Saturday, December 9, 2017

Family Game Knights - The Emerald Enchanter, Pt 3


Exploring the Chained Coffin


Welcome to Family Game Knights, our regular tour through of the Shudder Mountains and  The Chained Coffin box set.  

For those uninitiated with the Chained Coffin, creative lead +Michael Curtis and the rest of the Goodman Games crew have created a wonderful and vibrant fantasy campaign setting based on Appalachian myth and legend.  During this journey, we'll be dipping into all of the adventures written specifically for the Shudder Mountains, as well as tossing in a few other favorites as well, thus turning this into a fantastic, ongoing campaign!  Special thanks to the DCCRPG G+ community for so many wonderful adventure suggestions.  

Here are our previously yarns:


The Adventuring Party


  • Jen
    • Wize Wizard McBride - Cleric
  • Evie
    • Jefffff - Warrior (she plans to add another "f" after each gained level)
  • Carrie
    • P. Specs - Thief
  • Jeremy
    • Sir Huey, Keeper of the Sacred Door - Warrior
  • Ella
    • Quinn & Kippy - Wizard & Squirrel Familiar 
  • Cooper
    • Soapy McSoap - Warrior
  • Andy
    • Walden - Thief


The Emerald Enchanter, Pt 3


As you can probably tell from the cover art of this blog post, I decided to add a little trickery to tonight's session. You see, during Goodman Games' big Black Friday sale I managed to get my hands on Grimtooth's Ultimate Traps Collection. I then spent about three evenings digging through the crazy and brutal inventions. I couldn't wait to spring these on my players, and I had the perfect opportunity during our next episode of The Emerald Enchanter.

 Our players are taking their sweet time with this adventure, an they keep going back to the village of Ugly Bottom after exploring part of the Emerald Enchanter's lair. Well, this time I decided that there would be a price to pay. The Emerald Enchanter reached out to Grimtooth and purchased a bunch of traps to catch those pesky jerks that keep messing around with his stuff. My good friend Frank put this idea in my head about 8 years ago. The idea that a dungeon left alone should be restocked and better guarded this time around.

 Well the Emerald Enchanter spared no expense to protect his home! When the PC's arrived they found a note on the front door:

 "Dear Burglars: Don't come inside ever again. You've been warned. - EE"

 Naturally my players did not follow this advice... it would've been a short game if they had!

The party thieves, Walden and P. Specs, both checked the door for traps, and found one: a door knob that would grow spikes, blast off and strike the players. Walden disarmed the trap, and pocketed the spiky knob. They then opened the door. 

 The front hallway had a complete home makeover! The Emerald Enchanter replaced the tile floor with black tiles, and the ceiling was a swirling mass of sand. Walden entered the room, and gravity reversed, pulling him into quicksand on the ceiling. Both Sir Huey and Soapy managed to get sucked in as well, but they went in head first and started taking damage. Maybe I should give you some mechanics, as this trap was inspired by Grimtooth, but of my own design:
  • Gravity Sand: PC steps into the room and gravity reverses. DC 15 Reflex Save to go into the quicksand feet first instead of head first. If headfirst, PC takes 1d10 damage every minute. Anyone trying to pull the PC free must make the same save or they get pulled in unless they are tethered. 

Holy traps!


After freeing the PC's (Sir Huey would need to be revived, as he fell below zero hit points) our party wizard Quinn used her Flaming Hands spell to turn the sand to glass. The team then stepped out into the room. Since only the first fifteen feet were glass, Soapy used his shovel to burrow through the nearby wall into a hidden passage. This gained the team access to the next part of the map.

If you read our play report from the last session, you know everywhere that the players went this game, as they didn't go anywhere new. But with every turn, I hit them with a trap:

  • A floor trap in one of the hallways that can be found in Grimtooth's Ultimate Traps Collection. Step on one side, and the floor flips around on a hinge, dumping the PC into spikes below. 
  • Another trapped doorknob, with a handle that turned to acidic slime. On the other side of that door the party would find a signed receipt from Grimtooth to "E.E."
  • A [REDACTED] that the party didn't find, but I really hope they do next game.
  • A rolling ball trap that greeted the players just before they went into the room with the remains of the three dead wizards (the Consultorium.) It was a full 10' wide ball, straight out of Indiana Jones. Three of the PC's ducked into a nearby barracks chamber, while the other three retreated so as not to get crushed. 

This was Cooper's 3rd full game in this campaign, and he did a wonderful job figuring out a way to bypass some of the traps via digging through walls.



When the party finally made it back to the Consultorium, Quinn used her new Speak with the Dead spell. She cast it on both the mummified corpse and the brain in the jar. 

  • Thesipedes (the corpse) revealed that the word "Yasmilon" could be used to destroy Emerald Eidolons. Also, that the safest way to get to the Emerald Enchanter was through a grate in the floor, found later in the dungeon.
  • Istrobian (the brain in the jar): promised Quinn great power, and tricked the party wizard into letting it sneak into his brain, taking up residence. Quinn would gain intelligence with his new second brain, but at the cost of needing to eat human or elf brains. 

Unlike previous journeys into the Emerald Enchanter's domain, this time the party decided not to head back to the village afterwards. 

A Fine Selection of Quotes from the Table


"Wait a minute. I have a bomb." - Andy. And his character really did have one!

Campaign Crematorium


  • None this game... boo!
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