The Creepy Crawl Chronicles - Session 6

Who ya gonna call?

Attendants:
Vlad Draculastein – Lvl 4 Dampyr
Greed – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Arongoth of Hogendaus – Lvl 5 Cleric
               Gruff, Snuff, 2 zombified rat creature minions
Rael – Lvl 6 Thief

Henching:
Richard Darkmagic – Lvl 5 Magic User

Monsters Mashed:
The Spectre of Count Gore De Vol – Exploded by a magic missile (with a big red d30 roll for damage!)
               820 EXP
8 Skeletons from the Count’s Legion – Variously turned, smashed, and magic missiled.
               80 EXP

               EXP AWARD: 900 EXP

The Big Score!
Count Gore De Vol’s Treasure:
2400 GP worth of century old coins

2430 GP worth of gems [(1 Star Sapphire (100 gp), 1 Azurite (10 gp), 1 Amethyst (50 gp), 1 Aquamarine (100 gp), 1 Large Citrine (500 gp), 1 Large Topaz (500 gp), 1 Pink Rhodochrosite (100 gp), 1 Olive Green Peridot (50 gp), 1 Turquoise Bead (10 gp), 1 Black Jasper (50 gp), 1 Large Alexandrite (50 gp), 1 Tiger Eye (50 gp), 1 Violet Garnet (100 gp), 1 Piece of Crimson Coral (10 gp), a Star Rose Quartz (50 gp), 1 Spinel (50 gp), 1 Large Piece of Pink Coral (50 gp), 1 Deep Blue Spinel (500 gp), 1 Fire Opal (100 gp)]

1 Fine sword with skull shaped pommels and a thorny rose engraved on the blade. (300 gp)

1 Small porcelain bottle on a silk lanyard, containing a citrusy smelling liquid.

               EXP AWARD: 5130 EXP

TOTAL EXP AWARD: 6030/4.5 Characters = 1340 EXP apiece

Commentary:

In this session the party finally hit pay dirt. Working their way north in the catacombs and giving the flooded room and its oozy occupant a wide berth, they found their way to an iron doored crypt that contained a magnetized coffin full of treasure, guarded by the specter of the very late Count Gore De Vol and the animated bones of his Legion. You'll note that I tend to be very specific and descriptive with my treasure, so expect to see plenty fancy loot lists from here on out. I just think it's neater when treasure has enough personality to make players actually covet it.

At the time I was firmly ensconced in the Old School Renaissance (still am, honestly) and was using a lot of fun house rules I'd found on various OSR blogs. One of these was Jeff Rients' Big Purple d30 Rule. (Although my big d30 is red.) Since we were only playing an hour or so per session, I limited its use to every 4 hours of play. The players generally used their roll with the big d30 on attacks, especially magic missile spells from the mages. 

I'm not 100% sure I'm happy with the results of that one. I guess it was doing its job, in that the players loved to dump so much damage on my big scary monsters and would get big grins on their faces when rolling that big honkin' dice, but sometimes I think it eroded the challenge of the game a little bit. Ah well, as long as they were having fun what's a kerploded specter or two? Plus it helps keep the dice in my dice bag. 

My brother made it for me when we were kids. I will use no other bag for my dice.