THE TOWER OF THE TIME THIEF: SESSION 11 RECAP OF MY BASIC D&D CAMPAIGN

A page from my DM's notebook showing 
some of my prep-work. 

We played the 11th session of the D&D campaign I'm running for my daughter and her friends (plus one dad!) way back on October 10th. While I'm mainly using the old 1980 adventure B2: Keep on the Borderlands as the basis for this first part of the campaign, I've been including things from other sources. In this case, since it was October, I wanted a somewhat Halloween-themed spooky session and decided to adapt a very intriguing one-page dungeon I'd judged as part of the 2021 One Page Dungeon Contest, called Tower of the Time Thief by Zach Trent, Noah Morriss, and Adam Nyhoff. When I first read it while judging, I made a note on my judging sheets that this would be something I could run for my daughter's game, and I felt confident I could finish the scenario in one session. 

[As an aside, I highly recommend everyone check out the One Page Dungeon Contest. All of the previous year's entries are available as PDFs on the website, and you can also buy soft cover collections of the entries from most years. Now is the perfect time to start looking through them to get ideas so you can enter this year's contest!]

One of my favorite things I did while prepping this adventure was noting a room with a mirror that the description said would allow the PC's to speak with one of their lost ancestors. To increase the creepiness factor, I changed this a bit. Before the session, I emailed each player and asked them to send me a note describing one of their PC's ancestors, both physically but also what they loved most about them. I took these notes and twisted them. For example, my daughter told me that her PC's ancestor was her grandmother, who had black hair with purple streaks and purple eyes, and was known and loved by all as an excellent seamstress. I used this information and wrote a card, which I passed to me daughter when her PC looked in the mirror, describing a foul and twisted version of her grandmother's image, who smiled maliciously while sewing a dress, and then the PC realized that the dress her grandmother was sewing was made out of some kind of skin. 

Here are the cards I gave out to 
each player when their PC
looked in the mirror. Some were
less gruesome, depending on 
the player involved.

Every player chose to look in the mirror and got a similarly creepy card, twisting the pure image their PCs held for their ancestors. Afterward, I had each PC make a composure check to avoid gaining a "Composure Point" (my version of "Sanity Points"). 

As has become customary, I asked one of the players to write the recap of the session, and by this point, everyone has already taken a turn, so it returned back to the first player who volunteered, "E," who plays an Elf named Holly Short. This is the recap she wrote, in the manner of a journal-entry for her character. I really like the growth in E's comfort with writing in the voice of her character. It was fun to compare this recap to the first one she wrote. 

Below is E's recap, along with some pictures of the fancy vintage-looking PDF I made for her and some photos showing my prep-work from my DM's journal for this session. As always, I really appreciate any feedback you'd like to offer to my players on their recaps. They work really hard on these and have to fit them in between school-work, chores, and other activities, so it's nice when they get to hear compliments from people who enjoy reading them. 

For more information on our previous adventures: 

• Influences: Some of the Weird Fantasy Tropes I'll be using in this campaign 
• Sessions 0 and 1: Leaving the Village, the Bone Road & Capture by Goblins 
• Session 3: Escape from the Goblin Caves 
• Session 4: The Goblin Cave Exit and the Return to the Keep 
• Session 5: The Keep and the Creeper Lair 
• Session 6: The Creeper Lair, Part 2 
• Session 7: Conversations at the Keep 
• Session 8: Return to the Caves of Chaos 
• Session 9: The Orc Lair 
• Session 10: Return to the Goblin Caves!
• Thoughts on Playing D&D with Tweens

SESSION 11 FULL RECAP (As written by "E" in the voice of her character, Holly Short, the Elf)

Wardenday, Redleaf 25 

My eyes blink open. Where am I? I think to myself. Then the memories all come flooding back in. I’m in the forest with the other Shadow Hunters. Then, I become aware of the eerie silence. The others are still asleep. I take the opportunity to study my spells so I can use them later on if needed.  

The others eventually start to slowly awake and get ready for the day. All is still quiet except the crunching of forest floor under the Shadow Hunters feet and shuffling of clothes and belongings. Finally, as everyone is finishing up, we hear the first non-Shadow Hunter related noise. A whooshing, a flapping of wings. An unkindness of ravens flies overhead.  

“Oh no. Gruumsh knows that ravens very bad.” Says Gruumsh, the dwarf fighter, who we’ve hired as a retainer. We start walking to the keep with little banter. I only trip once. When we finally arrive at the keep all is quiet and still. We check in and as Greta the Wanderer checks in her sword, the guard asks her if she would help them tonight.  

“It is the anniversary of the Purging.” He says. We ask what the Purging is, but he says he doesn’t feel comfortable talking about it. We move on and meet Ulrich Von Munchburger and return his brother and his sister in-law. He gives us 50 gold pieces which we split equally amongst ourselves. He didn’t seem to be in the mood to chat and dismissed us immediately afterward.  

We head over to Doktor Schüttelt’s place, and he heals us and gives us mediocre haircuts. We were still curious, so we asked the doctor if he could tell us about the purging. His face suddenly snapped into a very shocked expression, and he started to back out of the room.  But Cora Netflix, my beloved elf cousin, stopped him just in time and offered to teach him our traditional elf dance from our hometown, Wibbleville. 

After that, we head over to the tavern, The Greased Goat. There sat Vasilov, the man I had hired to train my wolf pup. Alex, a former group member who had since passed, had also hired him to train her wolf, but left that wolf to me. He was playing a strange song on a strange instrument. He informed us that the song calmed the wolves.  

We walked around and had conversations and gathered that the Purging was when a group of crusader knights drowned a group of "heretics" decades ago. Many think it's just a legend to frighten children. Even Gustav, the tavern keeper, used to dress up in scary costumes and go out with his friends to pull pranks on people.  

We leave and head over to the Witch’s Tower. Once inside, we give an ivory wand we found on our adventures to the Witch. My cousins and I are allowed to enter the tower. We hear a disembodied voice inside our head sarcastically congratulating us. She agrees to train us, as stated before we left on our adventure, but we have to wear anklets that won’t come off for seven years, binding us to the Witch.  

We leave, and Anslem the guard approaches us with a letter from the Burger Meister asking them to investigate strange happenings at an abandoned chapel on the outskirts of the Keep, past the Slaughterhouse District.  We agree and make our way to the chapel. We got our weapons back for this special mission, so we feel a bit more prepared than we would’ve. We walk slowly and carefully into the graveyard, but despite our confidence and carefulness, skeletons began to rise out of the graves and slowly come toward us. My good friend Bartolo the Seeker called on his god, the Thrice Great Kule, and with great, mysterious power, the skeletons were turned away. Even with the epic power of the god, skeletons were still emerging and coming toward us. We quickly ran through and around them and made it to the chapel. We burst in and slammed the door. I then used my own epic power, and cast the spell Hold Portal, which held the door shut so nothing and no-one could open it except myself.  

Our newest member, a thief, named Augustus, found a curious pocket watch. She tried to set it, but instead it turned her into a very old woman. We tried to take it from her to avoid further damage, but upon touch, many of us turned various ages!  

We decided to start exploring and found a room with a mirror in it. In the mirror we could see not our own reflections, but the reflections of long dead ancestors. I saw my Great Aunt Crystal. She was known for her baking and stories. I saw her long gray braids and flour covered apron, same as always. It appeared she was baking something. Then I knew. She was baking poisoned cookies. Her usual warm smile was replaced by an insane, menacing grin. The rest of the Shadow Hunters later claimed to have seen different distorted versions of various ancestors.  

We quickly left and entered another room where the was a party. The room was full of people, but they were slightly see-through. We asked them questions, but they avoided the questions, turned back food, and forgot we were there. If we got their attention again, they would speak to us as if they were seeing us for the first time in their life.  

We found another room where there were children, caught in a loop of waltzing. They would enter the room, waltz across, and slowly grow old as they swept the room, then start over. By waltzing with them, we gained access to another room where we had to fight an undead witch night sister. We defeated her, and found her infant son, which she had conducted awful experiments on and cursed to be undead for all eternity. We were forced to kill it and it melted to a puddle of goo.  

We left the chapel and upon leaving we’re reverted back to our regular ages and the weather was happier and the skeletons were gone. 

The End

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The ends the recap from our 11th session. We played one more time last year, in November. I'm still waiting for one of my players to send her recap from that session in advance of our next game, which is scheduled for this Saturday. 

Hanging: Home office

Drinking: Tap water

Listening: "So What" by Miles Davis and his Quintet, from the album "Kind of Blue: Legacy Edition"