The party continues pt.1

I think this last weekend was the fourth Beacon session we've played and the players finally made it to level 2.  The interesting thing is that they almost didn't make it, and without the quick thinking of Thedric they probably would have ended up as goblin chow.  I guess I haven't been keeping up with the narrative so here's a brief breakdown of the previous two sessions.

Since the first adventure, the party had made their way to the town of Milham and decided to try to collect a 500 gp reward for the bandit leader.  Realizing that this large reward must entail a great risk, they decided to earn some money (and experience) by exploring some old dwarvin ruins a few days south of the town.  They spend their little money on a map of the country and on a treasure map.  On their first outing they ran into some merchants who were fleeing from a haunted building in the woods.  They investigated and found that it was actually a band of hobgoblins who were using the building to trap and rob passing travelers.  They managed to kill and drive away the hobgoblin tribe and recovered a couple boxes of fine silverware and some 50gp.  They also retrieved three horses and a couple carts.  However in the combat Tom, the hunter, was wounded (down 3 STR) and so they returned to town so he could recover (by staying in the church under the care of healers, he sped the normal rate of healing from 3+2+1 or 6 days to 3).  

While in town they sold two horses and one of the carts and then tried (and failed) to make a secret rendezvous with a shady fellow in order to gather more information about the bandits.  Disheartened by their failure, and now were back at strength, they all bought some fancy hats and then they decided to travel back to the hills and find the dwarven ruin and hopefully a bunch of loot.  They hired a fighter named Luc on as extra muscle, Luc having worked with Henril as a caravan guard back in the first session. 

This time they made it to the hills.  On leaving the road to journey to the ruins the random encounter table came up with a stag and so they hunted it down.  While cleaning the stag, the blood smell attracted a group of huge scorpions which they managed to dispatch.  Henril decided to collect the scorpion venom in the jars he had brought with him (for just such an eventuality perhaps).  Emboldened by their victory, they traveled east, following the instructions on the map until they found the dwarven marker stones indicating an ancient hold.  They searched and found the entrance, a cleft in the rocks hidden by undergrowth.  Inside it was pitch black but they fired up their torches and alerted the nearby goblins of their presence.   Shrugging off the hail of crossbow bolts they charged down the dark hallway and managed to kill the goblins on watch.  Then they made their way further down the hallway, finding and dispatching another group of goblins.  All in all they did quite well in the combat but they were somewhat wounded, and since it had been afternoon when they entered the ruin, they decided to head back to the wagon before it got dark.  They made their way back and out of the complex by late afternoon and rested in the wagon, leaving Luc to keep watch.  Sure enough once it was dark a small band of goblins snuck out of the entrance, but Luc had heard them approaching. The party was onto them in a flash, and with a modest amount of luck, dispatched them right quickly.

So that's a quick rundown of session 2 and 3. I'll write up session 4 and then get into my thoughts in the next post.

On a related note, my 10 year old daughter ran her first game last weekend.  Her and my youngest, and their friend had a sleepover and they wanted to play some Laser Ponies.  I was agreeable, but my daughter turned to me and said "but can I do the part where you tell what happens?".  Naturally I was pleased.  She did a great job of it too. I sat with them and helped them make their characters, and listened in for the first 10 minutes or so.  At first she was telling the younger ones what they were doing but I said that she should just tell them what they saw, but let them decide what to do.  She got it right off and they happily had a grand adventure with raccoons, bears, a three eyed monster and probably the fastest take down of the Chasm Queen anyone ever heard of.  There was a little bleed-through from their games of Beacon, as the bears were carrying silver pieces and the ponies all had little jack-knives and weren't shy about using them.  I believe a few liberties were taken with the rules but I think that it was a great victory none the less.