Dungeon Crawl Classics # 2: "The Lost Vault of Tsathzar Rho" (Part 1)

Since my father-in-law, who is very much anti- board game, has repeatedly expressed interest in trying out a role-playing game, I decided to introduce him and another friend to the genre through an old school dungeon hack adventure. I've come to rely on modules for introducing newbies to what gaming is like, because there's less preparation involved (I'm not creating maps or monster stats), I don't feel any special pressure to come up with a great story, and there's a pre-defined stopping point (so if the players don't like gaming, it's easy for them to stop there, and if they do, it's their responsibility to ask for more).

I decided to try Goodman Games' Dungeon Crawl Classics # 2: The Lost Vault of Tsathzar Rho, a D&D 3.5 adventure for first-level characters. It has a very traditional premise: monsters from nearby hills have started menacing an isolated hamlet, which hires the adventurers to put a stop to their evil. The module is actually really old school--there's a little boxed text, and then the adventurers are smack-dab at the beginning of the dungeon. Since starting like this would involve little or no actual role-playing (the whole point of the exercise), I decided to start the game with the PCs arriving at the hamlet, witnesses an attack by kobolds, and being asked by the hamlet's leader to intervene. I staged another ambush on their way to the dungeon, and then used the first room of the dungeon as the climax to the adventure. This last part might seem really odd, but then this module is really odd. The first monster the heros fight is probably the deadliest they're going to encounter for quite some time: an ogre with an attack bonus of +8 and damage of 2d6+7! That's enough to easily drop a first-level PC to stonecold -10 DEAD with a single hit, and I honestly have no idea what the maker of the module was thinking as the rest of the module (at least the early parts) are not nearly so lethal. Fortunately, the PCs proved themselves clever enough to figure out a way to subdue the ogre before it used their bones to bake its bread.

It was a pretty fun time, as my father-in-law and his friend are characters in themselves, and they exchanged all sorts of trash-talking. The Wife was there, playing the erstwhile Daisy, and helped keep them on track (and alive) while letting them push the action forward. I think it was a success, and if so we'll see what else lays further into Tsathzar Rho's vault . . .