Played last weekend and it was fantastic! The players didn't know what to do next, session 9 had been an intense investigation that ended with a conclusion. They had no leads and low morale. The Village of Belalp was going to have a big party celebrating the end of the Witch murders, and the biggest scumbag in town made it look like he was the hero. Oddly enough, the players didn't want to attend this party.

I figured that this would be a good time to head back to Belalp #3, and have a dungeon crawl. This would be their 3^rd trip down into its depths, and there is a lot to do down there, so it was a good time to open it up some more.

 Designing Kobolds

In Switzerland, the word for Fairies is Kobold. Above ground, Kobolds are seen as benevolent and helpful nature spirits, but below ground, they are twisted and evil. I've been using the word Kobold as well as Tommyknockers. The mine is haunted, but not all of the spirits in the place are dead.

I had never run kobold monsters. Never! In my power-gaming days, I saw them as too weak. They are weaker than the lowly goblin. As a DM, I just never had a place for them. Goblins in my worlds usually take the spot of booby trap-ambush experts, so in the book they stayed, until this dungeon.

I modified them some. I gave them a natural ability to turn invisible at will, and added “Spook”. I wanted them to be different, so while my goblins are traditionally forced into the wilderness, these sneaky things can quietly live among us. They are physically weaker than goblins, even a child could beat one up, so psychologically they had to be different, they depend on people. They are expert thieves. They rely on these skills to survive and are happy to live like rats. For the most part, their traps are designed as warnings and are more insulting in nature than dangerous, however, they rely on very dangerous traps to keep them safe. The tripwires for kobold traps are a bit more ingenious than Goblin's need. Traps are their primary method of attack, but for the most part, they are not nearly as aggressive as goblins are.

THE MINE

The mine is a tricky dungeon. It is designed to open up over time; I don't enforce this; if the players find a secret door they find a secret door. It features a backstory that evolves and tells itself through play; it predates human history, first opened by Gnomes who lived here for centuries. Romans and Medieval men moved in to terrorize them, it was always the same story, the gnomes would allow the humans to share the wealth of the mine, as long as they kept to their sections, but without fail the humans wanted the whole thing for themselves.

There was a massacre, the humans crossed a line and murdered gnome women and children, ancient blood ran in rivers. The survivors of this genocide swore revenge, and something within the gnomes minds became twisted, they killed every last human in that mine. Not just killed, this was not war, this was murder. After the deed was done, and the Adrenalin wore off, they had time to reflect on what they had done. They had won nothing. Their families were still dead, they were still alone, and one gnome, in particular, believed something else; that he was cursed. He murdered his accomplices while they slept, leaving him totally isolated and insane. Rage was his motivation, it was all gone, the gods had abandoned them, and existence itself was punishment. He is still here.

This story is told in the Gnome section of the mine. This area, hidden from the main mine through residual illusion and kobold ingenuity, is being used by a small community of kobold miners who work sections that the humans don't.

There are other mysteries to be discovered in regards to the kobolds, but that is the story that the players have learned so far. Communication with them is very difficult, both are reduced to drawing pictures in the dirt, or pantomime.

The players stumbled upon their living quarters and stayed passive. Some communication was accomplished, the kobolds knew that if they attacked they'd be slaughtered, they'd die fighting if they had to, but they didn't want that. The kobolds were able to ask the party to kill some nasty spiders who also lived in these gnomish tunnels, which wasn't too difficult for the players, but impossible for the kobolds.

Heroic NPCs, how much is too much?

I was able to get my two wizard NPCs some XP, they are low level and both were able to use spells which the players themselves didn't have access too. I like playing them, they are totally in over their head but have no idea. This game the players had to first find them, they had gotten spooked by a kobold and when they ran, they put out their candles and were now lost in the dark.

Playing NPCs of this nature is a challenge, you don't want to take anything away from the players. You can give hints sometimes, and I often forget that they are even there, I got caught not rolling Saving Throws for traps. I coughed it up as NPC immunity, the odds of them making their saves would be annoyingly terrible and only serve to irritate the players and me. I want them there.

I got the idea from watching a show on the Syfy Network called “Ghost Mine” and wanted to incorporate it into this story. They supply the motivation to keep this mine open. If they die or aren't there, it will close and have economic repercussions on the village of Belalp which really needs this place to survive. If these investigators aren't there, the village won't be either; else the party will get paid to work here full-time and that isn't what this adventure is about either.

The mine is a piece of the Belalp Puzzle, but it isn't the point of the adventure. Is it railroading to keep these NPC's hiding behind the party, or as safe comic relief? I don't think so, they are an element of the design. They are open to attacks; when picking targets I remember that they are there, but they aren't destined to die in a trap. Not yet at least. If they bite it during an attack, then we'll deal with that. That is also up to the party. So far, they feel responsible for the safety of the investigators. One almost got eaten by a giant spider, and they hustled, took risks, and were able to save her. When she used her spell, it also furthered the story.

 1st Level Mage To The Rescue!

The problem was a weird one. The spider webs chocking the hall needed to be burned, but nobody had any torches or oil because the cleric was using magic to light the place. The wood in the gnome ruins is ancient and not fit for anything. The party was going to have to go all the way back just to get something to burn the webs out, which was boring, so I offered up my NPC. She is a horrible wizard who has no confidence in her abilities, but she had gotten the spell to work a couple of times. She told the party that she needed some components which could be found in the area, namely bat-poop and some spiderweb clippings. She ground it up and made a powder which she poured into her hand and blew onto the webs, then she said the magic words . . . and! Nothing happened.

She apologized for getting everybody's hopes up when a web shot out of the passage and got her, quickly pulling her in. Without even thinking the party all raced through the webbing, everybody getting stuck but one person who was able to get a hold of the NPC's foot, and THEN the fire spell was activated, forcing everybody to make a saving throw vs. spell for half damage.

That, to me, was more interesting than having to leave the dungeon. They got to be heroes, and I got to burn them all, so it was a win-win. Was I manipulating the game? Yes, but sometimes I think that the DM has to. This scene needed a bit of spice, and I wanted to remind the party that the investigators were there. They had to serve a purpose. Do you think that I over did it?

The hall was cleared and the creepy spiders were dispatched, opening a hall that hasn't been seen by even the kobolds. That is where they found the bulk of the gnome story, in a room, at the end of the hall is a temple to a Gnomish God, the floor glittering with huge piles of cursed gems and a pickax stuck in the statue of the god. The heroes were able to pry that pickaxe out of the statues head, hoping that maybe that would end the curse . . . it didn't. The mystic used her sense of touch to learn what had happened in this place, it wasn't perfect, but she does know that the angry gnome who put that pickax there still haunted the dark.

Instead of murdering the kobolds, they figured out that the things were using an ancient gnome press to mint coins. Why they are doing this, the party has no idea; well, actually that isn't true. They have an idea, but they don't like it and aren't sure what to make out of it. Anyway, they decided to pay the kobolds off and figured out a way to tell them that the mine was to be shared. They could work their section, but they had to leave the human section alone, and not scare or attack any more miners, nor sabotage any more equipment. The kobolds agreed, and the mine was reopened.

Zudet?

In regards to what the kobolds are up to, they got a clue. One of the kobolds pulled out a small bone statue of a dragon, calling it Zudet. The PC Wizard, instead of going up to the village right away had gone to the city of Brig to research the area and had found mention of a medieval settlement somewhere in the mountains called Zudet Castle. He also learned that an archaic name for the Alpine Skinks that infest the area every Spring and Summer is “Spawn of Zudet”. Is Zudet some kind of Pagan god? A symbol of some kind? Or is the statue literal?

There has been other news in town! But, that will have to wait until next game. This one is in the bag!

Folks around here hate the word “Balance”, and I get it, there is no movement with balance. I myself am on the record as stating, “When the players can try anything, there is no such thing as balance.” Yet, you look in the books, and you see designers talking about balance all the time, and they insist that it is present. 

There is a problem in translation: for most of us laymen, we associate balance with equality. Chess is a seemingly balanced game. Everyone starts out with the same amount of pieces in the exact same spaces and it is all equal until play begins.
Chess, however, from a design standpoint, is not a well-balanced game. It is a game of skill: while two people of the same skill level can enjoy the game, the most skilled player is always going to win. There is no way for me to beat a chess master, I may enjoy getting clobbered, but the skilled gamesman is going to win every time.

To best examine the inner-workings of game balance as it applies to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (since it is such a hidden system), we'll look at another game that is popular and itself providing a giant leap in game design: Axis & Allies (A&A). There is no game master, so the rules controlling the game are all out in the open, it hides nothing. A&A is a strategy game, but like D&D, it is also both a team and an individual game.

Setting up the game and playing it for the first time, A&A doesn't appear to be balanced at all, however, it is, very beautifully so. On the surface you've got the Axis powers, they appear to have the best position: their forces are centralized and they have the most powerful military, however, as the game progresses this balance will shift during play. The Allies are able to build units more quickly than the Axis.

• The early game favors the Axis 
• The middle is equal
• The late game favors the Allies. 

The balance of the game isn't fixed, it fluctuates, thus it dictates  different strategies. The Axis have a limited amount of time to win the game through offensive force, while the Allies are playing a defensive game, slowing down the game as much as possible to give them time to gather their strength. That is a balanced design. 

The balance in the game isn't equal; play is dynamic and allows everyone to play the game on equal terms, regardless of skill level. Sure the odds are in favor of the most skilled player, but they can choose more difficult countries to run, and give less skilled players the easier ones. Victory isn't just dictated by skill alone, nor does it depend simply on luck, these things factor in, but that is what makes this game so playable.

More in relation to D&D, A&A is a team game, if the players who are playing the Allies don't work together, they are going to get annihilated. Like the D&D Fighter, you have England, it has a huge army, however, it is scattered around the map, not centralized like Germany. England has to give its allies enough time to build up their forces, but at the same time, if they sacrifice too much then their removal from the board will cause the downfall of the Allied forces.

You have the United States that begins play much like the wizard class, it is weak but it has the potential to become the strongest force on the board, but even at its most powerful, it still needs England. Each nation has it's own group strategy, as well as a personal strategy. Each nation is different, some are so difficult it is almost impossible to play, but skilled A&A players gain respect if they are able to master them.

This is all esoteric really. Let's move on to something that more closely resembles D&D.

The majority of users don't play wargames, but the original designers did. Wargames teach you a new definition of balance and how it applies to the D&D system. Let's set up a simple scenario:

We'll set up our scenario out in the open, the Regent has chosen a spot to do battle on the road. He wants a nice open space to use his superior numbers to his advantage. His units out number the units of the Prince three-to-one.

To make things interesting, we'll give the Princes men more skill and a higher morale rating than the Regents troops.

Who is going to win? Will the Regent's numbers overwhelm the Prince's elite but battered troops? Or will the Prince be able to break the Regent's defenses and move on to retake the capital? We don't know. We could probably run this simple scenario a few times and have different results each time. That makes things interesting, and while it doesn't appear to be balanced on the surface, it is.

If this battle was perfectly even, we could decide it all with a percentile dice, but since each side has weaknesses and strengths, we have an interesting scenario that is worth running on our table.

Balance isn't about keeping things fair, it is about keeping the game interesting. 

If we introduce a dragon to first level characters, we should strive to end up with a scenario that they will lose, but can survive if they are skillful and a little lucky. Something has to be there which allows escape or an equalizer of some kind, even if that strategy is to run like hell and regroup.

But are the players actually beaten? Now the players know what they are up against, and can start a defensive game to minimize the creature's influence until the players feel they are strong enough to challenge its power or come up with a scheme which gives them an advantage over the more powerful opponent. The DM can kill them at any time, but what would the point of that be? In this case, we balance player skill vs. the chaotic might of a dragon. Who is going to win? We don't know, not until we run it.

Balance has nothing to do with keeping the game fair, or even. A high-level wizard is still going to need the protection of the fighter if he doesn't then why make the fighter play at all? On the same note, the low-level wizard is still able to contribute, he isn't just a liability. This is balanced as well, but that enforces the idea of teamwork and really isn't our problem. The players still have to pick their moves based on individual and group benefits. The better the team, the cooler the adventures that they are going to have.

Additional Links:

Nerd out with me:  'Axis & Allies' - A Buyers Guide

FREE-FORM KRIEGSPIEL is the system which the designers took for granted that you knew. All wargaming systems have the same basic rules to function. When variant designers, such as Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, published their changes they didn't really focus on the basics. Not only did the people who bought these books not want them, but, honestly, wargame players become blind to them. They are just there.

There is actually enough basic wargaming rationale in the AD&D system that it makes it fairly easy to understand the more complex processes of kriegspiel and how to get a game on a tactical level to function, and I recommend that you do! There are principles and theories that can be carried over to the D&D table which will greatly help the DM understand the art of war. Understanding is key to running Free-form Wargame scenarios.

When one thinks about wargamers, there is an image in your head which features men standing around a highly detailed battlefield moving finely painted miniatures, determining combat through highly complex rules; this game exists, but it isn't native to AD&D. Folks have incorporated that game into the system, and it can function! If you want to see how a specific large scale war will affect the world, this probably is your best bet, but it isn't necessary, and there are some serious flaws with it that make it incompatible with the D&D system.

STRICT KRIEGSPIEL

This is the image that comes to mind for most people. Those who have incorporated it into their games had to deal with pounding a square block into a round hole; it is a bad fit, and since it is a bad fit you have to alter the game until it does fit. It can be done, but it is clunky and awkward for one simple reason, the figure representing the player does not follow the same rules as the rest of the units. Elaborate rules have been introduced in an attempt to fix this, but only serve to extend an already long game into something even more tedious.

Another problem is the players themselves. Anyone who is interested in strict kriegspiel can tell you, we are rare breeds. Buying or creating these games, learning the complex rules, modifying them to your own specs, painting figures- this is the easy part. The difficult part is finding opponents.

Just because you build it, doesn't mean that players will come. Your players don't want to learn these new, very specific rules, and even if they did, strict kriegspiel is a long game that they probably don't care about and are not interested in. While not scientific in any way, I estimate that about 1-10 players of tabletop RPGs are even interested in experimenting with this system, those that find it fascinating and discover enjoyment from it, maybe 1-50.

There is also another glaring problem with the strict wargame format, it is a 2 person game. You can break up into teams, and have fun, but this is not D&D. At its heart, strict kriegspiel is nothing but a complex and heavily modified game of chess. While two players can enjoy it, a DM expecting to challenge the entire table to a strategy game is going to get destroyed. This removes the need to simulate the event and makes the act pointless.

Another problem with 4+ players as powerful as D&D characters is that it takes longer to set up the board than it takes for advanced players to destroy the enemy. This was built into the system by the designers on purpose, that purpose being to eliminate the need for strict kriegspiel altogether.

Kriegsspiel was originally invented by the Prussian military, it was not designed to be entertaining, it was designed to run thousands of scenarios which allowed the small German army to resist the overwhelming might of the French; a feat that (I believe) was successful!

The game was also used to train officers, and strict kriegspiel had the same problems with accomplishing this as we D&D players do; the participant has the ability to see the entire battlefield from an unrealistic position, overhead. This position also makes it too easy to study and accurately predict the strategies of your opponent.

To fix this, and make the game more realistic, the referees concealed the board. The participants didn't get to see it, they had to ask questions and command their troops through written messages which the referee would take into the room with the board and they would interpret the commands of the player. Commanding Officers would apply the changes to the board and decide what happens, and then update the player.

This sounds exactly like Dungeons & Dragons, and this is exactly how the game was intended to be played. This style is called Free-form Kriegspiel, and the benefits are obvious; namely that the players don't need to know the rules at all. 

via Pinterest

Studying the mechanics of D&D itself, and comparing them to kriegspiel, you gain an appreciation for the true genius of Gygax and how his invention was designed to limit the number of dice rolled, while not limiting the game in scope in any way.

Free-form Kriegspiel applied to the rules which govern Dungeons & Dragons eliminate the necessity of an actual board completely. Often, the results of a player's commands to his units can be compared to the tactics which were defined by the DM prior to play, and logic will dictate if an entire battle was successful or not.

AD&D's SECRET WEAPON

Advanced players have known for years that you don't need to kill them all, you just need to figure out ways to trigger a morale check as quickly as possible. In this way, a party of 4-6 high-level adventurers can easily defeat small to medium sized armies. Even mid-level PCs can overwhelm entire armies on the field of battle if the players are skilled enough. They don't even need followers or an army to do this.

The Morale system is the key. This is the tool that makes Free-form Kriegspiel function without the need of a board. When we use this tool, even if a battle doesn't go well for the players or we want more involvement from the participants, we can update the players to the situation and use the morale system to quickly determine the actions of NPCs with very little fuss and just a few die rolls. The play doesn't stop because we have to move a bunch of little pieces and determine combat on a tactical level.

Speed and playability are always desired over specifics and realism.

Applying followers and allied soldiers to the game is made practical once we understand the mechanisms in place to govern their actions. Gygax could take the players into the midst of a full-scale battle, and decide how the player's choices interacted with the event taking place around them without ever having to set up a single miniature soldier. The only person who had to understand the inner-workings of these mechanics was the Dungeon Master.

The DM can alter the challenge of a battle and the players level of involvement by using the Morale System, Enemy morale can be high or low, the higher the level of enemy morale, the more actions and involvement will be needed on the part of the player.

The Language of Free-Form Kriegspiel

Now the folks who played in Gygax's campaign and helped him play-test the designs were all avid wargamers, this is where it can come in handy to do some study, just to acquire some common concepts and the vocabulary. The player need not write down his commands as the rules of kriegspiel were applied to soldiers, we are doing this for entertainment. You can give leeway and continue the standard D&D guideline of trying to error in the favor of the PCs, but the more specific and precise the command, the better.

Once the DM has these vocabulary words, the players will pick them up. A Unit, for instance, represents a number of people, “You see a couple of units of cavalry riding in your direction.” is a good description. The players don't know exactly how many men on horseback are approaching, but it is fair to say that it is more than 10. The statement above is enough to start a dialog, the players have time to ask specifics and come to a conclusion as to what course of action would be best depending upon the information that they were able to get before either side enters each other's range of attack. Exactly how much time and information being dictated by the DM, as always.

It is also helpful to study the old rules of CHAINMAIL, you don't necessarily need to use CHAINMAIL during the game, but it will greatly help you determine results without actually having to run them, Free-form Kriegspiel relies heavily upon the laws of averages, for example: if equal numbers of infantry attack an equal number of cavalry, the cavalry are going to win. Both sides may suffer casualties, but the infantry will be routed. 

CHAINMAIL even has the mathematical principals behind exactly how many cavalry units may be lost before the infantry are slain. The actual results may vary if the scenario is physically run on a board with dice, but we want to eliminate that step, thus the averages add to playability and speed of the game.

 SUMMARY

Once the DM understands the rules and logic of Free-form kriegspiel, many of the strange or obscure rules and mechanics will finally make perfect sense; the hidden wargame is revealed and the genius of the design is exposed. The system becomes neat and tidy and we discover that we were over-complicating things.

Art by Giuseppe Rava

It can be difficult to find a DM who will allow followers, but now fighters can enjoy the full ability to gain and use their troops as they were intended to be used. Followers are loyal, can guard treasure and property, keep night watch at camp, search large areas so the players don't have to, their uses are very functional; besides, when the fighter walks into town with a military escort it is awesome!

An unlimited number of NPC actions can be determined with very little work, it enforces the separation between player skill and character skill in a balanced way that truly has to be experienced to be appreciated. CHA matters to this game, it is not a drop stat; an enemy with a high charisma is going to be much more dangerous than a wizard with high intelligence.

This doesn't mean that we can't make complicated tactical battles if we want to, this just means that we have the ability to run them, keeping all of the players involved, and preserving the DM's ability to challenge them. If you need to keep a tactical map secret from the players, do it. If you want to play the CHAINMAIL system or the BATTLESYSTEM rules, you can do that too, but Free-form is what was intended.

After a long delay, we finally got together and played again, and to get back on schedule we'll be playing again in 2 weeks, thankfully I have very little prep to do. We had a hard time focusing on the game, we had two R/L parties going on, our AD&D game, and my youngest just turned 13-years-old and we let him invite a bunch of his friends to come over for a sleep-over. This was something like our 4^th annual St. Patrick's Day game? We went through a bunch of corned beef and cabbage, and we had a great turn out!

My computer took a dive, but I finally got my brand new computer! I can't tell you how many years it has been since I didn't have to make due with a hand-me-down; thankfully I was able to keep my old files this time, which is rare. I'm still in the process of getting this new laptop up and running how I like it, so please excuse the delays.

The players were very lucky with Random Encounters (RE), in the wilderness, but I had set the table too low in my haunted mine and had to improvise a lot to bring it alive. For some reason, I had failed to create a RE list for it . . . not sure why, or maybe I did and I misplaced it? I don't know, I wrote up a quick list just prior to the game; I had set the RE to 1 in 10, it really should stay at 3 in 10.

I also committed a very amateur mistake, I have a large list of NPCs which I had color coded but failed to organize in any cohesive way. Every time the players wanted to talk to somebody it took me way too long to find the proper NPC; little things like this really upset me. It was such a stupid thing to do, but one that is easily fixed, I reorganized the lists into their colors and alphabetized them so that I can find them fast without having to skim the entire two column NPC sheet, now all I have to do is print that list off and throw the other one away. It wasn't a total waste of time, though, since I did alter a few of the characters from my original design; so this one will be more accurate as well as functional. It is those little details that get you every time!

That was really just a hick-up, the thing that spooked me the most was the gaming board that I had set up; if this thing didn't work then the whole game was in question. I am glad that I had filled it in ahead of time, my biggest concern was a specific player who knows me very well and can usually spot where I hide things; he could look at a map and point directly to where the whatever is and be dead on correct, this one, in spite of being mostly filled in, has kept its secrets, which is good! That is the point of the game.

I was very impressed and happy with how the game map functioned; it was easy to grasp, easy to use, and easy to understand. It aided both myself as DM and the players. Movement is controlled by 1d6, and a table that I keep hidden behind the screen, the modifiers to movement are simple and intuitive for everybody; Days are broken into 4 turns, and follow the guidelines for RE in the DMG, each HEX = 1 abstract mile, and it is very close to the MR listed in the core rules for Mountains, but it varies to better simulate mountain conditions and environment without turning into “survival porn”, unless we want it too. Locating elements within the hex involves either a passive check, or the players can invoke an improved check, but nothing is guaranteed. I really like it! It slows the game down just enough to FEEL like you are traveling through the mountains, yet is abstract enough to not become tedious.

I do have to change the way that my caves function; the players discovered two of them, but they always went back to the one that they originally discovered, which isn't the problem, the problem was that I had set it so that movement between the caves lasted 1d12 days, which is too long, it does nothing but eat up my calendar; besides, my original intention was a kind of warp zone, I think that I will change it to 2d12 hours, and see how that goes, but I'm not really set on that. That aspect really does need some fiddling until just the right balance is found. My RE is set too low in those sections as well, but I'm not sure what to put down there . . . I do like the concept, though. It should be faster below ground but unpredictable, I know that it is a maze of natural cave systems, which are impossible to navigate with any certainty, namely because I'm not going to map it.

In regards to story: the players explored the remote village of Belalp and uncovered some of its secrets. I helped one of the players correct her alignment, Chaotic Neutral is not an easy alignment to play, and she has constantly played somewhere between Lawful Neutral and Neutral Good, I didn't dock her any XP, and instead did it through story, the Relic of Sebaldus which they are hauling around is also unpredictable, the spirit of the Saint visited her and asked her leading questions about who she is, and through those answers we settled on LN; I always consider alignment to be more of a tool than a hard fast rule that must be obeyed; maybe if somebody is being a jerk about it I'll enforce the rule of level loss, or if it serves the scenario, but so far that has never been an issue.

The players did get a chance to use some of their NWP skills, which, honestly, we don't really utilize all that much; we tend to use them more as guidelines: How do you know this information? Because I have herbalism. This game put many of the skills that they chose to the test, which is nice and exactly what I want to happen. Too many times I just skim over elements that make some player choices pointless, such as NWP skills. While it isn't my job to make sure that these things are used, it is my job to provide opportunities to use them.

Despite the fact that we had a hard time focusing on the game, there was some fancy playing going on! I don't always make things easy, that isn't my job either, in fact, it is my duty to make things difficult. In this instance, the party really wanted to explore a haunted mine, but besides the fact that workmen said no, the Archaeologists that had been hired to investigate and debunk paranormal activity were jealously guarded because they too planned on making a profit by publishing a book about the place. I wasn't concerned with the how, I just made it difficult but the players found a way in, when trying to impress the two novice wizards with their amazing credentials didn't work, they quickly went to the next best thing, catering to their egos: Asking them for their help learning the lore of the land. It was shrewd and effective. Subtly, that is a trait of the master player. Fast too, I hadn't planned on actually letting them in yet.

They had the opportunity to make an impression upon the archaeologists, and they did it in truly heroic fashion; exposing a nightmarish and incredibly powerful creature that was hidden and getting away with murder undetected the entire time, a monster that I had hidden in many of my dungeons but had always managed to elude detection, the icky otyugh, a tough monster to fight when you have the advantage, never the less when it does. Their goal wasn't to actually go fishing with the cleric as bait, but that is exactly what happened; they just wanted to access a section of the mine that was unexplored, but the squiggly tasty cleric dangling just above the diseased and smelly water was just too much for the otyugh to resist, it went after her. The two fighters of the group have their hands full, as they are trying to haul her up before the nightmarish blob of horror could catch her, and it tried! It's tentacles barely missing her as she is helplessly being hauled up this 60' pit, they get her back up and had reduced the things attack to just one, as the other tentacle was needed to hang from the chimney above the pit; it grabbed one of the fighters before he could get a shot off, and intended to use his body as a shield, but the gunfighter was a dead-eye and was able to put a bullet into it.

The otyugh dropped the explorer, who fell into the fetid water below with a fresh bleeding wound caused by the creature's fang encrusted tentacle, and tried to nab the remaining fighter; it missed and Sam unloaded both pistols into the thing, as well as the cleric behind him. Their problems were over, but the fighter who had popped his head, screaming in disgust looked up to see this giant dead blob of filth falling towards him, he just barely got out of the way before it splashed down. Out of this misadventure, they not only found treasure of an unknown origin, it isn't roman nor medieval, it's gold coins minted with images of different vegetables? But they also became gods to these two low-level wizards who had never in their lives thought that a horror like that could actually exist. You could say that it went well, and it was all the players doing. They even role-played the disgust and terror, once the gold was hauled out of the bottom of the pit, the Explorer, stinking and covered in things that make otyugh happy was adamantly done with this place for awhile, whatever secrets were kept down here could just stay down there. He bathed and threw away his clothes and bought new ones. The players even made him do all of the nasty work; since, you know, he's already dirty; he can clean the 4000 gold pieces so that they can sneak this stuff back to their cabin. For a DM, the discussions going on was immensely entertaining. Make the DM laugh and get lots of XP, that is how you win the game!

This one goes into the books as a success. Everybody had a lot of fun, it has the players thinking while away from the table, there was joy, there were tears, and there was poop; D&D just doesn't get any better than that, does it?