For Gold and Glory - Actual Play Report #1

This is the first Actual Play report of one of my Play-by-Post games over on the RPG.net forums. For Gold and Glory is a game I'm running using the Dark Dungeons rules and I chose to run an adventure (and maybe some more later) rather than running a sandbox game. I chose to start with my favorite adventure - The Sunless Citadel, originally published for D&D 3.0. I'm basically converting it on the fly, but 95% of the monsters in the adventure are available in the Dark Dungeons book and the traps are pretty much straight out of the adventure. This campaign started back in September and we've got almost 350 posts so far, with no sign of slowing down any time soon. 

In case you missed it, I fucking love this adventure.

So, first up, here's the initial cast of characters:
Anich Larinson - 1st-level Fighter, played by Phil6294
Rowan Porter - 1st-level Thief, played by m111
Quartz Graystrike - 1st-level Dwarf, played by Sabermane
Penlin the Mighty - 1st-level Magic-User, played by thirdkingdom
Father Suril Troar - 1st-level Cleric, played by CaliberX

The adventurers, a mix of locals and roaming folk, met up in a tavern (how original, right?) in Oakhurst. While most were responding to a call for adventurers needed to take care of a local goblin tribe, Father Suril was a local priest, determined to go out to the fabled Sunless Citadel in search of his nephew, one of a band of adventurers who had gone missing in the Citadel.

A merchant approached the party and revealed the full reasons why Oakhurst put out the call for adventurers - a goblin tribe living in the bowels of the fallen fortress would ransom a single perfect apple once a year. The apple would cure any ailments, though occasionally the goblins would attempt to sell a white, sickly apple instead - where the red apple would bolster whoever ate it, the white apple would steal the life from the poor victim. Another party of adventurers, including the merchant's son and Father Suril's nephew, went into the Citadel over a month prior to the party's arrival and never returned.

Long story short, after much promised reward, the party set off for the Citadel the next morning. After a few hours walking out to the ruined Citadel, with no encounters along the way, the party reached a deep ravine surrounded by broken pillars with a rope leading down. After some debate over what to do, Penlin the Mighty grew tired of waiting, cried "Observe my decisive action as I grow bored of standing about!" and swung down on the rope to a ledge down below, only to be promptly attacked by giant rats. The rest of the party quickly followed, with the notable exception of Father Suril (who preferred to use his sling from above), and two rats were slain and the third fled. Fortunately, despite being bitten, Penlin and Quartz managed to avoid contracting a deadly plague from the rats.

After some minor patching up of wounds later, the party continued down a battered set of stairs from the ledge, leading into a ruined courtyard, beyond which laid the Sunless Citadel itself - a blasted keep that had fallen into the ravine centuries before. Deciding to press forward to the entrance, the group nearly had its first death - Rowan tumbled into a pit trap, bashing his head on the ground and dropping to zero hit points. A fortunately-timed critical save vs. death ray later and he was back up to one hit point.

After pulling Rowan out of the pit (and grabbing some loot from a goblin corpse found within), the party moved on, entering the Citadel. Their first sight was a group of slaughtered goblins, one of which was pinned to the wall with a spear. Moving on from that room, the party killed another giant rat and chose to ignore for the moment a stone door carved with an elaborate dragon.

After that, the group of intrepid adventurers made it to another room with a broken cage, a smoky firepit, and a huddled tiny humanoid covered in rags and weeping - a beleaguered kobold known as Meepo, Keeper of Dragons...

More to come soon! That covers about 150 posts up to the first week of October. We've got another two months and 200 posts to go, and hopefully I'll get that covered here in the next few days. If you guys found this at least a little interesting, please let me know - if not, I'd love to know that too and I'll go back to my other gaming content. Thanks!