4/7/2025
This is a series of campaign diaries about the lessons I’ve learned (and would like to impart) while GMing my most recent Aketon campaign. The first post is below, I highly recommend to start there and work your way back to here.
Behind the Screen – Arrival in Stormreef (SR01)
GM tricks or lessons learned will be in gold.
The Next Day
I start every RPG session by having the players summarize the events of the last session. If one player is dominating the recap, I’ll have them swap out for a second for a quieter player.
Where last we left our heroes, our heroes had just committed double homicide, got caught, escaped, and are hiding out at a local barmaid’s apartment. They have low enough HP that by resting the night all of them return to max HP.
To start, I just said that the barmaid answers any questions about the city and tells the PCs what changed in the city since last they were in it (all of them were natives but hadn’t been in town for a few years). I used this opportunity to hand them a map of the city, which can be seen below:
The players remember that the local guard sergeant threatened the barbarian marauders with being, “thrown in the cellar” while they were hiding out in the smithy. The players ask the barmaid if the inn has a cellar and if there are strange people moving in and out of it. “Sometimes, but I don’t know much about it. I can leave the exterior entrance unlocked for you if you’d like when I go into work this morning.”
“Perfect.” The heroes reply. As they left the apartment they say wanted posters with rough approximations of their faces printed on them (there are printing presses in this world).
They never actually asked how the guards knew they did anything, I think they just took it at face value. They also never inquired about the printing press. All-well.
Delving the Cellar and Below
This cellar is an actual dungeon provided in the adventure (the Golden Grain Inn, not the Inn of the Slumbering Serpent), and I played it totally faithfully to the actual module. I think it was suitably dangerous, although it did not have much loot, which I would have preferred it have more of. Most of the encounters in the inn were IN the inn, not the cellar, but considering the players never actually stayed at the place I don’t think they’ll ever interact with them. Instead I’m going to take those and make them modular, slotting them into to other side-areas if the game starts to get boring.
The players head down to the cellar from the exterior entrance in an alley leading to room 16. After a search of room 15, they detect there’s a secret door to room 18 but don’t know how to open it. The Thief player (totally new to D&D, this is his first campaign ever) immediately goes to each of the torch sconces and pulls on them, expecting a lever and in the adventure, it literally says that’s the way to open the secret door. 10-out-of-10, good job.
They move from room 18 to room 19, and I give them a choice of passages, their torchlight cannot see the end of any of them. They choose to hug a wall and circle back if needed, so they go straight to room 23, which has three ghouls in it.
The adventure doesn’t say why there are ghouls there, but in the end it didn’t matter. I described them as hunched undead, hairless, with huge claws that drip with black venom, surrounded by human bones.
The Paladin goes, “that’s evil” and charges in! He misses, and so its the ghouls’ turn. One attacks and hits but rolls doubles (which means he deals a damage, but his side’s turn ends immediately). The Paladin saves vs Paralysis to resist the ghoul venom.
The players, for some reason, are about to go whole hog into this fight. They would die. The ghouls have more HP then they do, collectively have a higher chance to hit, and if they hit they have a chance to paralyze the victim. I have to remind the players of this and when I do they quickly realize if they try to muscle through this fight they will DIE. FAST.
After some debate they decide to run away, attacking the pillars supporting the dirt roof and they all succeed. The pillar collapses and the ghouls fail any attempt to escape in time.
The players retreat to room 19, then decide to let the Thief scout ahead for them. The Thief enters room 20, is given hints of the giant constrictor snake that’s inside, continues in, gets ambushed by the snake, yells out, after a round his allies come and they defeat the beast.
Now they sit around and debate for a while. A really long time. A random encounter occurs and their torches start to dwindle. I decide the random encounter that would make the most since (looking at the monsters that are left in the cellar) is for more bad guys to enter the area.
Bad Guys Investigate
The players hear voices coming from room 19 and see torchlight. They immediately extinguish their torches and, after some debate I have to cut short, they sprint deeper into the tunnels to room 24, which is mostly empty except for a big ivory statue of a naga. They overhear that the bad guys are investigating the sound of the tunnel collapse earlier, and spot that there’s a guard (in chainmail with a shield), the bartender (who is the Warrior’s father, unarmed), and two hooded troglodytes (one with an axe, one with a club). They hide out in there and try to develop a plan.
Now I had to quickly figure out the order the bad guys would search the rooms, and it made the most sense that they’d go for room 24 first considering it has the most treasure in it. I just straight up tell the player that, and they ask if it can be rolled for, I let them, and say if they get a 4+ on a d6 the bad guys will go other places first (50/50 chance). They roll a 6, so I tell them the bad guys loudly exclaim they’ll search every other room before this one.
With the time they have, they decide the ivory statue (worth two-thousand gold when converted to Aketon) is too big to carry, so they just chop off the head of it and pocket it (which the module actually had rules for how that would effect the value! Very cool!). Then they lay the rest of the statue in front of the only entrance and prepare to attack anyone going in.
The bad guys arrive, the guard (who is enchanted to obey the trogs) goes first and tries to take all the hits, leaving room for his allies to follow-up. The players roll INCREDIBLY, and I give them all +1 for putting that obstacle in the guys way. That guy had 2 HP and was wearing chainmail with a shield, but they all hit and he was super dead before he even got through the door. The troglodytes, cowardly creatures, sprint away to get back-up, the bartender, overweight, falls behind.
The players follow close behind, the Paladin stays to subdue the bartender in room 20, the other two players engage the trogs in room 18. Now, these trogs each have 3 HP. That’s bad news for the players.
Now, if they died in their first real fight, that would suck, and they’d played expertly up until this point (remember the Thief and the trap door?) so I wanted to reward them. What’s better, the players totally believed it and didn’t feel like they were being saved.
An elf character, who they had encountered in the first session, comes down from the trapdoor in room 19 and helps the players by taking a few hits from the trogs and dealing one hit of her own. Eventually, the Thief is knocked unconscious (the trogs are fighting to subdue so they can interrogate them, and they are better fighters HP-wise and skill-wise so why not?) and one of the trogs flees before the Warrior throws and dagger into his back and kills him with an epic roll of a 6 and 5 while the elf kills the other.
They exchange information and pleasantries, the elf puts the subdued bartender into an arcane sleep, and the players drag him back to the barmaid’s apartment. They then split up to each do different things:
- The Warrior stays behind to watch the prisoner.
- The Paladin goes to the local Hospital of St. Dymphna to have a toxicology report done on his wound to see what kind of creature they encountered.
- The Thief goes to the City Archives to look up information on Nagas (the creature depicted in the statue they found). While on the way, he tells a local connector to put out the word that he’s looking to sell an ivory head worth 600 gold to any collectors that are interested.
The results of each of these actions were left as cliffhangers for next session.
Session End
Thank you for reading!
Until we meet again,
GOOD LUCK ON YOUR ADVENTURES
Ward Against Evil 
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