Building Bhakashal – Session Report – Dad’s Game – Tamoachan!

All of my gaming groups adventure in Bhakashal, and their primary adventures have been urban and wilderness. The classic dungeon delve is less common in my game. I run a campaign for a group of dads (fathers of my kid’s friends), and I realized over the break that they hadn’t done any classic TSR modules, nor had they done a proper dungeon crawl.

So, I fished out a module I’ve been dying to run again, The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan.

It is really the quintessential TSR dungeon, it was originally run as a tournament module, your progress through the Shrine timed against a gas that would kill you if you stayed too long.

Tamoachan is awesome for many reasons:

1.        It has unique monsters

2.        It  has traps

3.        It has environmental threats

4.        It is totally dark in most rooms

5.        It is damp and fetid, filled with brackish water, mud and caustic lime

6.        It has many hard to open doors and secret doors

7.        It has cursed items

8.        It has a unique Aztec/Mayan inspired motif, right down to the names

9.        It has “permanent” traps that can block off sections of the dungeon

10.   It has an illustration booklet with awesome old school art

The module feels claustrophobic, wet and rotting, the PCs wade through mud and water, giant slugs crawl on the walls, as do huge spiders the size of a man.

When the PCs moved through the shrine, I described what they could smell, hear and see. Dungeons gain their power in part through atmosphere, its my job to describe what they experience.

Many people complain about boxed text, but the boxed text in the module is superb, it makes sure to describe the spaces in such a way as to give the atmosphere of the environment in each case.

 

Reading out this description to the players produces such a visceral reaction, the glowing trails on the walls, the brackish water, the cracked braziers in the water, the description of – something – the hint that it might be leaving that strange trail on the walls...

When they arrived in the first room (in my version of this, they don’t fall in, they find the hole and crawl in), I described it as smelling like decay and death, wet, close, miasmatic, rotting. They heard dripping water, the low thrum of shifting air currents through the ancient structure,

Their light source was a bullseye lantern, as the shrien is entirely dark inside of most of the halls and rooms, their two bullseye lanterns were their only light source, and they shone like a flashlight, lighting up a cone rather than a globe, so they would shine it around and I would describe what they saw, but I would also regularly remind them that outside of that cone of light, it was pitch black.

Knowing that their vision was restricted that way terrified them, as things could come out of the dark.

As an aside I'm always bemused when people say "D&D can't do horror", watching the terrified looks on my player's faces, the urgency to their reactions to even minor threats, the murmurs and whispers at the table, they were absolutely scared. When they were sealed off by a trap and realized they couldn't leave the way they came in... D&D (or AD&D in this case) can definitely do horror.

The party Thaumaturge (in Bhakashal, a thief/magic-user) earned her keep, she was checking for traps at every door and in many hallways. She managed to set off a pressure plate trap in an early hallway and sealed off the passage. Every door and hallways produces fresh fear.

Not only that, but cautious exploration takes time, and you roll for encounters every turn. The players found this horrifying, normally you roll 4 times a day for encounters when travelling, once a turn is a lot in comparison. Early on a huge spider appeared on the ceiling as they were investigating a hallway for traps. Lucky surprise and initiative rolls led to the party warlock blinding the spider, then the party fighter impaled it with a javelin. The fighter has a girdle of hill giant strength, so he one-shotted the thing with the javelin.

That was awesome.

The best part of that encounter was that this party is on average 6^th level, a huge spider is not a big threat, but they were so disturbed by the per turn encounter rolling, and it crawling along the ceiling in the dark, that they kind of freaked out about it. We underestimate the amount of raw fear that the unknown creates, and the degree to which knowing that monsters can show up at any time puts them on edge. Every time I took out that d12 they would all breathe in and look shaken.

Delicious.

They had an encounter with a talking crayfish and giant crab, thanks to the party Seer (cleric) they can speak with animals, and I had the opportunity to role play a centuries old sentient crayfish and crab team. The crayfish was demonstrative, waving around his limbs and shouting his answers to questions. The crab came to life after a strong positive reaction roll from the crayfish, when the “boulder and stick” stood up and spoke to the party they almost fell out of their chairs!

I also don’t do “voices” in regular play, but something about the adventure called on me, and I had the crayfish speak in fast, high sentences, and the crab spoke in single words using a harsh, guttural monotone. That was fun.

They negotiated their way past those two creatures and continued on.

Another awesome aspect of the session was the mapping. I have printed out an oversized version of the dungeon map and laminated it for my use, but the players are manually mapping the dungeon as they move around.

The difficulties of navigating by your own hand combined with the uncertainty of being in the dark and the regular per turn rolling for encounters has upped the tension significantly. It’s a great reminder that a perceived threat can produce as strong a response as a real one.

They were so tense that just the description of a green mass on the wall had them throwing oil and torches to burn the thing before it could attack them. They were convinced it was a green slime (it wasn’t) and that it was mobile (it wasn’t), and they were very eager to burn it. However, burning oil on a foul green algae creature in a closed dungeon environment led to thick black smoke filling up the room and blunting the only source of light they had (the bullseye lantern), as well as making it difficult to breathe for a while. When I rolled for random encounters as the smoke coiled around them, blinded, and the green algae creature shuddered and hissed as it burned alive, they were terrified!

They encountered the nerid as well. She managed to ensorcel one of the PCs, who just wanted to enter the water to be with her! The other party members held him back, and one used his trident of fish command to try and control the electric eel in the water that was in the service of the nerid. hat enraged her, so she roiled and boiled the water, harmless but it further freaked them out, as they had no idea how powerful she was. They eventually pulled their charmed colleague out of the area and went to explore another branch of the dungeon. The artwork really sold these encounters to the players, the languid nerid waiting seductively by the water, old school art is so evocative, and they loved all of it.  

They have only had three fights so far, the first with the huge spider, the second with the algae creature, and the third was with the slug on the wall (mentioned in the boxed text above). Two of the party fighters dropped into the water unexpectedly in that room, when they hit the water the slug turned its head and noticed them. That freaked out the party as they didn’t know exactly what this thing was or what it could do. I decided it was a spitting slug like the version in the monster manual (just smaller) and it spit acid at the two fighters who had dropped in the water. Fortunately for PCs in Bhakashal, they do not wear heavy armor, as the setting is infernally hot, this meant they didn’t have increased odds of drowning.

The party warlock and the party thaumaturge both cast magic missile, one from memory, one from a scroll. Describing how the missiles corkscrewed through the air, each time lighting up the whole room for a brief few seconds as they unerringly tracked their target, was awesome. They finished it off between the two of them. 

They haven’t found any loot so far, its been mainly terrified stalking, constantly checking for traps and wandering monsters, while delving deeper into the shrine.

When we finished I rewarded them by covering up my laminated large size version of the map and leaving behind only the rooms they had been through. Next session I think I will switch it up and slowly reveal the map as they move along, that’s good fun.

Everything about the session was terrific, the players were on the edge of their seats the entire time, every threat they faced was terrifying, and so far it was a giant spider, a crayfish, a giant crab, an algal mass and a giant slug. Monsters associated with death and rot, bugs, slime and crustaceans, primitive, basic things, all housed in a damp, fetid temple, crumbling and decaying all around them. They can’t see all around them, and they are constantly terrified of what might appear out of the dark.

And they haven’t even encountered the gibbering mouther!

We all have busy schedules and have only been able to meet once every 6 weeks or so, but they were insistent that we should get together as soon as possible, they want to explore!

Big fun.