We Did:

We began the session in media res with the PCs harrying a band of goblins up the dark rain slick slopes of a mountain in the dark. Like you do. The goblins were following a well used track in an attempt to reach the secret entrance to their layer in the bottom level of the Tomb of The Serpent Kings. However, heavy rains had caused a small landslide cutting off their retreat and allowing the PCs to corner most of them.

Personally I love goblins. Maligned little fey creeps. I know lots of people think they are boring, but I think that’s more an issue with their application than their supposedly limited potential. I typically have goblins attempt and succeed at insane gambits, but I also like to have them die spectacularly. They are little engines of chaos and I think they are great. 

DM Note: I missed out on an excellent opportunity to use Surprise and the rules for light sources to great effect in this encounter. In our 5e game only one party member lacked darkvision and it was so irritating that I let them find Goggles of The Night very quickly in that adventure. Out of habit I set up the goblins up across the board like I normally would. I should have kept them hidden until they appeared gibbering and screeching at the edge of the party’s light, their feral eyes reflecting the torchlight like wild dogs in the night. I’m content to simply recognize the mistake and do better next time.

After failing a morale check (because I needed it to), a single goblin escaped up the rubble of the landslide and into the freshly exposed entrance of a strange and unnatural cave. The Party, in cautious pursuit of the surviving goblin, entered The Tomb of The Serpent Kings, Area 1: The Entrance Hall. 

The Party heard the slapping wet footfalls of their goblin quarry and it’s incessant chittering receding into the darkness. Then there was a sudden rush of air and a thunderous echoing boom from deep in the darkness that shook the mountainside as the goblin tripped the hammer trap at Area 5 and killed itself. Rattled, the Players spent a good while standing in the doorway of the Entrance Hall seeing what they could discover without exposing themselves to any real danger. 

Little roots protruding from the ceiling, crude stonework, goblin tracks in the gravel on the floor, and cold dry air. That was all they could see.

This is a good place to note that at the back of the ToTSK module is an excellent two-page map of the entire dungeon. All 52 keyed areas have a little summary box near to them. A more experienced DM than I could improvise the entire dungeon from these two pages. My favorite part of each location summary is that it starts off with a “sights & sounds” description. These are excellent for setting the tone of each area. For some reason the “sights & sounds” are not included in the detailed area descriptions of the module. Only on the map. It would be great to have those added to the room descriptions, and would have avoided a lot of flipping back and forth.

It was clear from the single set of goblin tracks that no one had been in here for a very long time. Deciding to put his darkvision to use, Maul the Dwarf scouted ahead of the Party (actually making his 1 in 6 Stealth check). There was nothing living (or dead) to hide from in this part of the dungeon but the Players didn’t know that and the heavily armored Dwarf stalking around in the dark like a Rogue was a lot of fun for everyone. He reported back to the group (loudly) via the Cleric that there were two doors 40’ down the Entrance Hall corridor. 

A debate followed over which of the two doors (both keyed as 2: Guard Room) to open or whether they should ignore doors for now and continue chasing the goblin down the corridor. The conversation continued long enough for the torch to burn out. It came down to a random roll of the dice while Cletus lit a new torch and Maul tried to bash down a door. He failed. Then the two fighters tried. They failed.

DM Note: I forgot to mention that using a crowbar and/or another PC assisting would have made the rolls easier. Then again, the Players didn’t think to ask either. 

I’m using Necropraxis’ variation on the Wandering Monster die, the Overloaded Encounter Die, and I was rolling away on that as the players tried and failed repeatedly to open the stuck door. Spooky noises and random clues hinted at what lay deeper in the dungeon. On the third attempt I rolled an Encounter and 4 goblins who had been missed during the last skirmish appeared at the Party’s back.

DM Note: I didn’t remember to roll Surprise for the Party. They totally should have been surprised.

In the 10’ wide corridor only the two Fighters could engage the goblins. The goblins had a single spear in their group and showed how using a weapon with reach in a dungeon could be useful. Alonzo took a glancing blow and laughed off the 2 points of damage. Until he realized that the glancing blow represented 20% of his total Hit Points at which point he freaked out a little. Meanwhile the not very strong and intensely combat-averse Thief effortlessly opened the door that had stopped the three muscle-bois of the group. However, because the Cleric and her lightsource had moved down the hall to support the fighters against the goblins, the room was in total darkness and Ramen was NOT sticking her head in there without a light. She had no torches. 

Goblins defeated, eventually all four rooms attached to 1: Entrance Hall were opened and  . . .stared into. No one wanted to open the crummy old wooden coffins, or disturb the dead in any way. Eventually someone worked up the courage to open a coffin and the group quickly convinced themselves that the clay serpent people statues within were undead guardians who would definitely come to life and kill them if they took a wrong step.

DM Note: They are not and do not. 

In Room 4: Sorcerer Tomb the clay serpent-person in the coffin was wearing a silver ring. Greed eventually overcame caution and the Dwarf snatched the ring, breaking the clay finger off in the process, and releasing a cloud of poison (knock-out gas). The Dwarf is so tough that it merely took him down to 50% HP and made him/his player angry.

DM Note: I am very unclear what to do with non-lethal poison that is meant to knock a character out but fails. I just had the Dwarf take the damage rolled and then let them recover the hit points over d4 Turns as the toxins left their system.

With the hollow clay statue broken it was revealed that the crumbling skeleton inside wore a gold amulet shaped like a snake. What followed was a series of wacky plans to crack open the other clay serpent-person statues and see what treasures they held without getting exposed to the poison gas. In short order the party had recovered the four golden amulets hidden in this section of the dungeon. 

Which brought us to  Area 5: Door/Hammer Trap. I felt like this trap needed a little foreshadowing. Perhaps having the smashed organs and flesh of the pulped goblin oozing down the door was a bit much. The Cleric decided to look at the ceiling and I rewarded her with several drops of blood dripping on her cheek. The Party swiftly worked out a rough sketch of what had happened and set about some intense brainstorming to figure out how to open the door without suffering the goblin’s fate.

I think this was a good way of running this trap rather than having it (in all probability) kill the first PC who tried to open the door. The real fun was in solving the puzzle of how the trap worked rather than avoiding certain death. I suppose for more tension I could have given all kinds of indicators that the trap was about to go off as the PCs messed with it, but this worked out well.

A few iron spikes later the trap was dissabled and the PCs entered Area 6: False King’s Tomb. The Players sniffed a Boss Fight coming and thus dialed their paranoia up to eleven as they tentatively explored the area around the 3 coffins at the north end of this room. Carefully opening the lid of the closest coffin they saw the fanged skeleton of one of the False King’s wives, but nothing happened.

Until the Cleric poured holy water on the skeleton’s face and it perished (again?) thrashing and hissing as it’s head and upper torso dissolved as if acid had been poured on it. This immediately kicked off the fight with the remaining two skeletons which the PCs won handily.

DM Note:
1.  I should have had more skeletons pour in from somewhere to make this more of a challenge since I knew it would be the last combat of the day. 

2. With Dexterity bonuses unaffected by medium and heavy armor, coupled with the generally lower attack bonuses of B/X, landing hits on PCs is much harder than in 5e. Maybe the trade off is that those few hits that do get through are more likely to kill a PC.

There was only one room left to explore on this level of the dungeon, but we were all wiped out after several hours of play. My original intent was to start running an Open Table and the PCs would have to leave the dungeon at the end of each session, but in this case I just hit the “pause” button and we agreed to pick up where we left off next time.

Then we ate cake because it was Bilbo baggins birthday and we are D&D nerds. So of course there was cake!