Tamoachan

Notes on Tournament Play:

The purpose of tournament play is to get out of the ruins before time runs out. Choosing less direct paths, arousing monsters, or searching for treasure will cost players precious time. There is a real time limit of 2 hours on tournament play. If a shorter playing tournament is desired, it may be played that when the party reaches room #39 they have reached safety. This shorer version may have a time limit from 1 to 1.5 hours.  The DM should note the time at which play begins and halt play when the predetermined length of time has elapsed...

- From module C1: The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan

It's been decades since I've run the C1 adventure. In the past, I've run it as both a "standard" camaign adventure, and in its "tournament" format...minus the time limit.  Having now experienced tournament play (and run several timed tournament sessions) I have a pretty good idea of what it takes and how much is possible when it comes to running such adventure sites.

Tamoachan is too big for the time allotted. That much was crystal clear from the outset.

Still, "nephew" Spencer was coming over Wednesday to play D&D, and by God we were going to give him a game! He picked up Sofia from school, and showed up around 3:30ish...about ten minutes after Diego got home. We sat down to play a bit after 4pm, pre-gens in hand, determined to tackle our "two hour" adventure. Meanwhile, my wife was working in her office, and had already agreed to make dinner (pozole...nummy!) after she knocked off work...figured we'd be eating around 7ish or thereabouts.

Then...at roughly 5:30pm...we heard a distant explosion and all the lights went out.

It's been "atmospheric river" up in Seattle over the last week...perhaps you've seen the images of flooding on CNN through some parts of the state (most notably Pierce County...south of Seattle). Well, it's been accompanied by a hell of a lot of wind, too. An enormous tree took out a swath of power lines and blacked out some 10 city blocks in my neighborhood. Our electricity wasn't restored till 3:20am.

Still...the show must go on. My wife moved out to the car where she could charge her phone and use her laptop to finish sending emails. Pizza was ordered from a place outside the dark zone (still had to go pick it up...but that gave me an excuse to get a six pack of beer). Candles and electric torches were lit, and we continued our game by lamplight, only breaking to eat.  

We finished up sometime around 9:40 (and then played a few rounds of laser tag in the dark house).

So...about four hours? And I ended the thing just after area #39, stating that the stairs beyond led "out" rather than to the slightly more complex (if shorter) 2nd level of the dungeon.

I should point out that the kids are no slouches, by the way, not even Spencer...who has less experience with AD&D than my kids at this point. He is very no-nonsense and decisive, maybe even more so than Diego who, I have to say, had a spot of difficulty wrapping his head around the scenario's parameters ("get out") when he's so used to the usual objective ("get treasure"). But he was able to buckle down pretty quickly, even as he decried the LACK of treasure within the adventure.

Sofia, on the other hand, was quite on her game. Of the pre-gens, she chose Rhialle the fighter (her standard class) which is the only character that speaks "Olman," the language of the various monsters and critters in the adventure. Which is great, because she tends to be a "talk first THEN kill" type player. She quickly won the friendship of the crayfish and guardian crab, scoring an off the charts natural "00" on her reaction roll, and likewise managed to 'talk down' the awakened monks and buy them off with a potion of climbing that she had little use for. She was also quite generous with the Keoughtom's ointment in her inventory and they'd used the entire thing before the end of the adventure. 

Diego, playing as Cair the magic-user/thief, and Spencer, playing Myrrha the cleric, alternated taking the lead for the party, though there weren't many disagreements (the one time they couldn't come to a consensus on a direction, they used augury to make a decision/achieve consensus). Both players ranged from good to great with their chosen characters:

Diego's an old hand at playing "thief types" (usually assassins) and had no issues knowing when to search for traps, picking locks, etc. and he's played plenty of elves and half-elves in the past. What was new for him was playing a magic-user...especially one with access to so many mid-level spells (he just couldn't wait to let that fireball off the chain), but he did just fine: killed the nereid's eel with magic missile, used detect magic on the statue's sword, knock to open the door in the flooded room (in order to safely empty the water), and light once the party ran out of torches (which just got them to the fire beetle chamber...thank goodness!). He did have a chance to use fireball...on the giant slug (in a chamber large enough to take the thing), boiling its hide and collapsing the wall on the thing...a fine use of the spell. And while he got his arm trapped in the beak of the eagle stature, he used his potion of stone to flesh to soften the thing so they could just cut him free without bashing his arm. 

Meanwhile, Spencer was fantastic as the cleric...quickly deducing that slow poison would help them with the poison gas of the place. using create water to wash the silt out from below the stuck door, and using snake charm on the two-headed amphisbaena in the final chamber, as well as the aforementioned augury and (duh) cure light wounds. He also made made excellent use of his wand of secret door and trap detection to (narrowly) avoid the sand box trap and to discover the secret door in the cat-faced wall (after Sofia had already failed her attempt to search for secret doors there) which would eventually lead to freedom...I think he ended the session with only 3 or 4 charges left after starting with 15. Kudos also for destroying 9 of the 15 zombies and knocking down another two with his quarterstaff.

And kudos to the whole group for simply ignoring the gas spore (Sofia did try to talk to it in Olman). Though Diego was tempted to take a swing at it (which would have been disastrous), they decided to simply not waste the time. I should note that NONE of the three players have the slightest idea what a beholder is, having never encountered one in the game (and not being the kinds of kids who fawn over a Monster Manual), so that probably accounts for their nonchalance about the thing.

All in all, the three of them hit some 24 of the 39 encounters that comprise the "lower chambers" and the "first tier" of the adventure. Even though many of these are designed to be easily bypassed or ignored for the sake of expedience, that's still remarkably  good time. Generally speaking, 3 to 5 numbered (i.e. "interact-able") encounter areas per hour of play is what I expect from an experienced group of players. Even accounting for the fact they weren't searching and looting for treasure, knocking down 6 numbers per hour is solid play.

Their scoring (tournament-wise) was pretty good as well. They had +46 positive points and only accruing -14 negative points. Adding +100 for all PCs surviving and the 100 point base, that gives the group a very respectable 232 point score. Not bad at all, despite struggling a bit with the whole nereid encounter and nearly losing Cair in the "plant pits" right before the end.

[to be fair, that one's a little "iffy;" Cair was healed...using the last of the Keoughtom's ointment...at the same time he was being reduced to zero hit points. We diced for initiative but the rolls came up tied, and I allowed him to continue on. Regardless, the PC wouldn't have "died;" he would have been "zeroed out," and still could have been dragged from the dungeon by his companions. Since they entered the final encounter area directly thereafter...and Spencer neutralized the snake threat immediately...Cair being down would not have altered the outcome of the session in the slightest]

Showing the map to the players afterwards, they were incredulous that the scenario could be completed in only two hours. Diego, a solid chip off the old block, was disgusted by the pitiful lack of treasure in the place (although I haven't actually run the numbers yet...). I did explain that treasure hunting was not the actual point of the adventure but, rather, escape...and the PCs could always go back, now that the air was somewhat cleared, and try plundering the Shrine. He grudgingly conceded the point.

[okay, I should probably look at this now: C1 should have an expected treasure yield of around 190,000 g.p. given that is it designed for five to seven PCs averaging 5th level and contains 54 numbered encounter areas. Total treasure count for the place is more like 90K-100K depending on how you want to price the many unique and weird magic items in the place. I suppose you COULD make up some of the shortfall by stocking an excessive abundance of "stucco figures" in area #1 (there's no specific number given, only their value) but an upwards limit of 4,000 g.p. worth seems appropriate. Still...only about half of what I'd like to see, and the upper tiers are especially meager. One podcast review of the adventure I listened to suggested doubling the value of all the ornamental jewelry and gemstones, and that seems like a reasonable (and easy!) fix, if you want to make the treasure count more palatable]

But it was fun; everyone had a good time, especially Spencer who loves "old school" D&D and just does not get enough of it. But isn't that something we ALL could say?

Okay, that's enough...hope I didn't spill too many spoilers on this (nearly 50 year old) adventure!  Cheers!

The Kids