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DnD 5e

So I am no longer in a position where I can play with my previous party, and haven’t been for a while. However, I am now gathering friends and am going to attempt a new session, with a new group. Maybe I’ll write some more posts on here, maybe not, depending on time. In any case, I’m excited for DnD again!

#dungeons & dragons #tabletop #boardgames

Puzzles, Part Two.

So, in the puzzle I mentioned before, whereas the the change in understanding, ΔU, would have been quite large, since it was a big leap to go from strange symbols to the latin alphabet in disguise. Had I not remembered something similar on the TV, that would have been the case, and assuming that the time we took to figure out the puzzle, T, would have been fairly small, then we would have had a great time and the puzzle would have been a success. Personally I think it's a great puzzle, feel free to use it! (obviously I don't need to give permission, if someone puts a DnD puzzle up on the web then they've no right to keep it from anyone)

However, because I did figure it out so quickly, my leap in understanding was very small, the ΔU was only me going from 'Ooh,those look like letters with bits missing' to 'those missing bits are the on the other sheet, obviously.' So the puzzle was a failure. Whereas T was very small, the ΔU was so insignificant compared to what it might be that the puzzle became a disappointment.

The other side to this was nicely demonstrated earlier on in our adventure, where our DM threw another really cool puzzle at us. We walked into a room in which we needed to find an old man, for some weird prophecy stuff. In the room, there was a carpet, some images of faces along the walls and three doors (or four, including the one we came through). We figured that this was going to be some kind of maze, so to mark the exit Torrin stuck a dagger in the door we had come through.

However, after inspecting the room, we found two things: that there was a trapdoor under the carpet, and, more interestingly, that in the door opposite us was a point of a dagger sticking through from the other side. After some investigation, we confirmed our suspicion that the doors each lead to their respective opposites (think Portal, with each pair of doors being a set of portals) and that if we opened the trapdoor then we could see down though the ceiling at ourselves, after a hidden trapdoor opened up in the ceiling as we opened the one on the floor.

We tried everything. We went in and out of the doors, cast spells, looked at the images on the walls, tried tricking the system (thank you to Portal for helping us figure out how the physics of it might work) and eventually were on the edge of giving up. However, our pixie decided to fly up through the ceiling for some reason that I can't remember (possibly just to make sure we had tested each opening) at which point we discovered that the hole in the ceiling did not actually send us through out of the floor.

After getting everyone up to the room above, we found the old man behind another door, although at this point I was wondering how we were going to escape. As Vale shut after coming out he opened it again, hopeful that it might get us out of here on the second try. Unfortunately not, said our DM:

It's the same room, it doesn't change on this side

The key was to shut the door while in the room with the old man, then open it from inside to escape. If our DM hadn't chosen his words as carefully, it's pretty likely that we would have headed back down into the room below and gotten very stuck. So, he reduced T (remember that?) in order to make sure that the puzzle was successful (and it was). It wasn't perfect, as the real ΔU arrived before we really tried solving the puzzle (so, at a small value of T, making it very satisfactory), when we realised the connections between the doors, which was the enjoyable moment. After getting no closer to the solution for a while (big T by the end of the interaction) then it became far less enjoyable, but was worth it for the ΔU we had in learning about the mechanics of the room.

So perhaps puzzles aren't the only thing you can apply the theory to, and when you do then the ΔU doesn't necessarily need to be the solution. I think that keeping this in mind is important when designing adventures, as that's where the true enjoyment of DnD comes from for me, in finding out about the world and in being surprised. Players need that to stay engaged, and making sure that their change in understanding ΔU is as big as possible at all times and that the time it takes T for them to learn stays small, I think that a decent campaign should be able to grow...

Christ, that was a wall of text. I assume this sounds like the ramblings o a madman. I'll proof-read it at some point when I'm not so sleepy. I'm also worried that I sound like I want to sound like I know what I'm talking about and stuff, and that I'm coming off as pretentious. This isn't a foolproof way of creating adventures but I think it's a fascinating idea, so thanks to Zach Weinersmith for getting me thinking.

Puzzles, Part One.

This post has taken a very long time to come out. I've been thinking about it a lot and this is the fourth draft, since it started off as something very different, although maybe that post will manifest in the next few weeks.

In our last game session, we finished after a short dungeon crawl with some cool puzzles. One in particular was the cause of some surprise on the part of the party, the DM, and myself. We walked into a room with two pedestals, each with a glass plate on. looking more closely at the plates (which were removable), we found that one had an image of the moon at the top, the other had the sun. Beneath these were a series of strange symbols. Our DM passed out two sheets of paper with odd symbols over them, one with a sun and one with a moon. I immediately recognised the symbols as letters with missing lines (I had watched the most recent episode of Jonathan Creek when it came out, in which the detective solves a code by adding a line to the bottom of each symbol and then rotating the text, somehow it popped up in the back of my mind...)

As soon as the DM passed us the papers, I jokingly said

ME: Well you probably just stick them over each other and they say something.

[I place one over the other]

DM: What, how?

ME: Whoa, shit! [I was surprised at myself]

TORRIN: Huh, let me see

I let Torrin look at it all, since I was a little surprised that I'd actually solved it. The DM wasn't happy. He was disappointed that I'd figured out his (I have no idea if he got the idea himself, if you do know a source, drop me a message) really clever puzzle out so quickly. I was actually quite disappointed as well, since it seemed like a really good puzzle that might have had a good eureka moment, if I hadn't thought of Jonathan Creek.

Zach Weinersmith (creator of SMBC) wrote a pretty fun piece about an artificial joke generator a while ago, which I found really interesting as a concept, not only because it has a bit about mocking DnD players for not having any sex but also because there's some maths(!)

More specifically (if you don't have time to read the article), he writes about the concept of ΔU/T=How good a puzzle is, where ΔU is the change in the level of understanding and T is the time taken. If ΔU/T is large, then there is a success, in a joke, in a philosophical thought, in a riddle, in education, whatever. The idea is that satisfaction is gained from having a big leap in understanding in a short amount of time is one that can also be applied to DnD puzzles. If the players can figure out the answer to a puzzle quickly, but suddenly understand what's going on, then it is satisfactory, and the players get pleasure out of it. It's a good puzzle.

Hm. This is getting a bit wordy and I'm going to go to sleep now. Part two coming soon, where we'll look at what the concept means, why I explained that puzzle in the first half and how it fits into the theory.

A Curiously Great Game Session.

So after the disaster that was the last game session, we eventually recovered and decided that we should continue so, after Varis and Reverence had been replaced by Fog and Bjorkus, we had another session. We were off to the Septarch's Tower (in Fallcrest, the setting of the majority of the campaign so far) in order to ask them about the goblins.

Weirdly, before we could approach them we were told that, for our own good we were going to be thrown down into the depths of a dungeon underneath the tower. Although it seemed a little bit magical. We followed a corridor into a large dome, with three doors with our names on surrounding us. On a plaque on the floor, we read

Welcome adventurers,

Behind each of your doors you will discover what lies in your future

So, Torrin went to his door, Vale went to his, and Darbek followed Vale because he's not particularly clever and wouldn't want to be caught alone. Unfortunately, after Torrin entered his, Vale's seemed cut off. He and Darbek went to try the door reading 'Darbek' on it's front. Darbek didn't really understand.

*Darbek waits by the door, gesturing to Vale to go first*

VALE: Hm.

*Vale pulls at the door*

DM: Nothing happens, you can't seem to open it.

*Vale looks expectantly at Darbek, and gestures towards the door. Darbek shakes his head*

DARBEK: Locked.

And so the pair follow Torrin through his door, as he was wondering why he was suddenly alone.

Our New DM And How We Lost Two Party Members.

We eventually ended up on a sidequest to defeat some wraiths that had been haunting the dungeons of Fallcrest. The DM dropped some hints that it might actually be related to the main quest but both as players and characters we couldn't see the link. But we were down in a dungeon that we'd briefly been through before, and rather than start down one of the corridors, we simply stood still and let our dragonborn, Torrin, send a roar down into the depths. There were four blue wraiths and three black ones, if I remember correctly (I probably don't). They flew into the room (our first battle against flying enemies) and we quickly got down to the fight.

The entire session was this battle, as it wasn't a very long one (the session, not the battle, which did actually drag for far too long) and a fair few things went wrong. We found out that the wraiths were going to take half damage from almost anything we hit them with, and the fact that they were flying meant that it was a little difficult to maneuver around them and get into good positions. The issue, I think, was that every enemy had the advantage of taking half damage and were all the same type of enemy. If they were simply mixed in with other enemies they wouldn't have caused much trouble, but the shear total number of hit points between them meant that it took a very long time to wear them down. And all that time they were hitting us. They were also hitting us on roles of 6 or 7 as opposed to us having to roll 12 or 13.

It wasn't supposed to be a tricky fight, but lack of experience on the DM's side meant that it's quite difficult to predict the fight's difficulty beyond looking at the numbers. We also did quite poorly, as the blue wraiths had an aura that caused damage and threw us backwards. The tank was blocked down one of the corridors after being blown away and the wraith's speed and dynamic attack meant that they could hit our ranged characters pretty easily. It took a while but bit by bit the wraiths wore us down and we ended up with three of us dying (including myself) while Torrin and Varis both continued fighting. While Darbek and Vale were stabilised, Reverence eventually got up on a natural 20, which led to a cheer from the party.

I don't think he even had time to roll damage and before long he rolled his last die and was dead on the floor. Varis took a hit for Torrin and also went down, eventually dying off as well. Torrin finally got another hit in (after missing an annoying amount) and the DM might have fluffed the numbers a little and killed off the final wraith.

It was a disaster, and a mistake on the DM's part. But we all learnt from it, as it turns out that the DM needs to do more that just rely on the XP budget and creature level to balance an encounter.

No updates in ages? You guys stopped playing or something? New DM a dick?

Ha, thank you for pointing this out. No, I’m doing really badly at updating, but I think I know why. Firstly, busy life and I’m procrastinating at important stuff, so the less important stuff isn’t a top priority. Secondly though, and perhaps more importantly, I didn’t really find any enjoyment in talking about my time as a player, or at least not in so much detail. I think this is probably because I talked in detail about my own plans for the players whereas here I can’t see behind the scenes. We’ve actually been playing quite a lot (perhaps too much!) but whenever I want to write something up I feel like I don’t have enough detail to actually write anything insightful if I use the same format that I have been doing so far.

So thanks for giving me a nudge. I’ll do my best to get something written this week, because I do love doing this!

PS: New DM is not a dick, he’s great, but inexperienced (hey look, a subject for my next post)

(Definitely going to have a go at talking in less detail about the sessions, just talking about what I found interesting)

Game Session Eight, Part Three.

We waited. Which was unexpected, apparently. As per the unspoken agreement between all players of role-playing games, we were determined to spoil the DM's excruciatingly intricate campaign, despite his dedication to the planning of said campaign. We didn't intend to, of course but the fantastic thing about DnD is that no matter what the players do, it'll always be the exact thing that the DM didn't plan for (perhaps that's an exaggeration, but you know it's practically true).

After a day of waiting, Darbek spotted a movement in a bush opposite the mound, and before the others could do anything, shot an arrow into the undergrowth (seeing as he's a shoot first, ask questions later kind of guy). After I made a roll, we heard a squeal and something ran off. Our DM probably expected us to follow it, but the party sat back down, assuming it would have escaped.

Looking back on that, I can see why the DM would expect us to follow, because it's obviously important, but we didn't. I'm sure it made sense at the time, as we really thought that the best thing to do was to wait for longer at the exact place were nothing had happened for a whole day. Our DM was not impressed...

Game Session Eight, Part Two.

The party gave chase to the goblins, which was good, because otherwise they wouldn't have met Darbek. Because he had been tracking the goblins (I'll explain why at some point, probably), he was hiding in the forest as a group of misfit adventurers charged into a clearing after some goblins. The goblins proceeded to run (with their prisoner, Merric) seemingly through a wall cut into a large mound in the center of the clearing, leaving the heroes behind.

Before the party could react however, they were ambushed! A couple of spiders jumped out along with some goblins and we all rolled initiative (me included). The spiders were upon the others, while Darbek ran out after making a shot with his bow and then smashing a goblin in the face with his axe.

I haven't spoken at all about the way that Darbek fights, so I'll do that now. The thing is that I didn't want to create a boring combat character, so I went for a dual-wielding ranger build, where I chose the powers that seemed the most fun rather than the most powerful. I also went for a couple of long ranged attacks, so Darbek was anything but optimised, unlike some of the others. And then I found a gimmick. A gimmick that fell right where I wanted in tone between silly and reasonable. Darbek has a lot of weapons, probably about 15 in total, consisting of maybe 6 different choices. And he also has the quick draw feat, allowing him to draw his weapons as a free action. Since dropping weapons is also a free action, it doesn't cost any actions to drop a weapon and draw a new one.

So that's what Darbek does. He'll go in with a ranged attack, then drop his bow to draw two hammers, perhaps. If he needs to do single damage attacks, he'll drop those and switch to a great axe, and if he needs to he can get out a halberd to get some extra reach. It's a fun system and great to play.

Meanwhile, the others dealt with their attackers without too much difficulty, and after some short introductions, offered Darbek the opportunity to join them in their quest to join Merric. Darbek wanted to find out what the goblins were up to, and was quite happy to do anything as long as he got a good fight out of it. Darbek was already evolving into a simple drawf with simple pleasures.

The newly formed party then turned to look toward the mound and wondered exactly what they ought to do about their friend Merric's disappearance...

Not Being A DM.

It's great! I'm not saying I don't want to run another adventure, because I loved doing it, but seeing someone else doing it and experiencing being a player is fantastic! (I feel like that sounds weird and pretentious so I'm moving on now)

The new DM is great. He's already seen me struggle to do it as well as I can, and understands more than I did, both about the game and about being the DM. He very much let us do what we wanted and it was fantastic, which means I'm really looking forward to the next bit.

Game Session Eight, Part One.

If this had a subtitle, it'd probably be something cheesy like, A New Beginning or Operation: Rescue Merric, which happens to be what our new DM, Merric's player, has named our new adventure. A suitable name, actually, seeing as that's what our quest is.

We began the session at about half past 2, with everyone arriving with pizza, booze and doughnuts. Perfect. We got set up, fairly slowly, as the DM is almost as new at this as I was (which I say as if I know what I'm doing at this point. I don't). Darbek wasn't part of the action at the start as, after Merric suggested the group went to Fallcrest, they were attacked by goblins:

GOBLINS: We're here for the halfling Merric! (good thing too, because I thought they were after the other Merric)

VARIS: ...Take him!

VALE: Well, maybe we should ask them why...

But before they could, everyone (well, not me) had to roll initiative, because the goblins apparently had a very short attention span.

Once in battle, it became clear that they were completely outmatched. They might have managed to kill one or two goblins, but also got repeatedly got turned into frogs. Which was hilarious.

It was also rather difficult to keep track of if you weren't paying attention, so that caused some confusion; Torrin in particular asked what the frog situation was immediately after Varis had just gone through it. Communication is an issue, I feel. But eventually, despite the group's best efforts, the goblins escaped with Merric, leaving a single clue behind them, a nice map of Harkenwold, with some bizarre scrawlings covering parts of it. With some manipulation, the group managed to line up the scribbles to find their first lead:

RIVER RATS

Not that they had any idea what that meant...

Update.

Whew. Been very busy, and I haven't posted at all. But I have written up the first part of our adventure with Merric's player DM'ing.

So that should go up while I'm away in Europe, and once I'm back then I'll finish the other parts that I'm drafting up at the moment. So, see you in about four weeks!

Darbek, And What Makes An Engaging RP Character, Part Two.

And so, while the other players mocked my low INT and CHA scores, I figured that perhaps my character wasn't as level-headed as I imagined. He evolved. Past meeting the others, I found that Darbek was desperate to keep fighting, to show off his skill and many axes. So, he went looking for a fight. When we went to Fallcrest, I missed the introductory discussion about the settlement, since I was on food duty, as it was my house, and those pizzas won't cook themselves! (they did, I just put them in and out of the oven) So I found Darbek in the same boat, and as soon as we found a clue, I chipped in:

DARBEK: Let's go fight 'em!

And my character was born. See, he doesn't care much for the intricacy of the quest (which I'll explain later) or the possibilities of learning more about the town, he's simply there for a good fight and to help people out if he can. He's a very different character to me; once I figured out a direction for my dwarf, I found that I wanted to roleplay more and listen in on what was happening. Darbek disagreed. He's always desperate to take me in a different direction to the one I was looking for, and it was really exciting.

So when Vale's player pulled me aside and told me that my character was really cool because Darbek actually has his own personality, separate from either a boring blank sheet or my own traits. I think this is the key to roleplaying a great character, especially if you're not used to doing it. If your character is separate from yourself, you're not playing the game, you're playing your character, who can grow by their own means.

We crossed Fallcrest, with Darbek in the lead and I found myself telling the others that Darbek walks over and asks explicitly about illegal activity in the area:

DARBEK: Who are the River Rats?

NPC: Who's asking

...

DARBEK: ...Me.

NPC: I said, who's asking?

DARBEK: ...Me.

NPC: Then you can go somewhere else.

DARBEK: ... Fight me.

He didn't rise to the challenge, and the others had to cut in to actually get any information out of the guy. Darbek goes into a tavern and pays the blatantly disgruntled tavern owner 10 times what the ale was worth, because 'he thinks he's being clever'. He was a great character to play, taking me in completely unexpected directions.

Darbek, in the first session alone, has gone from being a dark, troubled character still on the drawing board, to a dual-hammer-weilding maniac, carrying an arsenal around so that he can find a great fight and help any friends out. He's not clever or subtle, he can hardly hold a conversation before offering to fight anyone that looks at him funny. I can't wait to see how he develops, because I can't imagine where we'll end up.

He is going to be a whole lot of fun.

Darbek, And What Makes An Engaging RP Character, Part One.

I don't think I ever did a character profile for Merric. Hm, Anyway, I'm probably going to rewrite the character profiles as during the downtime between sessions, the others focused on their respective backstories and wrote between a page and three pages each. I'll probably write a profile for Darbek once I've done something similar, but I didn't want to do that until I got a feel for my character. See, when I imagined Darbek for the first time, before he had a name, I saw him as a leader figure, the silent but wise, deadly ranger that the group trusted completely. What happened in the first session surprised me.

Half way through the first battle, before Darbek had been properly introduced to the team, Varis yelled out to ask the name of my dwarf. Supposedly this was roleplaying and while I'll give him credit for trying, who is so desperate to know their ally's name that they can't wait until after the current battle? Sure, it could come up in conversation while you're having a fight (because that's always cool), but it's not the only thing you say, because the name of your new friend doesn't help you in any way. So whatever, Varis yelled out:

VARIS: Dwarf, (identifying people by their race is still common, still makes me confused) what's your name?

DARBEK: Who's asking?

Perhaps there would have been more, but our out-of-game personas where questioning whether or not that was a sensible thing to just yell out, and Varis' player, with his morale somewhat diminished, ended his valiant attempt to roleplay. However, I thought about that, as I had no idea how to answer the question. The suspicion in Darbek's tone was coming from what I thought was his nature as a character with a dark past, but in reality it was just my poor roleplaying skills.

See, when your character doesn't have much in the way of a personality, such as a silent brooding ranger that we've all seen before, or is based off of your own personailty (Darbek wasn't far enough off at all, as I myself am a quite person, often thinking rather than doing and every now and again taking the role of group leader, I was the first to volunteer for DM after all) then I think it's difficult to separate yourself from your creation. Reverence's player always refers to Reverence in the first person, and it's slightly scary how linked he is to his character, being stubborn about what he wants rather than what the character wants (although they appear to have merged to become one and the same).

The other players are slightly less linked, although Torrin hasn't seen much in terms of personality, as his player definitely isn't a roleplayer. Merric is better, but seems to do all of his roleplaying in secret from the others, stealing, sneaking around and talking to goblins. Varis does his best, but is a hero who hasn't done anything heroic. Vale is a quiet wise wizard who is a strong character, but really doesn't make a mark seeing as he hardly says anything, and is quite similar to his player.

It's not that the others have bad characters, it's just that their strengths (as in, their ability to remain memorable and fun to play with) come from their players, like Reverence's stubborn nature (which is the nicest way to put it, because that already came up in the first session). The best bits of our adventure came from the players rather than the characters. And it was going to continue that way, I think. Until I planned my character badly.

See, Darbek has a low intelligence and charisma score. Which didn't really fit with my original vision (I'm sounding more and more pretentious) for the character. He was a wise ranger wasn't he? But then, my weapon load-out didn't fit with that either. With various axes, as well as dual wielding two hammers (subtlety isn't easy with weapons like that), he was clearly not some level-headed hero, but a maniac who had no idea how to interact with others past saying 'hello'...

Coming Soon.

So in our first session of the second adventure (which happened last week), I played rather than ran the session, so I'll talk about that soon. I'd also like to start planning for the adventure after that, which I'll be running assuming none of the others have any objections.

So, I've got some ideas milling around in my head, and I think I'll probably change up the setting, seeing as our latest adventure is also set in the Nentir Vale. So I'll be getting those up on this blog once their solidified.

I'll also be recording our new adventure (although there's likely to be no more sessions past the first until the end of July, as I'm going on a four week trip across Europe, but I might line up some posts to appear during that period, if I remember to do so), which is going fantasticaly so far, mostly because I don't have to deal with the stress of running it at the moment (don't get me wrong, I loved doing it, but right now I need a break from that).

Finally, I'd like to say thanks for sticking with me, since the last few posts have been infrequent and lacking somewhat in humour, due to the difficulty I had during the last session or two, and the difficulties I'm having now. However, I'd like to assure you that I had brilliant fun and loved doing it, despite it all. I've haven't found an experience quite like Dungeons and Dragons... ever. It's a brilliant mix of socialising, playing and generally enjoying myself with other people, with a fantastic community and brilliant memories that have already become a truly great part of my life; I fully intend to continue playing.

Game Session Seven, Part Six.

Ok, so after sneaking out of their closet, the group made their way down to the gaol, in which the baron was being kept. They did find a small bag of coins (since they were complaining about loot, the fact that they hadn't bothered to loot the hobgoblins meant that I thought they should at least get some gold. They still missed most of the gold from that battle) and they weren't interrupted on their way down.

At the bottom, there was a brief encounter between the party and the guards at the gaol, including a rather nasty tar devil. This was really where my difficulty came in with the session, and so if it sounds like a lackluster description of the battle, I apologise, but I was struggling at the time to be enthusiastic. My players often complain about my lack of flavour text, so when Varis (possibly the most frequently moaning member of the group) simply rolled, then listed some numbers for both his attack and damage, I almost had a breakdown on the spot. But I kept going without the players noticing, and eventually they won.

Everyone in the group was still struggling with their role in the party, so Merric jumped into the battle, between the tar devil and a soldier for the sake of combat advantage, eventually being bloodied and then dying, due to his low health and lack of defense, since he's a striker. Due to this mistake, Merric was left dying as the others finished off the rest of the group. With one saving throw left before he was out for good.

Now, at this point the party had completed their quest, saved the baron and had an escape route from the gaol, without any other obstacles in their way. So when Varis decided not to use his lay on hands because 'I might need it later', then we were all sort of surprised, as Merric was about to die. Thankfully, after a brief argument, he gave in and helped Merric up, before the group escaped to hear the lamest ending to any campaign in the history of DnD.

The Iron Circle find themselves without a leader, and over the next couple of days, they leave the keep, knowing that if they don't, your power is too much for them to match. They move on, and although the barony of Harkenwold is safe for now, you can't be sure where you might see them again...

...was what I should have said. But I explained that in a frankly exhausted state, without much explanation, so I'm pretty sure all they got was:

The Iron Circle's leader is dead, so they all run away for some reason.

What's that? ...Are they gone for good? Oh, uh, you're not sure.

The end.

Although I'm paraphrasing, I'm not sure that the reality was any better.

So thank you for staying with me through this adventure, as I explored the medium of D&D (DnD? I should be more consistent) for the first time as a DM. Our campaign was over, but I like to believe that my journey has only just begun. Next time, we begin Merric's adventure, as the group encounter goblins, halflings, spiders and me, a dwarf named Darbek...

Character.

I was planning on finishing off the seventh session by now, but I've been busy, and I can only put a certain amount of time into DnD stuff before I go crazy. So, in the time I've been doing that, I've actually created a character. It's a dwarf ranger with a violent twist, carrying as many weapons as possible. I'm going to be using him this afternoon for our next adventure, with Merric (who will now be referred to as the DM) in the driving seat.

Should be good, and I will hopefully be able to relax and experience playing rather than running a game. Now I just need a name for my dwarf...?

Game Session Seven, Part Five.

Once Vale had taken his haul, and the others had grabbed some gold from the chest, Merric took a look outside through the keyhole. I told him, he could see a few guards moving about, dragging bodies as far as he could tell.

So the group decided to... Take an extended rest. To be honest they needed it, but I was surprised to see them decide to take a nap until dawn (or just before) in the heart of the enemy's base, even if Redthorn was dead. But they did and the night passed uneventfully, although the keep became fully alert, with guards stationed everywhere.

It's at this stage in my tale that I realise that I haven't mentioned why the group weren't caught after they hid in an obvious side-room. As the group tumbled in, dragging an unconscious Reverence, Vale created the noise of footsteps retreating down the secret passage in the wall, that I believe was exposed. This happened just as the enemy arrived, and combined with the fact that only Redthorn had the key to the small room, the Iron Circle soldiers disappeared down the passage, ignoring the heroes.

And so just before the light of sunrise shone through the slit in the wall, the group took another look through the keyhole. It appeared that no one was there...

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