Kelpsprot Session 8

Castle Kelpsprot is my Dungeon25-ish project: a science-fantasy capsule game megadungeon designed for HUDless play. For background, see my first post on the project.

Session Eight

Morning of the 6th day of spring, year 4201

Castaways:
Egil Lothbrok, Fog-cloaked Reaver
Hazel, Animist Sculptor
Lady Harlowe, Hapless Heir
Professor Archibald Bandersnatch, Windblown Balloonist
Sir Imago, Remarkably Errant Knight

	This session	All time
Real world time played	1 hour 40 minutes	~13 hours
In-game time elapsed	~4½ hour	~Three days
Rooms discovered	3	62
Denizens met	4	40
Castaways slain	0	0

Highlights

• Having gathered a relatively large party, the castaways made preparations to confront the fearsome Mawfly and free the trapped gull folk.
• However, after waiting for the crepuscular Mawfly to fall asleep, Egil had the realization that Lady Harlowe could rescue the trapped gulls by using her silence spell to creep beneath the Mawfly as it slept draped upon the rafters of its hall. She did just that, ferrying the gulls three-at-a-time to safety within a bubble of silence. The castaways also rescued Waldren, brother of Sir Wendolyn, from a pantry where he’d been hiding from the Mawfly for days.
• The gulls had a jubilant reunion with their trapped kin and promised the castaways a generous reward once the Mawfly eventually starved. Rescuing the gulls without slaying the Mawfly earned the castaways favor with the eidolons of the sky.
• Lady Harlowe made clever use of her silence spell once again when she helped Egil quietly disarm the net and bell trap. The party rappelled 30 feet down into the undercroft. They found a giant glass tank—home to a golden fish named Glum—and confirmed the location of the kidnappers’ lair.

Reflections

• Our last session of the year proved to be a climactic one! The party managed to rescue the trapped gulls without confronting the mawfly. I’m excited to see how further exploration unfolds now that the castaways face no major time pressure.
• So far the castaways have remained within the fairly populated ground floor in the vicinity of the gatehouse. These first eight sessions felt a bit like a prelude. The castaways made contact with several factions, earned favor through two succesful rescue missions, established connections between the three main floors of the castle, and identified two entrances to the undercroft. I’m looking forward to the peril, discoveries, and faction play ramping up in the new year!
• I addressed this in a footnote of another post, but I do think the ease at which castaways can pass between the gatehouse and the rest of the castle has been a real mixed bag. On one hand, there are major logistical benefits. Running an open table, West-Marches-esque campaign with two-hour sessions would be quite challenging if castaways could get to and from the dungeon as easily. However, the fact that castaways are rarely more than a hundred yard dash away from safety does somewhat diminish the excitement of dungeon crawling. If I run another campaign of Kelpsprot someday, I’ll place the gatehouse on a separate island from the castle—the trip between them only possible during a three-hour window around high tide.