Youth DnD: The Damaged Dungeon

 I realize that I've been lax about reporting on the youth D'n'D game that I run for Firstborn and his friends, but I'm pleased to say that: 

A) It's still going.
B) It transitioned to online gaming with only a few growing pains when the pandemic hit. 

The characters have been fairly consistent. Firstborn is still playing his dragonborn draconic sorcerer. (Because dragons. And fire. But mostly dragons.) The player of the mousefolk cleric transitioned to a half-elf swashbuckler/bard once they rescued the mousefolk tribe, allowing the cleric to gracefully return to her people. The third of the original players is still playing his halfling arcane trickster. We have two other players who are currently absent, but we're hoping to have them back when circumstances permit. 

The campaign itself is based in Roslof Keep, which is very much an old-school dungeon: you go inside and defeat monsters and get treasure. The primary conceit is that the dungeon is the creation of a Mad Mage, who is supposed to have hidden an immortality potion in the Infernal Machine at the heart of the maze. The dungeon is less of a dwelling than an elaborate test and training ground; the monsters inside are generated (and recreated) by the dungeon itself, though every so often some stray beast or tribe wanders in. 

This is not terribly well explained, since the dungeon is otherwise quite difficult to enter; it is sealed with a magic "membrane" -- essentially an impenetrable force field -- which will open only to groups who have sworn themselves to one of seven magical banners called Mithal Standards. In addition, moving down to each new level beyond the first can only be done when a group has defeated everything on the current level; a similar membrane keeps the levels separated. I've dealt with this by deciding that the membrane becomes more permeable when a banner company is entering or leaving; so long as some of the group is inside and others are outside, it's possible for other creatures to pass through. This was how the Mousefolk (as well as a group of orcs on the first level) made their way into the maze, and it was how the party eventually brought them back out. 

The prepackaged campaign is designed to be used for both AD&D and 5e... mostly. Mainly, that means that there are 5e stat blocks for the monsters along with the AD&D stats. Unfortunately, it looks like nobody thought to do conversions for the treasure, which has created some interesting issues with the magic items; as written, they're really too powerful for 5e characters. I've mostly ignored that, since the dungeon is fairly brutal and I've compensated by letting the characters level up a bit more than recommended and keep the more powerful treasures. I've also given them some sidequests outside of the main campaign; one was a quest to find out what was eating the horses at a logging camp, and another was a quest to return a stolen book to the Library Lich, and then a smaller sub-quest to clear the imps out of his basement. Oh, and they discovered a mysterious tiefling who was apparently spying on their lord's manor and probably on them, and survived a couple of assassination attempts.

As they've progressed, we've filled in more of the keep above the dungeon, local politics and other Houses and banner companies; they've rescued a member of another company and had one of their own members rescued by that same company. The characters are still definitely in the Scrappy Underdog category, but they're starting to make a name for themselves. Meanwhile they've discovered a strange fungus that seems to be infecting both the dungeon and the creatures in it, and one of their "recurring enemy" monsters -- a kobold sorcerer named Gex, who has attacked and been killed by them several times -- has asked for a truce; Gex and another monster are worried about the fungus and the way it seems to be draining the dungeon's magic, which means that if they're killed they might not come back.

...Which brings me to this week. The group has formed a temporary alliance with Gex, and after he helped them clear a couple of rooms on the third level they started talking about whether it was possible to bring him out of the dungeon, or whether -- since he was a creation of the dungeon -- that would destroy him. 

So they tested it by capturing a dungeon-spawned giant rat and carrying it out through the membrane. It survived. (Well, until they killed it immediately afterwards.) So they brought Gex out. This was... an experience. For one thing Gex had never entirely believed that Outside really existed; the adventurers came from somewhere, but for all he knew the dungeon was generating them the same way it did him. For another, he'd never seen sky before; it took them a few minutes to convince him that he wasn't going to fall upwards, and he could let go of the door handle now. He had certainly never seen a street vendor's cart, or a meat pie, so they promptly brought several of them; that was such a revelation that he barely notice the next two blocks as they led him back to the estate. 

Their lord was perfectly appalled by this. How had they brought the kobold out? And even if you can bring one of the dungeon's creatures outside, why would you ever want to? And what would happen to Gex now that he was out? Was he still bound to the dungeon? Was he an ordinary kobold, set for a full natural lifespan, or would he weaken and die outside of his home? The lord, a former adventurer himself, called in a friend of his -- an elvish wizard and former member of his company -- who suggested that Gex was less likely to suffer unpleasant consequence if he was bound to the Mithral Banner; Gex promptly agreed to this. 

So now the group has adopted a kobold sorcerer who was designed by the dungeon of the mad mage to harry them and try to kill them. We'll see how this goes...