The first session of CotLK involves the party traveling to a dungeon to rescue or find a half-orc treasure hunter with a map to the Necropolis, where the crown is being kept. Okay, sure. Because it's the first session, you can start the adventure as far along as you want and the players won't know the difference. I essentially ran this adventure three (really, 2.5) separate times. I'll deal with the "half" one a little later. The first time I ran this session out of the module was at a retreat for a game company. I had three heroes: Jaspyr the Dragonborn Sorcerer (who was the last of a line of dragons with breath that turned things into glass), Andros the Half-elf Fighter (who could see different wavelengths of light), and Nargot the Dwarf Cleric (one of the only dwarves who hated dirt, darkness, and being underground).
The party began on the outskirts of Roachdale. The dungeon entrance was in a keep at the top of the hill, surrounded by a moat of chittering insects. The party made it through using Jaspyr's "glass breath." It quickly became obvious that Jaspyr was going to try to use this glass breath for everything. But that's okay. It's a pretty cool gimmick. I believe they failed one of the checks, but all that meant was that Jaspyr lost a recovery. No biggie.
Once at the keep, the party was met by two demonic guards. They initially tried bluffing their way in with a crude dragon statue they fashioned by sculpting some squashed bugs into the general shape and then using glass breath on it (see what I mean?) It didn't work, and combat commenced. The demons were dealt with handily, however, and then party descended into the dungeon.
This was the first montage. I probably did a lackluster job of explaining the concept, but the players got it, and came up with a few obstacles. Honestly, they weren't that creative. Not necessarily their fault, but it was something that happened a few times later. A dead-end with water streaming down it. A pit of spikes. A door with something in Elvish that Jaspyr tried to make easier to read by using his glass breath on it(?)
Eventually, the party made it to the Boss Room, where the treasure hunter had been caged. There was also a tinkerer character one of the players had mentioned earlier ("An alchemist friend of mine went missing in this same dungeon!"), and they set about freeing both of the captives as a rock approached. Technically, the treasure hunter was supposed to have been dead, but one of the players declared that he was alive, so I went with it.
The fight with the rock was pretty good. He kept failing his disengage check because of the fighter's "-2 to disengage checks" feature, which made Andros's player feel quite useful. No one died, but everyone had fun.
The second time I ran this session was at Strategicon. This was more in the vein of a demo, so everyone played pre-gens with their own One Unique Things. I don't particularly remember any of them, except two PCs (a wizard and a sorcerer) were brothers. That was kind of neat. This was also when I instituted another House Rule, this time concerning mooks: rather than roll every attack, I had whole groups attacks with one roll--if it hit, I multiplied the damage by the number of books. It sped things up for everyone.
One notable thing about both games was that everyone ALWAYS tried to parley with the demons guarding the entrance to the keep, and they ALWAYS failed. I think this was because they were still thinking in a Pathfinder/D&D mode, where all you have to say is "I'll bluff my way in" and then roll, rather than coming up with an ACTUAL bluff. Their lies were just totally unconvincing "we're on the list" type things. Not that it mattered--the demons weren't particularly deadly.
The "half" version of this session that I ran was with my normal gaming group--or, rather, three members of it: Ecco the Dark Elf/High Elf Hybrid Rogue (the only hybrid of the sort), Karama the Human Barbarian (with a living wolf coat), and Duke (the dog familiar of Tom, Human Ranger and sole survivor of the "Great Gyre"). The reason I call it a half is because I used the frame of the module (and the monster stats) to get more familiar with the system, but scuttled the overarching story to continue my regular group's adventures. Tom, Duke's owner, had died in a previous session, and his soul was trapped in the Chaos Dimension because the Diabolist had claim to it (Duke had actually died in ANOTHER session, and Tom had sold his soul to get him back). The High Druid granted Duke, Ecco, and Karama passage to the Chaos Dimension to retrieve Tom's soul.
The first thing we learned upon entering the CD was that if you thought it could happen, it could happen. To cross a lake of acid blood, Ecco stretched some butterfly wings to human size and flew Duke across. When they fought the demon guards at the entrance to the dungeon, Ecco stole the *will to fight* from one of them, and he became a docile guide into the bowels of the dungeon.
During the montage, the party came up with the idea of riding a cruise ship made out of bones, on which a bunch of skeletons in weird hats and bell bottoms had a dinner party. In order to gain safe passage, the party had to choose the appropriate utensils to eat a pile of offal with, or risk being thrown overboard into another acid lake filled with crocoliches. Good stuff.
Eventually, they made their way to the vrock's room, where they found Tom's soul and were rescued by a giant spider sent by the High Druid. Tom and Duke were united as two minds in one body (Firestorm-style), and could transform between dog and human form. Tom became the champion of the High Druid and received armor made of seashells and a storm-summoning trident made of coral. Storms and pirates and stuff--it's sort of Tom's thing. Ecco got to keep the giant spider. He named him Cutiepuss.
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