Second Spirit Games Demo Report
I turned up at the shop in good time and with every thing prepared to run my demo version of
Dancing in the Dark. I only had two players so I decided to let them chose what characters from amongst the pre-generated ones I had done to play and they chose to play the Cleric and the Fighter Thief an odd party but there you go. The players where a veteran role player with a well known liking for quirky characters, hence his choosing the cleric of
The sage even though he was under the miss impression that all clerics could heal at least a bit an a relatively new player who has a bit of playing and Games Mastering experience mostly with d20 derived games.
The players where read the introduction and briefed to expect mine devils, kobalds, and handed the players map. Our two heroes having successfully scrounged a pair of miners lanterns and having the foresight to hook them to their belts descended into the mine. As expected other than their lanterns the mine was black as pitch with the small square of sky visible far above them offering no light at all. They found the area at the base of the shaft in considerable disarray. The Cleric was particularly distressed to find that the small shrine to the god of industry, in her role as protector of miners, smashed and desecrated, they paused to put it back in place and to gather up the scattered offerings and say a prayer to the god by way of an apology and an explanation (cool bit of role play). They then came up with the idea to use candles to mark where they had been in the mine and not having any they moved into the store to get some as the briefing by the surface supervisor had lead them to the belief that they could use whatever stores they needed.
They found the store had been trashed, all the tools scattered the jars of lamp oil smashed and all the blasting tubes set off lacing the piles of tools with razor sharp bits of copper tube. They decided to push on with the plan and managed to retrieve a dozen or so usable candles without injury before pressing on into the north passage
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| Players map hand out |
Advancing slowly and cautiously due to the poor footing and the deep darkness beyond their lanterns light. They failed to notice the two Maggot orks a the first junction, the Maggot orks however noticed them. Drew their stabbing swords and charged out of the darkness, Their first strike was met by the Fighter Thief whose slightly superior reach allowed them to strike first, missing the orks strike did not causing a massive seventeen points of damage forcing a threshold of pain save, as the poor Fighter Thief had just taken fifteen damage, she passed but reeled back form the force of the strike. There followed a more balanced exchange of blows and the orks began to feel they where losing at which point the worst wounded of them decided to make a break for its friends, but became confused due to its wounds and ran off down a dead end. Outnumbered two to one the remaining ork soon fell to to the players blows. Not however before wounding the Fighter Thief again. Resting briefly the players came to the baneful conclusion that they had no means to deal with their wounds but decided to press on none the less. The followed the blood trail left by the escaping ork and located it trying to hide in the nearby dead end. No one was surprised and the ork acted first rushing the player pair, dodging their blows and felling the cleric. Stepping over the Cleric who had failed his threshold of pain roll, it tried to run but was pursued by the Fighter Thief who kept up with it slashing at it as often as she could but doing no telling damage back to the shaft, across the room and out down the south tunnel until nearly tripping over a dead miner just at the turn of the passage at which point the ork broke contact and disappeared into the darkness beyond the pool of lantern light. Staggering back he met up with the cleric who had recovered from failing his threshold of pain save save being knocked down. Looking at each other they decided they where too hurt to continue and that they should return to the surface to report.
After that I departed form the scenario a bit to allow them to go back down giving them one use of heal trifling wound by an NPC priest of the god of industry who had arrived at the surface which penetrated nicely and cured a remarkable amount of damage considering it was such a low powered spell.
Returning to the mine the pair continued past the dead miner into the next pair of Maggot orks, both sides where surprised but the players worse than the orks, which they managed to dispatch one with a particularly spectacular knife throw by the thief as it turned away wounded to try and warn its fellows further in the mine. However given that both the characters where now very badly wounded, again in the case of the Fighter Thief who was on one hit point despite the healing I decided to stop the adventure there as they would have n chance of dealing with the final encounter & would in all likely hood be killed by the next guard pair.
Player reactions - well they both had fun and whilst the more experienced player was a bit boggled by the complexity of the game as he saw it he could see it was a good game even if not quite his preferred type. The other chap loved it pure and simple and would have bought a players hand book on the spot. Sadly Spirit Games was out of stock as the distributors had got it into their head that HackMaster is out of print. I have been aware of this since I tried to get a restock prior to the demo. I know Phil is working on this form the Spirit end of things and Jolly had pased it on to the chap who deals with distributors at the Kenzer end of things. However I don't know what has come of this pincer attack yet.
