Dungeon Fantasy RPG Part 2 – First Session

Posted on June 29, 2020July 16, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

First Session

With the Elder Minion’s two characters picked out and the adventure prepped, we kicked off our first session of the Dungeon Fantasy Role Playing Game. Starting off our playthough, the Elder Minion will be running two player characters and I will be gamemastering. As a reminder, we will be starting with the adventure from the core set entitled “I Smell a Rat” with the action taking place in Nordlond, mini-campaign setting outlined in the Hall of Judgment sourcebook.

Campaign Backstory

To keep things simple, we established that Sir Yvor Gryffyn (Human Knight) and Llandor the Gray (Elven Scout) were old comrades-in-arms who had fought side by side on the battlefield in years gone by. They now journey across the land seeking their fortunes wherever fate takes them.

As the scene opens, the pair are on a barge that is proceeding upstream towards the town of Isfjall, as the spring trading season has opened in earnest after a long, bitter winter. Rumor of fae ruins in the forests and mountains beyond the city provide the motivation for the journey.

After listening to stories from the sailors, both Sir Yvor and Llandor are eager to explore the bustling town of Isfjall once they dock. After some vigorous roleplaying involving a dwarven merchant and a gaudy, totally non-magical bow, the pair begins to ask around for directions to an inn. With that, we segue way into the adventure proper.

The Adventure Begins

Without spoiling the adventure, the Elder Minion and I were able to navigate the opening roleplay and work our way through two combat encounters before calling it a night. Given that we were already at least somewhat familiar with the GURPS game mechanics, combat flowed fairly well. As we went along we were able to take our turns much faster and became more comfortable declaring which maneuver the character/monster would be performing.

One thing that was fairly new to us was the reload speed on Llandor’s bow. We haven’t used that rule previously, so it was a bit of a surprise to read up on how firing a bow operates. The Elder Minion was initially disappointed when considering the slower rate of fire (turn 1 shoot, turn 2 reload, turn 3 shoot), however, upon closer examination of the character sheet we learned that Llandor has the Fast Draw (Arrow) skill which allows him to reload as a free action. This got the rate of fire back up to one per turn, which was more to the Elder Minion’s liking.

Sir Yvor turned into a wrecking machine, once he was able to get into melee range. Doing 2d+7 cutting damage is brutal. Speaking of range, I previously thought range C was “close range”, i.e. the hex next to you. That is not the case and in fact a range of C means you are occupying the same space. This came into play during the encounter and caused me to position things pretty poorly for the first couple of rounds. Definitely a learning moment.

There were plenty of exciting moments where the Elder Minion threw me a curve ball by making attacks with improvised weapons or just pulling off crazy skill rolls to solve a problem. As an introductory adventure, I’m really enjoying the diversity that “I Smell a Rat” has offered so far.