Return to Land of Eem

Make sure to read the first adventure of this journey!.

Six months after the first campaign. We finally sat around the table once again, and played Land of Eem! for the second time.

We had set a couple of dates before to meet up, and even a session zero where some of my players made new characters, but we didn’t get to play for months. After all, when a couple of party members are still of young age, you can only do so much! Plus, we could only align after church and sometimes other activities would take precedence.

This time some things are different, I purchased the Deluxe Edition Box Set, and I was able to use the official GM Screen, the map and the pysical core rulebook!

The rulebook comes with a starting adventure: Wally’s Waffles and Rats, which is quite different from the one included in the Quickstart guide played last time. Spoilers ahead if you plan to play this with your own friends! But don’t worry much, it will not go the same.

First off all, I went very much not ready for this. I had the character sheets, I didn’t read them, I had all the rulebook, I didn’t bookmark any important pages for reference before the game.

I didn’t remember a lot, I just went straight into the game, hoping for the best, and this is how it went!

The adventure continues!

I did a half-decent introduction into the world of Land of Eem once again, focusing on the Used T’Be Forest and Wally’s Waffles and Wourgs. a restaurant that’s about to shutdown, because Wally lost his property deed and some conglomerate wants to claim his terrain as theirs. The whole thing happens during one last celebration, giving Waffles to everyone who comes arond before the bad guys arrive tomorrow to tear it down.

The adventure started quickly. The party of characters kind of went straight into the quest without speaking to any of the NPC’s in Wally’s restaurant. I offerend a couple of options and they did chat a bit, but I have to admit I wasn’t doing my best coming up with dialogues of my own and I want to blame the adventure design a bit, since it appears like Wally approaches the party and tells them everything they need from the start (honestly fine for a first adventure though).

Of course, I still could have pushed them a bit to participate in some of the activities inside the tavern, like Wally’s Howling Hot Challenge.

There’s another problem for me when it comes to the English naming scheme of pretty much everything in this fantasy land, since it kinda feels like it references things not in my language, but no biggie.

Last time I didn’t really bring up the party members, but I saw Daniel’s post—he went through this very same adventure with his family so give it a read!!—doing that and I thought I’d steal the format. They introduced to each other and said some things too, though it was not as detailed and a little bit rushed.

• Xavi the Bard, played by youngest in the group.
• Maujii the Gnome, a newcomer on this campaign!
• Cube the Dungeoneer, played by the oldest in the group, a gelatinous goo.
• Wibak the Wizard, a new mushroom character from the guy who played Loyal Chum last session.
• Lyra the Rascal, played by my sister’s boyfriend.

Another thing, we kind of forgot the special abilities of each class for most of the adventure, but some things came in handy on a couple of occassions.

After my party got the info about the deed and those details, they headed into the storage room. For some reason, my party was always scared to go through doors, and they had some trouble deciding who would go first. This is where something like the negative/positive character traits would have come in handy, but I kind of forgot to ask about that.

By now, I forgot who entered first, but well, the events are what matters more here. The room was filled with boxes and the like, so my characters did a search, found some strong-smelling mustard, a torch and not much else.

Walking there, they stumbled with an underground worm, which bit on the leg of one of the party members. Trying to pull it away, another character slipped and ended up hitting against the corner of a box, that hurt quite a bit, but eventually they managed to scare away the worm-thing.

The mustard was supposed to be useful to keep animals away, but they never even tried to use it!

With the torch in hand, they continued forward. They slightly opened the door to a room filled with wine bottles, but they saw some rats and tried to shut the door. However, one of the party members pushed the other, stumbling very close to the now angered rats. They still managed to run away though, and headed elsewhere.

The next room was a bit of an office space, with papers, an armor stand, and a bottled ship model, which was actually a magical item that becomes real sized when put in water! The armor in the statue was small, and the gnome in the party decided to keep it. I have to admit I completely forgot how defense and combat at all worked but anyway.

There was this huge hole in the wall that appeared to be dug by some animals, it was clear the rats the party saw before would not be the only ones in their way. At the end of the small tunnel, my party found a bloodied dynamite stick, which was a bit creepy, but useful.

They were about to get out of that tunnel when the party found themselves on a pickle, the floor ended, and the tunnel could only go down, they would have to descend thirty foot deep. For this they tried to use some rope, an item a character had in their inventory! None of them attempted a jump, they simply tied the gnome to the end of the rope, holding the torch, although they let go of it and it ended up all the way to the bottom. Thanks to a lucky roll, the torch did not go out, at least they saw the bottom now!

My party was once again, very scared, and since the rope was long, they decided they would let (or force, honestly) their gnome friend to walk alone forward and shout about whatever he could see in the way.

Underground, everything was a network of tunnels, and going through them proved a little challenging while tied to a rope. There were also some rats that showed up, but that Maujii managed to scare off. They tried a couple routes without success and eventually Wibak the Wizard saw fit to use a magic spell!

Magic Spells in Land of Eem’s Wizard class work a little weird, but he can basically say whatever he wants and as long as it makes sense for me as GM, I can let it slide. For some reason, his spell said something akin to “let the stars guide our way!” and well, the spell worked! Except that they were underground and there are no stars visible here—the wizard wasn’t very smart.

Eventually the gnome walked too far, and nobody noticed they ran out of rope, and that it had fallen to the ground and the gnome pulled it. They were now stuck 30 foot above the ground.

At last, they had no rope, but they did have the courage to push Cube the Gelatinous Goo and use his gooey properties to yelp. Using him as a trampoline, everyone managed to jump down almost unscathed. Not without having to scare off a few rats that showed up.

They finally made it to a new bifurcation, and they headed to a place full of mushrooms, only to backtrack when the mushrooms turned out to have very sharp teeth.

My scared friends went carefully the other way, a dark room with an inky smell and some black thread all over the place… Two of them, the Gnome and the Bard, went forward, only to get stuck on the thread, which turned out to be a black spider web made of ink. Only then they noticed some strange oval-shaped stones, which turned out to be Inkpot Spider Eggs, and at the distance, four eyes opened.

Before the creature got any closer, they had the brilliant idea of using the dynamite stick and blow everything up. They didn’t get a good throw and the blast got them unstuck of the web, and thrown away all the way onto the dangerous mushroom field. Thankfully, the rest of the party managed to catch them as they flung, and the spider nest was destroyed!

They moved forward, confident in their mission, and here’s where I as the GM, made a bit of a nasty move. The Spider survived, and she was also very much in shock, after seeing how all her eggs were now gone… A conflict started, and it was time for the party to pray for their lives.

It’s what I would say except they where exceptionally good at parley, and after a short conversation with the Spider, my sister’s boyfriend, I mean, the Rascal managed to trick her into believing that the neighbouring mushrooms caused the explosion. The Spider told them she still had some eggs but that were stolen by some rats further deep, so the party offered to at least save those, and that way they felt a little less bad about the whole thing.

The Spider let them pass and they found themselves in front of a chasm. They had recovered the rope from earlier, so they were able to go through it without much difficulty.

In front of them, a cave of crystals shone due to the light of the torch—which has managed to survive the whole way through somehow—soon after, they saw the skeleton of a goblin, with a hat and a document with orders to steal a property deed, from Krog and Sons Inc—another company that also wants Wally’s property. As the party realizes the fortune the presence of the crystals implies, they hear the sound of big steps approaching.

A giant rat with a not so giant crown on its head is seen, proclaiming to be the mighty and powerful King Klik. Clearly in possession of the property deed that belongs to Wally. All of my players were kind of scared to get into combat, so they bet everything on parley and did their best to convince King Klik.

The players learned that apparently, some of the meat used by Wally for the restaurant was actually made out of rat, which is something the party took very seriously—they wanted to blackmail poor Wally. However, they first had to get the property deed from King Klik.

How did they convince the rat to give it away, you ask?

Very simple, after a very lucky roll, my evil sister’s boyfriend I mean, the lucky and mischievious Rascal, used the magic bottled ship and inspired King Klik to become the captain of their own pirate ship, with a crew of rats under his command!

Somehow, that worked out! They managed to avoid conflict and they were able to recover the lost Spider eggs as well. King Klik and the rest of the rats dug up a new tunnel heading to the south, and we may eventually find what happened to them!

Without a lot of trouble left, returning to the surface to meet Wally was easy. The party decided to confront him about the rat meat, but I wasn’t feeling like making Wally such a bad guy and so his innocence was proven after checking the refrigerators.

After that ruckus, the party continued to enjoy Waffles for another while, and the adventure was over, for now!

Finishing words

Returning to Land of Eem was incredibly fun. With the inclusion of two new players into the party—and the absence of one of them—dynamics definitely changed a little bit.

I honestly was feeling guilty about making the Inkpot Spider sentient, and even the party felt bad about the lie. This is a friendly reminder for everyone that setting the tone of the adventure on a Session Zero is very important. This genocidal event did leave everyone feeling uncomfortable, and even though we joked about it and moved on, the rest of the session was a bit sour.

There are many ways in which this could have gone better. First, actually understanding conflict. Had I done a better job learning that, I could have conflicts develop in more interesting ways. For a while I forgot about the limited amount of Parley one can do, which is how pretty much everyone in my party got to try and convince the Spider and King Klik through a variety of ways without having to fight at all.

If they had gone into regular combat, the Spider would have been a worthy enemy, and I even could have made them promise to save the rest of the eggs or something as a last wish. Making the Spider just a mindless beast would have worked out fine, defeating or making it run away in an environment that is kill or be killed is more easy to justify, without guilt being involved.

Some things of note and lessons I learned, even if I may be repeating myself:

• I really need to pay more attention to the character traits, and use them to move the story in more fun or chaotic directions
• Understanding combat, seriously!
• Handling things better when the party splits up so everyone has something to do or react to.
• Sticking to an atmosphere everyone is comfortable with.
• Trying to work around the rolls we get instead of rerolling until I like the result (yeah we did this sometimes).
• Keeping items in mind! We used the rope and the torch but other useful things were never looked at.
• Get better at describing environemnts and pushing the players to explore instead of peeking at a room and not going in.
• Push the party to stay in character, there were a few immersion breaking moments I wish I’d managed better.

However, for something that was very improvised, I’m very happy things worked out okay, I’m not going to be too hard on myself and will simply try to learn!

As always, any advice is appreciated! and I hope you enjoyed.

This is day 33 of #100DaysToOffload